Life Change: Finding a New Way to Hope, Think, and Live

Marriage

Introduction

Do you know anybody who is desperate for life change? A spouse, a coworker, a friend, or . . . maybe you? It’s likely that as you are reading this introduction, you are asking whether this book is going to work or not. You’ve been here before, wanting to make a change that will . . . well . . . change your life.

Maybe you’ve failed so many times that you’ve about given up hope. Or have you felt as though you were the only one struggling with change? You’re definitely not when you consider this list of how to phrases I just searched for on Google:

How to lose weight before my wedding: 19,600 results

How to join Alcoholics Anonymous: 55,900 results

How to stop biting my fingernails: 188,000 results

How to quit smoking: 884,000 results

How to keep New Year’s resolutions: 1,030,000 results

How to change my life: 5,740,000 results

You’d think that with all this information on the Internet—not to mention decades’ (if not centuries’) worth of self-help books—this industry would be shrinking instead of still growing. But most people are looking for their solutions in all the wrong places—especially when it comes to authentic life change.

What you’ll discover throughout the pages of this book is—no matter how difficult it may be—true change is possible in your life! You’re about to begin a journey in discovering what that looks like.

As we walk through the book of Mark, you will be introduced to several people who had unique stories and backgrounds. But one thing they all had in common was a desire for change: A leper whose need, hope, and faith brought him to Jesus. A paralytic who needed to change his environment first. A woman who lived twelve years in total isolation—no family, no friends, no touch, and no hope for change. A boy who had to fight against the change fighter—Satan—before he could experience the change factor.

As we peek into their lives, as well as others, there’s a good chance God will reveal something about your own life and show you exactly how change can happen to you as well.

Chapter 1

Life Change

Why we want it, need it, and why it’s so hard to experience

Here’s a little quiz for you (circle your answer, either physically or mentally):

Is there something in your life that needs to change? YES / NO

Can you change it? YES / NO

If it were a matter of life or death, could you change then? YES / NO

A wife says to her husband, If you don’t change, I’m leaving.

A doctor says to his patient, If you don’t change, you’re going to die.

A financial planner says to his client, If you don’t change, you’re going to lose everything.

A warden says to an inmate being released, If you don’t change, you’re going to be back here soon.

Would you change anything in your life? Think for a second. What would it be? How would you do it and how would you make it last?

When it comes to change, the facts I’ve discovered about life change are discouraging. There was a new statistic released from the medical field recently. It stated that only one out of every ten people could change, even in a crisis environment. In a recent study of patients who have undergone major heart surgeries, researchers have found that two years after the surgery, ninety percent of those patients had not changed their lifestyle and found themselves in the very same health condition they were before surgery.

These are startling statistics when you think about it. They mean that the chance for change depends a lot on luck and circumstances beyond our control. When it comes to change happening in your life, the odds are stacked against you. Change sounds easy. It sounds doable. It sounds like it shouldn’t be that great of a challenge, but when it comes to creating a lasting change in your life—real, authentic change—it’s much easier said than done.

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines change as to make or become different and to become different or replace with another. We all feel the need at times to become different in some way. Change is rooted in who we are as humans. In order to grow and develop in life, change is inevitable. Just Google change theory or human development and you’ll get eyestrain reading the hundreds of articles and research papers on the many theories about change. Psychologists have some major theories associated with the process and complications of change for humans that span from ecological explanations to biological and social reasons. One thing that is clear from all the psychological research: the desire and need for change is felt by everyone and is an absolute necessity to being healthy and growing over time.

Whether we realize it or not, we’ve changed probably thousands of times over the span of our lives.

Whether we realize it or not, we’ve changed probably thousands of times over the span of our lives. In addition to the psychological, social, and biological reasons for wanting to change there are some spiritual reasons too. The Bible begins with the story of how everything in the beginning was perfect and then things fell apart. Suddenly, what was all right became in need of repair. From that moment in the garden, we have needed, wanted, and sought after some kind of change in our lives, even if we didn’t know what those changes were. The apostle Paul wrote to the Christian groups living in Rome as early as the year 56, saying that because all of creation fell—the earth, the animals, and especially humans—they desperately want, are looking for, and expecting change.

Because of this, not all of our desires for change are obvious. Some of them are deeply hidden and can only be seen in the things that we do every day, like the things we buy or what we watch on television. We buy products and services. We are persuaded by countless commercials. And we watch hours of makeover and renovation television programs every single week. Companies around the world make billions of dollars selling everything from flake-free hair gel to knee-high argyle socks with the promise that they will make us feel better, make us look better, or just simply change our lives for the better.

In the mid- to late-1800s a Scottish gent named Samuel Smiles started a revolution we now call the self-help book industry. His book, simply titled Self-Help, sold more copies than Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, to the tune of a quarter million books during his lifetime, which today would be the equivalent of a New York Times best seller. Smiles is cited with writing the famous maxim that many mistakenly attribute to the Bible: Heaven helps those who help themselves. This self-help revolution that Smiles started has turned into a $10-billion business in the United States alone. As staggering as that figure sounds, it doesn’t even include other book markets around the world. In the United Kingdom, self-help books have reportedly sold the equivalent of $100 million in just a five-year period. That is approximately one million self-help books sold per year.

The sad reality is that by the end of that year, we end up setting many of the same goals we did twelve months earlier, hoping that our luck will change or we will magically become more disciplined.

Every year we set goals for our lives. We make promises to ourselves and to our loved ones, and we call these promises New Year’s resolutions. And the sad reality is that by the end of that year, we end up setting many of the same goals we did twelve months earlier, hoping that our luck will change or we will magically become more disciplined and finally achieve the life change we’ve sought so many times before. The statistics are pretty staggering when it comes to the resolutions we make. Surveys suggest that most people don’t even keep their New Year’s resolutions past the first few weeks of the new year. Our spending of time and money on everything from creating feng shui in our homes and offices to relieving stress through yoga tells us that we are willing to go anywhere, consider anything, and do whatever it takes to get real, lasting change in our lives.

In case you’re feeling extra-unspiritual because you can count on two hands (or more) the number of self-help books you’ve read or how many times you’ve set and reset New Year’s resolutions, rest assured you’re not alone. Here are some examples from the Bible of men and women who also struggled with this topic of change:

Paul said that he did the things he didn’t want to do and called himself a wretch and desperately asked for change.

Jacob ran away from everyone, ashamed at the reputation that he gained himself as a liar and a thief. He desperately wanted to be changed.

Adam and Eve hid from God and wondered what would happen to them.

Joseph kept ending up in bad situations, time and time again.

David proclaimed numerous times that he was helpless and doomed to be a bad guy.

Sarah laughed when God Himself promised her the unimaginable.

Solomon wrote a whole book about how he had a bad attitude, lived a wasteful life, and finally realized when he grew older that he was still unable to do anything about it.

Jeremiah desperately wanted to say all the crazy things that God told him to say but was too afraid of everyone and wished that he wasn’t such a coward.

Ruth, David’s grandmother (and, thus, Jesus’ ancestor), seduced a man to get him to like her.

Peter, one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, was a racist who didn’t want to share the gospel of Jesus with people who weren’t the same race as him, even though God told him that he needed to change his mind.

I mentioned Paul in that list of people in the Bible who needed change. Paul is a poster child for needing some dramatic changes. He could have been considered a Middle Eastern terrorist before becoming an apostle. He notoriously got permission from the religious leaders to kill the infidels, Christians. Once his life was transformed, Paul was not just an average Christian. He traveled the world and was imprisoned for telling others about Jesus. He weighed the pros and cons of staying on the earth or going to be in heaven with God. Even in this, Paul confessed how much he wanted to change the person he was in some other areas of his life. Paul was probably the guy written about as undergoing the most changes in his life in the New Testament. He began as a murderer of Christians, a religious zealot, and a Jewish terrorist, but became a church-starting, grace-loving peacemaker. Paul began as an arrogant proclaimer of the gospel and yet transformed into being a confident example of the gospel. His many insecurities, frailties, and challenges were basic human failings, but God turned those around and he eventually lived a changed