-How People Change – the process

Emerging Tuesday Column: The following are notes from my “Writer’s Notebook”—ideas that might develop into a Tuesday Column. They are presented here for two reasons: (a)because some of you only need a seed idea to get what you want from me—something to think about. And (b) some of you like to give your input on the front end—shaping what I might later say. So either take this and think about it, or respond with your input to keith@tuesdaycolumn.com

How People Change

An Emerging Theological Model

1/21/03

• How do people change? What is the theological model behind our assumptions of change?

• Other professions have models of change from counseling to chemical drugs. We need a solid model rooted in our theology.

• Not just the change of conversion, but ALL change… every change in thought word or deed wrought by God.

• Edit and revise this to approach a sound change model:

1. GRACE.

All change starts with God as the first initiator--with prevenient grace—the grace that precedes everything, even our initial conversion. God’s grace reaches to me enlivening me and prying open my ears to hear God speak--without it no man or woman would hear with their ears the word from God--but with it he who has ears can hear. This grace enlivens us to hear Gods word and even to desire to hear it. All change starts with God's reaching grace and all change subsequent to conversion is through grace.

2. CONVICTION

Enlivened by God's grace to hear His word the Holy Spirit can bring God's word to us through the written word, through other people, by a direct voice to our inner being, and especially through preaching so that we hear and are pricked--we are convinced we need change. This is the work of God the Holy Sprit and is a "stage" in the sense that it is often gradual and progressive--becoming increasingly convinced that we must change. This stage is often accompanied with attempts to self-change which at times are successful--at least for a time. And this conviction often drives the person to seek change through the means available to them: accountability groups, self-discipline, counseling, or chemical drugs. Or it may induce the person to seek “spiritual” change by God’s mysterious power and move on through the process.

3. REPENTANCE & FAITH

Confessing my need for change and my totally helpless estate to change myself, I and sick of my unchanged state emptying myself out of self-reliance and filling up with faith in God and God alone for change I cry out in faith to God to do what I am unable to do through external law, self-discipline accountability or other social enablement--I reach for God's changing power in abject helplessness. I am willing to wait, to seek, to pursue, to knock, until God responds how ever long that takes. Repentance is often a season, though it may have crisis moments.

4. CHANGE OF HEART

God responds in power to change who I am--not what I do so much as who I am…changing my inner being, my soul, my spirit giving me a new nature, or at least a new nature in this particular area, an undivided heart, a desire to obey, a desire to be right in this area.

5. CHANGE OF MIND

My change of heart/soul will change my mind so that I will develop now thought patterns, a new mindset, a new worldview, a new belief system, and especially a new self-image of who I am and who I am becoming. Sometimes this happens simultaneously with the change of heart, sometimes it lags.

6. CHANGE OF LIFE/BEHAVIOR

Growing out of my change of mind (or along with it), my behavior changes and I move forward spiritually through God's transforming grace. A changed heart/desire and changed mind however does not make me a spiritual robot—there is still struggle but once the heart is changed the process is inevitable: sooner or later I will become on the outside what I have been made in the inside.

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Questions to explore in the column:

• It seems like the first three stages can be sidetracked--you can resist grace, reject conviction or refuse to repent.
• Are the second three stages irresistible--once God changes out heart/soul the rest is inevitable, though not always immediate or complete?
• The first three stages are often gradual though have instantaneous elements. To what extent are the last three stages gradual or instantaneous or both?
• What part does “expectations” play in the process—i.e. “Faith.” When we believe and expect God to work gradually is He more likely to do so? If we expect and believe in a faster work is He more inclined to complete His work faster?
• There are changes that happen totally outside this process—through secular methods, through chemical drugs, through secular counseling, or by support groups and self-discipline—indeed one might be changed through these methods quite as easily as through the “spiritual” model above. Are these other routes to change God’s means too? Or are they not “spiritual” changes. That is, if you can get with Prozac or through self-discipline and accountability what you might have gotten through a “spiritual miracle” from God are these changes still “spiritual changes” or have you settled for less?
• How does this model explain what seems to be the major lag between change of heart and change of behavior? There are scores of folk who certainly seem to be Christian who have behavior totally unchanged… is “conversion” only a partial change of heart and thus we need to increase out attention to this process in sanctification—for each individual behavior to overcome?
• What other questions should be asked or answered in this column?

Emerging Tuesday Column: The following are notes from my “Writer’s Notebook”—ideas that might develop into a Tuesday Column. They are presented here for two reasons: (a)because some of you only need a seed idea to get what you want from me—something to think about. And (b) some of you like to give your input on the front end—shaping what I might later say. So either take this and think about it, or respond with your input to keith@tuesdaycolumn.com