How to Deal with Life’s Greatest Changes
Series: Surviving the School of Hard Knocks
August 6, 2000
Show video clip, “Toy Story” ( start 25:05 “What is it?” – Stop 31:02 “They’ll see. I’m still Andy’s favorite toy.” Duration: 6 min.)
Change is a tough thing to swallow. Whether you’re being asked to deal with some new policy changes at work, or you’re being replaced by a newer and better toy… change is no fun.
When Buzz Lightyear shows up at a surprise birthday party, Woody is knocked out of bed and ends up face to face with his replacement.
And whether he likes it or not, Woody is forced to deal with change.
I think everyone of us here this morning can relate to Woody.
If you were born before 1945… think of the changes you’ve experienced…
You were born before T.V, penicillin, polio shots, frozen foods, Xerox, plastic, contact lenses, credit cards, pantyhose or the Pill.
In your time “closets” were for clothes, not for “coming out of”.
A “chip” meant a piece of wood, “hardware” meant hardware, and “software” wasn’t even a word!
“Made in Japan” meant junk… “Grass” was something you mowed, “Coke” was a cold drink, and “pot” something you cooked in. “Rock music” was grandma’s lullaby, and “Aids” were helpers in the principal’s office.
A lot of things have changed since 1945… and not all of them good! But, whether we like it or not… things change! It’s inevitable and unavoidable.
Think about it, without change, life would quickly become dull and unbearably boring. Can you imagine wearing the same clothes, and having the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday?
Change is also a necessary part of life… it’s essential to our growth. I like what a famous inventor once said, “The world hates change, yet it’s the only thing that’s brought progress.” That’s true.
Well in our story of Joseph this morning, Joseph’s dad, (Jacob) is going to be faced with a major change in his life, and it’s not exactly a change he wants to make.
What’s interesting is how much he resembles us and our reactions when it comes to this issue.
If you’ve been here over the past 6 wks. we’ve been studying the roller-coaster life of Joseph in the book of Genesis, as a way of gaining insight on how to survive the school of hard knocks, we call… “life”!
Now, if you’ll remember, by studying Joseph, we’ve been learning how to:
…pass life’s greatest tests,
…resist life’s greatest temptations,
…escape life’s greatest prisons,
…survive life’s greatest successes,
…overcome life’s greatest hurts
and this morning…”How to Deal with Life’s Greatest Changes.”
A couple of weeks ago, (before I took off on a wk. of vacation)…
we had come to the climax of Josephs story. After all the years of learning and hardship… Joseph (by God’s amazing coincidences) had been elevated to become the prime minister of Egypt.
In a twist of fate that even Hitchcock would be surprised at, Joseph’s brother’s show up on his door step, asking for food during a great time of famine.
After a number of tactics designed to expose their true character, Joseph reveals himself to them. It’s an incredibly moving family reunion… but it wasn’t complete yet.
Because, remember, Jacob, (Josephs father) was still waiting back in Israel. He had no idea about what was happening… and so he feared the worst.
So, I want to back-track little bit… because if it had been up to Jacob, this family reunion would have never taken place.
Remember? When Jacob found out that this mysterious ruler in Egypt wanted to see his youngest son as proof of their identity…
Even though one of his sons (Simeon) was being held hostage until they showed up with Benjamen… He dug his heels in and said, “You gotta be crazy! NO WAY!” (READ Gen.42:38)
His sons had returned with plenty of grain, (free of charge) and all they needed was proof that they weren’t spies by returning with their youngest brother.
But instead of seeing that God just might be working in this situation… Jacob freaked! Even though he’d known the Lord for over 100 yrs., Jacob was a man who had a lot of trouble walking by faith.
He constantly wrestled with a suspicious, closed, resistant and stubborn mind. Sounds a lot like us huh?
I gotta admit, stubbornness does have it’s helpful features. At least when you’re stubborn you always know what you are going to be thinking about tomorrow!
But for the most part, it gets us into more trouble than it’s worth!
Now it’s one thing for us to reading about this story, knowing what the outcome is and saying… “What’s Jacob so stressed out about? I would have trusted God in that situation!”
But would you really? If it’s so easy, why didn’t you trust him last week? Why did you get so stressed out over your finances recently?
Think of your most recent test. Did you calmly believe God had it all worked out, or did you push the panic button?
When life drops unexpected changes in our laps… our 1st reaction is to fight them!
Let me tell you why…
We fight change for at least 3 reasons…
1. Change changes ROUTINES
Let’s face it… we like for things to remain the same. Change messes with our carefully constructed routines and traditions.
You’ve heard the “light bulb” jokes haven’t you? I like this one… How many people does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: Four. One to change the bulb, and 3 to reminisce about how good the old light bulb was!
That’s us! We like to hold on to the old lightbulbs!
2ndly we fight change because…
2. Change changes COMMITMENTS.
It’s a fact of life that a change costs! It costs time, it costs money. That’s one of the reasons I don’t change my oil when I’m supposed to. I don’t have either!
Some people are open to change as long as it doesn’t inconvenience or cost them anything. (In otherwords, they’re not open to change!)
Jacob was convinced that it might cost his son. And the price was just too high in his mind to pay. Which brings out a principle I want you to be very careful not to miss…
Many X’s the changes that God wants to bring about in our lives requires that we at least be willing to give up the thing that gives us the most security in life.
And then, the #1 reason that we resist and fight change, is because…
3. Change changes US!
And that’s a scary thought! Nobody likes to admit that they might have to change. My goodness! That’s like admitting that we might be wrong… that’s like admitting we might not be perfect!
The hardest thing in the world to change is a habit. First we form our habits and then our habits form us.
The biggest mistake I ever made when playing golf was the decision not take lessons on the very 1st day.
Now I have so many bad habits to deal with that I can hardly play the game! In fact, the main problem I’m having is that I’m too close to the ball after I hit it!
To go back and “unlearn” all my old habits seems too big a challenge to tackle, but it’s the only way if I want to be a good golfer.
The same is true when it comes to making the necc. changes in our lives… It’s not easy to change our attitudes, our bad habits, our marriages, and our lifestyles.
And so… we fight change. And here’s how we do it…
1. First of all, By DELAYING…
We delay from making the changes we know God wants us to make.
Chap. 42 of Gen. ends with Jacob making the unilateral statement: “My son will NOT go with you!” And that was final!
Now we don’t know how much time had passed between chap. 42, and chap. 43… but we DO know that it was enough time for them to eat all the grain they’d brought from Egypt. (which was a substantial amt!) It might have been months… we don’t know.
Chap. 43 starts out with the words… “Now the famine was still severe…” The famine hadn’t let up. Maybe Jacob thought he could wait it out. Maybe he thought the problem would go away… but it didn’t!
And now he’s faced with the same problem… only worse!
How many times can you think of when you should have dealt with a problem, but just didn’t? When are we going to learn that with procrastination problems only grow bigger… not smaller!
I think of the church that desperately needed a new building but were afraid to venture out. So they stalled, and the church just continued to deteriate.
Until one morning during a service some plaster fell from the ceiling and hit the chairman of the board squarely on the head. Immediately a meeting was called and the following decisions were made.
One: We will build a new church.
Two: We will build a new church on the same site as the old one.
Three: We will use the materials of the old church to build the new one.
Four: We will worship in the old church until the new church is built.
(Please understand that the proceeding illus. has no basis in fact whatsoever!)
I have to admit that sometimes it’s taken more than a “bonk” on the head to get my attention, and I’ve got to kind of smile to myself as I watch God tighten the screws on ole Jacob… because I’ve been there!
Listen, when it comes to God ordained change…God always gets His way! He’s very persistent, if you didn’t know! Now we can fight him and resist Him if we want, (that’s our choice)… but let me tell you from personal experience… delaying the inevitable only succeeds in causing a lot more pain!
And the longer we resist… the longer the pain persists!
How many of you remember watching, “The Wide World of Sports” on T.V.? Do you remember when they used to show some athlete winning an event, and say something like… “The joy of victory… and the… what? (pause) Yeh… “and the agony of defeat”. Remember that?
And at the moment they said, “the agony of defeat”, they’d show this skier who looked like he was in good form as he was headed down a ski jump, but then, for no apparent reason… he just WIPES OUT!
He’s flipping head over heels, bouncing and flailing his arms and legs wildly, hitting the railing… it’s a mess! And you wonder if the guy ever survived!
Well, amazingly all he suffered was a pretty big headache. But what we didn’t know is that he actually chose to fall, rather than finish the jump. You’re thinking…why would a guy do that?
Because, (as he explained later)… the jump surface had become too fast, and midway down, he realized that if he completed the jump, he would land on the ground way out of bounds and probably dead on the spot.
The lesson is this… to change your course can be a dramatic and sometimes pretty painful undertaking… but the change now is better than the fatal landing at the end.
If God has been speaking to you about a change that you need to make in your life. Do yourself a favor… don’t delay!
But Jacob isn’t ready to give in yet… so he keeps falling off the edge. And all too often we do the same thing. After delaying the change… we continue on…
2. By DENYING … the change.
We deny our need for change. (READ Gen. 43:1-5)
Even when it became painfully obvious that changing his mind was the only way out of this predicament, Jacob stubbornly persists.
Almost like he’s ignorant of the facts, he says, “Okay boys, the last sack is empty…it’s time to go back to Egypt and get some food!”
Judah has the unpopular task of bringing him back to reality…”Wait a minute Dad! We can’t go back without taking Benjamin with us… remember?”
But Jacob was in denial, still unwilling to face reality. He’d refused to hear it when his sons first told him, he’d been denying it for months… and he was denying it now.
It never ceases to amaze me how people are able to deny the obvious in life.
I was reading this week that 1600 people in the U.S. belong to an organization called, “The International Flat Earth Research Society of America” They’re group dedicated to the belief that the earth is flat.
Their president, Charles K. Johnson says he’s been a flat-earther all his life. “When I saw the globe in grade school I didn’t accept it then and I don’t accept it now.” he says.
Now as amazingly ignorant as that is… people still believe it. And obviously it’s going to take a lot to change their mind!
I’ve found that most of us don’t change unless 1 of 3 things happen…either we, learn enough that we want to change…
… we receive enough that we’re able to change. Or… we hurt enough, that we have to change…
God was in the process of forcing change on Jacob through this circumstance. That’s because God knows that we can’t become what we need to be… by remaining what we are.
Be careful when you’re resisting change in your life because you might just be resisting God!
Have you ever thought that God might be allowing a particular situation to occur in your life order to bring about the change He requires?
To those of you in denial this morning, I want to say this…
Don’t look – you might see.
Don’t listen – you might hear.
Don’t think – you might learn.
Don’t make a decision – you might be wrong.
Don’t walk – you might stumble.
Don’t run – you might fall.
Don’t live – you might die…
I’d like to add one more thought to this depressing list:
Don’t change – you might GROW!
But not only does delaying and denying keep us from making the changes that we need to make in our lives… but we fight change
2. By DECIEVING
In a last ditch effort to hold onto our stubbornness, we begin to deceive not only others… but ourselves.
When Judah tried to shake his father out of his delay and denial Jacob responded by trying deception… READ Gen.43:6
Basically Jacob’s saying, “Why did you have to go and tell that man you had another brother in the first place? It’s YOUR fault we’re in the mess we’re in!”
Jacob asks him, “Why didn’t you just lie?” Now remember, Jacobs name meant “deceiver”, and so when he’s in a tough spot he resorts to his old nature.
And then notice what he does. He’s trys to shift the blame off of himself and onto his own sons! That’s classic human behavior!
In I Jn.1: 5-10 John describes the 3 defense mechanisms we use to keep ourselves from seeing the truth about ourselves. (READ)
They’re given in the order of their seriousness, and the 1st defense mech. is found in vs. 6 … DENUNCIATION – (or denial) claiming to have a relationship with God, but continuing to live like we don’t.
This is the simplest and most direct form of self-deception. We deny it, we lie about it, we refuse to acknowledge it. We don’t want to look at it or even discuss it.
The 2nd defense mech. that Jn. describes (and psychol. agree with…) is… RATIONALIZATION.
This type of deception is more complicated and therefore more serious. In rationalization we try to give reasons to justify our behavior. It’s like someone once said… “There are two reasons for everything we do; a good reason, and the REAL reason!”
Now this is a deeper type of deception because we’re not only deceiving someone else…but we’re deceiving ourselves! (and what’s worse…we don’t even know it!)
I like reading vs. 8 from the Phillips trans. “If we refuse to admit that we are sinners, then we live in a world of illusion and truth becomes a stranger to us.”
Then there’s the worst kind of deception of all… PROJECTION.
(This is what we see Jacob doing.) This takes deception one step further, and blames others for our problems.
In fact, we project our failures onto someone or something else and say, “THEY are the problem… not me!”
John describes this so accurately in vs. 10…
See the progression here? We begin by telling the lie ourselves, and we end up by saying GOD is telling the lie! “I’m not the liar… HE is!” … THEY are!
This is pretty serious stuff! Again, these are simply the various ways that we humans keep ourselves from seeing the truth. We’re actually protecting ourselves by deceiving ourselves, all because we don’t want to have to change!
If you saw the whole movie of “Toy Story”, you know that Woody was used to being in charge, and anything, or anyone who threatened that was the enemy.
Sadly, he was willing to do anything to secure his position. What he eventually found out though was that sometimes the things we resist the most, turn out to be to our greatest benefit.
Realize that no matter what Jacob did or said, it didn’t change the reality or truth of the situation…
His sons refused to be his co-dependent in lying and deception anymore and they leveled with him in vs. 7 of chap. 43 (READ)
That’s what it takes to break the cycle of lies and deception. We just have to level with the people around us.
“Look Dad, we were standing there in front of Pharaoh’s right hand man and he specifically asked us if our father was still living and if we had another brother. So we told him the truth. No more lying to others and ourselves Dad. Enough is enough. Let’s get honest and face the consequences of our actions head on.”
Judah even offers to put it all on the line in vs. 8-10… He says in
effect, “Come on, the games up, we can’t continue to delay and deny and
deceive. I’ll take responsibility for Benjamin’s life. If anything happens to
him, I’ll take the blame for the rest of my life!”
Jacob finally breaks in vs. 13, 14… “Alright…
Change is tough, and it’s never fun… but remember, it’still the only thing that brings progress in our lives. So in closing this morning let me leave you with 3 quick statements (from the life of Jacob) about “How to Change With Change”, …
1. Fight Your FEAR
Realize that change, (of any kind), whether it’s around you (or in you)… always creates a fear of failure. Fight that fear!
In reality the greatest mistake you can make is to be afraid of making one. It’s true…all change isn’t necessarily an improvement, but without change… there can never be improvement.
Realize that there’s no such thing as success w/o sacrifice, and with every gain, you have to lose something. In otherwords, You have to give up to go up!
But in the end… it’s worth it!
H. Jackson Brown in “Life’s Little Instruction Book” writes, “You pay a price for getting stronger. You pay a price for getting faster. You pay a price for jumping higher. But you also pay a price for staying just the same.”
The reason so many people fight change is because most people aren’t willing to pay the price for change and growth in their lives.
2. View Life VERTICALLY
I’ve never seen a habit just lie down, surrender and die. If we’re going to make the changes in our lives that God is wanting to make, we’re going to have to force ourselves to get a “vertical focus”.
What that means is when faced with a difficult situation you ask God, “Lord, are you in this? Are you trying to get through to me?”
Or, “Lord, I’m not sure what you want me to do, so I invite you to help me deal with this!”
That’s what I mean by “forcing a vertical focus”. Listen…
If you want to be distressed – look within.
If you want to be defeated – look back.
If you want to be distracted – look around.
If you want to be dismayed – look ahead.
But if you want to be delivered – look up!
And then lastly,
3. Stay Open to OPPURTUNITY
Ever heard of Cornfields Law? Well, Cornfields Law states that: “Nothing is ever done until everyone is convinced that it ought to be done, and has been convinced for so long that it’s now time to do something else!”
My advise… ‘Don’t wait that long!” The sad truth is, most people are more comfortable with old problems than with new solutions.
In his book “Teaching to Change Lives” Howard Hendricks, (whose been long time favorite Christian speaker for me) throws out a challenge and I want to throw it out to you…
He says, “Write down somewhere in the margins of this page your answer to this question: (If you want, write it down somewhere on your notes this morn.) How have you changed…lately? In the last week, let’s say. Or the last month? The last year?
Can you be very specific? Or must your answer be incredibly vague? You say you’re growing. Okay… how? ‘Well,’ you say, ‘In all kinds of ways.’ Great! Name one.
You see, effective teaching comes only through a changed person. The more you change, the more you become an instrument of change in the lives of others. If you want to become a change agent… you also must change!”
God has (and is) providing all kinds of opportunities for us to change in positive ways. We have to be willing and open to them.
In conclusion this morning I want you to repeat a very simple phrase with me. Because if you have this attitude, God will change & use you in remarkable ways.
Say this with me… “The days ahead are full of changes, which are my challenges!” (repeat)
