4 ways change happens

It's probably like a soup where the order things are added and the quantity can vary, but here's four main ingredients:

1.  Step by step

• The long, slow way, sometimes trial and error, you learn as you go
• Fail, learn & try again.  Perseverance.
• It's the way of steady progress
• In spiritual change it's a long term dealing with God (or him dealing with you); failure, repentance, repeat, sometimes rotating cycles of numbness and waking up.  It requires an ongoing trust and responsive relationship with him
• This seems to be the way designed for much of change and growth to happen

2.  You wake up 

• You hear, see, realize what you had previously been numb or dead to. 
• You're almost shocked to your senses.  What are you doing?  How could you have missed it?  How could you act that way?  How could you end up here? 
• Spiritually it requires sensitivity and responding with repentance to what's been revealed to you, but of course you could say if you were sensitive and responding you wouldn't have needed to wake up to begin with.  But maybe not -- maybe the alarm just hasn't gone off til now.

3.  You get caught 

• And that slaps you into reality. 
• You can't fool yourself anymore because now everyone knows. 
• You go, Oh God, this will never happen again!
• People are suspicious of this way of change -- they know you may only be responding to the consequences of getting caught.  You can't blame people for being suspicious, and you can't expect them to believe you've changed.  Even you might not know for sure.
• Only over time will you and others know if the change is real.

4.  God just goes and does it

• Now, God really does them all, but in this I mean he does it unilaterally.
• It's like you're not involved, you're only the recipient.
• When I quit drinking, God just did it.  It was like something that happened TO me. 
• When my wife, Brenda, realized all that Jesus had done for her, she gained a peace and rest that she had never known.  Her life was transformed.  There was a long process, but in the end it just happened.