improve my life | the illumined one

Recognizing our wrong behavior

Many times in life, we recognize that we have adopted certain behaviors that are wrong and need to correct them. It might be when we step on the scales and realize that our BMI is too high. We realize we have to change our diet and exercise more. Or it might be that we are a student and our GPA needs improvement. We realize we need to change our attention to more diligent studying.

Rethinking our bad behavior

In the Holy Bible, God instructs mankind to change our thinking when it is out of alignment with Him. The Holy Bible calls this ‘repentance.’ Repent means to think differently. It’s the first step to improve your life. There is much that can be said about repentance. But the basic concept is that mankind tends to view God and His commands improperly.

Many people don’t give God any thought at all – these people need to “think differently.” Many people believe they know the Creator, but their beliefs are man-made fabrications of who God is—these people need to ‘think differently.’ Still other people know the word of God up through the arrival of Immanuel but don’t recognize Jesus as the fulfilment of the Old Testament – these people need to “think differently.” And there are people that attend church where Jesus worshipped and praised as He should be but they don’t really know Jesus – these people need to “think differently.”

Even when we focus properly on our Creator, God is likely to illuminate areas of our lives that need alignment with His purposes. Maybe we’ve allowed work and our desire to build wealth consume far too much of our time at the expense of loving our spouse and children. Maybe we’ve allowed a particular sin to fester in our life when we know very well it’s something God doesn’t want us to participate in. Wherever we are not aligned with God’s purposes, we need to ‘think differently.’

The Chinese Farmer paarable:

There once was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “How can you be sure?”

The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “How can you be sure?”

The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “How can you be sure?”

The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “How can you be sure?”

“Thinking differently” may take time

So what does this parable have to do with change? Sometimes when we recognize a behavior problem in our lives we need to ask God for help in changing it. When we ask God to help us think differently His answer may immediate. But far more often God will answer our request in what may seem like a roundabout fashion in order to teach us a lesson with lasting value. It’s analogous to the old idiom “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” And often, because the lesson is addressing an area of our lives where we have a fundamental misalignment with the purposes of God, the lesson can take weeks, months, years, or even decades to learn.

Why is change so hard?

Look at the sin of pride. Pride is when you think more highly of yourself than you should. We learn this behavior from the time we are infants. Pride is such a fundamental part of our behavior that we often don’t recognize it. Yet pride is the source of a vast majority of our bad behavior. We almost exclusively behave in a way that essentially says “me first.” Philippians 2:3-4 says “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.”

Now lets say God starts to convict you of your pride and you pray to God to ask Him to help you deal with it. Step one is generally NOT God just ridding you of prideful thoughts and activities. It’s getting you to recognize how pride manifests itself in your life – and this can be quite painful. You’ll begin to recognize various ways that you don’t esteem others better than yourself. You will find at your workplace that you really don’t esteem your coworker as better than you. You will find in your marriage that you really don’t treat your spouse as someone who is better than you. Even driving in traffic you rarely look out for the interests of others.

Some sins go unrecognized yet remain pervasive.

There are literally hundreds of areas of our lives that God can show us how we have been behaving in a “me first” manner. Pride is like a mountain that we’ve spent our entire life building up bucket by bucket. And the older you get the larger the mountain – until it gets so big that it’s not even surmountable anymore. You look at the mountain and it seems hopeless. But don’t lose heart. You will see that, as painful as the process can be, the end justifies the means that God uses to bring you in to alignment with His purposes. And it’s not just pride – There are many, many ways to improve your life.

Summary

So many times I’ve heard, or read, people say something to the effect of “I’m not praying to God. He never answers my prayers.” And I think to myself “How can you be sure?” How can you improve your life if you don’t ask God for help? I can confidently say that God has answered literally every request I’ve ever prayed since He adopted me in to His family. He has taught me how to recognize answers much more quickly than I used to. Even when the answer seems to be coming in a roundabout fashion I can often recognize it. And many times His answers come in a way that I never even thought of. His answers are always vastly superior to any idea I had.

I want to leave you with a prayer that I pray almost every time I pray. It’s so important when you are seeking change. My prayer goes something like this:

“God, please open my ears to the truth of Your word. I know that my ears have a tendency to get stopped up as I make my way through this world – listening to all kinds of things that distract me from the prize. And Lord, break up the fallowed ground of my heart – soften it so that when Your word comes in through my ears it lands on a soft heart that is ready to embrace all that you are teaching me. And Lord, loosen my stiff neck. Help me to be a doer of Your word and not a hearer only. Let me not forge ahead on my own path as I am so inclined to do but rather let my neck be loose to turn to the left or right as you guide me. Please help me to get on track to improve my life.

I pray that the Lord bless you!