change through our relationships…

there’s a lot of ways that GOD challenges change in our lives.  HE does it through our circumstances.  HE does it through what HE’s written to us.  but one of the main ways HE does it is through our relationships and that’s not always comfortable. 

paul wrote to some people in the town of corinth that he’d had to have a difficult conversation with.  it hadn’t been a comfortable conversation and yet after it was all over he writes to them, 2 corinthians 7.9 (ncv),  now i am happy.  not because you were made sad, but because your sorrow made you change your lives.  that’s how it works. 

notice it says, made you.  your sorrow made you change your lives.  they’d had a difficult conversation and it made them sad but that sadness made them change for the positive.  that’s when we change.  we change when we’re made to change. 

most of us don’t change because it’s a great idea.  we don’t like to change.  we like to stay comfortable.  so we change when we’re made to change.  we change when we’re put in the middle of the ring of life.

listen, we don’t change when we see the light, we change when we feel the heat.  so we’re made to change when that difficulty comes into our lives and GOD can use other people to be the ones that challenge us towards that change that we deep down all really want.

proverbs 27.17 (ncv) talks about how HE does this.  the bible gives us this picture.  as iron sharpens iron, so people can improve each other.

that may sound like a beautiful picture but in reality it’s a pretty tough circumstance.  when metal hits metal what happens?  sparks fly!  absolutely! 

have you ever seen that happen in a relationship?  in fact here’s how it happens.  the metal hits the metal.  someone says something to me that hits a rough spot or a dull edge in my life and the sparks fly.  first comes the sparking, then comes the barking – the yelling. 

i don’t like it when the sparks begin to fly in my life.  i don’t like it when people challenge something in my life.  do you?  because of that you and i go through a little bit of tough time in that relationship.  but on the other side of that comes the change.  you can’t do it any other way.  it’s metal hitting metal, that’s the picture.  you can’t do this easily. 

just a thought from the front porch…