Lesson Text: Luke 5:36-39
LESSON INTRODUCTION
The only permanent thing in life is change. Becoming a child of God involves a change process (2 Cor. 5:17). We were transformed from the kingdom of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pt. 2:9). We entered into a world of new creatures where we have to learn and live a new kind of life that He gave us. To live this new life effectively, we will need to have a mindset that embraces change and that is not moved by the effect of the changes.
A. WHY CHANGE IS NEEDED
Change is essential because it drives personal growth, fosters innovation, and ensures survival in evolving environments. It breaks stagnation, allowing for the development of new skills, increased efficiency, and improved life quality. Without change, personal, professional, and organizational progress stagnates.
They say old habits are hard to die but as children of God, letting go of old habits are very much needed. Here are some reasons why they are needed:
God has promised to do something new for us, but a major problem is that we want God to do something new for us, while we keep doing the same old things. Isa. 43:18-19
One key aspect of change is letting go of the past. They may look good or precious, but they all must go. If they are not in God’s plan for your life, let them go. Let go of whatever the flesh is asking for, regardless of how painful it is. Until we let go and fully embrace the change God requires for each and everyone of us, we might never fully manifest God’s plan for our lives.
Discussion : Benefits of Change
“If you do not create change, change will create you.” ~Unknown
We are often resistant to change, and we don’t realize that change itself is constant. Even if you resist or avoid it, it will enter your life just the same. When you initiate the change yourself, it’s pretty easy to adapt to it, since it’s a wanted one.
- Personal growth: You grow and learn new things every time something changes. You discover new insights about different aspects of your life. You learn lessons even from changes that did not lead you to where you wanted to be.
- Flexibility : Frequent changes make you easily adapt to new situations, new environments, and new people. As a result you do not freak out when something unexpectedly shifts.
- Improvements : We all have things in our lives we’d like to improve—finances, job, partner, house, etc. All of us know that nothing will improve by itself. We need to do things differently to make that happen. Without change, there’d be no improvements.
- Life values: From time to time changes make you re-evaluate your life and look at certain things from a different perspective. Depending on what the change is, it may also reinforce your life values.
Life Question
But are the unplanned and unexpected changes bad? What if all changes were good by default?
