 Hey guys, what's up and welcome back to the daily Disciple channel? My name is Isaac and this channel is really all about helping you become an authentic inspired and passionate disciple of Christ and Today we're gonna be jumping into the topic of how do I change? How do I change? Like that's a big topic. How do I change as a person because we're always talking about look Hey, you need to change this aspect of yourself. How do you change this? You need to change this aspect of yourself, you know You need to be nice or you need to be kind of you need to be happy or you need to be like But how do you actually change? So there's been many theories in the history of the world and more recently on how humans change So there's a guy named BF Skinner. He was in the you know beginning one of the founders of kind of a Psychological thought and he kind of came up with this idea of behaviorism or a form of behaviorism in which you apply positive and negative reinforcements to reinforce a Behavior that you want it. So let's say I wanted a dog to like walk through a hoop or something like that Maybe I would have you know, I coax him to go through the hoop and every time he went through the hoop I'd give him a treat right and that's a positive Reinforcement so even though that seems a little bit out there. You're like, okay What does this have to do with how do we change as humans? We tend to do that with humans as well if we do something if a human somebody does something we like We often kind of like reinforce that by giving something that they like even with children You'll see this a lot when raising children a child Does something good they get a treat right they get a lollipop or sucker or something like that and Or if they do something bad, they're gonna get a punishment you go to time out You're gonna go, you know, you get grounded that kind of thing So I want to dive into honestly, what is the biblical approach to change? But when we talk about change in a biblical context, I think honestly, we should start at this idea of justification So justification is when you come to face faith in Christ when you are justified Based on Jesus work on the cross your sins have been paid and now that you are in Christ You're born again by the Spirit of God. You're on this path of sanctification And sanctification is this idea of Progressive change so you're gonna continue to change to become more like Jesus important verse here from 2nd Corinthians 3 18 and we all with unveiled faces holding the glory of the Lord are being Transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another For this comes from the Lord who is the spirit. You see we're being transformed into the likeness of Jesus, but not by our own Strength and power and will but by God so you can see the difference between these two kind of models One is really looking to this kind of like a methodology Of really change people using these reinforcements to change people. It's method. It's a tactic You want to be effective and changing well sanctification is not it's not like we're just instituting all these different methods and Tactics in order to get ourselves to become more like Jesus It can't be out of our own merely our own will because it wasn't out of our own will that we came to Christ Anyway, it was Christ drawing us to himself through the power of his spirit and it is continue And it continues to be his holy spirit that continues to form us into the image of his son So that's why I want to really caution you when you think of when there's people that say, oh look, you know Get get more sanctified real quick use these special tactics, you know because it's a lifelong Process, it's a lifelong Dedication to being a disciple of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. He begins to transform us So there's a couple things here that I want to keep in your mind as we're talking about sanctification I just want to encourage you with a couple things here as you're walking along this path of Sanctification and changing into the image of Christ through his transforming power So we have a verse here from James 1 5 if any of you lacks wisdom You should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault and it will be given to you See wisdom is so important to ask for a wise person Will seek and hunger for righteousness and will turn aside any Kind of selfish desires or selfish motives and we want to be wise We want to be able to discern those things and continue to follow Christ So the first thing is ask second thing is seek and we have verse here from Psalm 910 and says seek the Lord And his strength seek his face continually. I Want to just encourage you That if you are If you're struggling to maybe read your Bible if you're struggling to pray I want to just encourage you that is through Relationship relationship with others relationship with God that God will begin to change us And if you feel kind of like in a dry season like you're just kind of stagnant in your faith Like you're not hot. You're not cold, but it's just kind of like ordinary I want to encourage you Seek God seek him seek his face because through that relationship that is the means by which God will continue to transform That's how he'll change you. So I want to encourage you seek Jesus from Proverbs 3 5 to 6 trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not only on your own Understanding in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths stripped You see there's a lot of things in our lives that aren't going to be easy fixes as much as we want to change and look like Jesus right away. We want to just everything to work out Perfectly in our lives and all our sinful tendencies to be reversed and all our are pulled towards selfishness and But the facts are we're going to become discouraged because it's not easy It isn't easy We're always in a battle, but what God doesn't want us to do is trust in ourselves Trust in our own will to overcome these things. He wants us to trust in him He wants us to trust in him and his power to help us overcome sin and follow him and Follow him in that process of sanctification. So continue to trust Christ to help you overcome Sin so what I want to leave you with is this idea that God wants us to change He wants us to change But he doesn't want us to be looking to all these different kind of behavioristic models of change like that. We're gonna just kind of Transform our behavior by our own will true Transformation of the heart at the heart level can only come by the power of God so that's why we need to stop looking at quick fixes to Changing others and changing ourselves Trying to fix our problems with just these quick fixes or We got to be looking to Christ We got to be looking towards him Because he only has the power to transform our lives So I want to encourage you to continue to ask to seek his face and to trust him to continue to change us Into the image of his son if you guys like this video if you like the content that we cover on this channel Be sure to subscribe and like this video Share it with your friends if you find any one of these videos particularly helpful And leave a comment down below with your thoughts on this topic I know it's a big topic But I think it's an important one because we want to be following Christ's authentic Disciples and sanctification is a big part of that so if you have some thoughts on that Let me know I'd love to hear them and I'll be back next week with another video. See you guys then