The Switch

Wouldn’t it be great if creating a new habit was as easy as flipping a switch?  We all have areas in which we yearn to do better — have more clarity, focus, discipline.  Sometimes, it feels like we’re on a hamster wheel, going around and around without much progress.  We admonish ourselves, declare that this time, this week, this year… We’re finally going to have breakthrough.  

Welcome to my world.

We all have lists of things we know we should do — Exercise, drink more water, spend less, organize, purge… do.  And then we have, well… life.  We are constantly adjusting to circumstances, issues, and the demands of work or others who depend on us.  There exists a perpetual tug of war, excuses why we don’t accomplish what we set our minds to do.

And so, we slip into default — that place where we coast on autopilot.  In the eternal words of Annie, there’s always tomorrow, right?

Romans 12:2 tells us not to conform “to the pattern of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  I love this powerful Scripture.  It makes it all seem so easy, so doable.  Renewing my mind is what I strive for when worry overtakes me.  Renewing my mind is what I pray for when the enemy inside my head tells me that I am not good enough, lovable, or a hundred other things that cause me to doubt that what I yearn for will ever happen.

Sometimes, change comes to us in radical ways.   Something happens that causes us to make dramatic adjustments — an illness, a death, a divorce, a job loss.  But most of the time, we are called to change by the tiniest of nudges that knock inside our spirits.  We want our lives to stand for something.  We want to do that one thing we have always wanted to do.  We want to lay down the hurt that keeps us broken.  We want to mend a fence.  We want to be loved, heard, understood.

We just don’t know how.

It is these things — the ones that we keep buried — that burden us the most.  We numb these.  We avoid them.  We put them off, thinking that they are unattainable, so we don’t even try.

God is the Flipper of the Switch.  He calls us to renew our minds because He wants us to see that we don’t have to live in default.  It’s not always in knowing how we are to do the things that beckon us, it is in Whom.  He tells us to submit our plans to Him and they will succeed. Its believing — not with our rational minds, but with our Spiritual ones. 

I am learning that it is that very thing that I resist the most to do, that I must lean into.  It’s counter intuitive.  We are equipped to come up with all the reasons why we can’t do something.  We don’t have the time, the resources, the energy… But what if we conditioned ourselves to do them for five minutes a day?  What if we gave up having one less soda/Starbucks/glass of wine? Watching one less program a week?  Organizing just one shelf in our garage?  Commit to a walk around the block?  Get up 15-minutes earlier?

What if we try ruminating on forgiveness when think about that person that hurt us? What if we choose to extend gratitude instead of indifference?  When if we exhibit grace rather than anger at the person who cuts us off in traffic?

This is just one way we can renew our minds.  

God wants us to see what is possible in all the baby steps we take.  He wants to be our default.  He wants us to push through our numbing, self-defeating patterns, and transform our lives in daily forward progress.  

What we feed, succeeds.

God is a God of action. He calls us to focus, not on what we don’t have, not on what is not perfect, not on all the reasons why we can’t do something, but on Him.  Our human nature is to see things in terms of deficiencies and difficulties.  Our Spiritual nature, our faith, allows us to see that in Him all things are possible.  He is our strength. He is our Provider. He is working things out for our good… But we have to take a step.  We have to fight through resisting doing nothing, and do something. 

God is the only One who is perfect.  The rest of us will still have lists of we can do better, what we must work on, from small to big things.  

On our own, we our powerless.  But in Him, we can do all that He has placed within our hearts to do.

Flip the switch.  Take a step and see how far you go. 

And then tomorrow, do it all over again.

Maybe it really is that easy after all.