The Winds of Change
How to Have Positive Change in Your Life
12/8/04
I. Introduction
SKIT
Tonight we’re talking about The Winds of Change: How to Have Positive Change in Your Life. How many of you could use a little change? Not the type of change you use to buy a soda. Not changing your clothes or your underwear. Not changing your mind—but change that causes a transformation or transition or something different to occur.
Certainly there are areas of your life that could be better. We haven’t all arrived and our lives aren’t the model of perfection. So change isn’t just something we could use, it’s a necessity if we’re going to live better lives. You’ve heard it before but I’ll say it again: to do the same thing over and over and expect different results is insanity. So if you want different results in your life, you’re going to have to do different things, which in essence, is change. Do you want to have change in your life? Well, where do you begin?
II. The Catalyst of Thoughts
Affecting positive change in your life begins in your thoughts.
Stephen Covey, the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, says that all things are created twice. The principle is this: there’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things.
One of the habits of highly effective people is to begin with the end in mind.
People use this principle in many areas of life. For instance, before you go on a trip, you determine your destination and plan out the best route. Before you plant a garden, you plan it out in your mind, and maybe on paper. You create speeches on paper before you give them, you envision the landscaping in your yard before you landscape it, you design the clothes you make before you thread the needle, and you plan out a meal before you turn on the stove.
Proverbs 23:7 NKJV 7For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.
Using this principle in conjunction with change may look something like the skit earlier. You need to have good grades to play sports. Your mid-term exam is a determining factor in your English class. How are you going to make a good grade on your exam? Study. Study hard. Play the Rocky theme song if it inspires you while you study. You begin with the end in mind. The end that you want is a good grade and that’s where you begin. From there, you ask questions like: What can I do to accomplish this? What are the risks? What are the rewards? How much is it going to cost?
III. Write it Down
After you’ve answered those questions, it’s time to draw up a plan. If you were building a home, you wouldn’t go straight for the hammer without first designing a blueprint. You create it in every detail before you ever hammer the first nail into place. You try to get a very clear sense of what kind of house you want. Then you reduce it to blueprint and develop construction plans.
And that’s what you’re going to do to cause positive change in your life. Write down the plan.
Habakkuk 2:2-3 MSG 2And then GOD answered: "Write this. Write what you see. Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run. 3This vision-message is a witness pointing to what’s coming. It aches for the coming--it can hardly wait! And it doesn’t lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It’s on its way. It will come right on time.
Now, this is more than just writing down a wish list of things you want to change. It’s actually writing down a step-by-step plan with action items and deadlines.
This isn’t something I just made up here. It dates back to before the Flood. You remember Noah’s ark?
Genesis 6:14-16 NIV 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. 16 Make a roof for it and finish the ark to within 18 inches of the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.
God was changing some things and He had a plan. He told the plan to His man, Noah, and Noah most likely wrote it down somehow. And ultimately, Noah built the first cruise ship. Could Noah have built that ship without a plan? No, he had never even seen anything like it before. And maybe you haven’t seen what your life will be like when a certain change occurs, but writing down a plan will not only help you see it, but help you make it happen.
Luke 14:28-31 NIV 28“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 29For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, 30saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’
31“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?
This is all about having a plan.
What does a plan look like?
Let’s just say that your goal is to make better grades.
The plan may look something like this. First you list out possibilities:
Ask a friend for help.
Ask the teacher if he knows a tutor.
Find out who the class brain is and offer him money for answers…I mean, ask him if he’d let you study with him.
Look up study tips on the Internet.
Study.
Then you take that list of possibilities and put a deadline beside the things that you can definitely do:
Ask a friend for help – 12/10/04
This is the date by which time you should have completed this step.
Then organize the list in order of things that should be completed first.
Once you have your list, the obvious next step is to DO IT!
IV. Do Something
Psalm 37:23 AMP 23The steps of a [good] man are directed and established by the Lord when He delights in his way [and He busies Himself with his every step].
You should be taking steps towards the change that you’re wanting- and not just one step. When you take one step, you haven’t really moved. It’s when you take more than one that you begin to gain some momentum and start heading in the direction that you’re wanting to go.
If you just do one thing to bring about change and that one thing doesn’t work, try something else. Work your list of options until something works. If nothing seems to work, ask somebody else for input. Whatever you do, don’t give up. Keep taking steps until you begin to see that change coming about.
V. Control Your RE-Actions
Well, what if you’re not the one causing change, but the one receiving change?
Well, change happens all the time and at some point or another, you’ll be reacting to change instead of the one causing it.
Now, the ideal situation would be for you to change things when you want and nothing would change in your life unless you wanted it to, but some things are just beyond your control like the choices that your friends’ make. You wish you could control your friends and help them make the right decisions, but you can’t. What you can control is your reaction to those choices and the changes that follow.
Annie was very popular and well liked by everyone in her class. In fact, they liked her so much that they voted her homecoming queen and student body president. She had a lot of friends with a lot of problems. Becca was one of them. Her parents had divorced last year and Becca blamed herself. She was so distraught by their separation that she became suicidal. She had attempted to end her own life three times but couldn’t muster up the strength to do it. This last time she was going to slit her wrist with a piece of broken glass when Annie showed up unannounced and walked in on her. Becca tried to explain it away but couldn’t fight back the tears that told everything. Annie was shocked. She was confused. But she leapt into action with a consoling embrace and wonderful words of encouragement and affirmation.
Annie couldn’t control Becca’s actions, but she could control how she reacted to the change Becca was causing. What happened that day changed everything. From that moment on, Annie and Becca were inseparable. Annie made it her mission to insure that Becca would never attempt suicide again. It changed Annie and it changed Becca.
You see, Becca and Annie reacted to changes that were happening around them. Becca’s reaction to her parents divorce could have had a terrible outcome. Annie’s reaction to Becca’s suicide attempt turned a negative into a positive. So, while you can’t control some things that are happening around you, you can control how you react to those things.
And if there are some changes that are happening to you and around you and you don’t like them, you can use these steps we’ve talked about tonight and cause some positive change in your situation. Let’s pray.
