Proverbs chapter 16
Today we are walking in: Essential Features of Purposeful Change
Habakkuk 1:11
Then shall his mind change H2015, and he shall pass over, and offend, imputing this his power unto his god.
CHANGE
Today we look to the word- CHANGE- H2015- haphak- a primitive root; to turn about or over; by implication, to change, overturn, return, pervert:—become, change, come, be converted, give, make (a bed), overthrow overturn), perverse, retire, tumble, turn (again, aside, back, to the contrary, every way).
The Torah Testifies…………….
Genesis 35:2
Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that werewith him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change H2015 your garments:
Leviticus 27:10
He shall not alter it, nor change H2015 it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good: and if he shall at all change H2015 beast for beast, then it and the exchange thereof shall be holy.
Leviticus 27:33
He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change H2015 it: and if he change H2015 it at all, then both it and the change H2015 thereof shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed.
The Prophets Proclaim………
Jeremiah 2:36
Why gaddest thou about so much to change H2015 thy way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria.
Zechariah 3:4
And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change H2015 of raiment.
Malachi 3:6
For I am the LORD, I change H2015 not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
The Writings witness……………
Job 14:14
If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change H2015 come.
Psalm 102:26
They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change H2015 them, and they shall be changed:
Proverbs 24:21
My son, fear thou the LORD and the king: and meddle not with them that are given to change H2015:
Charting Your Course to a Preferred Future
Essential Features of Purposeful Change
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no
real security in what is no longer meaningful.
There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
—Alan Cohen, inspirational author
Many people think of life as a difficult thing, but it’s truly a gift from Yah. If you approach life fearfully or antagonistically because of the reality of change, you will certainly hinder your progress. We must think of life as a privilege, not a plague. It’s a blessing to be given life, and we need to handle it thoughtfully and carefully. We can do this by developing, initiating, and monitoring a plan for positive change that will help us to fulfill the Creator’s purposes for our lives. Initiating change, as we have seen, is the highest form of response to change.
Your Path to Planned, Positive Change
For many years, I have been speaking to people all over the world about personal potential and leadership. I talk to people in government, in corporations, in churches—in a variety of venues. This has involved quite a lot of air travel. In recent years, making the right flight connections at the right times has become difficult because of my increasingly busy schedule.
Several years ago, an aircraft was donated to my organization, which has been a great help in my travels. It has also opened up a new world of knowledge for me. I’m naturally inquisitive—I enjoy learning what makes things function successfully—and the pilots of the aircraft have taught me a great deal about flying. When you fly on large, commercial airliners, you don’t learn much about what it takes to pilot a plane. But when you are sitting right in the cockpit with professional pilots, and when you have an opportunity to watch them firsthand, you learn quite a bit.
Many times, I would sit down with the pilots and ask them questions. For example, I’d look at the panels of buttons and dials in the cockpit, and I would ask them, “What is that for? Why is that moving? What’s this light?” In the process, I discovered some fascinating things about flying an aircraft. However, I was mostly reminded of some essential aspects of successfully implementing purposeful change. My conversations about piloting helped me to understand better the way our Creator works and how we are meant to relate to Him as we pursue the purposes He’s given us to accomplish in life. Here are some points about piloting an aircraft and their parallels for the pursuit of fulfilling purpose.
Determine Your Destination
The first thing a pilot must do may seem obvious, but it is essential: he must determine his destination. You don’t just take off from an airport with no destination in mind. Air traffic control has to know exactly where you’re going to land before you take off.
What is your destination in life? Most people go through life without knowing where they want to end up. Yet they are still surprised when they do not arrive there. Our destinations are determined by our understanding of the purposes Yah has for us. Our purposes, then, determine the initiation of change in our lives, which ultimately leads to the fulfillment of those purposes. In other words, you chart your course from the end to the beginning. Where you want to end up determines the path you choose in life —the priorities you set, the practices you nurture, and the daily habits you follow.
In our piloting analogy, the Creator is air traffic control, or “the tower.” Through seeking the Creator’s purpose for your life and what He has placed inside you to do, you can determine your desired destination. You confirm that this is where you want to go, allowing Him to guide you all the way.
One of my favorite verses of Scripture is Proverbs 16:9: “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines [“directs” nkjv] his steps.” Who makes the plans? Man does. Who determines or directs the steps of that plan? Yah does. You make the plan, based on Yah’s purpose for you, and He directs you.
If you don’t have a plan, there will be nothing for Yah to direct you in. I wrote a plan for my life when I was thirteen years old. It wasn’t written in calligraphy, and the words weren’t fancy. I wrote it on a dirty piece of paper! Yet I am still doing, in some form, everything I wrote on that paper. So, don’t be intimidated about the form or style of your plan. Just get it written down. Once you have written a plan, that plan will begin to grow and expand, but you have to start somewhere.
It was the plan I wrote that kept me away from drugs and alcohol when others my age were using them. The first gangs were formed in the area where I grew up, and bars were easily accessible in my neighborhood. Yet I survived those influences because I had a plan for my life. I knew that involving myself in those things would derail that plan. To protect your future, therefore, you must take this truth to heart: If you approach life casually, you will end up a casualty. Changing your life for the better won’t just happen on its own. You need to actively make decisions and plan your course. You have to make specific choices that put you on a route that corresponds to your Yah-given purpose.
Here are some questions to ask yourself in regard to understanding your purpose so that you can determine your proper destination. It is a good idea to review these questions monthly to keep yourself focused on your preferred future.
1. Do I know where I want to go in life?
2. Do I know the Creator-inspired desires of my own heart?
3. What do I want to achieve—specifically?
4. What is my destination in life?
After you’ve asked yourself these questions, can you describe your destination?
File Your Flight Plan
Second, after a pilot determines his destination, he must file a flight plan. This means he must not only know his destination but also submit to air traffic control the specific route he intends to take, or the plan he has made to get him there, before he leaves the ground.
Do you have an idea of your destination but lack the specifics of what it will take to arrive there? In other words, have you filed your “flight plan” yet? If you approach life halfheartedly, you will miss out on your preferred future. Disappointment awaits those who merely make plans but do not implement them. You must be committed and faithful to carry them out.
What, specifically, will it take to get you from where you are to where you want to go? Map out a detailed route to your preferred future, including everything necessary to arrive there. The list may include knowledge, skills, education, research and development, financing, equipment, materials, facilities, communications tools, means of attracting interest and support, personnel, and product. Before a commercial plane takes off, airline personnel need to make sure everything about the aircraft is in working order: that it has enough fuel to make it to its destination, that it is mechanically sound, that it is properly staffed and equipped, and so forth. In a similar way, you should adapt the specifics of your plan to the needs of your particular destination, making sure your plan is in “working order.” What you need for your plan won’t be exactly the same as what someone else needs. If you were going on a skiing trip to Switzerland, you would pack your suitcase differently than you would if you were going on a beach vacation to the Caribbean.
Have you set a specific course to take you to your dream? What resources do you need?
Monitor Your Flight Path with the Tower
Once a pilot has determined his destination, filed his flight plan with air traffic control, and been cleared for takeoff, he can leave the ground and begin the actual flight. But he never loses touch with the tower. The pilot must frequently be in contact with air traffic control to monitor his flight plan.
In this stage of pursuing your purpose, you know where you want to go and have made a detailed plan to get there. You have left the ground of your past and are on your way to a new destination and a greater level in life. Now, you must make sure to monitor your course by remaining in constant communication with the Creator and continually reassessing your activities according to your original plan.
The course you should be on to implement planned, positive change in your life is determined by your purpose. Yet the choices you make daily will decide the course that you are actually on. Perhaps your plans for change began with some resolutions. Maybe you wrote them out on a piece of paper or typed them on your computer and printed them out. You have them taped to your wall, but you haven’t done any of them yet. Why? Even though you had a goal, you didn’t make the necessary choices in keeping with that goal. Making a plan alone is not a guarantee that you’re going to succeed. It is making good choices that will enable us to stay on course to our purposes.
Are you staying in constant communication with your Creator and continually reassessing your life choices according to your purpose?
Follow All the Instructions of the Tower
During a flight, a pilot must carefully follow the instructions of the tower because air traffic control can see the total picture of what’s going on around him. One of the pilots of our aircraft explained to me, “In any given moment, within a five-mile radius around you, there could be numerous aircraft. You can’t see them, but they’re at different levels all around you. The tower knows where all the other planes are, and the tower knows where you are.” Since the pilot doesn’t know where he is in relation to all those planes around him, he has to depend on the tower to guide him, doing everything the air traffic controllers tell him to do.
Similarly, Yah knows about every single situation surrounding you. You have to stay close to Him and follow His instructions every day, through reading His Word and through prayer, because you don’t with whom you could be in danger of colliding.
Yah will give you a resilience that comes from trusting in His Word. Sometimes, He will tell you to hold steady when you want to move, or vice versa. One time, when we were in flight, I heard the captain say, “Oh, no.” That didn’t sound good. I asked, “What happened?” He said, “They want us to pull back. We have to slow down.” I said, “Man, we’re late.” He said, “But the tower says we have to slow down.” I repeated, “We’re going to be late.” He said, “Yeah, but the tower says....” The pilot didn’t listen to my opinions about the situation; he listened only to the tower. After about twenty minutes, he told me air traffic control had sent a message saying that he could speed up again. When the plane began to gain speed, we suddenly saw a large commercial airliner whoosh by, and he said, “That’s why they told me to slow down.” We had been in its path.
As we seek Yah, He will sometimes tell us, in effect, “Hold it right there,” but we’re impatient and want to pursue something. Yet, again, He sees the big picture, including the hindrances and dangers involved with moving forward too quickly. For example, Yah may warn you, “Don’t marry this person,” and you may say, “Yah, You don’t understand. I love this man!” Yah will still indicate to you, “Don’t do this.” He knows there’s another man about two miles away on a different latitude, and he’s the right one. But since you can’t wait, you move ahead too quickly and end up in an emotional collision. Or, you end up with a helicopter rather than a Boeing 747! Again, we have to follow Yah’s guidance completely because He can see the whole picture, whereas we can’t.
Are you following Yah’s guidance for your life?
Stay Steady On Course, Unless Redirected by the Tower
At times, as we were flying, the pilot would switch to a different frequency on his radio, allowing us to hear pilots from various commercial airlines talking to one another. A few times, when we were listening to the other pilots, we would hear one of them say, for example, “There’re some thunderstorms up ahead. It’s bumpy up here.” Another
pilot would add, “Yeah, at twenty thousand feet, it’s bumpy.” Still another would report, “At forty thousand feet, we’ve got thunderstorms.” However, the pilot of my plane couldn’t change course based solely on what the other pilots were saying. Even though we heard that storms were up ahead, we had to go by the word of the tower, because the tower guides the aircraft’s course (except, perhaps, in a complete emergency), and it can see the storms in relation to where the plane is.
There are times when everything around us, or everything in our own lives, seems to be falling apart. Yet if we’re listening for our Tower, we will be able to hear Yah say, “Keep believing and stay steady.” Maybe you’ve lost your house, but Yah says, “Still believe.” The very business Yah told you to start closes its doors, but He keeps saying, “Stay steady.” You lose everything you thought was already yours, but Yah says, “Keep on course.” When things change and conditions are chaotic around you, you have to obey the last command Yah gave you. It may be something you were supposed to do but failed to carry out, and it needs to be set right.
Several years ago, I heard a wise statement by a Nigerian bishop: “We should never be selective in obedience.” Selective obedience is deciding to obey some things but not others. You can’t do that when you’re following Yah. You have to obey the Tower, no matter what He says. As an illustration, during a flight on our airplane, the pilot will sometimes tell me, “We have to go up another two thousand feet.” When I ask why, he’ll say something like, “I don’t know, but they say we must go up. Our altitude has to change two thousand feet.” Then, he might say, “Okay, now we have to go down; we have to drop another ten thousand feet.” Again, if I ask why, he will say, “I don’t know; the tower says it, so we just have to do it.” In other words, whether he understands the reason or not, he needs to do whatever the tower tells him to do.
Do you listen to Yah like that? Once more, He sees the big picture, and He knows how to help you to avoid the obstacles or storms up ahead. He knows what potential collisions or “enemy attacks” are in your “airspace,” and He can see the whole “weather system” within range of your life. So, He may say, in effect, “Go down ten thousand feet.” You answer, “Yah, I don’t see anything. It looks good up here!” But He says, “Drop right now. Drop your association with this person, or you’re headed for trouble. He has charted a destructive course.” “But, Yah, we went to school together!” “Drop down.” “But we go way back.” “Now!” Yah is trying to preserve your future— and, perhaps, your life. How many people have failed to fulfill their potentials because of unhealthy friendships? Many who are struggling with destructive habits right now were encouraged by their friends to start them.
What are you doing right now that is taking you off course? What should you be doing right now that you aren’t doing? Whom are you listening to that you shouldn’t be listening to? Think about it: If you are not in the place you should be, you may make it hard for others to fulfill their futures. On the other hand, don’t allow others to miss their best futures because you were in the wrong place along with them, encouraging them in something that wasn’t right for them. Bad environments destroy good destinies. Nothing can destroy the fulfillment of your purpose faster than being in the wrong environment. So, check your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual environments. Staying on course will protect both you and others. We’ll discuss more about how to get back on course in another teaching.
In addition, if you aren’t accomplishing what you wanted to, perhaps it’s because you’ve listened to other “pilots” around you who were telling you their perspectives on the ways things are, what you can expect, and what direction you need to go in. Good counsel from those who have proven trustworthy is important, and it should be heeded. Yet you may receive advice from well-meaning people that is not appropriate for you. You have to be careful when listening to other people’s experiences because they are not necessarily Yah’s will for your life. If you’re trying to accomplish something, they may tell you what they’ve been through and how tough it was for them to try to do the same thing. You can listen to them, but ultimately, you must listen to the voice of Yah, because He may be doing something different in your life.
After Moses died, and Joshua became the leader of the Israelites to take them into the Promised Land, Yah told Joshua, “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Joshua 1:5). Yet when you read about Joshua’s experiences in the Promised Land, you notice that Yah worked in his life in ways that were different from His ways with Moses. Yah wasn’t telling Joshua to expect Him to do things in exactly the same way. He meant that His presence and power would be with Joshua continually, in everything he did, as long as he stayed close to his “Tower.” Yah also said to Joshua,
Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.(Joshua 1:7–8)
Are you staying steady on course, following Yah’s leading, whether or not you understand it right now?
Watch Your Landing!
It’s been said that more aviation accidents take place during takeoff and landing than while planes are in the air. As a concluding parallel to our piloting analogy, therefore, let me encourage you to pay extra attention when you are completing your plan. We talked earlier about making sure you know your destination before you take off. Without a clear goal, you can “crash” before you really begin, or you can end up way off course.
Yet you can run into trouble just as easily by becoming complacent just before “landing.” To use another transportation illustration, people often get into car accidents a short distance from home. Since they are almost at their destinations, they lose their concentration on the road. They may become too relaxed or start thinking of what they’ll do when they arrive home. They are distracted, and they end up in collisions of some sort.
When you think you are about to accomplish your plan, make sure you guide it all the way to your destination, remaining alert to any final directions from your Tower, wrapping up any unfinished details, and addressing any problems that might prevent your “landing gear” from working. Then, if everything is in place to land, you will fulfill your Yah-given purpose, successfully enacting the positive change in your life or in the lives of others.
Remember that it takes a quality choice to make an effective change. If you make that quality choice in the beginning and follow through all the way to the end, the desired change will become a reality.
Life is a progress, and not a station. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist and poet
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