Pattern People

One of the things about longer ministry tenures is that you can sense and see patterns before they even happen.  This is more prominant when dealing with specific people, but you can also see it in the macrocosm of the congregation at large too.

In dealing with individuals though, there is a hard reality that no matter how many times you correct, positively encourage, or admonish some individuals towards change, some people remain unchangeable, or will go in an almost memorizable repetitive cycle of disobedience and obedience. And who is chief amongst them?  Me, of course.  I doun't doubt for a second that my heavenly Father sees me in that same light too.  "Here he goes again.  He's going to withdraw a bit until 'x' happens and then he's going to have a mini-epiphany and move forward."  That's an over-simplification, of course, but I think you get my point.

As a big social media fan, I see this pattern full-force amongst the pages of facebook and twitter.  I see posts of angry rants, followed by contrition and resolve to change, followed by spiritual highs (accentuated by a million inspirational memes added for good measure), then failure or crisis, then rant, cry of desperation......and the cycle begins again.  Sound like someone you know?  Sound like perhaps yourself?  In some ways we have seen this pattern in the life of the nation of Israel in the Bible too.  It's nothing new.  But, it's still a problem.

I do, get weary quite often as of late about these patterns in other people, and I'm trying not to lose heart, and to keep perspective that we all are "pattern" people. God's grace is there for those bad cycles in these patterns for us.  I want to be known as a pattern person, but I want my pattern to be one filled with qualifications such as 'dependability, loyalty, steadfastness, and Christ-likeness.' Breaking a negative pattern can be tough.  A new routine and set of behaviors can be a scary thing to confront.  Let's pray for eachother as we set out to do just that.