Hopes change when you know things won’t change

There is a tremendous amount of peace that comes from the resignation that a thing you hoped would change won’t.  When you’ve finally come to acknowledge that what you’d hoped would change won’t, there suddenly before you, at the correct time, is the valley of decision.  It is easy to decide when reality is settled once and for all.

It can take a long time to arrive at this point.  Perhaps we’ve wrestled long and hard to arrive at this day that we probably thought would never arrive.  When the day does arrive, it can strike us as odd.  It certainly is the miracle we’ve prayed for!

The truth is people don’t change unless THEY themselves see the need of change and THEN they resolve to change.

This involves movement in a person’s heart, first and foremost, which is a miracle of God’s grace, and then it requires the diligent obedience of behaviours that must become patterns.

Change in a person doesn’t simply happen — it’s the work of a miracle-working God, and then it’s fashioned by the diligence of obedience.  Every true Christ follower is capable of change.

But it is a different matter to accept that there are hearts in others we would arrange to change, and yet we also frustratingly find we can do no such thing.

Yet, and here’s the thing, if only we can accept that a person will always resist change for external reasons, we’re at peace because we have discovered that our best gift to the world is to resolve to never manipulate any human being, because it’s a sin.

So the divine invitation is perennial.  Accept that others won’t be changed no matter how important we think it is.  When we arrive at the defeat of our false and impossible hopes, we suddenly begin walking in strength, which is acceptance.  When we walk in acceptance, then there is peace.

When we live this life of acceptance, not needing to change anyone, we ourselves have walked into a miracle, which is freedom first and foremost for ourselves, but that which extends outward as a ripple of God’s grace into others’ lives as well.

Photo by Christian Holzinger on Unsplash