Change

Do you like change? Does change make you uncomfortable? It does for me. I don’t care for change and when I do experience changes in my life, I want a very detailed description as to why this change has to happen and whether or not this change is going to be good for me in the long run. Now, it helps to understand that I am a planner. I like a plan. No … I’m sorry, I need a plan.

Over the years, God has taken my “need” for a plan and turned it upside down. In my mind, I envision my live as a book and God tore that page out, crumbled it up and threw it in the trash. He is saying to me that I do not need to write in permanent marker in the pages of my life … I need to use a pencil with a large eraser. I can dream and I can make plans but I need to be flexible enough to get out the eraser and rewrite as needed. God reminds me every day that when I make a plan, He has a bigger plan in mind. One that helps me grow both spiritually, emotionally and unfortunately more often than not in maturity. I say unfortunately because in my experience, growing in maturity often is difficult and more often than not, painful.

A very wise friend made a comment this week about how difficult it is to change in the church. We change every day at work. Our boss give us a new plan or new guidelines and we accept them for what they are, follow the rules and move forward without much thought. So why is it so difficult to accept change when it happens in church? Why do we become irritated because we are asked to get out of our comfort zone to do something that we’ve never done before? I believe this is about control. In our jobs, often we relinquish control over to our bosses because that is how things are. In our church, this is different because this affects our lives … who we are, what we believe. Relinquishing control over to God is difficult. Allowing ourselves to be open to things God wants to introduce us to can be difficult. We become vulnerable and transparent. What if we don’t understand? What if this new thing at church exposes us to areas that we are not comfortable or areas that we don’t understand? What if someone sees that I don’t have it all under control? What if … what if …

So this is what I propose … what if we allow God to be the Lord of our lives? We know our church leaders continually seek God’s guidance in everything they do. How freeing would our lives be if we put down our permanent markers and picked up a pencil to write in our book? Allow God to change us and to help us grow.