Where To Find Improvement
These days you do not have to look too hard to find a quick fix for whatever problem or dilemma you are facing. I typed the words “self-help” in the search box on Amazon’s website and found over 100,000 results; books and products promising to improve just about everything about you. I even came across a series of books promising to make you (and me) badass. Maybe I should read those books, and in doing so, I will have better success at winning friends and influencing people. Hmm, what do you think?
It is fair to say that whatever is lacking in our lives, there is probably a self-help product available, with seemingly endless places to look. And it can be said, at least of me, for much of my life, I looked in some of the strangest places.
We also spend lots of time and money seeking “improvement” advise from others, some of which is absolutely of great help to us. Other times, nothing more than quackery. In the Peanuts comic strip, Lucy has a psychiatry booth. Her advice is almost always of no help. Once, in response to Charlie Brown telling Lucy that he had deep feelings of depression, her answer was to simply “Snap out of it! Five cents please.”
It is true that we all need help improvement in one or more areas of life. Wisdom is admitting that we do not have all the answers and knowing who or where to go to find help. There is also great value in changing up the things we do and don’t do, say and don’t say, many of which are self-help in themselves. And sometimes we run from fad to fad, just hoping the latest and greatest fad might “fix” us. And when that fix stops working, we move onto the next one, until that too stops helping. Then off to the next. It becomes a vicious never-ending cycle, usually with little or no lasting improvement, and soon, frustration sets it, and invariably we end up stop trying to improve.
I am in no way discounting the many proven methods to make changes in us and around us. They often bring about tremendous results. We should always be striving to become a better version of ourselves. But, today, I would like to offer another, always more effective, and time-tested, method to improving your life. Let me do so by simply offering you these three verses from the God’s Word, the Bible.
“Your word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105).
“Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another – showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us” (2 Timothy 3:16-17, MSG).
Jesus, in His final words to His disciples after the Last Supper, called the Farewell Discourse (Gospel of John, chapters 14-17), said this – “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26).
So, in these last two weeks of the year, and as you look to 2023, if you want lasting and permanent improvement, seek first the advice of the best Helper available to mankind – God. Dive into His Word and ask the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom, courage, strength, and help in becoming a new and improved you, someone being formed more and more into the image of Jesus.
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