One of my Twitter friends tweeted a question and it goes
like this: why do we resist change so much? And who conditioned us to believe
that we must remain constant, stagnant or risk the loyalty of one's community?
I told her that I would respond to it via a blog and she so
graciously waited till now for me to type this up.
Why do we resist change? They say it’s harder to do what’s right versus
what’s easy. Change is very uncomfortable. Think about this for a minute (this
is an excerpt from my blogpost Complacency & Hebrew Slaves posted April
2011): In Exodus 1, Jacob & Joseph had died and there was a new Pharaoh in
town (who disregarded God's chosen people). God's people were slaves in Egypt
and were treated horribly. They were treated so bad that the Egyptians wanted
the Hebrew women to kill the baby boys but let the girls live.
Now fast forward a few chapters into Exodus, after Moses gets the children
of Israel over the Red
Sea, the children of Israel
do one thing that's interesting: complain and want to go back to Egypt
and be Hebrew Slaves. They said that they got food to eat, notice they
neglected to say they got beaten and cruel treatment. God was trying to test
their faith and rely on Him but they failed horribly.
Of course the moral to that story is that because they didn’t walk by faith
as God wanted them to, they would die in the wilderness.
Luke 14:28 talks about counting the cost before you build a tower. Sadly, not
everybody is willing to pay the price. So this is why many resist change.
Who conditioned us to believe that we must remain constant, stagnant or risk
the loyalty of one’s community? It’s the devil, hands down! He thrives on our
complacency. When the children of Israel were in the wilderness for
40 days, all they did the whole time was complain. And after Joshua got them
over into the Promised Land and he died, the children of Israel went
back to their ritual of complacency and worshiping whom they chose. The devil
didn’t have to do too much because they voluntary chose to do this. Same holds
true today. After MLK got us over to the Promised Land and was killed, we
remained complacent.
I’m going to close this blog with an excerpt from What Breaks The Heart of
God (Part 3 – The Partial Commission). This was posted in March 2013. I want to
close it like this because our resistance to change and taking action is no
different in the church walls.
Jesus (when speaking to His disciples) said in Matthew
28:19-20: Go, then to all peoples EVERYWHERE and make them my disciples:
baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach
them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to
the end of the age.
To me, everywhere includes going to people in your backyard
as well as different cities, states, regions, and countries! I remember when I
was a young Christian; some of us men went door to door in the city we lived
in. It wasn’t to ask them to come to church; the focus was sharing the gospel,
and also asking them if we could pray for them for whatever they needed. You
don’t hear much about that anymore.
What created this blog was a sermon a heard a few weeks ago
about this, and I thought about a conversation I had with a very good friend of
mine. My friend was sharing about how churches in the area where she lives
think. She said that the churches have a fire for God and sharing the gospel of
Christ, but it’s in other countries. What breaks my friend’s heart (and it
broke mine when she told me) is that there is a huge mission field in her area
(in fact, more than 55% deny the deity of Christ and are worshiping a dead
prophet). It’s been said that the churches in that region burn out in their
mission work to those who deny the deity of Christ in that area; however, I
have to pose a question that must be answered by us Bible-believing Christians:
are we sharing the gospel on our own strength? If we are sold out for Christ
and we are constantly in prayer, constantly fasting, constantly interceding for
anyone who is outside the body of Christ, there’s no limit to what God can do
if we would simply be obedient to the Great Commission.
