Change comes with a certain chaos, an uncertainty. Change is rejected and resisted whenever possible because it’s often never comfortable. Change challenges us and requires us to be flexible. If you want your life to be different, progress, and be all that God intended you will need to embrace change as a lifestyle.
What is change? Change is defined; to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc. of something different from what it is or from what if would be left alone.
1. The Reality of Change: change is inevitable.
We live in a world that is constantly changing. Technological advances, information transfer, economy, etc. There are 3 types of change. There is a change we initiate, change the world initiates, and change that God initiates. We have to respond to change either through resistance or acceptance.
[shareable cite=”@terrylamasters”]The irony of change is that God is constant in the midst of an ever-changing world. #forwardleader[/shareable]2 Corinthians 5:17 (KJV) “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.
Ephesians 2:10 (NASB) “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
Isaiah 64:8 (NKJV) “But now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand.
1 Thessalonians 4:3 “For this is the will of God, your sanctification:
Hebrews 13:8 ESV “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Numbers 23:19 ESV “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
Malachi 3:6 ESV “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.
2. The Resistance of Change: change is uncomfortable.
Our comfort zone is where we know we can do it.
Status Quo – Keep things the way they are.
Outside of our Comfort Zone is where God knows we can do it.
[shareable cite=”@terrylamasters”]Fear causes us to resist change. #embracechange #forwardleader[/shareable]John 15:1-3 Message “I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. He cuts off every branch of me that doesn’t bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more. You are already pruned back by the message I have spoken.
Joshua 1:9 ESV “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
Romans 12:1-2 ESV “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
3. The Resolution to Change: change is possible, measurable and necessary.
Matthew 19:26 NLT “Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.
John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
Romans 6:4 “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
