Become willing to change (2)

You must be willing to pay the price for change. Dramatist and screenwriter Sidney Howard remarked, “One-half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.” Change always costs you, if not in money, then in time, creativity, and energy. In fact, if it doesn’t cost you anything, chances are it’s not real change! As you consider how to make the changes needed in your life in order to improve and grow, it’s important to count the cost of changing compared to the cost of remaining the same. That means you must do your homework. Change brings growth. But it can also bring grief, especially when it means letting some things go in order to embrace others. What will the changes you desire really cost? Paul wrote, “Everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him…I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead! I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me” (vv. 8-12 NLT). The question is, how badly do you want to change, and are you willing to pay the price?