Can People Change? Podcast Series

Somehow, some way, God and his ultimate plan worked through these broken people. And I think that we have to hold that that’s where our peace is, that God is at work through both the best and sometimes the hard things of life. And that gives me a lot of comfort. It really does.  

Greetings and welcome everyone to Breaking Bread the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. Excellent to have you along. Can people really change? That’s the topic. And I hope the answer to that is yes. And I’ve brought some guests on to help with this conversation. I’d like to introduce those guests. I have with me, Jeff Waibel, thanks for being on. Ted Witzig Jr. and Aaron Platner, thanks, brothers for being here. Good to be here, Matt. All three of you have got a lot vested in this question of people change and how people change.  

Jeff, fill out a little bit about your space, but you’re a clinical director and in counseling and direction there at Gateway Woods, working with youth. Tell us a little bit about your background and your interests there. So, coming into Gateway Woods, obviously what Gateway Woods is, is a treatment facility, so the idea behind our whole reason for being is to take young people in who have experienced addiction, or some sort of behavioral issue, or sometimes mental health issues and help them work through those things in a safe treatment environment. And so, our whole mission is predicated on the idea that people can change. Whether or not they want to, that’s another whole ball of wax, but it’s predicated on the idea that change is certainly possible. Thanks for that. 

Ted, you have vested interest in people change as well. In fact, you have made a profession out of it. Speak a little to that. Yes, I’m at Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services, and I’m a clinical psychologist. The concept of change is key. And what we’re thinking about is trying to help people remove barriers and grow skills to be able to achieve those goals of growth. 

Aaron, speak a little bit to what you do and your interest in change. Yeah, so I live in Alto, MI but do tele psychiatry down to ACCFS. I’ve been doing that for several years as a psychiatrist. So, I went to medical school and really found a love for psychiatry. And my position is what can I do with medications to shift the ground so the seed of therapy can engage and can grow. 

So, kind of coming alongside different therapists, ideally, so that the atmosphere is the best for change to take place. You know, this is, I think, a common human experience, right? The desire for change. And I want to set that change separate from circumstantial change. Yeah, certainly we would like circumstances to be different in our life. 

But that’s really not what we’re talking about, is how to change our circumstances. We’re talking about, at the core, how do we change who we are as human beings. And I think sometimes we can be met with some skepticism. When we throw up our hands and say, I don’t think I can possibly change in this or that area. 

Now, each of you do provide, I think a lot of crossover, a lot of wonderful cross pollination in terms of psych background, social work background, neurological background. But I also want to highlight because I really want this to be a part of our conversation as well as your pastoral background. 

That is a part of people change. So, let’s talk about what change people are interested in. What is some of the change that you are actively working to help people bring about, Ted? If you could list some, it can’t be exhaustive, but what are some of the top things people want to change?  

Well, I think the first thing that brings most people into a counseling setting or oftentimes seeking help with some kind of pain and that pain might be relational pain. It might be emotional pain. It might be in terms of difficulty with thinking or achieving something that they’re trying to do. And so, one of the first things that we’re trying to do is help people move out of the symptoms or out of the kinds of challenges that are bringing painful things into their life. 

That oftentimes motivates people. Without some kind of pain, oftentimes people are like, hey, you know what? No pain. Why change? You know? So, no need for change. The second thing is once people are out of pain or are able to better cope with their pain, they can oftentimes work on things that have to do with skills, that have to do with their identity, their self-worth, their ability to set and hold proper boundaries or communicate with people. And then I think another change after that is a third set where they get to be part of the solution. They’ve moved from I’m in pain or have these symptoms to I’m working on some of the roots or some of the factors that have gone on in my life. And now that I’ve learned, I can go on and I can become a helper and redeem my hurts. So that’s three kinds of change that I see people trying to really speak to a transformation.  

It would appear even in kind of the shape of that, Jeff, add to that, what do you see and what are the high stakes issues of change? Well so one of the hats I’m going to put on now is this pastoral hat. So, I can talk about here at Gateway Woods, but I’d prefer maybe to talk about what we see in the church and what I feel when people come to me as a minister for guidance, most often I would say the number one thing that they’re looking for is relationship help. 

So, it could be a marriage, it could be a parent child thing. It could be some conflict with another brother or sister in the church. It could be, it’s some sort of relationship thing. I would say that’s number one. Number two would probably be some sort of besetting sin issue. So, there’s something in their lives where they know they are transgressing God’s ideal for them, for their life, what’s good for them, and they hate it. They don’t want it. They’d like to get it out of their lives. So those are the sorts of things that they want to talk about. Like, what can I do about this? I’ve tried, I’ve done this, I’ve done that, and nothing seems to work. And I would say the third level that people come is processing through some sort of past trauma, some sort of past hurt. It could be a church hurt type of a situation. It could be the classic, something happened in my childhood. I had a bad relationship with my parents. It could be I had an older sister in church talked to me once. And she talked to me about something that happened when she was in grade school, we’re talking 50, 60 years ago, and it was still haunting her to this day. Those types of things sometimes come out when you set enough safety in place.  

I really like that. And I’d like to go back to your second one there, Jeff, that besetting sin. And that’s a term that we use. I think we understand what that means. But I do think there is a uniqueness about this topic of besetting sin. It’s these sins that we really struggle with on whether we’re forgiven, I think we all have bandwidth to understand that we slip up here, we slip up there. And it’s just not me, but I did that certain thing. I repent. I find forgiveness in the gospel all makes sense in those situations. 

But this besetting sin situation, I think there is something here I think worth lingering on. Yeah. I have seen people walk away from the faith because of these types of things. Like I have asked God to help me with this area of my life and he hasn’t, therefore he must not exist. I mean, I’ve had those exact conversations. I know probably some of you have as well. It seems like these are sins that become part of your lifestyle. It’s so ingrained in who you are and what you do, and you have tried to root it out. You’ve tried, it’s like crab grass. You pull the top off of it and it just keeps springing back up. 

It’s hard to get rid of. It’s hard to get out. And in fact, to such an extent that a lot of people come to the conclusion, I guess I can’t get rid of this and said another way. I guess I can’t change. I guess this cannot change, which I think really puts this conversation at its premium here. 

That’s really what we want to address and what we want to talk about here, because there is a sense of desperation, I think, that many experience on severe levels, right. And also on mild levels to say, man, I guess this thing in my life is just going to be the way I am. Aaron, your perspective on the change you help people with. 

I think what Jeff has talked about, I don’t want to over neurologicalize, you know, that’s not a word neurologicalize. I don’t want to over biological, make it biological should be a word. You’re a doctor. You can make up your own words. Yeah. Those are called neologisms and that’s a bad sign. 

You should see his handwriting. Yeah. It’s horrible. So, the deeper we go inside the brain, right? The inner part of the brain is a very unchangeable part of the brain, which is healthy, right? Because the, we don’t really want to change when our heartbeats or when we breathe, these things go automatically all the time. 

Like I’m always breathing and I’m not even thinking about that’s that deep core. Like if you think of an onion, that’s that deep core in the middle, though, the further we go outside of the onion, that’s like the further we go outside of the brain, things are more flexible, and so what I think sometimes happens we have these habits, right? 

We have these things that have been formed at a very young age, and part of it is like the going through the path of the woods. The more you go through the path in the woods, the easier it is to go through that path. You don’t want to go to other paths. And that path then gets flattened out. The vegetation dies because you’re walking on it so much. 

And so, when you’re in a situation, you always want to go back to that path, even if it’s not a good path. So, you have some sort of a cue, some sort of something that brings something in mind, then you have a routine, and then you have the actual response, right? So, when I worked at a restaurant back in the nineties, when everyone could smoke, I distinctly remember my boss being stressed, going in the back, lighting up a cigarette and feeling relaxed. 

Right. And she would tell me, I need to stop smoking. Like she knew this and how do you get that to stop? And so, that’s where we get into this. The basal ganglia is an area of the brain where habits get established. And once those habits are established, they don’t necessarily go away. I take food in, the body deals with the food and then we send some things out. When you take things into the brain, it never really goes out. It forms a pathway. You have neurological things that are changing. So, it’s really important at a young age to develop these healthy habits to have these things modeled. 

But also, when we talk about these changes, it’s how to have someone have a cue like something that trigger something and then replacing a wrong response or wrong behavior, but still getting the same overall response that is healthy and good. And that’s the change that is so difficult. That’s the person who doesn’t want to smoke, but can never stop smoking. 

And then all of a sudden, they get pregnant and then they stopped smoking for nine months, right? And as soon as the baby is born, guess what they’re right back to smoking, right? They have this clue of I need to smoke, but then they know like, no, I can’t. Because I have a baby in my body and that overrides it. 

And then all of a sudden you see that change. And so how do we put that into place of people to say this path that you have taken this path that you have blazed into so easy to go down, we need to stop that path and replace it with something else. Now, if we had the answer to that, that would be brilliant, but that’s where I’m trying to look at. 

How can I help medication wise to help rearrange those pathways so it’s easier for them to make a different pathway, but I also agree with what I said before that there has to be something that’s greater or outside of us, which I would say, you know, would be the Word of God. It would be accountability with brothers and sisters that come in and help in that change. 

Because just relying on medication is not going to work. Well, let’s pick that up. I think you’ve really said it well with the illustration of a path in the woods, I think really makes sense. And we can now see the complexity of our experience and why we go down certain pathways. And I would love Jeff and Ted for you to pick up on this concept of, I know what I should do, but I don’t do it. 

I know how I should be, but I’m not that way. I think that lies at the center of the frustration of the human experience that struggles against change and the difficulty of it. For sure. Go ahead, Jeff. Well, I was just going to say that one of the things I would, I’d like to point out is that this is not an intellectual exercise. 

I would say most people know the changes they need to make in their lives, or they would like to make in their lives. You’re overweight, frankly, you don’t need people to tell you. We’re all waiting for Aaron to give us a pill to fix it. But until that happens, we know what the problem is. 

And we also know exactly how to fix it. It is a simple mathematical equation, right? It is very, very simple. So. It’s not an intellectual problem. It’s something much, much deeper than that, I think. And to explain that, Ted is going to now step in. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think one of the things to understand is that we have different levels of awareness. And sometimes we thinking about facts and figures. Other times we talk about emotions and experiences and patterns. We also have shaping experiences and things like our flesh has its sin nature that wars against the Spirit that’s there. Also, our human bodies are changing and growing and aging all the time. 

So, there’s all these changes that are going on and we’re affected by the fall in a general sense. So, there’s not just one factor. It’s another thing we have to understand. There are a bunch of factors, but even in that, I think one of the things that happens is that, and I appreciate the thought that this isn’t just an intellectual and the reason that that’s so important, is that until we’re able to see that we’re in a character shaping process, we have personalities, we have families, but ultimately, if you think about what the Word of God speaks to, it speaks about character and virtue and these kinds of things. And that is walking with the Spirit, abiding with him and its moving. 

And I think the thing that what we want the most is we want change to be quick and easy, and ultimately, I would say that change is really more like watching the rings of a tree come together. Now, again, some change can happen fast. And I said, we have to take part in being in this shaping process that includes social factors, biological factors, habits, all those things, and really relying on the Spirit of God and each other to move us in that direction. 

Because quite frankly, while we know what we need to do, oftentimes, what we don’t realize is that our own, our own fears, our own defenses, our own tendencies move us in the opposite direction. And so that’s why change needs to be both information that needs to come in, but there’s also community that has to come in. 

There may be some anxiety that needs to be dealt with. There are all these different layers or else we accidentally get what we don’t want. So let me say a couple of things here. First of all, I totally agree with everything that Ted just said even though I’m going to contradict it. 

No, I totally agree with everything he said. I think change is so hard because it is so multifaceted. Absolutely. However, here’s the problem that I see over and over, not only in my life, but in the lives of many other people. We need change to be quicker. We understand that it’s difficult. We understand it’s like rings of a tree growing. And we understand it’s a nonlinear process, two steps forward, one step back and all the rest, we understand all that, but if you have a sexual addiction, it needs to stop now. Or if you’re sitting in the doctor’s office and you have a diabetic episode and your doctor says you have got to change the way you eat now, today. So, this is the problem. I think this is the disconnect I sometimes have in my life when I try to change things. I know it’s a problem that a lot of other people have. We understand, I think intuitively, that change is difficult, slow, and involves a lot of different facets of our lives. 

But the changes that are most important, sometimes we put off so long or they get so bad that we need to do them all as soon as possible. How do we fight through that? Which is why I think we go to people like Aaron and say, is there a pill for this? It’s because of the urgency of the need. 

Yeah. And there is no doubt that there are numbers of people who want some magic bullet and they’re looking for some sort of road to Damascus light that strikes them down. And there’s a sentinel event and then everything is different after that. I think that there’s a lot of shame involved in change. 

I’m not encouraging the activity but saying that this change needs to happen also meeting people where they are. And so, Jeff, you had talked about some people with different traumas in their life. And so, I’m always reminding people if we need to get to New York city. Some people start in Philadelphia, some people start in Chicago, some people start in Denver, and some people start in Phoenix, right? 

And as people are working through their path, they need to get to New York City, but the guy that started in Philadelphia and is still in New Jersey, this is closer to New York City, but the guy that started out in Phoenix and now in Chicago feels like they’re way far behind, but they’ve actually made more progress than everyone else. 

And I’m always trying to say it’s progress, not perfection. We’re looking to continue to make those small improvements as, you know, Ted had mentioned sanctification is very difficult and I think that sometimes people will base their justification of who they are in Christ on their sanctification how much progress am I or am not making so if we can nail down the justification you are accepted in Christ because of the cross that should fuel that sanctification moving forward. 

Although slowly, I want to encourage them on their path to know where they started and that they might’ve made a lot more progress than the person that started ahead of them. And I think that we have a special fellowship that. The Apostolic Church really can continue to lean into and have that accountability, but encouragement at the same time, as we’re moving along in that path. 

We also have to realize that different kinds of changes move at different speeds. If something’s in a crisis state, we have to deal with things very differently than if we’re like going, you know what, it’s time for me to address my problem with anger that I’ve had for 30 years. You know, and sometimes that problem with anger has resulted in now I’m separated. 

And so now I have to deal with this very quick. I have to deal with this other times. It’s like, finally, the Holy Spirit gets me right in my heart. And I’m just like, you know what? I have allowed myself to not deal with this in a way that isn’t okay. And I got to do better, you know? So all those things are, are at play in this. 

So let me bring up another thing here. I think one of the, I don’t want to call it a lie, I want to call it maybe a misunderstanding about life in the Spirit, is that God enables people to change immediately, this sort of transformational moment. And I think a lot of people come to Christianity and they do have a transformational moment, right? 

They go from death into life. They go from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh. They do have this big transformational moment. And they keep expecting that those transformational moments will happen. And when they don’t happen, sometimes they’re like, was I sold something here or why isn’t this happening? 

I’ve asked the Lord to take away this thorn in the flesh, whatever it might be, and it’s still there. Is God being mean to me or am I asking wrong? Should I be praying 10 times a day instead of just once? Or, you know, we go into, how about, am I being punished? Yes, you know, that’s another one. 

Yeah, the Job sort of response. Yeah, so I how do you brothers sort through that with people when they ask you those questions like I pray for this to go away and I believe God can heal me of this or work a miracle in this or whatever. Yeah, I guess I always remind people that there’s a hundred and fifty Psalms for a reason And you need 150 of them because of the oscillation of like, Psalms 23, you’re my shepherd, I shall not want. 

And Psalms 22, like I’m surrounded by bulls and they’re gashing me, they’re juxta positioned right next to each other. And I think sometimes David needs a hug, like it’s going to be okay. And then he’s rejoicing in the next Psalm. So, I love the order of Psalms because it feels like life. 

I do agree with what Ted had said that education on these things is key. Like, I mean, the fact that you can have someone with the trauma and then walk them through the symptoms and they now understand this trauma, this is the fruit of the trauma. This is the results of that. And that does kind of have this enlightening time, but they can at least have an understanding of why they’re experiencing those things. 

But I also wonder a lot of this is expectations, right? But you know, there’s the science hope song. It’s really not that difficult Uh a righteous man to be i’m like, wait a second. Wait a second. It’s it’s it’s it’s not Complicated but it’s hard. It’s very very simple, but it’s very difficult and how to have that juxtaposition and so I have Understood that I had these unrealistic expectations and when they were not met, I felt crushed. 

So I do think that in some ways, having people understand what the expectation is. That we are both a saint and a sinner at the same time. That’s where I find that educating people about life, but yet God is good. Should hopefully juxtaposition it of like, wow, this is really hard, but God is really good at the same time. 

And can you live in that tension? And I find that our world is unable to live in tensions at a growing degree. And that’s what all of these biblical characters that we read about, you know, how, how Peter was so passionate and impulsive, right? And Noah built an ark, but got drunk in the next chapter. I mean, it’s just over and over and over these heroes with their flaws. 

Yeah. That can we live in that tension? That’s, that’s helpful, Aaron. Not everything is, not everything is fixed and life, but life is hard and some things are really broken. It’s hard for us to accept that. That life really is, it has its brokenness. And so having a good understanding of what suffering and hardship is, is part of handling life well. 

And that’s not to say that there aren’t blessings in life, it’s wonderful. But life has both of those things, right? And it has joys, and it has, it has sorrows. And, and, and the thing about it is, God tells us so. I mean, He doesn’t hide that from us. He said this is how it is. And one last thing I’d like to say about this is, when you look at the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, And, and you go through that and you look at that family and you think about God’s promises to that family and how he showed up and then you think about the brokenness in that family and the rivalries in that family. 

I mean, it wasn’t, it wasn’t, I mean, I mean, my brother and sister and I, we fought, but I didn’t ever think about selling Andy. I didn’t ever think about selling him. to, you know, to, to somebody. I mean, maybe I did. I don’t know. I don’t remember that far, but, but the whole point is in all of that brokenness, God still worked through them somehow, somehow, some way God. 

And his ultimate plan worked through these broken people, these relationships that went well, and then went poor, and then, and then there was resolution to some and not to others, and God still worked through it. And I think that we have to hold that, that that’s where our peace is, is that God. Is at work through both the best and and sometimes the hard things of life, and that’s that gives me a lot of comfort. 

It really does. I’m going to hit pause now on this conversation for today. I think Jeff. Aaron and Ted have done a nice job of painting the landscape of change in people’s lives. Both the hope that’s there, but also the angst, the perplexity, the difficulty, the urgency, the need, the importance, and all of these things. 

It’s been good to listen in. But when we return, we’re going to… Peer a little bit deeper into this space of how does change happen? I think a question that all of us are vested in. Thanks each one for being on. 

What if the church was a little bit more like that Alcoholics Anonymous, where we were a little bit more transparent, both on the side of, I’m struggling, and on the side of, I’ve actually been successful. Because I think we, we need to see both. We need to have both of those voices. And the church, one of the things that the Bible presupposes is that the church is like a body.

We’re all connected. Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling Family Services. Excellent to have you on and excellent to have you back as we continue a conversation with Jeff Weiple, Aaron Platner, Ted Witzek, Jr. on the topic of people change. Glad to have you here.

Help us think through growth as a believer, change as a believer. So, uh, I’ll just pick up on something here and and say, this is that what I find is that human beings by their their nature, they tend to identify some things that they would both like to change and how they would like to change it. Okay.

And so. What ends up happening is I end up applying the same tool to all these different situations. But, but as human beings, we have a, we have a, we’re a soul where there’s this undying soul that is, that relates to God. We’ve got relationships. We’ve got our, our mental faculties and our thoughts and our feelings.

We’ve got our physical body and all these things work together. What I find is that people tend to want to solve a problem based on either Either physical means or psychological means or social means or spiritual means kind of like that. There are, uh, those are, uh, completely, there are options that are completely segmented from each other, completely a wall in between them.

And, and the fact is. If you don’t sleep good for three nights, the fact is your mood is going to be changed and your relationships are going to be affected. And even how well you can memorize scripture or even remember scripture. And so what was the problem? Was it physical or was it spiritual or was it, you know what I’m saying?

These things ring back and forth. And, and so I think that one of the things that happens is that, that we have to be able to kind of. To bring our whole selves, okay, the whole thing, okay, to, to an understanding of what we’re, we’re trying to do. And it doesn’t mean I’m not, I don’t mean that we have to fix everything at the same time.

We just understand that these things affect one another. How, how have you seen change? How have you seen change in people’s lives? What has unlocked

it? So Matt, how to change to, to bring a hope into it. There is a whole concept of wisdom. Right. And God has given us many tools or things to think about change.

Number one, we don’t, we don’t need to change everything, right? The old saying Rome was not built overnight, right? So small particular changes can then lead to bigger changes. So someone wants to exercise more, right? Great. Put your exercise clothes and lay them out near the bed when you go to bed. So when you wake up in the morning, your exercise closes are there.

They have found that if you set your exercise clothes out the night before, you’re more likely to get up and exercise the next day. Right? You don’t need to run a marathon, sign up for a 5k, right? And if you sign up for a 5k, you have committed, you paid some money. And if you can just sign up for a 5k and they have, you know, apps that you can do that kind of gets you couch to the 5k work through those, those things, accountability.

If you say to someone, can we do this together, whether it’s diet or exercise, You’re more likely to complete it because you have other people keeping you accountable. So I think part of it is, is understanding what you want to change, starting with small increments, getting rid of any obstacle. I’m trying to smooth the new path out.

So it’s there. And then walking through those things, that’s where these little things start. And we celebrate little changes. We celebrate little successes. We don’t minimize them, you know? And I think of, you think about when our children were first walking, they took their first step. You know, I mean, it’s really, we, we walk all the time.

We don’t even think about it. Right. But one baby takes a step and we, we, we celebrate it. Right. And that’s how it has to be. We have to celebrate small things because that does lead to big things. And what happens is, is, you know, new year’s resolutions, all those other things, when people slip, they make a mistake, we don’t throw it all out.

The baby, the bath water, we get back up and we keep moving forward. And I think as we talk about this, this should be kind of. Fueled by this hope, this, this faith that God is working something out, right? That God has this purpose for us and that he is a, an author of good things. And that, uh, if we can lean on him, even though it doesn’t make sense, knowing that he is an author of our peace.

And he is someone of grace. I think that does provide a fuel through the spirit to move forward in life, to have that hope. If we don’t have that hope, if we don’t

have this kind of realization that in the end, all things will be made, right. I think that can be more disparaging and it can be somewhat unmotivating.

And so I’m always asking people who want to change, like what’s one thing you can do for next time I meet. And let’s talk about that. And that one thing just builds upon another, and that’s how we. We make substantial change. I want to take a lesson from the playbook of alcohol treatment, um, alcohol addiction treatment.

So we, we’ve all probably have some context for Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the things that they do is they put you in a room with a whole bunch of other people who are at varying stages or steps, they would call them, on their path towards freedom from their addiction. Uh, addiction, and they put you all in a room and you all talk.

So one person maybe gets up and talks for a while, tells a story about their week or tells a testimony about the, um, the successes they’ve had. And then another person does. And another person gets up and says, I actually had a really bad week. I took some steps back or whatever. I think the benefit of, of that sort of environment is that we can see that.

First of all, it dispels the myth that change happens instantaneous. And second, it dispels this whole thing that we sometimes get into in the church. Which is a, it’s a, that it’s a performance art. Sometimes I think church is performance. So people come in and they’re, How was your week? Oh, I’m blessed. Or, you know, I had a great week.

And the reality is, is, um, they left their house this morning yelling at their spouse. I mean, sometimes it’s not that dramatic, but sometimes it is. And so we, we can get into this performance thing. But, but what if… Please don’t take this too far. But what if the church was a little bit more like that Alcoholics Anonymous, where we were a little bit more transparent, both on the side of I’m struggling and on the side of I’ve actually been successful, because I think we, we need to see both.

We need to have both of those voices. And the church, one of the things that the Bible presupposes is that the church is like a body. We’re all connected. We’re interconnected. We depend on each other. We. Even, um, supply each other’s needs. We lift each other up. We’re stronger together than we are alone.

And I think it’s because of this, we need to go into church and we need to be able to go to somebody who’s been walking with the same problem that I have an anger problem, and you know, that so and so used to have an anger problem

because they’ve told you that at some point, but they’ve found ways to deal with it and ways to successfully handle their emotions.

We need to, first of all, be able to identify them. And then second, we need to be able to have access to them. And I just think there’s such power in that community of faith. I think there’s such power there. You know, Jeff, the other thing that really speaks and in moments like that, you can borrow the hope and faith of other people.

Yeah. If I, if, if my book, besetting sin. Is, is unraveling my faith and I’m questioning, um, whether it is that I can possibly change a really good thing to do is to know the story of another person who was in my shoes and it requires that type of community. And, and so we have that help surrounding us, whether, and now I think you’ve prompted us to engage it.

It sounds to me, uh, that even the suggestions here that we’re, we’re sharing meaningful change is, is a cooperation. Could we say that a cooperation of ourselves with the spirit of God? And I think sometimes those are difficult waters to tease out in our head. What is, what is God’s part? What is my part?

You know, this individual over here repented and never had a, a hankering for, for a smoke and I’m struggling with it that happened. It seemed like with no contribution of himself. And yet so help us help us understand just good, good thinking, good spiritual sense here of the converted life. What is our part in, in, in the change?

God loves you. And because he loves you so much, it prompts us to love him back. God loves you. And love involves surrendering parts of your will to the one you love. That’s just the way it is. That’s the way every relationship is. And so I, because of God’s love for me, I love him and because I love him, I want to be more like him.

And the path to be more like him is found in the pages of scripture. Ted, you speak to God image a lot. How do you think God views? I think the concept of God image is a really important part of the change process because here many times we’ve talked about reading scripture. We’ve talked about leaning into our relationship with the Lord or guiding people to the Lord is that picture.

While we don’t necessarily see him clearly, we see through a glass darkly. Sometimes people’s life experiences and teaching is sometimes given them a twisted view picture of God. And so it can be very difficult to call on God or trust in God if that, if my picture of God is a God of impossible expectations or

a God that is the rug puller or the God who, who, um, just waits for me to feel loved and is going to, you know, get me somehow.

So, so the point there. Being, it’s part of the reason why, uh, yes, we need to go to scripture, but we also need other people kind of helping us to clear our lenses too. And the Holy Spirit to clear those lenses so that that picture of God and leaning into God can be healthy. So I oftentimes, in fact, it’s up on my wall.

I have a picture of Jesus holding a lamb. Okay, and it says Jesus and a lamb together and I will ask people to look at that picture and I will say, okay, you see that picture? Who is it? No, they’ll look at a little bit and they’ll see this nail print, like a nail scar at the back of his head. So it’s Jesus.

Okay. And I’ll say, so that lamb there that Jesus holding, is it a good lamb or a bad lamb? Okay. And I get all kinds of, I get all kinds of responses to that, but you see, it really doesn’t matter. Okay. It really doesn’t matter because if that was just had a great success at overcoming, it’s, it’s celebrating by going to Jesus.

And if that lamb just fell down for the 79th time, you know, and, and that besetting sin, the right place for him to go is yeah. Jesus. Okay. And so I think that’s the, the, the thing is we have to have a God concept, the God image that’s able to, that we can bring our joys and our sorrows to. And that’s part of what I would say that, that part of what we’re actually after.

Is this renewing of our mind and that renewing of our mind is, yes, it is a, it is transformational as the, as we go from darkness to light, but it is also the constant shaping of that mind into, uh, and, and to the, to the mind of Christ and then to the, what to say, under the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ.

And so, and that’s, that’s, that’s that process again, but it’s renewing the thinking and renewing those things. And. And scripture and the Holy Spirit, uh, get to be the, the main guides there, uh, along the way. Yeah. Matt, can I just jump in real quick though? What Ted was saying about Jesus? I do think it would make sense to kind of bring up Matthew 11 that God says, you know, Jesus says, come unto me all you that are labor and heavy, you know, laden.

And I feel like people wanting to change are just exhausted. So he’s calling that group of people that are, that are tired. This isn’t, and I will give you rest, right? Take my yoke upon me, learn of me. I’m meek and lowly of heart. I mean, that, that is where we hear God’s actual heart. That he is meek and lowly.

And this is that once again, and then you will find rested to your souls. Cause my yoke is easy. My burden is light. And I know we sing that song. It’s a beautiful song, but I think people forget that he’s inviting people to have that rest. And I think as we think about change and discouragement, and I can’t do this.

It’s still that invitation, like come learn of me, put my yoke upon you and you will find rest for your souls. And I think that’s what everyone, including us here wants is that rest from this kind of inner murmur of, we’re not good enough or we need to do more, we need to change more. And he has an invitation that I think kind of, once again, Draws the person to get back up and keep moving forward.

Brothers, as we just bring this to a close, I’d like to give you each one a chance. Jeff, we’ll start with you. Can people change was the question I posed at the beginning. I’d like you to answer that question and then say any concluding remarks about the change you’ve seen in people. Can people change?

Absolutely. People can change. People change all the time and I will look no farther than myself. I am a different person since I had my children. I am a different person since I married my wife. I’m a different person since I surrendered my life to the lordship of Jesus Christ. I am a different person since this morning.

Some of those are little changes, some of those are big, huge changes, none of them happen quickly. I had children quickly, it only took a few hours, but it, the change was gradual over a long period of time. So I will look no farther than myself to say, yes, people change, sometimes in very, very big and dramatic ways, and praise God for that.

So the question is, can people change? And I’ll say I’m going to, I’m going to give two part answer and I’m going to say the answer is yes, that people can change. I’m also going to say that change is not necessarily either automatic or guaranteed. And what I mean by that is it’s a little bit like maturity.

You’re, you’re guaranteed to age. Okay, if as long as you’re alive, but that doesn’t mean you’ll mature and I think one of the things is that as life goes on, as we have the opportunity to, to lean into these things we’re talking, we’ve been talking about today. Yes. God wants to God’s. plan for us is to grow us up in him.

And so if his plan is to grow us into the image of Christ, I would say, yes, change, change is possible. I would also say too, that I will just say that. For me,

I have, I have found that change has most often happened in my life, not because of happy things or good things, but has often happened in hard things.

Now I’ve been changed by happy things. I really have. I mean, children and marriage and those kinds of things. I would, I would say the things that have, that, that have shaped me more, more recently were things like. open heart surgery that had complications, you know, and things like that. And so I would tell you, and I would, I would say that almost every time you ask somebody, not every time, because that’s not every, every situation is the same, but to say, when somebody has gone through a hard thing and come out the other side is they will many times they will say, I would never wish that thing on anybody.

But also God met me in that place in a special way that I wouldn’t change out for the world. And that’s a really interesting thing. And I think it’s the hope that we have as believers, because it is, it just says that he’s with us. It’s he’s with us in the good and the not so good. Thanks to Aaron. Yeah. I mean, can people change?

Absolutely. And I think that’s what gives myself and hopefully others hope to get up and do. Whatever job God has called us to do. I mean, uh, we are all a part of God’s plan to bring order to chaos and whatever that way is, I’m just reminded that change does not always look like the way I think it should, or that I would like it to, but, uh, God is both sovereign and good at the same time.

And so I have to take the change that occurs, whether it is or is not the way I like. And understand that this is a part of something that is beyond what I’m going to see. I am grateful that I have the opportunity to come alongside people and walk with them and see some change. And I’ve just encouraged people that God has given us each a plot to cultivate and some people’s plots look very different.

I think sometimes my plot is potatoes and carrots and I don’t see anything growing the whole time where the guy’s plot next to me is all these huge ears of corn and these huge corn stocks that you can see a mile away. And yet this is the plot that God has called me to, to cultivate. And so I need to find contentment and joy and cultivating that and trusting that he will give the increase.

That doesn’t mean it’s always easy or better, but I have many stories of people who are changing and. And sometimes it happens very slowly and sometimes it happens very fast, but, but it is always happening. Really appreciate that brothers. And, and I hope to our listeners, I hope that you also experience the hope in this content that people can change.

And I think that is a human experience that we wonder is the change that we need to, to make possible. I would like to maybe conclude with this little story or analogy. My children are all musical by birth. My wife is musical. They have the seed of a musician within them, and you cannot take it away from them.

There’s no way to take it out, but that doesn’t mean necessarily that that they know how to play the piano or the violin. That would have to come later, but. Their change towards being a musician is possible because all that’s within them is present and the Spirit of God does that at conversion. He puts all within us in his Holy Spirit that makes his final result possible.

So I think we can be encouraged in the change that we need to face is possible change by the power of God and by. The person he has created us to be now, as we have heard from you brothers, some technique might need to come alongside that some community, some habits, some relational, but it’s possible. I think that is really exciting.

Thanks each one for being on.