"Willing" to Change-An Exercise in Futility

     With the advent of the New Year, the cultural tradition is to make "resolutions," about what one will/will not do. The general theme is to "improve oneself" and by doing so, "one's life."
     Can we, as Christ followers, by our own will do that? Is that the way improvement, change, or transformation happens for us? Well, we might do it for awhile, but only by way of external actions. Our trying and exerting our wills, only serves the outward man, and this too, usually fails overtime. One's will can only go so far before giving out in the long run. (Think of endless diets people have tried.) Also, if our will is that strong to maintain a certain course of action, it needs to be broken.
     In brokeness and subsequent confession of our weakness to God and repentance, can true change happen. When we "give up" our own wills, realizing the futility of them to enact true change for us, and turn to God in broken submission, asking for His help, He begins that process in us. He is so attentive to our cries which confess who we are, and in contrast, begin to realize who He is. But, usually we have to come to the end of ourselves to do that.
     It all goes back to the garden. Adam and Eve choose to live life apart from God, because they knew "good and evil" by eating that tree. Before that, they relied on the wisdom of God and trusted it and Him for their lives. We still try and live in that fallen condition; one in which we think is freedom, but is truly bondage. Freedom is letting go of our lives and our wills, and trusting Him. When we do that, true inward change can happen, and this changed impacts every other change.
     He desires that all of us be governed by Him in trust. Don't waste your time on resolving to do something this year. Instead seek Him and His will for your life, and respond to it. That is the change that will change you and the world. Amen.