Most people do not like change. I can understand that, I don’t always like it myself. However, I have learned something about change that I want to share with you, it helped me and I am hoping it may help some of you as well.
As I said, most people don’t like change, they like being comfortable and anything that makes them uncomfortable is not welcomed. But life is about change, things change on a daily basis and if we are not able to embrace that change we will become miserable…and stagnant.
I am a person who gets bored easily, I like to stay busy and keep things moving. I find that I at times, I become bored with my house and need to change it around. A LOT. This past weekend I was feeling just that way. Therefore I changed some things around in my bedroom, moved furniture, added some things, and took some things away. As I did this, I noticed that when I first made a change, automatically, I didn’t like it. It just seemed out of place and not comfortable.
As I was doing this, I heard the Lord say ‘just leave it for a few minutes and come back and look at it a few times.’ So, I went on to the next room and went back and looked every now and then, as I did, I would notice what it added to the room or how it made it more functional.
What I learned about myself was this; change makes me a little uncomfortable, however if I simply give it time, often it works out best.
I see this in our Christian walk as well. Something will happen that brings change and we become uncomfortable. When we become uncomfortable we will often try to stop the change or make things remain the way they were – there is no growth in that kind of attitude – we need to instead stop, allow it to sink in, see the benefits of the change and then make a decision.
At times God will remove people from our life, it hurts sometimes and causes discomfort, however, if we will allow God to be Lord of our life, and give it some time, we will see that His presence is stronger in our life when we allow things that are not conducive to His blessing to be removed, even if those things are people. If we give it time we will see His hand of blessing in our life in a new way.
At other times, God has to literally rip things out of our hand because letting go would be too hard or because we refuse to let go out of fear. I remember years ago I was praying about working for myself from home so I would have more time with God. I had decided that I would work at my current job until I created a strong customer base, which made sense to me. At the same time, deep in my spirit, I knew it was Gods timing for change for me but I was afraid to make the leap. One day, God stepped in and I was suddenly released from my job. Not because of anything I did wrong, not because my boss was upset with me, I was simply released.
At first it terrified me, and then I decided that God knew this was coming and if it was coming then He would take care of me. That next Monday I began working on my business, I gave it everything I had, and He blessed it. This change that literally threw me into a new place, this change that terrified me in the beginning, turned out to be a tremendous blessing.
I could have done many things; I could have hung on to that job. I could have become angry with the people who wanted to release me, I could have taken offense. Or, I could have embraced the change and trusted God to have my back. That was the attitude I decided to keep and He blessed me. He blessed me then and I have been able to work for myself since that day. That would not have happened if I had resisted change and not allowed God to move me when He knew it was time.
Proverbs 16:9 says; a man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. That is exactly what happened in this season…I had a plan and I thought it was a good plan but God directed my steps differently…and I allowed Him to.
Change is inevitable. What you do with it is up to you.
