Last weekend, I celebrated my 38th birthday. Without a doubt, I celebrate my birthdays these days with a bit less fanfare and excitement than I did when I was younger. I see my daughters, Sophia (7) and Xenia (5) who look forward to their birthdays and what’s ahead for them. Every year marks a year that they’ve grown taller, are able to do more, and get one step closer to being a “big kid.” For me, birthdays are a very different story. While my kids watch themselves grow in height, I watch myself grow in white hairs.
Over the past two weeks in our pastoral team, we’ve been doing discipleship lessons on the topic of change. One thing we know is that change is challenging. However, change is also one of the most basic and common human experiences. No matter who we are, what we do, or how old we are, change is going to happen! Seeing how it’s impossible to completely stop change in our lives, the best thing we can often do is learn how to manage changes so that we can grow through them, instead of becoming stressed when change happens and we’re not prepared.
In our first discussion on the pastoral team, a point that was made about change was “do not forget about God.” Something about that idea caught my attention. As we discussed the topic of change more deeply, one conclusion we reached is that change for the sake of change is pointless. On the other hand, change because God is initiating something is very important.
I think that there are two different ways that we can initiate change in our lives. One is to make a decision to change based on our best judgment. We use our experiences, education, common sense, and knowledge to make a decision to change. We set goals in our lives and make changes in order to reach them. At times, these kinds of changes are necessary and can be fruitful. We need to use judgment and wisdom in every decision we make.
But there is another way to initiate change that is very valuable. This is when we initiate change in response to something we think God is doing in our lives. We change because we feel a tug or a sense that God is leading us to make a change. For these kinds of changes, listening prayer becomes very important. The better we are able to hear God, the better we can have a sense of the kind and timing of change God wants us to make.
Growing in maturity is a form of such change. When we decide to make a change by forgiving others, or attending a marriage conference, or going through steps for inner healing, we’re initiating change in our lives based on where we think God is leading us. Every time we make this kind of change, we grow as a person, much like a child grows in height from year to year.
What drives change in your life? Do you wait for outside circumstances to force you to change? Do you initiate change based on goals that you’ve set for yourself or your loved ones? Or do you approach change with listening prayer, asking God for his will? I pray today that we will grow as a church that always has our ears to God, and is always ready to face change bravely as God leads us in new directions.