Top Ten Sins and Struggles. Top Ten Sins and Struggles. This is lesson
number six in this particular series. As you know we're counting down the top ten
sins and struggles that people listed in the congregational surveys given out
several months ago and so far we've discussed the results of these surveys
and they are in descending order: laziness, anger, cursing and gossiping (it
was a little tie there), pride number seven, number six neglecting church, we
talked about that last time and in this lesson tonight we're going to discuss
one of the sins and struggles that tied for the number five spot and that is
coping with change. Coping with change. There were two things that
were tied for fifth. I'm going to do the first one tonight and I'm going to do
the other one next week, because there's too much material to just do in one
session. So coping with change. So this particular topic does not fall into
the sins category, it falls into the struggles category, right? Because I mean
laziness and anger, cursing, those those are sins, but having
difficulty coping with change, that that's not a sin, but that is a struggle
that individuals have in many instances. The issue here is the power of
changing circumstances to affect a person's faith and their Christian
practice in a negative way or to affect your health or well-being in a negative
way. Change is traumatic, even good change is traumatic. Sometimes
affects your health, sometimes affects your faith, sometimes affects them both. So a
couple of case studies, couple of examples of difficulty in dealing with
change. For example, your elderly mother is put into a nursing facility leaving
your dad alone at home, but you, one of the children, live
120 miles away from mom and dad, now your younger, unmarried brother,
he lives in the same town as your parents, you get the scenario I'm
creating here? Can you see the problems that are going to arise with this change
in living arrangements? Mom's in a nursing home, dad is aged but is at home,
and both of them are 120 miles away from you. Perhaps, let's say you're the
daughter and your brother, he lives in the same town, but he's an unmarried guy,
he's busy. So some of the things that would come up with the scenario
like this, with a change like this, perhaps the fair division of labor for
the children. Maybe the unmarried brother barely goes, but when the
daughter drives 120 miles, she cleans the house, takes care of her dad, cooks a lot
of meals ahead of time, goes and visits her mom, stays with her Friday overnight,
Saturday and drives back home, goes back to work, whereas the unmarried
brother pops in once in a while to say hi to dad. Loss of work and family
time, traveling back and forth, I knew a lot of people in this congregation who
had that experience, aging parents, sick parents, they had to drive
back and forth and not just a hundred miles sometimes 2-300 miles. A
discussion whether to bring dad home with one of the children or that dad is
going to go live in the nursing home with mom, there's a change. The broken
routine of regular worship because of this new change, this new development.
Conflict over financial responsibility for the care and the expenses.
The daughter's driving back and forth, maybe staying over, spending money to do
this, but the brother is perhaps not thinking, 'Well, maybe I ought to split gas
with her. Maybe I ought to help her out with the expenses.'
One of the big problems that I've seen is one of the children hardly lifts a
finger to help the parents and then when there's a death, then that person who
hardly lifted a finger to help the parents all of a sudden they want a say
in everything, they want to make sure that they get their share of the
inheritance. I mean it's just trouble. Another scenario, you've just
moved to a new city with your family. You're happy for a new job, new
opportunity, maybe a little more money. Your wife, of course, she misses her
parents and your children are having trouble in their new school. The church
you now go to has less people and programs than your old church, what will
be some of the issues here? Well, perhaps more arguments between husband and wife,
stress for failure of the children in school, children used to be doing a whole
lot better back in the old school, back where we used to live, now
they're maybe not adapting as quickly, maybe they're having problems,
grades are not as good. And of course, loss of intimacy because of the pressure
and the anxiety of a change and after all what is it? You just moved from A to B
and yet that change moving from A to B created all kinds of problems that you
have to deal with. So I've just given two very common types of
experiences to show that changes bring new situations to get used to and then
new problems to solve and the point I'm making and I think the reason why some
people put this down, so many people put this down, is that not everybody is able
to cope with change. Some people they manage it. My wife and I sat down
once and tried to count how many times we have moved since we've been married.
23 times. 23 times in 38 years of marriage. That's a lot of moving and I
don't mean just moving next door I mean moving from a city to another city to
another church to another work to mission work to back to another mission
work, back and forth, back and forth. Thankfully my wife copes well with these
kinds of changes, brings the best out in her see, it's a challenge. Alright, we're
going to get organized, we're going to do this, and you know it doesn't take her a
long time to kind of whip a new place into shape and it feels like home in a
hurry. The upside of a thing like that is our children are very close because
they're they're used to being they were their own friends because they
were always the new kids in school, this school and that school, so they began to
rely on one another. The downside, the downside is they were having trouble
figuring out where their roots were when you move that many times. And of course, I
make an aside, this congregation about as close to home as they have ever had,
that's why they're so drawn to and so happy to be back in Choctaw. So all
of these changes that I mentioned, they bring stress and anxiety, depression, even
physical illness or family breakdown. So whether it's a new school or maybe going
back to school as an adult, declining health, your declining health, or the
declining health of the family member, or moving as I mentioned or a first
marriage, supposed to be a happy thing a first marriage, but that brings
a lot of stress as well, or maybe a subsequent marriage, you've been married
before and divorced or widowed or whatever and now you're remarried, well
that has all of its own baggage right there, stuff that you've got to deal with.
A new baby or a job or retirement from a job or a failure of some kind or perhaps
adapting to a greater responsibility, all of these changes.
So changes are difficult and learning to cope with change is a large
part of our maturing process because the older you get, the more changes there are
many times; change in health, change in circumstances, kids moving out, kids
getting married, kids moving back in, those things cause stress. Now changes in
every area of our lives are inevitable. You have to get used to the idea that
there will always be changes. We can't avoid the fact that our lives will
encounter change from time to time, sometimes for good, sometimes not so good.
So the first thing we need to understand and accept is that there will be change,
you just have to accept that there will be change, no need to be surprised or
upset when it finally occurs. If we accept that change is a natural, if not
always easy, but a natural part of life, we can more easily learn the things that
we need to do to cope with changes. And actually what is this class about, right?
It's about sins and struggles, how to deal with sin, well, how to deal
with struggles and that's our first opportunity to do that is tonight
because this is the first struggle that has kind of surfaced in our
survey. So obviously the lesson tonight, we're not going to exhaust all
of the more positive ways to deal and cope successfully with change, we only
have 30 minutes or so, but hopefully what I'm going to share with you is going to
help you see what God provides us with in order to support us in changing times
in our lives. Alright, so dealing with change, struggling with change, some
things to keep in mind. Number one, keep change in perspective. There's
an ebb and flow to life that bring natural changes with them,
try to keep this in mind. Solomon said that there was a time, "a time
for everything under the sun," and all the things he mentions in Ecclesiastes 3
have to do with change, right? That's what he's talking about. There's a time for
everything under the sun, right? Time to be born, time to die, time to start, time
to stop, time for war, time for peace, searching, giving up searching, building,
tearing down, all of these things that he mentions are changes and the point he
makes is there's a time for change. All of us go through them and if we remember
there is a time, in other words, there's a beginning of the time when changes come
but there's also an end. We eventually end up coping with it. We
eventually end up dealing with it, understanding it. So the coping problem
that change engenders is one of dealing with how we feel about the different set
of circumstances that face us because of the change and what happens,
people who wrote down, 'Boy, this is a big problem for me,' coping with
change, is that we get nervous and sometimes depressed because we begin to
think that the change is going to change everything when in reality only a part
of our lives will be different. We overestimate the impact of the change.
'Oh no! This changes everything!' Well, no. This may just change this over here, but
it doesn't change everything. So we need to keep change in perspective when it
takes place. Sometimes we get nervous because the change is too fast, when the
real problem is that we're too slow accepting the change or the
change is for the worst, we're always thinking something that looks kind of
neutral, but some people tend to always go to the negative side first. 'Oh no. That
there we go. Well that spoils everything. Now we're all going to hell in
a handbasket now boy,' and we say this because we're judging only the immediate
results and not the long-term effects that may yield good results. How do you
know? How do you know what's going to happen? How many times have people said,
yourselves included, myself included, 'Well this thing started out and I never
thought that this was going to be a good thing, but you know what? Looking back on
it, boy if this hadn't happened, then I wouldn't have met so and so or this
wouldn't have happened and you know somehow God have worked it out.' All
things work for, yeah, for good. And then of course the one that really kind of
turns that screw; we have this screw in situations, turn
that screw and make us tighter and tighter and more nervous and more
stressed, well the thing that really tightens it is we begin thinking
that the change is not what we wanted. Of course, we think this when our will is
crossed, but since when is our will the criteria for what is good or best? So
just because it isn't what you wanted doesn't mean it's bad, it's just not what
you wanted. So change is less unsettling when we can see the big picture and not
just the small universe of our own lives. For example, children marrying, even marrying
someone were not crazy about, this may be traumatic for the moment, but you know
what? In the long run many children realize that they actually want to be at
peace with mom and dad and they want their parents support as they begin
raising their own families. I remember when Lise and I were married,
she of course was French-Canadian, I was French too, but she was like pure French;
her mom was French, her dad was French, her grandparents were French, her
great-grandparents were French, her great great great great great, all
the way back to the boat as they say, all the way back to the boat an unbroken
line of French Québécois people. They were French when they arrived from
France and they married and raised French families, who married other French
families, who married other members of bababababa and we get to Lise and she
brings home a guy whose name is Mazzalongo? And to add insult to injury, not
only, not only is he's not French, but he speaks English and then to make matters
worse, he's not Roman Catholic, are you kidding me? There were no great shouts of
joy in her family. On top of that he's broke, he doesn't even have his own
furniture, you know what I'm saying? This was not a happy moment for her parents
and her family. Although they were always, always very gracious and polite, but you
know what's happening. But with time they realized, 'Well, these
two young people, they really love each other and they're having babies and
they're wanting to include us in their lives. So OK, our daughter's name is
Lise Mazzalongo, but she and her husband love us and want to include us in their
family and they bring the grandchildren to Juliette, that's the little town
they lived in, they bring the grandkids very often to share
time with Grandma and Grandpa and OK, he's not Roman,
he's not Catholic, I used to be, but I'm not Catholic anymore, I wasn't a
minister when I when Lise and I got married.
These are like Bible people and we don't get that, but you know what?
They're walking the walk. They're living according to what they believe. They're
sincere in their faith, so I guess. So at first blush it was like, 'Oh no,
our youngest daughter has blown herself up,' but they gave it a little bit
of time and they realize OK, it's not so bad and I have to share with you my
mother-in-law that I love dearly, what a wonderful, wonderful woman, she was
so gracious, so kind, so wise and she had leukemia and this is the thing that
took her away and at the end I went to see her. She was quite lucid, not a week
before she died, and I went in to see her alone and we talked and visited and
I told her, 'Aline,' her name was Aline,and I said, 'You know, I love you Aline.
I always have and I've always respected you and she says, 'well,
don't tell the others but you're my favorite.' So I think we all got that
speech, but it was good. So what's the point? The point is
sometimes you think the whole thing has gone down, but give it some time,
give it some time. Sometimes the changes, some good comes out of those
things. Another example right here in Choctaw, I'm looking around here and
pretty much everybody in this room was [here] when we did the renovation,
remember? I mean that was a difficult time for some of the members when we did
this thing. I mean just the cost alone half a million dollars, wow! For this
little church here. Some people expressed their thoughts quite clearly. 'Well,
there's nothing wrong with the old building. Why do we need to change it? Why
do we need to expand it?' Some worried about the debt. 'How we ever going to pay
that off? And many they didn't like the inconvenience, the dirt and the dust and
sitting in folding chairs and having to shut down the
kitchen and I mean 18 months of disturbance, of change, but we survived
and we grew and the debt is almost paid off and looking back could you imagine
if we had not done the expansion? Where would we put all the people that we have?
So keeping change in perspective or rather in the perspective that changes
in life are constant and that most changes they do work out in the long run.
Keeping this perspective helps lower the panic and the fear level that comes
along with the many changes that we face in life. Try to keep stuff in perspective.
Another way to cope with change more successfully is to entrust God with the
changes. One of the questions that most epitomizes how we feel about
change is the following: how will I ever be able to deal with this
change? My daughter got a divorce, my sister has cancer and whatever,
how am I ever going to deal with this? All this talk about the difficulty of
dealing or coping with change usually is a sign of fear. We're afraid that we
won't be able to adjust. We're afraid that people will be left behind,
everybody's moving this way and we're going to be left behind. We're afraid
of the pain and that the pain will be too great, we won't be
able to deal with the pain. How many people have been caretakers of an
individual that they loved, a family member, and dealt with that individual
for many, many months or years and the thought is what am I going to do? How
am I ever going to deal when this person dies? And the more they think about it,
the more this, 'Oh man, I don't think I could. What am I going to do?' and
then it happens and then somehow a day goes by and
another day goes by and another week goes by and another week goes by, pretty
soon you hear something on the radio that makes you laugh and you surprise
yourself; I just laughed, I just smiled, I just found something that was kind of
funny. And you smell food that you like life kind of keeps on going. And
you say to yourself, 'What was I so afraid of? Why was I so afraid?' Sometimes we fear
that we are not going to like the change or the things that change brings us. New
job, new house, whatever. People buy a house, they design the house and
everything, then have all this anxiety, 'I sure hope I like the new house as much
as I love the old house.' Now I'm not saying that these are not legitimate
feelings and concerns; let's face it a woman has surgery for breast cancer and
her concern for the changes that will result from this, that's a very real fear.
Or a 47 year old man loses his job with the company that he's worked for for 25
years and this is going to bring serious change into his life, yeah, you can't just
blow that, oh nothing. A couple decides to sell their home and move to a retirement
community, yeah, that's going to, whoa. A young person chooses to go to college far away
from home. A young couple decides let's begin our family, we've
been married a year or two, we've taken a trip here and that, but is it the right
time? Shall we start a family? Boy it's going to mean a lot of things we're not
going to be able to do or not gonna have as much money. Am I going to stay home
with the baby or am I going to go back to work? All these things, these
are legitimate concerns.So I'm not kind of whitewashing those and I'm not saying
oh, don't worry about it. Sure. So these are real life scenarios that will cause
upheaval and uncertainty in anyone who experiences these kinds of changes. Of
course, there will be fear. Of course, there'll be anxiety and stress, but what
I'm saying is that this doesn't only have to be fear. In other words, the
feelings that we have don't necessarily have to only be fear or anxiety or
stress. For the Christian there's the avenue of prayer that brings us into the
presence and the protection of Almighty God. In Hebrews 13, excuse me, the writer
expresses his utmost trust in God in the face of all circumstances when he writes
the following. He says, "Make sure that your character is free from the love of
money, being content with what you have;" and I will pause there, not only content
with what you have, but content with what changes bring you, OK? Because a lot of
times we fear that the change is going to bring us to a point where we're not
happy or we're not content with the new thing. Then the writer continues, he says,
"being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, 'I will never desert you,
nor will I ever forsake you,' so that we confidently say, 'The Lord is my helper, I
will not be afraid. What will man,'" or changes, '"do to me?'" Now what is it about
the term "I will never desert you"? What is it about that we don't understand? Can we
twist that to make it mean sometimes I'll desert you? No, he said I will never
desert you. I will never forsake you. Never he says, ever, it'll never happen. We
need to kind of keep this in mind. Of course, change is threatening and
frightening and difficult, but it's not impossible, nor does it have to be the
cause for a negative experience. God assures us that He will
always be with us to watch over us and to provide for us and it's easy to
believe this while times are stable and times are predictable and your job is
there and you're making money and you've got plenty, you've got more
overtime than you can manage and that's fine. But what do you think is happening
to those guys that worked in the 55 story or whatever is Devon Tower
thinking, 'We're on top of the world?' Are you kidding me? We just built this
billion-dollar high-rise and what does it represent? Strength in the
economy. Money. Power. And the people who are working at the Devon Tower are you
kidding me? They're thinking, 'We're on top of the world. We're the boss. Look at me. I
got an office up on the 45th floor,' and yesterday they laid off a thousand
people because the price of oil went from one hundred and seventy six dollars
a barrel to twenty eight dollars a barrel. That in itself, that one example
in itself, should teach us once and for all that our faith and our dependence
should always be on God, not on man, not on the strength of our finances, not on
the strength of our government, our military, not on the strength of our
company. Our dependence is always on God and He will always find a way to provide
for us. It's a promise that He makes. So it's when we find ourselves in the eye
of the storm that this promise is difficult to believe, but think of it is
anything too difficult for God? Do changes confuse God or make it any more
difficult for Him to care for us? On the contrary. I have found that it is in the
process of change and upheaval that my relationship with God grows stronger and
more intimate and more spiritually satisfying. Why? Because I'm
actually seeing Him at work. When I'm surrounded by the Devon Tower
and a hundred and seventy-six dollar a barrel oil, I'm having trouble seeing God
at work, but when I'm on the edge, when I have to totally depend on Him from day
to day, then I see Him work. Perhaps this is because while everything around us
seems to constantly be changing, I then see more clearly the unchanging nature
of God's love and care and for me this remains a solid foundation upon which to
build my hope. I mean if the same God who said, "Let there be light" and there was
light, surely He can provide for myself and Lise the small expense that
we have to maintain our life, surely He can do that. So different people, let me
just summarize a little bit here, different people react to change in
different ways. Ask yourself, test yourself, which is your go-to method
when there's change, traumatic change? Some react with resignation, they simply
resign themselves to it. This is a kind of a passive-aggressive approach to
change. They don't resist it, but they don't accept it either. The change
doesn't change them, it merely changes their circumstances. So some people just
go with the flow, I'm a reed in the wind. Other people, their go-to
reaction is resistance. Some people fight change, any kind of change, any kind of
change and this is how they cope with it, they resist it.
If change comes I just I pull the handbrake, automatic reaction.
I just pull up, I haven't even heard what the change is, but the moment I feel
'Uh, oh, whoever this person is or whatever is happening is going to mean some kind of
change for me,' I stop everything because that's how I cope with change.
Sometimes we do have to resist change, because perhaps the change is a bad
change. You know what I'm saying? It will lead us into sin or whatever.
but some people resist change because they're against any kind of change. It's
their coping mechanism. If I can maintain everything the way it is without change
I feel safe. So they resist any kind of change and what happens is this becomes
a character trait rather than a management tool. See the difference? To
resist as a management tool means you're observing the change and you're saying
well there's some things I'm not sure about, I need more information, so that's
good. Put the brakes on, slow down, take a look, that's using resistance as a
management tool, but some people resist, not as a management tool, as a character,
as a character trait and when it's a character trait the problem is
you cannot discern what's going on because your effort to resist blinds you
to the possibilities of what's supposed to be, what could be, a good change. Other
people for them repetition is their way. They promote change the exact opposite.
Those people love change because change is the antidote to their boredom and
their lack of sense of self. These are folks who make change happen because
they like change, any kind of change so long as it changes. Again,
that's not a coping mechanism, that's not a tool. We can use change
as a tool to motivate, to change, to improve but when it becomes a character
trait; I change stuff just because I'm bored, then that can be dangerous.
Hopefully I've described to you a more healthy and biblical approach to dealing
with change in our lives. Review, one, accept the fact that change in life is natural
and inevitable. Don't be surprised or hurt or panicked because change is
normal and at every stage of our life, not just when we're very young, but it
goes through all of our life, change happens to us. Secondly, try to keep the
changes in your life in proper perspective. Don't overreact or
overestimate the impact of changes that you face and don't try to predict the
future. Oh, I know what's going to happen now. And thirdly, put your trust in God.
God is aware of every change in circumstance in our life and we just
need to trust Him with the outcome of the changes in our lives. Whatever we
need, He's going to provide. Whatever we lose, He will restore in His own way.
Sometimes we don't get back the thing that's been changed or that we've lost,
we get something else and it's not the same and it may not be better or worse,
just different, just different. Of course, there's only one final change that all
of us should look forward to as Christians and that is the change that
we will undergo when Jesus returns. Our mortal bodies will be transformed. Well,
what's another word for transformed? Changed into
glorious ones in order to dwell in heaven with God forever. Paul says in
First Corinthians chapter 15, he says, "Now I say this brethren, that flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the
imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be
changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the
trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be
changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must
put on immortality." And so we better get ready for change, because there's one
humongous change coming at the end of our lives. We will be conscious of who we
are, but we will have a different body, a different casing, because we will exist
in a different dimension. Can a fish live on land? Well, no. Can a cat
survive underwater? Well, no. Why? These are different dimensions, they're not
designed. A fish is not designed to live on land, a cat has not been designed
to live in the water. These mortal bodies have not been designed to exist in the
in the purely spiritual dimension. We need another kind of body to exist in
the spiritual dimension and what Paul is saying here is at the end of our lives,
in the twinkling of an eye, we will let go this physical body and we will have...
Do we know what it looks like? No. All we know is that it'll be different than
this one. Why? Because it will have to exist in a different dimension
with different parameters. The only thing we do know is that God will be there and
Christ will be there and the angels will be there and we will be there and that
we will know who we are and we will know who He is. We know that much. We know that
much. I suspect that a lot of the changes that take place in our lives helps
prepare us for the great change that will happen at the
end of our lives. So try to keep that in mind. So let's cope with change with
faith, with trust, and with hope that we will be found worthy to be changed into
the glory of God when the proper time comes. Alright, so that's our lesson,
number five. Issue number five here, coping with change. I said that there was
another issue that was tied with that one and I will discuss that next week. Thank you for your attention.