You knew it was going to happen; the call to action.

We have been discussing all the reasons that we need to wake up to our condition in Chapters 1 through 4.

We have been discussing all the benefits of being honest with ourselves and the ways we avoid honesty in Chapters 5 through 8.

Let me tell you, knowing that we need to wake up to the state that we are in and undergoing an honest evaluation of our condition does not mean that we will act.

In fact for almost all of us, it stops right there.  Nothing happens

That is so sad.

How does this happen?

Change is hard; we have to do something different, we have to commit, we have to think of a new path.

Life beats us down; we have too many efforts and too many failures.

We just don’t have a rock hard conviction.  We are having feelings but they are not strong enough to lead to anything.

Others have convinced you that you are what you are and that is all you will ever be.

You think that change will disrupt others and you don’t want to disturb those around you.

You use that old adage “I have to die from something,” if change is a health change like stop smoking, exercise or eating better.

You have accepted your role and if things are ok, you are satisfied with ok.  You don’t want to try for good, great, or super.

You are afraid that change means risking what you have and you don’t want to lose it.

You say “maybe this is the tops for me.”

You just don’t know the next step.  You have the feeling of needing to change but you don’t have the how part worked out.  You don’t know how to take the next step.

I see this all throughout society today.  People who have given up.  They are going through the motions in life.

My pastor, Pastor Janet Carden, preached on this very thing today.  Christians who need to be “born again.”  You have a routine.  You go to Sunday School, you go to church, you go out to eat after church, you take a nap after church blah, blah, blah.  Everything is the same.  Prayers become rote.  Your effort at singing becomes lifeless.  You see the same people every Sunday and say the same things.  God needs to infuse us with something new.

We need a change.

Pastor Idleman keeps coming back to the Prodigal Son story in Luke.

What finally happened to the Prodigal Son?  He strayed so far from his family, his father and he was at the “end of his string.”  He was so down in life that he was ready to live and eat with the pigs that his father owned.

But…

“He got up and went to his father.”

He changed.