Some of the pundits are saying that Barak Obama won the election because people are afraid of change. Did the President convince 52% of the electorate that they should not “trade horses in midstream’? That phrase was Abraham Lincoln's slogan in the 1864 presidential campaign! Three decades later, the phrase “Let Well Enough Alone” got President William McKinley elected for a second term. And, considering how Democrats demonized Romney, perhaps their slogan should have been: “Better to trust the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”
Given a choice, people more often choose the status quo, preferring a known path to an uncertain one. Someone called it the “tyranny of the familiar.” In the discipline of psychology, there is a word for this phenomenon: “resistance.” Thus, no counselor is ever surprised by his patient’s resistance to changing even the worst behaviors.
The question a serious disciple will ask is ‘how do I overcome my resistance?’ The short answer: by the power of the Word and the Holy Spirit—“renewing of the mind” (Rom 12:2). If you are facing a hard change in your life, be assured the Holy Spirit will facilitate it. Hannah Whitall Smith says, “He turns hard things into easy... not that He puts easy things in the place of the hard, but He actually changes the hard thing into an easy one.” Think about it. The path of least resistance is a straight one. “In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Prov. 3:6).
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