The Absolute Certainty of Change

Thank you, Jamie, for the beautiful special music. I realize there's a couple more announcements that I missed, so my apologies. Oh! At the end of the potluck tonight—so I didn't really do a great job of telling you what was going on today, either, did I? So what we'll be doing today—we won't be having a Bible study. We do have a Bible study format, and that's to allow for us to be able to have a little bit more time before we hit sundown, because a lot of folks, when it gets to be right around sundown, have got to get home.

And so we want to be able to have the ability to have them here with us and to be able to participate with us in this process. Today what we'll be doing is we'll have a potluck. We'll be enjoying that. And then there will be some kind of special snacks set up and some dessert set up, by way of thanking those that have served in our congregation for so very, very long. You know, one of the things as I came into this role, you know, a year and a couple months ago, it's hard to believe it's been a year and a couple months, but when he came in here, we could not have survived as long as we did without all of you and all of the incredible hard work that you guys do and that you put together and all of, you know, our department heads and our deacons and our deaconesses and the chair crews and the sound guys and just everybody.

And so what we wanted to do today was we wanted to just have the ability after services today to just say thank you, just to say thank you. That's all. To be able to thank you for many, many, many years of service. You know, some are stepping back from various capacities and moving into a different kind of role. And so we wanted to be able to have that ability and to be able to do that.

And so that's kind of the gist of today. We'll have a potluck, we'll have some dessert, we'll have some snacks. You know, big old thank you to all of the people who have served and then after that we'll have a game night. Well, the announcement says at the end of the potluck, please come and get your dishes. I have jokingly started to say the back of my car has turned into lost and found. Before we leave, you know, we're usually one of the last few out the door and usually there's a handful of stuff that's been left, you know, whatever else.

So if you're missing something, chances are good it's in the trunk of my car. If not, well, we'll find it. We'll track it down if we need to. For a while there I was collecting jewelry and other things. So anyway, please make sure and get your potluck dishes all taken care of here at the end that will help facilitate the game night as well as prevent me from taking anything else home in my car. So thank you for your cooperation on that. I certainly do appreciate it.

I'd like to start today by telling you guys just a little bit of a story. And it's a little bit of a long story, so settle in. I apologize. I promise we're going somewhere with it. When I was first hired at Waldo Middle School back in 2007, it was during the time of the No Child Left Behind Act. I see a few of my teachers in the room kind of give a little bit of an involuntary tick at the mention of No Child Left Behind, and in some ways, rightly so.

It was a very difficult time in public education. At its core, the No Child Left Behind Act was one that had its heart in the right place. But it often happens when good intentions meet passionate emotion. A knee-jerk reaction takes place, which often causes more issues than it solves. For those who were not in public education during the mid-2000s, No Child Left Behind was an initiative that was signed into law by then-president George W. Bush that mandated that all students would achieve at specific levels by a certain timeframe.

And it ratcheted up slowly. Everyone in education agreed, yes, children need to achieve at greater levels of achievement. You know, we've seen our scores. We know where they're at. We understand what students need to achieve at a greater level of achievement. And they agreed current levels of achievement were completely and totally unacceptable. So in that regard, everyone was on the same page. Yes, improvement was absolutely, wholeheartedly necessary. But there was a great degree, as often happens, of disagreement in the how and disagreement in the by when. The law stated that all students in all schools across the country needed to meet certain metrics of achievement by a certain timeframe. And it all started initially at all students needing to pass state assessments in reading, mathematics, science, all at a level of 50 percent the first year. The year after that, it goes up to 60 percent. The year after that, 70 percent. The year after that, 80 percent. And 90 percent. And the goal of the law was to allow all students, all students in public education to achieve at a 100 percent pass rate of their state assessments by the time that 100 percent limit came into place. And that would be a situation where no child would be left behind. That was the name of the law. That's why they called it that. What the law didn't take into account was differences in learning needs, poverty levels. Students came to school already knowing what happened in their family background, family of origin, language barriers. It didn't take that into account. It didn't take into account home life. It didn't take into account teacher ineptitude. I mean, it didn't. It didn't take that into account either. Well, okay, it sort of took teacher ineptitude into account from a standpoint of some of the consequences should you not meet. But it didn't take into account these extremely complex variety of factors that go into achievement in public schools.

There's a lot there. There's a lot of things. It's not a anyone-smoking gun. It's a death of a thousand cuts. It's a situation where there's a lot of things that are going on. For example, there were students in Salem-Kaiser School District at that time who were enrolled in what is called a Developmental Learning Center, or DLC. These are kids with very severe disabilities, Down syndrome and other disabilities that made learning at this level not realistic.

We had students in those DLCs—I worked with one who was blind, mute, and deaf. I worked with him for about three weeks. He had signs that he would do in his hand, and that would tell him kind of what he was doing. We had kids in that classroom whose graduation goal was learning to wipe their own face. But yet the law stated that those kids would achieve at 100 percent period end of sentence, which is simply not realistic. It's just not. And so it didn't take into account the students that were in our newcomer center at Waldo that were brand new to the country. It didn't speak English.

Brand new to the country. It didn't take that into account. So there were a lot of things that it just didn't account for. Well, I came to Waldo in the year after we had already failed for a couple of years. And we were on, like, strike number three here, and if we didn't achieve 50 percent that year, we would go into something called restructuring. Now I'll explain all that here, too. As I told you, it's a long story. Settle in.

I promise we're going somewhere. The year that I came in, the bar that our kids had to jump was 50 percent pass rate in math, in reading, and in science. And so we went to work. I mean, we planned all these things. We set this stuff. We taught our hearts out. We did test prep. We did all kinds of things. We connected our curriculums. We followed up on the kids that didn't come to school regularly.

You know what I mean? We were doing all this stuff. And when testing season came around, we didn't make the bar. We hit the bar. We knocked the bar off the high jumps, so to speak, and landed there on our backs in the pit. And so we were a little bit concerned because we didn't really know exactly what was going to happen. The law had a few different provisions in place when a school didn't make the cut.

They could either be taken over by the federal government, literally. They could have the federal government come in and take over that school and implement their own principal, their own teachers, and all that. That was one possible situation. The principal could be fired. All the staff could be fired. Certain sections of the staff could be fired. There were all these provisions that were in place should a school not make what they called adequate yearly progress. And we had not. And so the final option, the last option that you as a school could do is you could undergo something called restructuring, which essentially meant that you as a school came together and said, what we're doing now isn't working.

We're going to throw all the options on the table, and we're going to hack and slash what we're doing until we get to the things that will work and the things that will hopefully provide our students with the ability to achieve at the levels that they need to achieve. So we, as Waldo, looked at that and said, we don't want the government coming in, we don't want to lose our principal, we don't want to lose all our staff, let's restructure.

And so we did. We established a committee that I served on as a science representative. We laid everything that we did for a better part of an entire summer on the table and said, does this help students achieve? And if it doesn't, it's gone. We're throwing it out. We don't do it anymore. And so we just went through, I mean, there were all kinds of things on the table. You know, as a district, we didn't typically retain. We elected to retain students. We chose to retain students if they did not meet a certain level. I mean, there were certain criteria and things that had to go along. Anyway, it was during this time in this restructuring committee that was making all these decisions that the rest of the staff had to trust were the right decisions.

And it was a time of upheaval. That first year we went into restructuring, a number of staff just up and quit. We went home for the summer. We came back. They weren't there anymore. They decided, I'm done. I'm retiring. I'm out of here. I'm going somewhere else. You know, I'll go teach somewhere else. They put in their years. And rather than make the changes that had been proposed, because it was an incredible amount of extra work, they decided to just be done. And I can't fault them for that. Some decided they didn't want to teach anymore at all in the current climate.

They just said, you know, I'm done teaching, period. I don't want to do this anymore. And those that did stick around, we spent a lot of time that year talking about change. We spent a lot of time talking about change. Organizational change, how to cope with change, how to handle things when they shift, how to work with things when they shift. We talked about the difference between first order change and second order change, and how people react to these kinds of changes. For example, first order change is like change in individual parameters.

It might mean like it's a slightly different way that we teach math, for example, but we still teach math. We haven't overhauled the entire system in that regard. We've just looked at how we do different things. And so that was one of the types of change that occurred in some ways. But second order change was all over the place, too. And second order change is when you have change or an overhaul of an entire system.

When you open your eyes when it's done, it doesn't look the same anymore. And so we had quite a bit of a second order change going. Second order change you can reverse. You can kind of switch it back if it didn't work out for you. Second order change is a whole lot harder to switch back.

It's a lot less reversible. It puts new systems and new everything into place that makes it really hard to go back. During this process, we were asking a lot of our staff to make second order change. And we were asking them to make serious change to the systems and the protocols and everything that they had ever learned before.

Some of these folks had been teaching 30 years, and we're asking them to change everything. As you might imagine, it didn't go over well. It was a struggle. It was tough. But as we were working through this process, we consulted a lot of business leaders that led companies through similar projects or through processes, through mergers, restructurings. And one of the things that kept coming up was the existence of three camps of people when confronted with change. That there were these three camps of people that kind of found themselves in this camp.

And most of the time, it came because of a distrust of senior management. It just did. I mean, people weren't really sure that what they were getting from the top was trustworthy information or not. And so they kind of end up just naturally sorting into these three camps. The articles that we read referred to them as the resistors, the undecideds, and the embracers. They said there were three kind of camps of individuals that came into this.

And in just about every situation, these kind of camps developed. The resistors are those that resist all change simply because it's change. And it doesn't have anything to do with what's being proposed. It's just, no, that's new. I'm not doing it. And that's the resistor camp. That's the ones that are like, ain't gonna happen.

Anything new was immediately suspect. It was unnecessary. It was impractical. Why can't we do it the same way? We've always done it. I see absolutely no reason to change anything. Maintain status quo. That's the resistor camp. The opposite side of that coin is the embracer camp.

Those are those that kind of excitedly explore change, who try new things, make changes regularly, and really live in a pretty uncertain world. And they thrive on that. They enjoy that. Most people are not that person. Most people are not the kind of person that lives and thrives on uncertainty.

They're just not. And so, in that situation, these are your folks that tend to be kind of innovators, always looking for new and innovative ways of shifting processes. But between those two sides of that coin lie the vast majority of people. The vast majority of people are who are called the undecidants.

They're not, as we say, 100% for it. And they're not 100% again it. Right? They are really kind of weighing the options. They're looking in both ways, going, ehhh, about this. But I'm not 100% against it. I'm not 100% for it. But I'm going to listen. I'm going to make an educated decision based on, you know, what I hear as this information goes forward. What camp do you tend to find yourself in as you consider change, as you consider shifting and transitions and things?

Are you a resistor? Are you an embracer? Or are you an undecided? If you're being perfectly honest with yourself, which one are you? Which one are you? During that time at Waldo, we had all three. And throughout the restructuring process, we made a lot of changes. We put a number of new systems in place, taught our hearts out, worked and worked in the following year. Almost made it. This close. Two out of the three, we made adequate yearly progress and met. And there was one subject that we didn't make it on.

So we went back to the drawing board. We redid it again and again and again and again. The following year, we met all three. We were 60, 60, 60 across the whole entire thing. We were one of the first schools in the country who restructured and then met. We had people from China.

We had people from Japan. We had people from Finland and Norway and all over the world coming through our school and walking our hallways, looking to see what we had done because it had not been done before.

It was incredible. It was a wonderful, wonderful time after all the hard work went into place. Being able to reap the reward and say, okay, we did it. That was awesome. The three to four years before that, I could have done without those. I could have done without those years. They were tough. There was a party. We had cake. They gave us a t-shirt. Literally, and that was it. That was the extent of it. You probably didn't hear about it in the paper. We got cake. We had a party. We had a t-shirt. I might have the t-shirt somewhere. I don't know. Those years were tough. They were stressful. Frankly, as people, as humans, we are creatures of habit.

We do not like change. We don't like change. In fact, in some cases, we even fear it. We are literally afraid of it. It causes the stress and anxiety. It makes our stomach upset. The term that that is referring to is a phobia known as metathesiophobia. Metathesiophobia, and it's the name of the condition of having a real and debilitating fear of change. Individuals with metathesiophobia cannot typically go out of their homes because outside of their homes is completely unpredictable. They walk out that door and anything could happen, and so they don't go out their door. They close the door and they have their routines at home. They get up.

They have breakfast every morning at the exact same time. They watch their shows. They have lunch at the exact same time. They do whatever, and they go to bed at the exact same time, and they do not leave their home. These individuals experience incredible degrees of stress and anxiety from any sort of change that is outside of what we would say normal parameters. And even if we don't suffer to this degree, even if we don't have a severe case of metathesiophobia, we don't enjoy change. Not most of the time, at least. Again, there are some who thrive on those constantly changing circumstances, but that's not the majority.

Most, I think it's a fair statement, most would prefer a stable, consistent routine that is predictable and unchanging with time. Would you agree? Would you agree that if you had the opportunity to have a fairly predictable, unchanging routine, you would choose that over constant chaos? I think probably, right? I mean, I think probably. When I had my student teaching, I had an opportunity to work with a fantastic chemistry teacher. He was actually my wife's chemistry teacher when she was in high school, and he became a very good friend, which had some wonderful opportunities when he's sitting at my house and Shannon comes home from work and went, wait a second, my old chemistry teacher's sitting on my couch.

That's just weird. But he had his lesson plans nailed down to what would be specifically covered every day for a year in advance. Literally, he would roll in the classroom in the morning, he would open the drawer, he would go to week four, day two, and he would pull his lesson plans out, immediately reorder that sheet that would go back in that folder, and then he would teach his day.

Next day, he'd roll in week four, day three. What are we doing today? And so in the process of that, I mean, he would come in, he'd set this stuff up, he'd set a bunch of stuff on fire and do it all again the next day. And I aspired to that, I'll be honest, I aspired to that, especially the fire part. But I wanted that level of routine, I wanted that level of habit, that level of just sameness, that level of similarity, that level of not having changes all the time.

But instead, what I got in my first several years of teaching was change. Constant change. Constant. I had to move out and reset my entire classroom for the first seven years of my career. Every year, I had to move everything out of it, and move everything back into it and set it all back up the same way again. In fact, my very... Okay, no, my second year wasn't my first year. My second year of teaching, the roof over my classroom almost collapsed at state and high school. I walked in one morning, they handed me a hard hat, and said, Get everything you need to teach for the next week and a half, because it was the end of the school year.

Get everything you need to teach for the next week and a half. You have 15 minutes. Put my hard hat on. I climbed the stairs. There's a rifle in through my stuff trying to figure out, Okay, what are we going to do for the next week and a half? But once that happened, then I had to move back in, and then move out and move back in. You know, the first few years two buildings were remodeled, they were repaired. I taught in four different classrooms while I was at Waldo.

Four different classrooms over about a four or five year period. Every year brought a new reset of routines and procedures based on location, previous years' experiences, academic behavioral levels of my kids. We had always, with the district, new programs, new initiatives, district mandates that adjusted how we taught things, technology improved, lessons adjusted in response. In 15 years of public education, I never, never reached a point where I pulled out week four, day two.

Instead, what I learned was to roll with the punches, to adjust from the fly, to know when to punt, and to teach the kids in front of me because they weren't the same ones as I had the year before, and they weren't the same ones as I would have the next year. And frankly, I'm certain that in the long run all that change was, my classroom was better for it. I truly believe that.

My classroom was better for all of that change. Heraclitus is an Ephesian philosopher that was attributed as having said, there's nothing permanent except change. Nothing permanent except change, which is often adjusted to the colloquial, the only constant in the world is change. In his writings and his observations, he observed that the world was constantly in flux. A hot coal, for example, cools. Wet parchment dries.

Nothing stays the same, was his viewpoint when it came to the world. He took that a step or two further, and he made the claim that a person never steps in the same river twice because rivers are constantly changing. And he even took it one step further than that and said that the person who steps in that river, both the river and the person, are changed as a result of that interaction.

And the rest of his stuff gets really existential from there. But he is right on one account. Nothing save God remains the same. Nothing save God, save his way of life, stays the same. Change is inevitable. In fact, as Christians, I would argue change is mandated. I would go as far as saying it is mandated. We're born, we develop through adulthood, through childhood, adolescence, adulthood. We go into our golden years, and eventually we die. Scroll to Ecclesiastes 3 and verse 1, please. Ecclesiastes 3 and verse 1. Ecclesiastes 3 and verse 1. Solomon writes along these lines in the book of Ecclesiastes regarding transitions of life. Transitions of life. Times of life. Seasons of life, so to speak.

You might recognize this. That was Simon and Garfunkel that recorded this, wasn't it? Somebody that's more musical than me. I think it was Simon and Garfunkel, if I recall. Was it the birds? Thank you. I'm going to trust Dan. Dan's going to know. It's the birds that recorded it for every time there is a season, right? So Ecclesiastes 3 and verse 1. To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.

There's a time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to pluck what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to break down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance.

A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to gain and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to sow. A time to keep silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate.

A time of war and a time of peace. Now, what he doesn't go on to say is that the important part of this is recognizing the wisdom in when those times are which, right? Knowing when to open your mouth and when not to open your mouth, right?

Knowing when to gain and when to lose. And some of those things, again, are outside of our control, but life is full of change, it's full of transitions, and at every step of the way there is uncertainty. There is uncertainty at every step of the way, and there are degrees of stress and degrees of anxiety simply because it's not the same. It's not routine. It's not what it was before.

It's different. And so as a result, when that kind of stuff happens, nobody likes stress, nobody likes anxiety, so we as humans develop routines. We develop ruts. We develop habits. We develop all sorts of things to try to keep some semblance of normalcy in our life. We develop these things to attempt to keep a life that is constantly changing the same. These habits, these ruts, these routines can be healthy. They can be unhealthy. But regardless of their outcome, they are a veiled attempt at controlling certain aspects of our lives to manage change, which makes us uncomfortable. The title of the sermon today is The Absolute Certainty of Change.

And with the time that we have left today, I'd like to examine this concept to kind of consider what God thinks about change and how we as Christians can and should view change. So let's turn over to Hebrews 13, establish a couple of things here. Hebrews 13. And we'll pick up the account breaking into chapter 13 in verse 8. Hebrews 13 and verse 8. Hebrews 13 and verse 8. We see recorded that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And we see a very simple statement that gives us an understanding of the continuance of God, that Jesus Christ is the same today, or yesterday, sorry, today and forever. And when we take a look at that, you know, there's a certain context that that particular passage is written in, and it kind of gets into that as it continues.

He's trying to make the point to those reading that epistle that Jesus Christ doesn't change. Doctrines, teachings remain the same and not to be carried about with various and strange doctrines. Because the reasoning is Christ remains the same. That's what he's getting at in this particular section. James 1 records the unchanging nature of the Father. Let's go to James 1. James 1, just across the page from where you're at theoretically here, or just a couple pages away maybe, James 1 and verse 17.

James 1 and verse 17 reads as follows. It says, Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights. This is the part that we really want here. With whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. No variation or shadow of turning.

This is important for us to recognize and to remember and to revisit occasionally. God the Father and Jesus Christ are unchanging. They don't shift with the times.

They don't bend. They don't adjust to cultural expectations of them. Jesus is not an American. He's not. He doesn't espouse American values per se, unless where they line up, which they do sometimes, He espouses the values of the kingdom of God. We don't get to put them in our little box that agrees with what we agree with and conclude then that God bends to our will and our desires.

God is God. You and I are not. Because God is God, because He is unchanging, we can hang on the promises that He's provided us. We see incredible promises in Scripture. We can trust with full assurance that the kingdom of God, that He has promised to His firstfruits and to all of mankind, is coming.

We can look at the promises that we see in Scripture and we can conclude, because He is the same, because He is unchanging, these things will happen, because He said they would. Because He said they would. These things are assured as a result of His unchanging nature and His personal promise. Let's go up to Philippians 1. Philippians 1. Sometimes we begin to doubt at times. I think doubt, unfortunately, is natural. It is. It's a natural thing. But it's important for us to recognize God's unchanging nature when we read something like this.

Philippians 1. And we'll pick it up in verse 3 of Philippians 1. We'll read through verse 6, but we'll start in Philippians 1 and verse 3. We see the Apostle Paul is writing to the church in Philippi here in order to encourage them, in order to provide them with encouragement and to provide them with an understanding that if God has promised it, it will occur.

That if God has promised it, it will occur. Verse 3 of Philippians 1 says, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making requests for you with all joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now. Verse 6, being confident, having trust, being assured of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. God's not given up on His end.

The question is, will we give up on ours? God is working with us. He will complete the work that He began in us because, again, God doesn't change. He promised it. There's no shadow of turning. He's the same yesterday, today and forever, and He fulfills His promises. He follows through.

God doesn't change, but when it comes down to us, He expects us to change. He expects us to change. Let's go over to 2 Peter. In 2 Peter, the author describes these promises of God and addresses this accusation that some may have made at that point in time that God somehow is slack in His promise or He delays His coming.

And so, Peter addresses it. In 2 Peter 3 and verse 9, Peter explains that the Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but instead is long suffering towards us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. That's not on account of slackness. It's on account of God providing people with the time to repent, to provide them with the time to change. The word repent in Greek, the word metanoia, literally means to change.

In fact, specifically, it means to change one's mind, change the way that you think, how you process, the ultimate thoughts and the actions that come from the way that you think and you process, to ensure that you align yourself with God and with His expectations. Not vice versa. Not that we have a certain expectation that we put on God and decide we're going to bend Him to our will.

No. We bend to God's will. God's not slack. He's patient with us because He desires that none should perish, but that all should change, that all should repent. And when that repentance occurs, when that change occurs, it says that a person will bring forth what is described in Matthew 3, verse 8, fruits of repentance. A repentant person has fruits of repentance visible in their lives. The actions of their life reflect a changed mind, a changed way of looking at the world around them, a willingness to yield themselves to God, a willingness to adjust their life. These fruits of repentance are described in 2 Corinthians, in a bit more detail if you'd go ahead and turn over there.

They're also in Galatians 5 because they're the fruits of the Spirit, realistically. Once a repentant person is someone who has yielded their life to God's Holy Spirit, a repentant person exhibits God's Holy Spirit in their lives. But He also outlines it in 2 Corinthians 7. Let's go ahead and go over there. You're aware of the story of what happened between, you know, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians overall from a standpoint of Paul and his letter.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul writes the church in Corinth and absolutely scathing rebuke. Scaving rebuke in 1 Corinthians. Unbelievably. I mean, if you read through it, it is powerful, the writings that he writes in 1 Corinthians, especially 1 Corinthians 5 and some of the subsequent passages. But what's interesting is when you then read 2 Corinthians and you take a look at that in contrast with 1 Corinthians. We'll go ahead and read 2 Corinthians 7 and verse 8. I'm in 1 Corinthians. It's not going to do us any good. Let me get there real quick. 2 Corinthians 7 and verse 8, he writes the following.

This is, again, the Apostle Paul writing to the same people that he wrote for 1 Corinthians 2. It says, For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it, for I perceived that same epistle made you sorry, though only for a while. Now, verse 9, I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. You know, there's a big difference, and we've mentioned this before, there's a big difference between truly being sorry and being sorry you got caught.

Happens in a classroom all the time. Oh, Mr. Ladd, I'm so sorry. No, you're not. You're sorry you got caught. Because if I turned my back, you would do the exact same thing again right now. Yeah, you're right. I know. Thanks. Totally true. But there's a difference between being sorry, truly sorrowful, and being sorry that you got caught. It says, Now I rejoice again, verse 9, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing. Verse 10, For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation. Not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world, worldly sorrow, produces death.

For observe this very thing, verse 11, that you sorrowed in a godly manner. What diligence it produced in you. So now we'll see these fruits, these things that come out of it. What diligence it produced in you. What clearing of yourselves. What indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication in all things you proved yourself to be clear in this manner. Therefore, although I wrote to you, I did not do it for the sake of him who had done the wrong, nor for the sake of him who suffered wrong, but that our care for you in the sight of God might appear to you.

In other words, that you would know that he cared, that they would be aware that he cared. He states he didn't regret making them feel sorrowful. What Paul used here, Paul utilized what we might call tough love. He utilized what we might call tough love, because it encouraged a true and a lasting repentance. And the fruits of those repentance are listed. Diligence, a clearing of themselves, an indignation, a fear, a vehement desire, a zeal of indication.

Their repentance had caused an eagerness and a desire for God. It had caused a zeal, it caused a willingness for them to defend the faith, to desire to see injustices righted. These were the fruits of their repentant hearts, that they walked away from their sin, from their issues, that they were unwilling to see, and they changed. Paul utilized tough love here to help them to see that they were the problem, that they were struggling with things.

They'd become too accepting of sin. They'd exalted themselves as a result of it. But thankfully, as he wrote in 2 Corinthians, as a result of the letter, they saw it. They saw it, and they were willing to make the difficult choice to change. God doesn't change, but he certainly expects that we will. He certainly expects that we will. And it's tough. It is tough. It is not something that's easy. It's not something that's painless, because if it was, everybody would do it. If it was easy, everybody would change. Everybody would be the best versions of themselves if it was that easy.

But it's not that easy. You know, the irony of change and the dislike and the fear of it, you know, you have a ton of an irony in that as well. This time of year, especially, everybody seems to desire to change. Coming up on the last couple of weeks, the December, the first part of January, and everybody's taking a stock of 2018. They're looking at how things went for them in 2018, and as they prepare for 2019, they're sitting down and they're going, all right, I'm going to make resolutions, I'm going to decide to do this, I'm going to change that, I'm going to do this, I'm going to make this change.

So even though we fear change, this time of year we warmly embraced it. What happens in mid-February? Mid-March? It doesn't last, more often than not it doesn't last. People decide this time of year they want to quit smoking, they want to lose weight, they want to eat better, they want to stop drinking. These are all noble things. But again, mid-February usually reveals reality. The individuals may have desired change, but the habits, the routines, the ruts that were in place of their life or in their life maintained control. Those habits, those ruts and those routines resisted change. And again, come mid-February, early March, they're right back where they were before.

In fact, I saw a joke online a little while back that said somebody wanted to start a business, they wanted to open the first of the year and call it resolutions and it's a gym. So it's a gym the first of the year called resolutions. By mid-February all the gym equipment gets put into storage and it turns into a bar. And then just put it all away, bring out the gym equipment again first of the year, and then change it back into a bar again mid-February and March. But it's kind of the reality of things when we look at the kind of changes that people want to make, they often don't last.

You know, I'm guilty of this too. Change is tough. It is tough. It is so hard because as humans we tend to generally go toward the path of least resistance. That's kind of, it's like electricity, you know, path of least resistance, right? We're kind of like that as people. True lasting change requires that the pain of not making changes is greater than the pain of change. That's what it takes for us to make change.

Staying the same hurts more than changing. And you'll change. Because it hurts more to stay the same way. Path of least resistance, right? Unfortunately, that usually requires people to reach a very difficult place in their life. We colloquially refer to that sometimes as rock bottom, is what we sometimes say. That the person has now fallen to the farthest that they are able to fall and now have to look around and figure out how do I get out of this mess. If I can have, I have a handout for you guys today. It's a very small handout.

It's more of a bookmark, really. I apologize for those that are glasses-wearers. You might need someone else's glasses, too, to be able to see it today. So I'm sorry. But I printed off a few of these handouts in a bookmark style. And if this is too small, please let me know and I will print you off a larger one. I just don't have it today. I'm sorry. But this diagram is taken from the work of Prochaska, Norcross, and De Clemente. And it was published in a book called Changing for Good, a revolutionary six-stage program for overcoming bad habits and moving your life positively forward.

I would have personally picked an easier-to-swallow title, but hey, that's just me. Oh, well. This diagram is more commonly referred to as the change cycle or as the stages of change, and it comes from work in addiction psychology. So this comes out of work specifically in addiction. Okay? So that's what this is. And I share with you today, however, because, you know, I use this particular diagram and this book and some other things for putting a presentation together on alcoholism at the feast this last year in Montana. I used it again when giving a presentation for the young adults, this last go-around, on addiction.

And then I'm sharing it with you today because in conversations with people afterwards, there are an awful lot of parallels in this to overcoming sin. An awful lot of parallels in overcoming sin. So the diagram should mostly be passed out at this point. And I think this has some really useful stuff for us as Christians as we consider this as well.

The cycle overall starts at the top. So the top of this cycle is the beginning of it because this is where a person lives their life all the time. They live their life in this pre-contemplation stage. That is the normal resting spot, normal resting position for anyone is this pre-contemplation stage. And what that is, is that person is actively living their life. They see no need for change whatsoever. They are not even actively considering change. As far as they're concerned, they do not even have a problem.

What is everybody talking about? They are oblivious, literally oblivious to the need for change until something happens that jolts them out of that comfort zone. Until they reach a point now where something bumps them out of that comfort zone. And unfortunately for some, those that have issues with alcoholism, they might get a DUI. They might get a DUI. Maybe their marriage begins to suffer as a result of indiscretions. Maybe they just simply realize one day they look back and they go, you know what? Life should be more than this. Whatever it is I'm experiencing, life should be more than this. And so they start to think.

Well, at that point they enter a contemplation. So they move down the graph just a little bit from the top. They move down to contemplation. Now, they recognize that there's a problem. And they recognize that they're beginning to consider change. Maybe they begin to now ask for advice or counsel. They begin to search the internet for information about how to make the necessary changes and change their life. They haven't done anything yet, action-wise, but they're exploring. They're considering the possibility that there's a problem. And so they begin to explore. They begin to consider it. They start to reach out a little bit and contemplate some potential solutions to the issue.

Now, this is a wonderful spot for those that are in the family, because now they can support and they can encourage. The problem is, support and encouragement can do one of two things.

It can bump them to the next stage, or it can throw them right back into pre-contemplation, where they decide, I don't have a problem, everybody else has a problem.

Hopefully, it bumps them forward into the next stage, to preparation and action.

So now, hopefully, they're realizing, you know what, I do have an issue. Here's some things. This is a legitimate thing that I can fix. Here's something I can do.

Here's the fix that I can take care of. And now, at preparation and action, they have a couple of feet on the road. They've now begun to make some changes. They've started the process.

The alcoholic puts away the alcohol and begins a program. The person who's trying to lose weight joins a gym and hires a personal trainer. The person quitting pornography takes the necessary steps to prevent access. They begin to do what is necessary to try to get a grasp on this issue.

Now, at that point, once they've been doing that for a little while, once that preparation has been taken and action has been taken, they enter a stage called maintenance. And in this phase, they are now adjusting to those changes in their life. They're adjusting and responding to how life now throws things at them without alcohol, you know, without whatever the behavior they may be addicted to or whatever it is. They're trying to now negotiate life without these things. Or, in our analogy, if we're not talking about specifically substance abuse, without sin, without sinful behaviors, without the issues that we experience. This is now the process where they are working to make the changes necessary in their lives to be successful. You probably heard it said it takes about 21 days to make a habit, which is largely true. After about 21 days to a month, a person's well on their way. But there's a danger in every stage of this process, every stage, not just maintenance. In every single stage of this process, a person can relapse and go right back to thinking there's not a problem. Everybody else is the problem. It's not me.

Everybody else is the problem. That's a relapse. That's back into pre-contemplation, and I don't have a problem. Everyone else does. And so, hopefully, they reach a point at maintenance where they can remain in that place. And with encouragement and support and helpful behaviors and things, they're able to move out of that. But if those behaviors aren't internalized, if they're making a change for someone else and not for themselves, if that person's tempted, or if they're dealing with difficulties or stresses, anxieties, whatever it might be, they will be enticed to go back to the comfort of that previous routine, that previous rut, that previous habit, because it soothes and comforts them, because it's normal. It feels good. You know, it's kind of the dirty diaper syndrome, so to speak. You know, you have a kid who's got a messy diaper, and you're like, we need to change your diaper. And you're like, I don't want to. You don't excuse me? You need to. I don't want to. It's lunacy. I mean, it's truly lunacy, but it's children. I mean, they're allowed lunacy when they're young. It's allowed.

Depending on people's support networks, depending on their own desire to change, they can go back through that cycle again quickly once they've relapsed.

It may be years before they give it another go. They may go through it again and relapse again, they may just relapse and stay there. They may just decide, you know what? I'm done fighting it. I'm just this. This is who I am. It is what it is. I'm just going to stay. Change will not happen until the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of change. It will not happen.

Only then will a person be bumped out of pre-contemplation and begin to head towards and down that road of recovery. And it's scary. It is scary. Trying to change your life like this is scary. It's new territory. We're uncertain about it. We're afraid. We're afraid. Let's go over to the book of 2 Timothy. 2 Timothy, and we'll pick it up in 2 Timothy 1 and verse 7.

If I can find out where 2 Timothy went in my Bible. Hey, there it is, right after 1 Timothy, just like yesterday. 2 Timothy 1 and verse 7. The apostle Paul writes to Timothy. And Timothy, at this point, is a new pastor in the church in Ephesus. He's someone who is a younger person, somebody whom Paul loves dearly. It was like a son to him. And so Paul writes to Timothy here and says in verse 3, sorry. I know people love it when I do that. 2 Timothy 1 and verse 3, we'll pick it up.

It says, I thank God, whom I serve with a pure conscience, as my forefathers did. As without ceasing, I remember you in my prayers night and day, greatly desiring to see you being mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy. You know, there's I think there's a little bit of evidence here that Timothy might have had some writings with Paul that, you know, there were some difficult times for him, you know, being mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy. When I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother, Lois, and your mother, Eunice, and I'm persuaded is in you also. Verse 6, therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God, which is in you, through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. God has not given us a spirit of fear. Fear is of the enemy. Over and over and over again, God told Joshua, be strong and of good courage. He told his people, do not be afraid, for I am your God.

He said to them, I will never leave you, I'll never forsake you. And through times of intense doubt and through times of anxiety and concern and difficulty, God promised over and over and over again that he is there and he is with them. Even when the world was crashing in, he reminded them through his prophets that he was with them, that there was a hope that would come after this. So how does God view change in our lives? How should we view it?

I think we should view change as an opportunity for growth.

I think we should view change as an opportunity for growth. And I think God views change in our lives as an opportunity for growth. Change is inevitable. It's a constant in life. And honestly, we have kind of an illusion of control in some ways. In some ways, change happens to us, even though we may do everything that we can to make changes as we go. I think we have a bit of an illusion of control. Change happens to us. Some things are just outside of our direct control. And the only thing we have the ability to control is how we respond to that change as it occurs.

Will we let it grind us into the ground, or will we grow?

Will we let it destroy our faith, or will we let it build our faith?

We are expected to and can certainly make choices to change certain aspects of our life and to make change in our lives where it's needed, but we don't always have the ability to control the things that happen to us. So how do we view change like that when it does happen? Do we see it as an opportunity for growth, or do we see it as something to be afraid of or something to shy away from?

Will we resist it? Will we embrace it? Do we have the strength to make the changes in our lives that is needed, to change the way that we think and the way that we process, and to think differently? Our great and mighty God does not change, but he certainly expects that we will.