Why and How we Change

Two conditions that promote or provoke change are vision and pain.

Vision – the idea that something is happening that shouldn’t, or that something isn’t happening that should, awakens the person it can influence with a desire to pay the cost of changing themselves so that the vision can come to pass as other things change.

Pain can force change even with no target for improvement – sometimes we just leave the current situation we are being hurt in without a plan for how things will improve beyond just getting out of range of the cause or source of the pain.

The Egyptian slaves who were moved to leave Egypt under the leadership of Moses were only initially influenced by pain. The purposes of the trip to the land that was controlled by descendants of Canaan being the path through the desert included Yahweh’s intention of helping them shift from being motivated by pain to being motivated by vision.

Three things He tried to shift in their minds were the understandings of His identity and nature, His perspective of their identities, and His desire for them having purpose in the place He was taking them. When confronted with the cost of changes produced by submission to vision, millions of people preferred returning to the pain, and being influenced to change by neither vision nor pain. They wanted to return to Egypt rather than face the scary future created through the flames of change.

If you are being drawn from the comforts of life as it has been, into the terrors of Life as it could be, let the presence of Yahweh in the desert conform you to His will and His purpose. Be transformed by letting Him renew your mind in the place of disorder and danger. When you let Him finish that work, the promises of the Promised Land enter the land when you do.