Sometimes I’m amazed by my obstinate insistence that I can force myself to change. I train myself with the fervor of Pavlov training his dogs to respond to the bells and find myself unable to respond the way I know I should. I’m told over and over about my shortcomings and I work harder and harder to fix them; but, at the end of the day, I fail miserably. I tell myself, “today is the day I quit.” Unfortunately, today becomes tomorrow, and tomorrow turns to the next day and at the end of my long trip down a path I force upon myself, I am lost and utterly miserable. I know every semester I’ve been in school (32 semesters since graduating high school) I have said I will procrastinated less, get an earlier start, and work harder. Thirty-one semesters later, my bad habits are still bad, if not worse. I do this during new years resolution time too. “this is the year I will change,” I tell myself, but I stop trying after three weeks. How sad. I know you can relate because it’s human nature to try to better one’s self. We want to change, but just can’t do it on our own strength. We keep messing up somewhere. When we do mess up, moralizing pastors and friends say, “the important thing is that you pick yourself up after this.” Everybody knows that’s the important thing. That’s not what we want though. We don’t want to fall down in the first place! I know it’s part of life, but who really wants to fall down? More than that, who really wants to get scraped and cut and have scars from falling? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? – Galatians 3:3 Paul writes to the churches in Galatia, “let’s stop messing around pretending we can help fix ourselves with some type of action we do on our own.” He says, “what makes you think you can save yourself now?” I mean, our ancestors couldn’t save themselves and their stories are written in the Bible. God knew He had to intervene within history, so some could be saved. So Jesus was born in the flesh. He lived on the fringes of society. He changed the lives of people neglected. He changed how people can cleanse themselves from guilt. He died horrifically. Jesus was resurrected on the third day, carrying all our sins to the grave and leaving them there to be glorified by God. It is this hope that one day we can be heirs to receive a resurrection like Jesus’ own. Yet, having hope we foolishly attempt to save ourselves. Are we so dumb? Here is the logic behind Paul’s question: the change agent in our lives is God. We become changed because we believe God will change us. We are perfected in our weakness to become the glory of God, by His power, not our own. All the power we possess in the world cannot change us; but God’s power is spoken into our lives and alters the fabric of our being creating change. Knowing fully well that we will fail, we place our hope in Jesus who gives us grace. We become righteous with God when we faithfully believe in the change agent of our lives. We become cleansed by knowing God is cleansing us despite who we are and where we come from and what we did. There is a change agent who wants nothing more from us than a willingness to believe that God will use our brokenness for change. Our shortcomings can never be compensated for by our own flawed efforts. So the question is not, “why do we continue to try”; but “why don’t we trust in the change agent of God– the Holy Spirit?” Today, I want you to reflect on what you’ve been trying to fix or not fix in your life and ask yourself whether you are putting faith into God’s change agent or if you are masking around as your own agent of change. After serious consideration, I want you to pray, because I pray, this solemn week, that we can believe we will be perfected by the Spirit of God, the Change Agent of our lives.