Focusing on Change

Photo by Myrna Moore

When we suffer bad/negative experiences, Satan uses these hurts to encourage bad attitudes and habits, which often leads to unhealthy and unbiblical choices. These unhealthy, sinful, and unbiblical choices and habits in your life are the basis for the problems you are living with right now. They are the consequences for seeking relief outside of God. Instead of facing pain, sin, hurt, and/or wrong choices responsibly, we tend to try to find a way to shift the blame and live in denial of the part we have played and the responsibility that lies with us in changing our behavior.

Sure, you want relief from the pain, but you don't want to have to change. Most often, the pain you cause yourself is as great or ever greater than the pain caused by your experience(s). But your denial of your responsibility keeps you in bondage to your unbiblical, sinful, self-destructive lifestyle.

{ You feel the way you feel, because you think the way you think, and act the way you act. Jim Berg }

What we call denial is what God calls self-deception.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. {James 1:22-24}

 During the time of the Apostles, a group of Jews did not react favorably when Paul and Barnabus confronted them with their own sin.

Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses. Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets; behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you. And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles besought that these words might be preached to them the next sabbath. 

Now when the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews and religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas: who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God. And the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God. 

But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming. Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth. And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed. And the word of the Lord was published throughout all the region. But the Jews stirred up the devout and honourable women, and the chief men of the city, and raised persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them out of their coasts. {Acts 13:38-50}

 The Jews didn't like it when Paul and Barnabus began preaching to the Gentiles. When Paul and Barnabus spoke out against their envy and jealousy against the Gentiles, the Jews drove them away. They were unwilling to hear the truth about themselves. How often to we react in a similar way when a fellow Christian, or God Himself, exposes areas of our life that are in need of change.

Even David, whom God called "a man after His own heart," struggled with the sin of denial.

And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. And David sent and enquired after the woman. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house. And the woman conceived, and sent and told David, and said, I am with child. 

And David sent to Joab, saying, Send me Uriah the Hittite. And Joab sent Uriah to David. And when Uriah was come unto him, David demanded of him how Joab did, and how the people did, and how the war prospered. And David said to Uriah, Go down to thy house, and wash thy feet. And Uriah departed out of the king's house, and there followed him a mess of meat from the king. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and went not down to his house. 

And when they had told David, saying, Uriah went not down unto his house, David said unto Uriah, Camest thou not from thy journey? why then didst thou not go down unto thine house? And Uriah said unto David, The ark, and Israel, and Judah, abide in tents; and my lord Joab, and the servants of my lord, are encamped in the open fields; shall I then go into mine house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? as thou livest, and as thy soul liveth, I will not do this thing. And David said to Uriah, Tarry here to day also, and to morrow I will let thee depart. So Uriah abode in Jerusalem that day, and the morrow. And when David had called him, he did eat and drink before him; and he made him drunk: and at even he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, but went not down to his house.  

 And it came to pass in the morning, that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die. {II Samuel 11:2-15}

David thought that making Uriah's death look like an accident would ease his guilt, but it didn't. If you read further in the passage, you will see just how much pain David's denial caused in this situation.


When you repeatedly disobey God's law, your heart becomes calloused and you are no longer sensitive to the guilt of your sin. Denial leads you into deeper sin habits.

Examine the list below and ask God to reveal to you the areas where denial is keeping you in bondage to sin. You may want to add more as God reveals additional areas of sin in your life.

• Sexual immorality (Galatians 5:19)
• Lust (Colossians 3:5)
• Discord (Galatians 5:20)
• Anger (Galatians 5:20)
• Dissention (Galatians 5:20)
• Envy (Galatians 5:21)
• Idolatry (Galatians 5:20; Ephesians 5:5)
• Cheating (I Corinthians 6:8)
• Drunkenness (Galatians 5:21)
• Homosexuality (I Corinthians 6:9-10)
• Stealing (I Corinthians 6:9-10)
• Stubbornness (I Samuel 15:22-23)
• Impurity (Galatians 5:19)
• Hatred/Bitterness (Galatians 5:20)
• Envy/Jealousy (Galatians 5:20)
• Selfishness (Galatians 5:20)
• Arrogance (II Corinthians 12:20; Galatians 5:20)
• Murder (I Corinthians 6:9-10)
• Adultery (I Corinthians 6:9-10)
• Greed (I Corinthians 6:9-10; Ephesians 5:5)
• Lying (Revelation 22:12-16)

Ask God to take away your heart of stone and give you a heart that is willing to be broken over your sin, a heart that is willing to change.

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. {Ezekiel 36:26-27}