Embracing Change

“We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.”  -W.H. Auden

“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”  -John Kenneth Galbraith

“What a wonderful change in my life has been wrought,
Since Jesus came into my heart!”  -from the hymn by Rufus H. McDaniel    “I’ll go anywhere as long as it’s forward.”  -David Livingstone

World Missionary Evangelism began years ago at a traumatic low point in the spiritual life of Dr. John E. Douglas, Sr.  At that time, Dr. Douglas had been very disappointed and deeply affected by the failure of a prominent evangelist with whom he was associated.  Observing all this, a missionary friend of his suggested that he get away to someplace unfamiliar.  So Dr. Douglas went to India, where initially his ministry produced not a single soul.  Finally, at the end of yet another unproductive sermon, an Indian asked him whether he actually practiced what he preached.  Dr. Douglas said, “Yes!”  In response, the Indian man responded, “Then here are seven orphans for you to take care of.”  And then that man walked away, leaving the children behind with Dr. Douglas.  And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Quite often, God has to arrange for us to get “down” to a low place in our lives before we are in a state where we are really willing to listen.  Likewise, God often has to get us away from familiar places and friendly voices, just like he did with Abraham.  Maybe God needs to disrupt our well-laid plans to get us to raise our eyes to Him and accept His plan for us.

Recently, I was reviewing an interview with WME Director Dr. Walter Fletcher and his wife Deede that will air on our TV program The Father’s Bridge.  As I was monitoring the DVD, something that Deede Fletcher said got my attention, so I went back and wrote it down.  The Lord had spoken to Walter and indicated that they were to go visit Jerusalem at a certain time of year.  Then out of the blue, someone called and invited them to go with a group to Israel at the identical time the Lord had indicated to them, and the person offered to pay their airfare.  So all was set.  Then the current Syrian Conflict significantly worsened, and the leaders of that team decided to delay the trip to some later time for safety’s sake.

So what were Walter and Deede to do?  Listen to God or to man?  They decided to go to Israel by themselves, even though all the arrangements for accommodations were gone as was the itinerary and planned appointments.  However, when they went alone, the connections they made with Arab Christians and Jewish Rabbi’s and orphans were nothing short of remarkable and divinely appointed.  These things wouldn’t and couldn’t have happened if they had stuck with the original plan.

Deede’s comment to our TV host was she felt what happened was a “precursor to a time that we’re entering into as the church… That we’re not going to be able to always know exactly how something looks… We may have made our plans, and they get changed.  And we have to be flexible for what God is wanting to do so that we make the encounters and connections that He wants… If we’re stubborn in our ways, we can totally miss what God is trying to do with us as a people.”

If you’re going on in and with God, you’re going to experience change.  It’s not a bad sign; it’s a good sign.  Embrace it!  Enjoy it!  The last thing you want is to remain in a life-state that poet Robert Browning eloquently described as “…left in God’s contempt apart, with ghastly smooth life, dead at heart, tame in earth’s paddock as her prize.”