Do I Really Have To Change?

Opening: A Question We All Know

Can people really change?

That question sits in the back of our minds like a song we can’t finish. It comes at two in the morning. It comes after the argument we had at dinner. It comes when the doctor says, “The test is back,” or when a child looks at us with holy trust.

Maybe you’re asking it now: Can I really change? Do I have to change?

Let me start bluntly, because the truth sets the stage: on our own, we cannot. We can’t rewire the heart by sheer will. We can’t take ourselves to a better place solely by trying harder. That’s the bad news. But the good news is larger and louder: God can change us — and does, in ways that make our lives not merely different, but new.

To understand that, we step into one of the most dramatic spiritual scenes in Scripture: Isaiah’s vision in chapter 6.

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Part 1 — God Revealed (Isaiah sees the Lord)

Listen to how the scene opens. “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple” (Isaiah 6:1). Imagine with me the temple, the incense, the hush. Now imagine that hush breaking into song — a song so big it shakes the doorposts and fills the whole earth: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” (v.3).

Hebrew doesn’t do superlatives the way English does. To get to “the very most” you repeat. So God’s holiness is said with the force of threefold repetition. Not once, not twice, but three times: holy, holy, holy. That’s the sound of God being all He is — perfectly separate, perfectly beautiful, perfectly essential.

I want to open with a small, human picture to set this up. Years ago I read of a little boy visiting New York City with his dad. He tilted his head and watched the skyscrapers. After a long look he sighed and said, “Daddy, the buildings sure get small at the top. I guess by the time we get all the way to heaven there won’t be very much of us left.”

That kind of child-sight is more faithful than it sounds. The nearer we draw to God, the less room there is for puffed-up self. Praise has that effect: it shrinks us in the right way — not to shrink our worth, but to enlarge our perspective. When God is bigger in our sight, our petty territories and small triumphs feel smaller. That’s the first move Isaiah experiences: he sees God as God is, and in seeing that majesty something in him moves.

So the first task of worship is not moral self-improvement. It’s encounter. It’s being revealed to us. That revelation will lead to two responses that are almost always mixed together: awe and honesty.

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Part 2 — Heart Exposed (Woe is me!)

After the chorus of “Holy,” Isaiah does something honest and raw: he says, “Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips” (v.5). Think of a good, respected man — a prophet respected by kings — suddenly collapsing into the realization of how small and stained he is in the presence of the Holy.

Confession in Scripture is not a thing to ransack for guilt alone. It is the honest acknowledgment of reality. Isaiah’s confession is not a moralistic self-hating speech; it is a truthful posture in response to God’s shining. When you stand in the light, you see the spots you can’t see in darkness. That’s why confession follows revelation. It’s not punishment-first; it’s recognition-first.

We do three things that keep us from this kind of honest seeing. First, we excuse. We rationalize. Senator Dirksen once gave a wonderfully cynical political dodge: asked where he stood, he said, “I stand by my friends.” We do the same with our spiritual life — we stand by our habits, our resentments, our stories, and call them “reality.” Second, we minimize. We say, “God winks at sin; love lets me off.” Third, we drown. We confess with a parade of shame and never look up to hope.

All three are avoidances. Isaiah’s “woe” is not avoidance. It is the exact opposite. It is the gulf of honesty where healing begins.

A humor sign I once saw read: “Do you want to feel guilty? Call your mother.” We laugh because we recognize the truth. Guilt is not something a preacher invents to be cruel. Many of us carry the weight already; the preacher’s job is to point to where the weight can be lifted.

So here’s the heart question: are you willing to see? Not because the sight is pleasant, but because seeing is where change begins.