My Change Paper
It was a cold night in December as I found myself sitting on the side if the road waiting for the State Patrol officer to come speak to me. I knew what had happened, I had been rear ended by another vehicle, but what I wouldn’t realize until later is that I had a slight concussion. My head had hit the head rest so hard that my stocking cap was thrown off my head into the back seat. In the end I was towed to our local service center, that is owned by one the the elders at our church, and they provided me a loaner car.
I start my story here because this event was the catalyst of the change that was , and is, to come.
Many years ago, probably about ten years as I write this, I drove home fearlessly in the middle of a blizzard. It was a hour and fifteen minute drive normally but it took over three hours on this fateful night. Ever since that drive I have had a lot of anxiety about snow. I would say driving in snow, but occasionally just knowing there is snow in the forecast can cause me fits. Then about two years ago my Wife and I bought our first four wheel drive vehicle. Now I can have the confidence to deal with the snow. It worked, I was able to drive in snow and get myself home from work a few times and the streets were covered with an inch or two of snow. This would not have been possible with our previous car. So for the last couple of years I have been doing better with that anxiety. Coming into this winter I figured there would be some challenging drives to and from work but all in all I have a vehicle that can handle the drive so I’ll be alright.
Then the accident happened.
The loaner car that I was given to use was a Chevy Malibu. It’s not a bad car for what it is. It got me to and from work fine and was reliable. The problem that I had though is I had no confidence that it could handle the snow, and inevitably it snowed. The anxiety came back with a vengeance. One of the days that there was a fair amount of snow predicted I woke up the night before with an anxiety attack, shaking uncontrollably and consumed with fear. That night I learned something. I got up out of bed and went down to the living room and sat on our couch. I began to pray through the anxiety and God revealed to me that I had placed my trust in my Jeep and not in Him. As I confessed this to Him I began to feel peace. He showed me where my failing had been and gave me grace. In that prayer I saw in my mind His hand having been lifted from me and as I prayed He placed it back on me. This was the point He wanted me to see. If I lived with Him as my refuge and I put my complete trust in Him, He would give me the strength that I needed. I ended up calling off of work that day, but I felt confident in that decision. So fast forward a few weeks in and I discovered a chip in the windshield of the car. I panicked a little but took comfort in the fact that Jerry, the before mentioned elder, would take care of it and everything will be fine. Two days later the windshield wipers just stopped working. This was on a Saturday and I would see Jerry on Sunday. I’ll speak with him and everything should be fine. Jerry wasn’t at church that Sunday, and as I left the church wondering how I was going to figure this out I heard, “Is your faith in Jerry or Me?” Ugh, I did it again.
So to prevent making a long story longer, within that next week I returned the loaner car, and got a rental. To show the sovereignty of God in all this, my insurance covered the rental for 30 days. I had the loaner for about a month and half and it took the collision center two and a half months to return my Jeep to me. So if you did the math, I had the rental for 28 days technically, but if the collision center would have taken any longer with the Jeep I would have been paying out of pocket for the rental. Praise God for His perfect timing.
So know after recounting the events that drove this change in me, how does this relate to the change project?
First, this was 100% God driven change. I could make the decision to deny Him and be miserable, but I saw it for what it was, it was an opportunity to learn and grow, to draw closer, or as A. W. Tozer calls it, coming into alignment with God. This was the actual expectation that God had in this process. It wasn’t to stump out anxiety from my life. The truth is that comes from the flesh and the flesh is desperately wicked and can not be improved. The focus here is to learn to operate in the Spirit daily and deny the flesh and its evil.
I think that Watchman Nee says it well in the Preface of his book “The Spiritual Man”:
Our rest lies in looking to the Lord, not to ourselves. In the degree that we look off unto Him to that degree are we delivered from self. We rest on the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, not on our own shifting experience. True spiritual life depends not on probing our feelings and thoughts from dawn to dusk but on "looking off" to the Savior! (p. 14)
Psalm 139:23-24 (NASB95)
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
24 And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.
I learned to daily ask God to evaluate me, to search my soul and to confess my sins for the purpose of being in right relationship with Him. He is the one who must drive the change.
Matthew 6:25–34 (NASB95)
25 “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? 27 “And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? 28 “And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, 29 yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. 30 “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! 31 “Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ 32 “For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
God showed me in Mathew 6 that He will take care of us, He will watch over us. There are two conditions in this passage: seek first the kingdom and His righteousness. We need to pursue living in His spirit. There is a deeper study to be had into what it means to seek the kingdom, but for interest of time I will leave that for another time. The most relevant part of this for me through this experience has been seeking His righteousness.
Evaluate my heart of God, and pursue His righteousness.
So for this final portion I have struggled with what it means to “Evaluate Theological Change” but I think the point is to compare how secular change works verses theological change.
I have tried for years to just not be anxious with terrible results. Why would I have less anxiety with nothing to replace it. I have gotten advice like: “just don’t think about it”, “stop worrying so much”, “what are you afraid of” and my personal favorite, “Anxiety is being afraid of a bear that you can’t see, fear is seeing it, so what is the point of being afraid of something you can’t see?” Needless to say none of this was helpful, especially that last one.
On the other hand, searching God’s word has been illuminating and has actually helped. Understanding that we have a war in us continuously and the anxiety is just an outward symptom of the greater issue. Our soul is a battleground where the flesh is at war with the Spirit. We must not allow the flesh to control our actions but constantly pray that God would show us our sins and confess them. Stay in right relationship with Him and we have a fighting chance to overcome the things that drag us down.
In conclusion, in the struggle I have been through, God has been so gracious to show me through His word that I need only trust in Him. Trust was the issue, not the anxiety or fear. Do I trust Him or am I trusting other people or things to get me through. This is still a work in progress, but I am trusting Him more and more everyday.