Change: If you want something you’ve never had,
then you’ve got to do something you’ve never done.
I saw this sign and realize that change is dramatic. But another sign said; Don’t make change too complicated – just begin. What a concept.
Steve Menzel wrote this about change:
“Change or Die” What if you were given that choice? For real. What if it weren’t just the hyperbolic rhetoric that conflates corporate performance with life and death? Not the overblown exhortations of a rabid boss, or a slick motivational speaker, or self dramatizing CEO. We’re talking actual life and death now. Your own life or death.
Could you change when change really mattered?
“Yes” you say? Try again. “Yes?” You are probably deluding yourself.
You wouldn’t change. Don’t believe it? Want the odds? Here are the odds, the scientific studied odds: nine to one. That’s nine to one against you. Dr. Raphael ‘Ray’ Levey, founder of the Global Medical Forum, at an annual summit meeting of leaders from every constituency in the health system, told the audience; “A relatively small percentage of the population consumes the vast majority of the health care budget for diseases that are very well known and by and large behavioral.” This boils down to the five basic behavioral issues; Too much smoking, drinking, eating and stress and not enough exercise.
Dr. Edward Miller, the dean of the medical school and CEO of the hospital at Johns Hopkins University said, “If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle.”
Changing the behavior of people isn’t just a medical problem but for those who are in pastoral care, change is also a spiritual problem. So what did this study on change produce? Any answers?
One of the answers came from Dr. Dean Ornish who found that the ‘Fear of dying reasons for change’ was not nearly as important reason for an individual to change than the ‘Joy of living reason’. Inspiring the person he could live better, not just longer. If this is true than how does that apply to pastoral care?
So the odds are 9 to 1 in the medical profession but what are they in the spiritual realm? You pastors who are reading this blog, your minds are spinning, scripture references rising to the fore, what motivation Jesus gave for us to change. Renewing our minds, a better life not only here for us but for the Kingdom, bringing the Kingdom to earth with our new lives in Christ Jesus, and the scriptures are full of how to – why to – what happens when we – change. This will preach.