God Speaking

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

(Hebrews 11:8)

I came across a phrase in my reading, recently, that I was not aware of ever having heard before.

EMBRACE CHANGE

I had to process the words before I could quite grasp what the author meant, but the more I thought about them, the more I realised that they had a very deep meaning. Change in one’s life can be a welcome visitor, or a dreaded unknown that can unsettle the rhythm of life and bring about great anxiety about what lies ahead. We can use the word casually, “I need to go on a holiday. I need a change.” Or much more poignantly. “He has lost his job. Life is going to change”. Life is a series of changes and especially as we get older the challenge is to accept them.

The story of Abraham is a wonderful one that illustrates how one man coped with a startling change in his life. God asks him to leave his own country and to go where God was going to bless him mightily, by making him and his descendants into a mighty nation. This patriarch accepts change and as my author puts it “he embraces change” and obeys God without questioning, relying on his Creator to guide him.

Many of us may be facing change in our lives as change has become a part of our current society. When I was a child, one chose a profession or a trade while young and most of us expected to stay, sometimes with the same employer, all our working life, but now companies are nationwide or global, so one could be suddenly told to pull up roots and move to an unknown place. So change in the working place can be very frightening. We can embrace change by being upheld by these words;

“If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” (Psalm 139:9 – 10)

Change can also be a very liberating thing, especially within ourselves. Over time we can develop attitudes that can hold us back; old fashioned ideas we cling to; out dated-time- worn thoughts that need to be refreshed. We often see this arising in our own churches where “we have always done it this way” surfaces. This is when we need to be brave enough to come before the Lord and hear these words and ask him to give us a new attitude to things that are new and to help us have open minds to change;

“…to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:23 – 24)

Personal change can be very challenging, but the results of looking honestly at ourselves and admitting in front of our Heavenly Father that some of our habits, or choices of life style need to be discarded, and to realise the harm they are doing with our relationship with him, brings about a new freshness to our fellowship.

Deliberately facing change with optimism, can give us a wonderful sense of peace, we can expect our Lord to guide us through whatever is going to present itself to us. Instead of “However am I going to cope?”, we can choose to believe that he will be on the sidelines, giving us advice, directing us, upholding us;

“Who, then, is the man that fears the Lord? He will instruct him in the way chosen for him.” (Psalm 25:12)

So, then, with faith in the Lord it is easy to embrace change