Google recently released its 2022 “Year in Search” video. The triumphant video begins with the search “can I change…” and concludes with Sheryl Lee Ralph’s powerful Emmy speech where she tearfully urges her audience, “This is what believing looks like. And don’t you ever. EVER. Give up on you.”
Sheryl Lee Ralph’s story is inspiring. She won her first Emmy at age sixty-five after years of struggling to get opportunities in Hollywood. However, I’m not sure her rousing encouragement to never “Give up on you” is a satisfying answer to Google’s question, “can I change?”.
Will this be the year you change? How will you bring about that change?
These are questions that lurk in the back of our minds.
God offers a very different solution to how to change than Google’s. Our world promises that if you never “Give up on you,” you can experience the life you desire.
What if the allure of that harmful habit is too enticing to refuse though you’ve tried numerous times? What if the comfort of that crutch is too powerful to resist so you go back to it just one more time? Maybe you pray every day, but struggle to find the motivation to open your Bible though you deeply desire to. You want to salve the hurt, yet you’ve struggled for years to forgive those who injured you. We are creatures that want to do better, sometimes desperately so, but just can’t muster it within ourselves to bring about that change.
So what if genuine change is not found within you, but in giving up on yourself? What if your rescue is found in crying out to God, “I need you to help me, I can’t do it on my own anymore.” In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus twice urges us to do just that. He says, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matt 16:25, see also Matt. 10:39).
Our flesh and the world tell us that we can find ourselves in various substitute identities and pleasures. They comfort and quench for a little while, but these substitutes will not ultimately satisfy us, nor do they promise complete and permanent change.
My wife Angel and I have been working on a book called Trading Faces: Removing the Masks that Hide Your God-Given Identity that we hope will help engage these pressing questions. We believe that Christ can give us eyes to see the false “faces” we put on and exchange them for the true identities Christ offers in himself. We would covet your prayers as we work toward the book release this fall.
Can you change in 2023? Yes, yes you can! And that change begins not by never giving up on you, but by never giving up on God. He has made you for something far bigger and far more satisfying than what the world offers. And he promises that when you give up on yourself, you will change. As Paul promises, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18).
May 2023 be the year we behold his face. Are you willing to give to God your plans, hopes, dreams, and desires to experience his transformation? The reward is worth the price.
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Photo by Aamir Suhail on Unsplash