It’s commonly voiced that after age forty, people don’t change! Coming from that same philosophical arena is the old adage, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Many psychologists say that a child is “set” in his formation of thought, etc. by the time he is three years old. The Bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it.” I keep thinking, the reality is, “However you train up a child, that’s the way he WILL go.”
It’s very difficult for a person to depart from the input in his childhood. It’s almost like a “fingerprint” that gets stamped on everything in his later years. All of the “things” put into the luggage that a child carries around with him throughout his childhood and teenage years are taken with him into his adulthood . . . and marriage . . . and most often . . . the rest of his life. For this very reason it is usually reported that children of abusers become abusers and most children of alcoholics become alcoholics. So many times the “like father-like son” cliché turns out to be just as true as “mirror, mirror, on the wall, I am my mother after all.”
The Bible speaks of generational curses. I would like to think that these “generational curses are a product of both “nature” and “nurture.” In the same way that we who have a propensity to either gain weight easily or be overweight keep trying to understand why when we look into the mirror we see our father or mother starring at us. My family consoled ourselves so many times by simply noting that we were “big-boned.” For sure it’s some combination of the gene pool and the rearing or training up a child . . . the nurturing process. It’s easy for me to blame my propensity to be overweight on not being blessed with a good metabolism or the fact that my father’s side of the family were all tall and big . . . and my mother’s side of the family were shorter . . . with a propensity to be “stocky.” My father weighed 300 pounds at his zenith, but when I look at his high school picture, he appeared to be very fit.
All of that to say, it’s not just in the genes or the DNA; the other part of the equation looks at the mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese that frequented our family’s supper table. I’ve worked as a vocal teacher and coach to many students over the years who through that a change in their singing voice would only a couple of lessons away, not realizing that they had been working years and years on branding their existing voice into exactly how it sounded when they walked in for their first lesson. The statement hwas been made, “Things take time.” Although this does not seem to be very profound, the reality of the statement IS profound. Things don’t happen overnight . . . except if you’re a mushroom. Ask the huge, towering 200-year-old oak tree if things take time! As far back as 1734, Alexander Pope added his two cents in on this subject when he profoundly wrote, “Tis education forms the common mind, just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.”
Well-known motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar, says that to change anything in your life, you must do it for “twenty-one days” consecutively to even have a chance that the “change” will have an opportunity to “stick.” Having said all of this, we all are creatures of “habit.” Recently I read that of the 97% of smokers who would like to give up smoking, only 3% actually carry out the process to “kick the habit.”
So, you, like a gazillion others, made “New Years’ Resolutions” . . . and like most of the gazillion, you’ve possibly already failed to keep some or all of them. The bottom line! What would you like to change to make YOU a better YOU this year? Moreover, what do you think God would like to change in YOU to make YOU a better YOU that He would like to see this year? If you read the opening paragraphs carefully, you realize that making changes in your life do not and will not happen easily. And the older “of a dog” we are, the harder it is to change! Keep in mind you don’t have to necessarily be old in years or single to be brittle in your ways and thinking; way too many younger in years suffer from a condition of arthritis of the “head” and/or “heart.”
And so, we acknowledge that it’s not easy; however, the important criteria here is how “IMPORTANT” is it to make whatever change in your life that you would like to make . . . and that you feel God would like to make. For God’s part, you’ll have to seek him earnestly to “hear” his still, small voice admidst the clamor of a roaringly-loud 2011 world of which you are a part.
For your part, sit down and--
a) look back to where you’ve come from,
b) look at who you are and who you’ve become over a period of years,
c) look at what has been put into the “luggage” you carry around from day to day, and ask yourself if you are pleased with what’s in your luggage. Do you think God is pleased?
d) look into the mirror and try to get past the legacy of who your parents were . . .
. . . and then try to step away from the forest and take a good look at yourself and the areas of your life in which you are pleased . . . and the areas of your life that really need your attention. Case in point . . . I travel a lot; and, if I’m not careful I can overeat or eat way too much of the wrong things and easily blame it on my schedule. For me December was one of those hectic months; the schedule and demands were much and many, and my eating habits were way out of line. As a matter of fact, I gained about 10 pounds over the month! And so, on Dec. 26, . . . not waiting until Jan 1st, I started immediately to work on my situation; I jump started myself by cutting back very soberly. It is Jan. 17th, slightly over three weeks later, and I’ve lost 13 pounds and will lose 17 more to get where I want to be. Will I do it? Yes, because I’ve made up my mind that I don’t want to match my father’s weight and, Lord willing, I want to live longer than he did. So, I have a routine plan in place to make sure that I achieve my goal .
You know how sometimes your computer acts up and doesn’t work correctly? The first thing those “in the know” say to do is to shut it down . . . and reboot! There’s something about rebooting that so many times fixes the problem. What’s your problem? What’s your challenge? What’s your resolution? Where do you start? You might just want to “reboot!” Get a jumpstart . . . to get your attention . . . or your body’s attention . . . and then get on with a realistic, systematic, plan.
Oh, by the way, I didn’t forget the most important item on this list! I saved “e)” in the above list until you were through looking in the mirror and making visual evaluations.
e) look into your heart! Better yet, let the Great Physician look into your heart and tell you what He sees! This is the kind of checkup you need more than once a year and this is the kind of MRI or heart scan that we don’t like to undergo, because we know that many times the One who made us also made a plan for our life. Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans that I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” In this hectic world we live in we can so easily get sidetracked from HIS plan. Blame it on the devil, blame it simply on “life” or maybe you could just blame it on “yourself” not being as close to “the GPS voice” as He would like for you to be. And we know that oftentimes, this doctor, after examining us will want to put us on the potter’s wheel and “reshape” us . . . “reshape” our thinking . . . “reshape” our passions . . . “reshape” our hearts . . . “reshape” our direction . . . “reshape” our life! . . . as ONLY He can! So often we resist the wheel because we simply don’t want to give up our control of our life . . . be at the mercy of the potter’s hands.
So, after you’ve looked into your January ‘11 mirror and your heart . . . after you’ve listed some realistic priorities for your “2011” and responded to the Great Physician’s prognosis . . . ask God to help you have the “grit” to stay with whatever is needed to change to make a better YOU in 2011. . . to make you the YOU that He sees in the mirror. Remember that when your Maker looks into your mirror He keeps seeing the YOU He knows you can be and not just the you that you’re seeing. On your own you probably won’t be able to pull off whatever your head and heart decide needs to be changed, but . . . with God . . . all things are possible. Would you choose to argue with Paul who said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13) Let me remind you that this same Paul was the infamous killer of the Christians who God stopped in his tracks and turned his head and heart around, after which Paul penned, wrote 2/3’s of the New Testament. It would be both arrogant and a boast of self humanism to just say “I can do all things” but quite different to confess “I can do all things through Christ.”
New Year , New You? .. . or Not! Only YOU can answer this question!
Mp3 file: What I Could Be, words and music by Lanny Wolfe, ASCAP from the musical “Love Found A Way” (Lanny Wolfe/Mark Hayes) ParadigmMusic Productions #303854.
Great insight; profound knowledge. enjoyed it tremendously. Thanks. Rodney
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