Growth = Change
Change your spectators rather than change who you are.
Growth is an amazing phenomenon. As human beings we never stop growing and changing till the day we die.
Note the two words I used. Growth and change! They go hand in hand because when you grow, you change.
As we grow older we all know we change, physically BUT the truth is not everyone who ages grows! Although everyone who grows changes! An incredible paradox!
How many of us know we are outgrowing somewhere but because of a belief system that says, no matter what you have to be faithful and obedient and if you stop or leave you will be a ‘quitter’ so just stay where you are ….. Forever! Have you ever heard the saying, ‘never quit’ or ‘if you fail, just keep on trying’? Me too, and I have to say, I don’t believe it!
I love what WC Fields once said ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit, no point being a darned fool about it”
Although in saying that I am also 100% focused, and firm in my belief that we all must have an attitude that we will not be defeated, in our personal life and in business, but growth and change have nothing to do with how faithful and obedient you are to stay in the same place.
I love the full meaning of
Romans 12 v 2 Be not conformed to this world but transformed by renewing of the mind
We have missed something I believe that God wants us to catch!The wordConformed comes from the Greek word Echo which means a reflection of a sound. The words to this are the Greek wordAutos which means Automatically. And the word world is Greek word Aion, and it means the past!
So don’t just be an echo of what models, seasons, job, relationships etc., you had in the past, come into something new! Or in other words don’t stay where you have clearly outgrown, because to grow and change there comes a point in life where it takes so much energy to fit into and connect with places you’ve outgrown and it, it would be healthier to graciously move on.
Quitting can be a valuable choice to make at the correct time, its not failure, its not throwing in the towel, but when you are a champion and working toward your success, you will have to know when quitting is a choice for growth and change, that gives you freedom, and when it is just an escape.
We get too attached to things & people, and we get confused about the BIG ‘IT’, the destiny & call!
The problem is often we get tied to the small place we are in, or relationships we have, which are all part of ‘IT’, BUT are NOT ‘IT,’ in and of themselves, in the fear that if we quit them we we’ll never attain to the ‘IT’!
Sometimes we get attached to a job, people, circumstances, but we must remember, that our assignment, gift, destiny or call, however you want to articulate it, is not defined by a job, it is just part of it!
Don’t have the belief that your destiny and life is defined by what you used to do, because lets face it, most of us will not be doing at the end of our lives what we are doing now. Our life is greater, fuller and richer that where we are now, or what we are doing now.
When I was young I had such a fear of failure, that I quit everything not long after I started! Then when I became a Christian I decided I would never ever quit again! That was fine, BUT it meant that a lot of my time was being spent on things I really needed to stop, and so I was gaining very little, and losing much.
This mentality ended up with me throwing time and resources into the thing I was not going to quit, trying to justify my mistake! What I should have done was the old saying, ‘quit while I was ahead’! How often I ended up digging myself such a hole, stressed out, not growing, all because I didn’t know how to bow out graciously.
Jesus was a strategic quitter. He knew when growth had come, and that growth produced change. He understood the ‘fullness of times.’ Jesus laid aside his carpenter tools. No doubt, as a responsible first born son running the family business he explained to his mother that he would be leaving for a season and went off to the wilderness for a 40 day transition. I don’t thnk His mother expected that and possibly had she known what it was to entail she may have put up a few objections! Remember she knew He was the Son of God but what did that really ‘look like.’
When that 40 days was over He was changed. He could never go back. His local friends and acquaintances thought He had lost his mind and even his “friends” were concerned about him: “And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.” (Mark 3:22 KJV) Some translations say it was Jesus “family” that thought He was beside himself. Remember, “James” the first senior elder in the Jerusalem church, was Jesus brother by the same mother, and yet he did NOT follow Jesus during His ministry.
When did he get converted? Jesus visited him personally after the resurrection.
“After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; THEN He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.” (1 Corinthians 15:7 KJV)
If anyone knows you inside and out its your brother! James did not believe his brother was the Messiah till He was raised from the dead, BUT he could not discount His claim to being sinless because he never once saw Jesus sin while growing up!
Have you wondered what Jesus was like before His public ministry, where not told much about Him in this period. What was He like while he was a local personality? What changed about Him when He came back from His 40 day fast and baptism in power? In some ways He was the same, but in some significant ways He was totally different. He grew. He changed. He could not go back- even when He tried to do so. Even to His own family, He was mad.
However we see as Jesus quit so as to grow something happened… a new crowd began to form and they liked what they heard. The same will happen to you. A new crowd will be drawn even as a former audience will scratch their heads and wonder what happened to you! Romans 12 happened. You made the choice to grow, to stop echoing the past and in the process change happened!
Don’t think it strange. If you are a communicator or a leader your thoughts will always clothe themselves in the nearest physical equivalent to the message you carry. Your audience is attracted and connected by the “Word” you herald.
This is why certain people are attracted to you, they are the physical appearance of your message. When people leave a church for instance and try taking people with them, it rarely works, because people are clothed in the former pastor’s message and it wont be long before they feel naked in your presence!
This is an exciting concept because it means that as you change, your audience either grows with you or turns itself over. Don’t try to hold on to those who won’t go forward.
Simply be true to your message and be the embodiment of that message to the best of your ability. The right people will love the real you and if the old friends don’t like it- don’t change who you have become. In time they may find themselves moving down the same path and will meet up with you later.
James went from being an unbeliever to becoming the senior statesman of the church in Jerusalem. He grew, he changed friends, relationships etc.
This year is 2015 and in the Strongs Hebrew concordance in Greek the number 2015 is “Manifestation.” So for many of us in this year it will be a year of growth and change and just like Jesus when He went through that process we also will manifest an amazing spiritual upgrade that will NOT go unnoticed.
No wonder the earth is groaning waiting for the sons of God to manifest, and it only happens through growth and change. Putting some things you have outgrown, old spiritual clothes that belonged in the past, behind and going into the new thing God has for you!
Sometimes its our brain, our soul that needs to be trained to quit the past and look forward. Not long ago a woman came to me and asked me to prophesy over her regarding a relationship. I said, no I will prophesy what God gives me. She said she couldn’t get out of her mind a relationship that had ended 20 years ago, both now had gone separate ways and he was married etc., the woman believed because her mind was trapped in the small confines of the past that God was saying they would both pack up their lives and get back together! What a mess this would have been, all because something that they quit 20 years before had remained in her soul like a footprint and if not careful instead of growing and changing, she would have shrunk and stagnated.
Manifest tomorrow, not yesterday!
Be Blessed
Amanda
Professional Business Coach
Profit to Product Strategist
P: 1300 136 643 | M: +61 0417 795 256
E: amanda@wellsministries.com.au | W: www.wellministries.com.au
[contact-form-7 404 "Not Found"]
Leave a Reply