Are You Trying to Change God

Thoughts from the Donut Shop

A weekly paper from the Wednesday table at the Blue Line, Flint

Are You Trying to Change God?

The Hand You’re In

Last week we ended on the best news there is: no one can snatch you out of the Father’s hand. He’s got you. He won’t let go. Not the people who hurt you, not the past, not the storm, not even you on your worst day.

So this week, now that you know Whose hand you’re in, let me ask you a harder question about that same hand.

Answer honest. Not the church answer — the real one. Are you trying to change the very God who’s holding you?

Because you are. We all are. Wanting to change God isn’t some rare sin a few bad people commit down the road. It’s the oldest thing in the human heart. It’s the default setting. It’s who every one of us is before grace gets ahold of us.

We don’t come to God empty-handed. We come with a plan already drawn up. We want Him to sign off on the life we already built. Bless the thing He already warned us about. Loosen up on the command we’ve decided is out of date. Look the other way about the one room we keep locked. We’re not really after a Lord. We’re after a co-signer.

That’s not me being hard on you. That’s Genesis. The very first lie in the garden wasn’t “walk away from God.” It was subtler than that:

“You will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

— Genesis 3:5 (NLT)

Be your own god. Call your own shots. Decide for yourself what’s good and what’s not. We’ve been running that same play ever since — trying to drag God down to our level so we don’t have to be lifted up to His.

So quit acting like the question is out of line. It’s just true.

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts, says the Lord. And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.”

— Isaiah 55:8 (NLT)

He’s not the one moving. You are.

You’re the Branch. Not the Tree.

Here’s the part we keep getting backwards.

The branch doesn’t change the tree. The tree changes the branch.

Think about what a branch actually is. No roots of its own. No life of its own. No say in what fruit shows up on it. Every bit of what it’s got comes up through the trunk from a root it never planted. Leave a branch to itself and it’s just a stick — and a stick is only firewood that hasn’t burned yet.

And yet there we are, trying to be the tree. Trying to be the source. Trying to make our own life and then sit down across the table from God and negotiate the terms like we’re equals. We’re not equals at that table. We’re the branch, and we forgot who’s holding us up.

Jesus didn’t leave any wiggle room on it:

“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”

— John 15:5 (NLT)

Apart from me you can do nothing. Not a little on your own steam. Nothing. Read that again until it quits feeling like an insult and starts feeling like relief.

Every worn-out, dried-up, frustrated stretch in your walk traces back to the same lie — that you’re the tree and God is a supply you manage. You’re not the tree. You never were. And the sooner that dies, the sooner you actually start to live.

You Were Dying Wood

Let’s be blunt, because the gospel is.

You were dying wood.

Not a healthy branch asking for a better deal. Not a decent guy who just needed a little polish. Scripture doesn’t flatter us here:

“Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins.”

— Ephesians 2:1 (NLT)

Dead. Cut off. Brown at the edges. The kind of wood that gets tossed on the pile. And dead wood has no leverage. It can’t heal itself, can’t reattach itself, can’t demand one single thing. Which means every card you thought you were holding — you were never holding.

That’s the part pride hates. And it’s the exact spot where God does His best work.

“But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!)”

— Ephesians 2:4–5 (NLT)

He doesn’t rescue the impressive. He raises the dead.

Grace Made You Fruitful

So sit with the whole thing: you were dying wood — grace made you fruitful.

You didn’t earn a spot on the vine. You were grafted in. A broken-off branch joined to a living root it had no business touching. And the second that connection got made, the impossible started happening. Dead wood turned green. A branch with no future started carrying the life of the tree it now belonged to.

“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”

— 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)

And get this straight: the fruit was never yours to squeeze out. Fruit is just the tree’s life showing up at the end of the branch. When your life finally starts showing love, patience, kindness, some self-control — that’s not you turning into something impressive. That’s the Vine, living through a branch that finally quit fighting Him and started drawing from Him.

So — Back to the Question

Are you trying to change God?

You know the answer now. In a hundred quiet ways you’d never say out loud in a prayer, you’ve been wanting Him to move so you don’t have to. And that’s not some flaw that’s just yours. That’s all of us. That’s the human heart with the mask off.

I’ll be honest with you — I had to learn this one the hard way, and it took me most of my life. For years I had my own label stuck on God, built out of my wounds instead of out of who He actually is. And nothing changed until I finally repented of it and admitted the simple thing: He is perfect, and I am not. That’s the day the branch stopped arguing with the tree.

But here’s the trade grace puts on the table, and it’s the best one you’ll ever get. God won’t become who you want. He’ll make you into who you were meant to be. He’ll take dead wood and grow fruit on it. He’ll take a stick headed for the fire and give it a share in the life of the eternal Vine.

He was never going to change for you.

That was always the whole point.

Stop trying to change the tree.

Let the tree change you.

“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.”

— Romans 12:2 (NLT)