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LORD CHANGE ME

Moody Publishers

Contents

An Invitation.......................................................9Introduction: How to Make the Most of This Book.....................131. Take Out the Garbage.............................................192. Sign Me Up.......................................................393. Let's Get Specific...............................................634. Step One: Repentance.............................................795. Step Two: Now I Can Choose.......................................1016. I'm Dead to That.................................................1217. Lord, I'm Yours..................................................1378. The Power Source.................................................1559. The Power of Faith...............................................17710. The Power of Biblical Friendships...............................199Acknowledgments.....................................................221

Chapter One

SAY IT IN A SENTENCE: True life change comes only through partnership with God and begins by rejecting all self-centered change methods.

I love to tell stories of change—dramatic, detailed accounts of the transforming power of almighty God. When I was writing the first edition of Lord Change Me, the curtain was coming down on the 20th century. The frenzy of the moment was Y2K and the fear that the end of computerized civilization was near. Among the retrospectives on the century, I don't remember much attention given to some of the remarkable people who became Christians during the previous lOO years. People like G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, A. W. Tozer, Billy Graham, and many other notables came to faith in Christ. All except the last one I listed have been dead for a while. The testimony of their lives is finished and sealed. They joined the race, kept the faith, and crossed the finish line. Other people came to faith in such unusual circumstances that their conversions were met with derision. Frankly, celebrity conversions are usually put in the same category with foxhole conversions and aren't expected to create lasting change. But some people change and their conversion stands the test of time. One remarkable story of God's grace features Chuck Colson. Now there's a guy who got changed! He was on President Richard Nixon's political team. He was the most brutal, ruthless, get-out-of-my-way-or-I'll-kill-you kind of guy. As a gung-ho presidential aide, he once said, "I would walk over my grandmother if necessary to assure the president's reelection."

In the early 1970s, however, Colson's whole world came crashing down. He pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in the Watergate case and served seven months at Maxwell Federal Prison in Georgia. He was shamed before the whole world.

In the midst of that, Chuck Colson found a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. As he went into prison and began to articulate and grow in his faith, many people thought, "Yeah, right. Chuckie's got religion. What a joke. It'll never last." But you know what? It did. Chuck is no longer the celebrity he was in the 1970s but for believers, his story of change remains compelling.

Colson said, "I don't just want to be saved. I don't just want to be forgiven. I want to be changed." He has been changed and has emerged as one of the greatest Christian leaders in our world today. He is a powerful force. His life touches hundreds of thousands of men and women in prison every year through a ministry he began called Prison Fellowship. He's an author, writer, and leader who is tireless in his effort to get out the good news about Jesus. Colson has received many awards for his impact upon our world.

Chuck Colson went from ruthless political hatchet man to loving selfless minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Transformed! And you can be too!

TAKING OUT THE GARBAGE

"Take out the garbage!" It was never a gentle command at my house growing up. Instead, it was a harsh order, barked at high volume, designed to produce an action that everyone loathed. Amazingly, in a family of four boys, each child usually remembered somehow having taken his turn at the dreaded task just the previous week. To this day I loathe taking out the garbage. Why? Simply because nothing was in those bags that I wanted to save, just gross food remains and wrappers and things that ... well, garbage.

In this chapter we have to take out some garbage, and you may not like it. It's going to be somewhat negative. The reason for the negativity is really quite simple: I believe and have observed that the number one reason we don't change is because at some time in the past we have attempted to change, then failed, and in the process have been deeply hurt. After trying that a few times, we give up. We conclude that the only pain worse than needing to change is trying to change and failing.

Now I need to let you know: When we pursue God's plan for change, it always works. If you've tried to change and failed, it's because you've tried to change according to an unbiblical method. That's the garbage we need to take out: faulty change methods! We need to uncover the faulty change methods, and then we need to sweep them off the table and into the trash so that we can once-and-for-all focus exclusively on God's program for change. It's ugly work, but it's gotta get done if we're gonna change.

I've heard someone say, "If I keep doing what I've always done, I'm going to keep getting what I've always gotten." That's right, isn't it? We're going to look at three faulty psychological methods for change and three faulty spiritual methods for change—the things we've always done. We'll see how they're just trash, worthless. Are you with me? Let's do it together. Let's take out the trash!

Faulty Method #1: Environmental Change

Environmental change is an approach made popular by John Watson and later by B. F. Skinner. You might recognize this concept as behaviorism, which is a popular—but faulty—approach to change. Behaviorism is the idea that the environment conditions a person to behave in certain ways, that you are the result of the environment that you have come from. Therefore, change the environment and you will change.

Skinner and Watson relied heavily upon the findings of an experiment conducted by a Russian psychologist named Pavlov. You may have heard of the experiment or of Pavlov himself. He was the dude with the slobbering dogs. Pavlov would put food in front of a dog and the dog would begin to salivate. Then Pavlov rang a bell just seconds before the food appeared. After countless repetitions of hearing the bell followed by getting tasty food, the dog would salivate simply upon hearing the bell, even when no food was laid out. Pavlov concluded that the dog had been changed by his environment and called it conditioning.

From these findings, Pavlov, and later Skinner and Watson, concluded that most, if not all, human behavior is the result of conditioning.

As with most psychological theory, there is some validity here. Certainly behavior is influenced by patterns of thinking formed over a long period of time. The problem with behaviorism is twofold:

1. A cause/effect relationship does not necessarily exist between environment and change. In fact, studies have been done on identical twins from the exact same environment. You would expect them to grow into very similar adults but often they...