Why Can't I Change?

So you did it again. You told yourself this time would be different. You meant it. You actually meant it. You prayed about it. Maybe you even wrote it down somewhere. The thing that you were going to stop doing or start doing or finally let go of. And for a while it seemed like it was working. A few days, maybe a few weeks. You were proud of yourself and the progress that you were making because you thought, okay, something seems like it's actually starting to shift. This feels a little different. But then, somewhere along the way, you blinked and you were right back where you started. The same thought patterns, the same reaction, the same scrolling on your phone, the same conversation in your head that you've been having for years now. And there's that moment where you catch yourself and your stomach seems like it drops a little, and you hear that quiet voice that says, I cannot believe I'm doing it again. Hey, I'm Melissa, and this is my question for you. If you're new here, this is the place where we slow down and we sit with one honest question a week. The kind of a question that doesn't have to have a perfect answer, but it does have somewhere to go. And if you've been walking through this series with me, the question behind the question, that's what we've been calling this series, you know the whole idea. We're usually asking one question out loud, but living inside a different one underneath. So last week we sat with, Did I do something wrong? And we landed somewhere I really hope your heart needed to land, that your past doesn't sentence you, that God's grace covers anything you may have done in your past that you've repented and confessed about, that you're not being punished for who you used to be. But if I'm being honest with you, I think a lot of us walked away from that episode and felt one very specific thing. We felt loved, we felt forgiven, we felt acknowledged, and maybe we felt heard for the first time. And then we asked a really uncomfortable follow-up question, maybe out loud or maybe just quietly in your head. Okay, but then why do I keep going back to that thing that I thought I'd gotten over and was already forgiven for? Why am I still the same? Why can't I change? So that's where we're going today. And underneath it, there's a quieter question that I want us to sit with because I think it's the real question that we're probably thinking and asking. Am I actually changing? Or am I just performing change? Okay, let's jump in. Here's what I think most of us are walking around carrying, and it's it's pretty heavy. See, we believe God can change us. We've heard it our whole lives. New creation, transformation, renewing of the mind. We know the language, we've heard it all so many times before. And in our better moments, we even believe it about other people. But somewhere along the way, we started to wonder if it actually applies to us. Because if you've been trying to figure it all out, if you've been a believer for any length of time, you've probably had this experience. You have prayed for God to take something away from you, and He hasn't. You've asked for the patience, the discipline, the freedom from a habit, the peace from a thought that keeps spiraling. We've talked about that before, and you're still here asking for the same thing five years later, sometimes maybe even 10 years or longer. And that does something to your faith if you don't name it properly. Quietly, you start to think one of two things. Either something is wrong with me, or something is wrong with this whole change is possible idea that God keeps talking to us about. So I want to gently push back on both of those thoughts, because neither one of them is what's actually going on here. But I also don't want to skip past the pain and the heartache of that question. Because if you're listening to this and you're tired of trying, if you've genuinely been working on something for a long time and you can't tell if any of it is making a difference, I'm not going to hand you a five-step plan and tell you to try harder. That's part of why we're stuck in the first place. We've been treating transformation like it's a project that we're managing, like we're trying to make all the pieces fit perfectly. So here's the question I want us to sit with honestly. And then I want to take you somewhere in scripture that I think is one of the most relatable passages that we can read. Why can't I change? And what if change is actually happening in a way I don't recognize yet? I want to take you somewhere in scripture in just a minute, but before we jump in, I want you to remember someone. And he should be very familiar because we actually talked about him last week in episode five. So you've already met him, and this story should be familiar. And the only reason what he wrote is going to mean anything to you today is if you remember who he was before he wrote this passage. So you probably already know we're talking about Paul. But before he was Paul, he was Saul. And Saul wasn't a curious skeptic or someone who was just kind of lukewarm about God. Saul was actively, violently against the very thing he ended up giving his life to. He hunted down followers of Jesus. You remember, he had them dragged out of their homes, and he stood there and watched as people were stoned to death for their faith, and he agreed with it. That is who Paul was. And then he writes Romans. He plants churches across the ancient world. He writes huge chunks of what would later become the New Testament. The very scripture that you and I read today was written by this man, the most unlikely person God could have called, the man who had hurt the very church he ended up building. Okay, so in last week's episode, we talked about how God doesn't punish us for who we used to be. Paul was a living, breathing example of that. His past did not disqualify him. God's grace covered him. He became one of the most used voices in all of church history. And here's where it gets interesting for us today. Because if anyone had a reason to keep going back to their old patterns, patterns of anger, harshness, of self righteousness, of pride, it was Paul. He had decades of those patterns built into him before he ever met Jesus. You don't unlearn that overnight. You don't undo who you've been with a single prayer. It takes time, it takes intention, and it takes persistence. So when Paul writes the words I'm about to read to you, I need you to understand this is not a man pretending he has it all figured out. This is a man who knew intimately what it was to wrestle with the person he used to be. Here's what he writes about himself in Romans chapter seven. Let me read to you in his own words. It's it's a mouthful, okay, so I'm going to slow this down and I'm going to say it very slowly so you don't miss it. Romans chapter seven, he says, I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out, for I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do. This I keep on doing. That was a mouthful, told you it was a lot, but hopefully you caught on to that, and if not, I want you to go back to Romans 7 and read it again, read it slowly, and just sit with that for a minute. That is Paul, the same Paul we just talked about, not someone who was a struggling new believer or somebody in the back row of the church who hasn't gotten serious about God yet. That is the apostle Paul, the man whose past God had already redeemed, openly admitting that he still has things in his life he wants to stop doing and he keeps doing them anyway. And things that he wants to do, and he can't seem to make himself do them. Does any of that sound familiar? That sounds so much like me, and maybe that sounds a little bit like you too. I think this passage gets read past way too quickly because we want to rush to the part at the end where he says, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. We want to get to the good part. We want resolution. But before we get there, look at where Paul is actually willing to sit. He's willing to say out loud, in writing, in a letter that would later be read for the next two thousand years, we're still reading it today. He actually says, I cannot figure myself out. I keep doing the thing I don't want to do. And here's what I want you to hear. Paul writing that is Paul telling us the truth about what spiritual life actually looks like. Because if the most spiritually mature person in the early church was wrestling with the same patterns showing back up, what does that mean about you? What does that mean about me? It means we are not alone. It means going back to old patterns is not the disqualifier we've been uh treating it as. It means this is, in fact, what being human and being in the process of change actually looks like. You are not the broken one in the room. You are in really good company. You share the same story as an apostle. So what's been happening for thousands of years is no surprise to God. Okay, here's where I want to take a turn, because I don't think the answer is just accept that you'll always struggle with everything forever. Okay. That's not what Paul says, and it's not where the Bible leaves us. But I do think we have to be honest about something. There are two completely different kinds of change, and we usually only count one of them. So the first kind of change is the kind that we can actually see. The behavior stops, the habit breaks, the thing that you used to do, you don't do it anymore. That is real change, and when it happens, it's a wonderful thing and it's worth celebrating. We we feel good on the inside, we're proud of ourselves, we can actually see a difference. But there's a second kind of change, and it's the kind that's almost invisible while it's happening, but it's actually the deeper type of change. Okay, let me see if I can describe this a little bit better. It's the change in how long it takes you to notice you slip back into something. Okay, stay with me. So you used to do the thing for weeks before you caught yourself. Now maybe you just find that you do it for a couple of days. And now sometimes you catch it actually in the moment. You're more aware, you're more present. So before it took a long time for you to grasp the pattern and the habits, and now you're noticing it faster, and you're trying to actually stop it and do things a little bit different. So it's the change in how fast you get back up. You used to sit in the shame of it for weeks. Now you can talk to God about it the very same day when you notice it's happening. It's the change in what you feel when you mess up. So you used to feel condemned. Maybe you used to feel shame or sad, and that sadness is actually the Holy Spirit because condemnation pushes you away from God and conviction draws you toward Him. We talked about that before. It's the change in your desires. You used to want the thing fully. Now part of you wants it and part of you grieves it. That's new. We didn't feel that way before. That wasn't how we would react or respond. So we're noticing something different even in our desires. And here's why that matters so much. Almost none of that is visible on the outside. On the outside, it looks like nothing is changing. You did the thing again, the same as the last time, it looks the same. Everything about it seems the same. But God isn't grading you on the outside. He's working underneath in the places that you can't see yet. The behavior is often the last thing to change. The heart changes first, the recognition changes first, the grief changes first. The speed of repentance starts to quicken. And then, usually long after you've already given up on ourselves, that's when the behavior catches up and you start to notice the change. So when you ask, why can't I change? I want you to gently ask yourself, what if you are changing and you've just been measuring it the wrong way? Okay, let's go back into scripture. There's a line in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, and it says, And we all are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. I want you to notice the verb in that being transformed, ongoing, still happening, being transformed. And I want you to notice what that verb is doing there, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. It's not you doing the transforming, it's the Spirit. And God is doing that work. So here's the part I want to settle into your spirit. The Greek word that Paul uses for transformed in that verse is metamorphoo. It's where we get the word metamorphosis. It's the same kind of word you use for a caterpillar that's changing into a butterfly. And I want you to think about what the caterpillar actually goes through. Okay, so we can see it. It's inside the cocoon. The caterpillar doesn't just gradually sprout wings, doesn't slowly upgrade. What actually happens is that it essentially dissolves, it becomes liquid. And from that liquid, the new thing is formed. If you could check on a caterpillar halfway through that process, it could look like a disaster, honestly. If you were to see the caterpillar midway through and see it dissolving, you would not guess in any way that anything was working, that anything was changing. In fact, you would think that everything was actually falling apart, that this thing was maybe on the path to death and not on the path to a beautiful transformation. But that's exactly when transformation is happening the most. If you feel like a mess right now, if you feel like you keep falling apart in the same places, that may not be evidence that change isn't happening. In fact, it may be the evidence that it is. Okay, so I want to come back to that deeper question I named at the start. Let's go back. Am I actually changing or am I just performing change? For a lot of us, if we're honest with ourselves, a lot of us have gotten really good at looking like we're changing. We can manage our outsides, we can say the right things at small group in church, we can post the right things on our story, we can show up at church and have the same smile that we've always had, and on the outside everything looks perfect. No one's any the wiser. But on the inside, something different is happening. We're tired, we're going back to the same patterns when no one's looking. We start to wonder if any of this is real for us anymore. I want you to know something. God is not interested in your performance. He's interested in you. And the moment you stop performing and start being real about what's happening underneath, you are closer to real change than you've ever been, not further from it. The Pharisees performed. Jesus loved the Pharisees, but he also called them out because they had built their whole lives that looked transformed from the outside while nothing was happening on the inside. And Jesus said that was the most dangerous place a person could be. Not the obvious mess that everybody can tell you're messed up and something's going on, but the polished surface with no real life underneath. That's where the danger lives. So if you're tired of performing, good. That tiredness is the beginning of something honest. And honest is where real change actually starts to happen. So I told you I I didn't want to hand you a five-step plan, right? This isn't a how to fix my life in five simple steps. But I do want to give you a few things that you can carry with you this week. We always try to leave with something that we can practice and put into real life. So I want you to pick the one that stands out to you the most, and then maybe try moving on to the others later in the week or once you feel like you've gotten a good grasp on that. Or maybe if you choose one that's not quite working, come back to one of the others. Okay, so you don't have to try them all at one time. Just pick the one that seems to resonate with you the most. Okay, so first, change what you're measuring. Instead of asking, did I do it again? Try asking, how quickly did I notice it this time? How quickly did I bring it to God? How did I feel when I caught myself doing that thing that I said I was never going to do again? You might find out that things have been moving the whole time. You've just been looking at it the wrong way. So try try changing the way you're thinking about it. Second, get specific with God about one thing, not your whole list. Pick the one pattern that seems to be wearing you down the most right now and bring just that one thing to God this week. It honestly and bring it out loud. We've learned that God wants to have that conversation and that exchange with us. Just go to Him. God, this is the one thing I cannot seem to get free of this one thing, and I'm tired. Will you meet me here? Meet me in the middle of whatever is happening. Paul didn't try to clean himself up before he wrote Romans 27. He just told the truth. So start there. Next, stop hiding it from one trusted person. This is the hardest one for most of us, and it's also the most freeing. The patterns that we carry alone grow. The patterns that we share with someone that we find safe start to lose their grip. You don't need a big confession. You just need one person who knows what you're actually wrestling with. Someone that you feel that you can trust, that you can go to and be open and honest with. Stop hiding it from that one person and get in agreement with that person. Invite them into what you're going through and start talking it through that way. And then finally, look back six months, not six days. So when you check whether or not you're actually changing, you've been zooming in too close. Okay, I want you to step back and zoom out a little. Where were you six months ago or a year ago? Two years ago. Most of us, when we look back at longer stretches of time, we see things that we couldn't see day-to-day. Give the spirit room to show you what he's been doing underneath. When we look back further, you have a greater opportunity of seeing where you were and where you are today. So zoom out a little and really look at patterns over a broader span of time. So if you have a journal nearby, or if you just take a quiet minute later today, here's what I carry into this week. You don't have to feel transformed to be in the middle of transformation. So here's my question for you this week. The one I want you to carry around with you in the car, when you have alone time, quiet time, I want you to just really think about this. Am I actually changing? Or am I performing change? Or maybe even am I measuring change by the wrong standards? Because if Paul could write Romans 7 and still be Paul, still be used, loved, still be in the middle of being made new, and so can you. But going back again does not disqualify you. It doesn't even slow God down. It doesn't change the way he thinks about you or sees you. He is still transforming you with ever-increasing glory. And almost none of that is happening where you can see it yet. The caterpillar doesn't get to watch what's happening in the cocoon. It just has to trust that the falling apart isn't the end of its story. Next week, we're gonna close out this series. And the question we land on is the one that's been quietly underneath every other question we've asked this season. Is this ever going to change? It's a question of hope, and it's our finale, so I really don't want you to miss it. If you've been carrying something heavy all season, that's the episode where we let it settle down and we let it sit with God. But until then, keep asking, keep listening, and this week, be a little bit kinder to yourself than you've been. Something is happening in you that you just can't see yet. Before you go, if today's question stayed with you, I'd love to keep the conversation going. Each week, I send a short email called This Week's Question, a Quiet Invitation, and it's a simple reflection to help you stay grounded, to pay attention, to dive deeper into God's Word, and to walk with God throughout your week. You can sign up at myquestion for you dot com, bringing you encouragement for your spirit and wisdom for your walk.