The growth process:
Step #1: Getting past “I don’t need to change.”
Step #2: Getting past “I can do it on my own.”
Step #3: Getting past “I want to change, but I can’t.”
So how do we make it past Step #3? How do we change once we figure out that we can’t? To put it in Christian jargon: How do we repent?
To answer that question, I’ll tell you a story. When my children were young, one of my sons was hitting his little sister. So I took him by the hand, we went out to another room, I sat him down and asked him, “Can you think of any reasons why it might not be a good idea to hit your little sister?”
He immediately rattled off six reasons. He knew the speech better than I did! Hmm. I thought about that for a moment, and I followed up with this question:
“Can you think of any reasons why it WOULD be a good idea to hit your little sister?”
Then we got into something. We got to the beliefs that were driving the behavior. And that’s where we all need to go. We need to find the beliefs that are driving the behavior.
The reason we can’t change when we want to is this: Somewhere inside are beliefs that are blocking that change. Transformation occurs when we let Jesus deal with those beliefs.
More next time, and this is a topic I cover in detail in my course, Spiritual Self Defense.
