Why do some of us embrace change and others of us resist change? Why do some people look for new things to do, search for new things to learn? But others of us resist until our dying breath doing anything but what we’ve always done? Why is that? Why do we approach to life so very differently?
Some people, no matter how old they get, remain on the cutting edge. They are excited about getting to visit a new city or see a new country. They relish the thought of tasting exotic foods. They hope to learn new skills, they want to see new sights, meet new people, find new truths. There are some people who live right up until they die. They embrace change; they anticipate new challenges. Adventuresome spirits.
But then there are the rest of us who resist change, and I suspect this is where most of us are. I know this is where I am. I resist change. Some of us stick with the tried and true, and, well, if it isn’t true, we’ll stick with it just because it has been tried. I stick with things, come you-know-what or high water. My wife gets so put out with me, because we will go to a restaurant, where there are a number of innovative, intriguing-sounding dishes on the menu. And I will dutifully read about each one, I will carefully consider each exotic item. And then, predictably, I will order beef and potatoes, beef and potatoes. I’ve eaten so much beef and potatoes, I think I must have mad cow disease! But I don’t like to experiment with food! I stick to things!
The other day Margaret pointed out an ad in the newspaper. Doesn’t this seem like a good deal? Fly to France, use the trains there, rent a car, take the chunnel to Britain, and drive there! All for one package price. Yes, I agreed, the price sounded good. Yes, I’d like to travel. But go to France?! Drive in France? I’ve never been to France. (But then I guess that’s the point!) I don’t speak French. I might get lost.
Maybe … what if ... I don’t know. I’ve never done that before! Do you see? What is it that makes me resist change? What is it that inhibits me from trying something new? Why do some of us love to get into new things, and others of us cling to the old as if our very lives depended on staying put?
Now there is something that is hard for us stick-in-the-muds to admit. I want you to notice that change is inevitable. Moving from where we are now to somewhere else is going to happen. Change is a fact of life, and of death. Death comes to all of us, sooner or later; it is a journey from life to death that summons all of us. But many of you, I heard you, at the time of your loved one’s funerals, you lifted up an image right from the Bible, right from this passage in Hebrews. You said, "He is in a better place now." You sang, "This world is not my home". A better place. Listen to the Bible. "They desire a better country ... a better country ... and God has prepared a city for them."
The Bible suggests that the key issue is faith. Faith. The key element is believing that God has called us from what has been toward what is not yet. Willingness to change is a matter of faith in God. The Bible suggests that we need to start listening for the call of God to move from where we are now to what the Bible calls a "better country".
The story of Abraham is a picture of what God can do with a person who confronts his fear of change with one key faith decision. The decision to embrace change as God’s call. The decision to see change as God’s call to a better country is the decision that will help us go beyond our natural resistance to change.
I see two issues. I see first, the fear of failure; and second, I see the fear of being unsettled. I see the fear of failure, our lack of confidence in ourselves; and I see the fear of being unsettled, I see our losing a vision for the future. But I submit to you that once we discover that God is calling us to a better country, we can overcome these two fears.
I
One reason we resist change is the fear of failure. We hesitate to try anything new, because we are afraid we might fail at it. We lack confidence in ourselves. As I read my own heart, I see that one reason I don’t attempt new things is that I am afraid I might fail.
But I’ve found that if I believe, truly believe, that God has called me to a better country, to a new something, then that fear of failure evaporates.
As a kid, I was without doubt the most unathletic boy in my whole school. You name it, I could not play it. If it involved hitting something, kicking something, jumping over something, or putting something through a basket, I could not make it happen. I can still remember the first time, in the seventh grade, when we were expected to jump over hurdles on the track. From a distance those little fences seemed innocent enough, but I’ll tell you, when you start running toward them, they get bigger and higher. I remember thinking, as I got within a few feet, "I’m not going to make it over this thing." Guess what? I didn’t. I ended up in a bruising tangle, surrounding by the jeers of all the other seventh-graders. And after we had all had a go at the low hurdles, the teacher flipped them up to the high hurdle setting. Well, as I remember, I just ran up to it, stopped, and sort of tried to climb over. No way in the world was I even going to attempt a high hurdle. Why not? Because I believed I could not do it. Because my mind told my body what it could not do. The fear of failure stopped me cold. I didn’t even want to try something I might fail at.
But once, just once, I got a taste of how it could be. I was so unathletic that when the church youth group created a softball team, I was in real conflict. If the church was doing it, I should do it, right!? I do church! But softball? Actually play, out there on a real field, with real softballs? Well, they put me out in the farthest right field, where it was assumed that no hit would ever come, except, of course, that batters on the other teams, once they figured out what they had out there, did their best to hit in my direction. It was torture! And frankly, I didn’t care if the Methodists did win, just so long as the game was over without my actually having to do anything!
But there came a different night. There came a moment of truth. This is my only moment of athletic glory, my only shining victory. Somebody hit a high fly ball to right field; the second baseman and the center fielder came charging over my way, as they always did, to take over from my ineptness, but this time the ball had my name on it. I shut my eyes, stick my glove straight up in the air. And this time ... don’t you ever tell me not to believe in miracles ... this time the ball landed squarely in my glove and stayed there! I couldn’t believe it! I couldn’t believe it because I couldn’t believe in me! But for once in my life I had taken a stab at it. For once in my life I had just acted in faith, and look what happened!
Authentic human beings, those who are on their way to a better country, are those who live out of faith. They learn to let God succeed in them. They are those who learn to let God equip them for success. God is not a god of failure; He is the Lord of victory. And some of us will have to learn that by faith means just sticking your gloves out there and trusting that the right thing will happen, because we are available to God.
Listen: "By faith [Abraham] received the power of procreation, even though he was too old, and Sarah herself was barren, because he considered him faithful who had promised." Abraham, like most of us, was pretty skeptical about his ability to do what he was supposed to do. He might well have told the Lord that he didn’t even intend to try. The fear of failure could have stopped him completely.
But, because Abraham had made the faith commitment to be on the way, because Abraham had already consciously set out en route, God empowered him. God gave Abraham and Sarah the gift of a new life. And since Abraham was en route anyway, to a better country, and that was not going to change, why not simply become available to the living God? Why not simply allow God to equip him for life?
Do not, in this journey of life through death, do not underestimate what God wants to do with you. Do not, en route to a better country, stumble over all the I can’t’s and the I don’t know how’s. God is a god of victory and of possibility. God is the god of the risen savior, and with Him, all things are possible.
Since you have to go anyway, if you will believe that it is God who is leading you to a better country, then en route, through life to death and to that better country, you can have victory over the fear of failure.
II
The other reason we resist change is the fear of being unsettled. The fear of temporariness, the fear of impermanence. The fear that we are not going to be settled and safe and secure. Something deep down inside us wants to be at home, settled, safe. But watch out! I think this fear, more than any other, saps life out of us and makes us sit down and try to sit out the journey to a better country.
I used to laugh at my father-in-law, because whenever he would travel, he would take a whole stack of books along. Books were his home symbol. If you could have seen his study at its prime, you would understand. There were books everywhere. On wall shelves, in little free-standing units, in boxes and crates. And he would build them up all around his desk and his chair. You would go down into his study, and you wouldn’t even see him for a little while. He would be totally surrounded, his chair nestled down among them as if they somehow protected him against invasion. And so when he would travel, he would take an armload of books along, and the first thing he would do, as soon as he checked into the hotel room, he would haul out the books and make a neat little row on the desk. The rest of us might be surfing the cable channels or reading the room service menu, but he was organizing those books. It was his way of creating home, creating a little something of home in the middle of the journey. Some of us aren’t happy unless we are at home. We are afraid of being temporary.
But I guess I can’t laugh too long at my father-in-law, because I have my own way of doing the same thing. When Margaret and I travel, and we get home, almost the first thing I want to do is unpack and put my things away. She can live out of an unpacked suitcase for the next two or three days, but not me. Within fifteen minutes after getting home, I want to put my clothes away and return my books to their shelves. Deep down there is something that doesn’t like transience, doesn’t like temporariness. I want to be settled.
And yet, and yet, I see a danger. Look at this. Abraham, we are told, lived in tents, looking forward to the city whose architect and builder is God. Abraham lived in temporariness, knowing that he had been called to a better country. Abraham put up with the insecurity of now in order to achieve the confidence of the not yet. Abraham knew he was not going to stay here forever, and he was willing to give up some creature comforts, willing to give up some of the badges of stability, because God had called him to a better country.
The issue for us, since life is temporary anyhow, is, do we trust God’s call to live in tents? Do we trust God’s ability to care for us, wherever we go and whatever we do? My family and I passed a milestone about a month ago. Twenty-five years living in the same house. I’ve lived there longer by far than any other place. Never wanted to move to anything bigger. Never wanted to move to the outer outer suburbs. And since the average tenure for Baptist ministers is only about three years in each job, I’ve congratulated myself on having three different jobs, but always being able to stay in the same house. But could that mean that I am afraid of being unsettled? Could that mean I’m just not listening when God says move to a better country? Could that mean that I am so afraid of temporariness that I just don’t trust God to take care of my needs like he took care of Abraham’s? If we’re going to be en route to the better country, we need to be ready to live in tents, we need to be ready to move when God says move.
You see, sometimes we cut ourselves off from what God wants to do with us just because we are more comfortable with what is, even if it isn’t the best, than we are with venturing out toward that better country. It’s like the woman who was counseling with her neighbor, who was all the time complaining about her husband, how he drank and gambled and fooled around and wasn’t fit to live with. And so her friend said, "Look, you don’t have to stay with this. Let’s just admit he’s a dirty, rotten, no-good, low-down skunk. You ought to put him out!" To which her woeful friend replied, "Yes, he is a dirty, rotten, no-good, low-down skunk, but he’s my dirty, rotten, no-good, low-down skunk." We will stay with something, no matter how bad it is, because it’s certain, it’s secure. And we will forget that we are en route to a better country.
The men and women whose lives we celebrate today, each in their own way, found the route to a better country. Each took steps of faith, each heard God’s call and overcame their fears. Each began with a commitment that God had called them to a better country. From them we can learn.
I thank God for those who passed by this way. I thank God that they banished their fears and conquered their doubts, through the power of the Risen Christ.
I thank God for Eva Myers, who brought life and energy to her family under the most difficult of circumstances. En route to a better place.
I thank God for Henry Bryant, who found late in life that it is never too late to change, never too late to embark on the faith journey, en route to a better place.
I thank God for William Garrett, who brought such rich gifts to us, and whose driving ambition was for the glory of God, en route to a better place.
I thank God for Mary Sylvester, whose quiet spirit stayed the course, en route to a better place.
I thank God for John Kendrick, who discovered beauty in an unusual part of Christ’s church, and who learned to cherish the Christ who leads to a better place.
I thank God for Larry Crowder, who knew, though he had stumbled and fallen, that there was one who would love him through to the end, en route to a better place.
I thank God for John Sheppard, a deacon of this church, who endured pain and withstood suffering, keeping his eyes lifted up to that city which he desired, that better place.
I thank God for Thelma Brown, prayer warrior, who, though our eyes saw her flat on her back, was in her spirit striding confidently toward the goal, en route to a better place.
I thank God for Ethel Bradford, whose eyes no longer saw, but whose spirit saw everything worth seeing, desiring that better place.
I thank God for Otis von Blasingame, who lived in the tents of segregation until by faith he would be able to lead his family and all of us through to a better place.
I thank God for Tyler Rollins, mature beyond his years, who understood things by faith most of us do not grasp with our adult minds, and who knew, even as a child, there was a better place.
I cannot speak for you. But I’ve learned what I want to do en route to that better place. I’ve learned it through the Great Commission, "Go and make disciples, teaching all nations." Or read it this way, "Since you’re going anyway, make disciples, and teach all nations." I only know I want, since I am en route to this better place as well, I want ten thousand times ten thousand to be there with me and with them. Since I’m going anyway, I want to make disciples and to teach all nations. It doesn’t matter if I don’t know how. God is a god of victory and if I trust Him, He will equip me. It doesn’t matter if I have to leave my security to do it; that’s only a tent anyway. I want to make disciples and teach all nations, and nothing else matters. Nothing else matters.
Because we are en route. En route to a better place. "I am bound for the promised land, oh, who will come and go with me, I am bound for the promised land?"
