Saturday 18 January 2014

God's way of having us deal with change

The secular psychological approach to helping people to handle change is generally to say "take small steps, don’t get ahead of yourself; graduated exposure; get in plenty of practice and you’ll improve; then you’ll be able to tackle the new task or situation in your own strength as your ability and self-confidence grow."

If only God saw it that way!

If you look at the examples in the Bible of God commanding people to do something, these were frequently radical and well outside the person’s ‘comfort zone’. It seems that often God’s way is to hurl us headlong into the unknown and unfamiliar, well outside our comfort zone or human competence.

So is God unfeeling? Does he not know that we are frail humans and are not good at doing things right outside our experience?

Yet, God’s strategy, again and again, is to command someone to do something quite outside of their ability, even outside their experience. But in each case He follows up his command by saying “Do not be afraid, for I will be with you”. For his purpose is not cruel, but steeped deep in love, teaching us to trust in Him alone and see what he can accomplish when we let him work though us - which is far greater than any of our puny human skill or effort.

As Lord and King, Jesus expects obedience; but as a Shepherd he says he’ll stay close beside us. "You will do this task I have commanded, but not by relying on your own ability; rather, you will need to rely on Me!”

It’s not self-confidence that matters, but confidence in Jesus.