I Need to Repent

 

“A person changes when that person develops a desire to change.” – Your Truly

"I tell you the truth, unless you change… you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” - Jesus

“The only thing that stays the same is that things change.” – Jim Sheppard

I want people to change. I want it badly. I want the wounded to heal, the frantic to have peace, the lazy to find purpose, the sad to get joy, the angry to forgive, the hurtful to be loving, the depressed to have hope. If I am going to expend energy, this is what I want to expend energy doing. Changing people…starting with myself (which will never end) and then offering it through every single relationship I have or will ever have (which will also never end).

This has been true for as long as I can remember. And in my adult life, as I look back, it is pretty much consistently what I have done.

As consistent as this has been outwardly, I can also see by looking back that the motivation behind that work inwardly has changed.

In the past, my motivations to help others change was really self-serving. They included:

• My need to believe that substantial change was possible.
• My desire to “be effective” as a helper of people.
• My need to prove that my motives were pure (to others, yes, but really to myself).
• My need to “be” for someone else what I felt I never “had” for myself.
• My desire to be “a good leader”.

Looking over that list, all of them could go under the heading of one profound work…my own healing. With only subtle (and often overlapping) differences, I have thus far in my life engaged in the work of helping people change for my own healing.

I’m happy to report, at the age of 41, that I feel like I’ve progressed in this area, and would describe myself as “healed and healing”. One of the litmus tests that signals to me that this profound milestone has happened comes in the form of the feeling that, while I want people to change, I no longer need others to change.

For example:

• I don’t need others to change to believe that change is possible anymore.
• I don’t need others to change to prove I’m an “effective” helper of people anymore.
• I don’t need to help others change to prove my motives are pure anymore.

With this glorious change in my inner being comes a problem that I was surprised by and am now currently wrestling through. You see, one of the benefits of having my own need to heal as my motivation to help others change is the fuel and passion it gives me to do so. Said another way, without “needing” others to change, the fuel that runs me as a “helping people change” machine is gone.

To sum up: the outward work that I have always done (“helping others change”) is what I want to continue to do. But without my own self-serving needs (“my need to heal”) fueling that work, I’m in need of something new…a new fuel.

It has taken me some time, deep contemplation, and time with Christ and my fellow Christ-following community, but I have figured out what the new fuel, if I am to find the motivation to continue helping people change, needs to be. And I’m a bit ashamed of what I found it to be.

Love.

I need to learn to love.

If love can be (partially) described as “kindly helping others become more like Christ for their good,” then what I have been doing is “kindly helping others become more like Christ for my own healing.”

So…today, I need to repent for my lack of love.

I expect this to be the most profound and all-consuming repentance of my life. It will call for my most focused effort, my most determined commitment, and a diligence, persistence, and depth that, thus far, I have never had to access. I’m bracing myself for this one to by my last one…not that I will not have countless other faults to address and course-corrections to make…but that this one will be the wind that drives all the rest. This one, I think, will explain me. This one, finally, this one, will kill me.

Don’t feel sorry for me, friends. I am elated. The shame that I am coming to grips with concerning what a beginner I am at this love thing is equaled by my excitement to begin the journey.

I am currently re-reading the story of Jesus, eager to witness him being motivated by this newest understanding of what love is! I am moving ever closer, if at a snails pace, towards my life-long goal of becoming more like Christ, which is more like God…Who is Love.

“Whoever loses his life for me will find it.” - Jesus