Real Life-Change – Go to the Ant

Often, when we face what seems to be an insurmountable task or goal, we become paralyzed into inaction by the enormous distance between where we are today and where we want to be tomorrow.  We cannot get there by tomorrow or by the end of the week or month, so we sometimes give up and do nothing.  It is just too overwhelming.  Whether it is losing a lot of weight, cleaning up a junky room, starting to exercise more, fixing something around the house, and so on, we want to do it, but the task seems so large that we can’t seem to face it, and often we do nothing.  The word of God tells us what to do in this situation, and how to effect change in our life that is doable, positive, real, and permanent.  God’s word teaches us how to accomplish the things in life that we want to achieve, and how to build godly character along the way.

“Go to the ant, O sluggard, observe her ways and be wise, which, having no chief, officer or ruler, prepares her food in the summer and gathers her provision in the harvest. How long will you lie down, O sluggard?  When will you arise from your sleep? “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest” — your poverty will come in like a vagabond and your need like an armed man.” (Proverbs 6:6-10)

Most of us have either had or seen an ant farm.  Perhaps we had one, a friend had one, or maybe there was one in our classroom at school one year.  When we first get the ant farm, it is just a clear plastic box that we fill with sand.  Then the ants arrive in the mail, and we pour them in, and after recovering from ant jet-lag, they start doing their ant thing, moving grains of sand around one at a time.  At first there is not much to see.  But over time, little ant-condominiums begin to take shape, and the next think you know, they have built an ant-palace inside that little clear plastic box.  They did this working together, one grain of sand at a time, over what is a very long period of time compared to their short little ant-lives.

When we read this passage, we usually think of this as being a way to save for retirement, lose weight properly, unpack moving boxes, get something done at work, organize a closet, clean out the garage, or something along those lines.  Do a little bit each day, each week, each month, and over time it adds up, and eventually the goal is achieved – we have accomplished what seemed to be an impossible task at the beginning.  And this is true.  It works.  But “going to the ants” also describes another aspect of how true change works, namely that there are no shortcuts to true life-change.

If we try to change all at once, it typically does not work.  Crash diets fail, and eventually we gain all of the weight back – sometimes gaining even more than we lost – and we are right back where we started, only we have lost precious time.  By choosing not to do a little bit each day, we ultimately get nowhere, and often lose ground.  There are no shortcuts to true change.  The long process of gradual change appears to be the primary path to real and permanent life-change.  Just as the ants do not build their ant-palace overnight but build it gradually over time, we too must choose to do the work of making changes gradually day by day in our lives as well if we want lasting change to occur.  Why is this?

It turns out, most true change happens gradually, not instantly.  Catastrophes happen, and can cause dramatic changes in the landscape overnight, but afterwards the long and slow process of nature rebuilding herself transforms the avalanche or mudslide into its final form.  Similarly, we may have an ‘aha’ moment that we can point to, where we finally got it, where the coin finally dropped in the vending machine of our life.  But the ‘aha’ moment is followed by the long and slow process of working out what God has put into us.

Even when we are born again, which happens in an instant, it still takes years, decades,  a lifetime, to grow into men and women whose lives begin to reflect biblical values and have taken on the character of Christ.  By putting God’s word into our hearts and minds daily, weekly, monthly, we are slowly building godly character in our lives.  This is how it is done, and is why people always tell us to read God’s word, to memorize bible verses, to meditate on scripture.  These are simply methods of getting the change agent of God’s word into our hearts and minds so that it can grow and bear fruit.

I am a gardener, growing vegetables every summer.  And almost every year, I have to replant something.  Either a frost will kill it, or the bugs get it, or sometimes the seed never sprouts or the starter plant just dies, and I have to replant that particular vegetable.  One year a very late frost killed an entire row of young onions for example, and I had to replant the entire row.  This type of thing happens every year in the garden.  Putting God’s word into our lives is similar.  We have to keep doing it, over and over, day after day, until it sticks, until it becomes a permanent part of who we are.  Until it shapes our character and becomes true of us.  And there-in lies the key, the answer to the question why.

When we try to change overnight, we have not changed who we are.  We have changed our outside perhaps, but inside we are the same person who loves ice cream more than anything else, and eventually we will cave and find ourselves eating pralines and cream straight out of the carton again.  Augustine taught that true change does not result from an action of the will but from a change in our heart’s desires. 

Willpower is not enough, and cannot be sustained indefinitely – it eventually fails.  Augustine teaches that the desires of our heart, our loves, are “disordered”, and that we must rearrange our loves in order to permanently effect the change that we long for but cannot seem to achieve.  He teaches that the key to accomplishing true life-change is to fix or rearrange our “disordered loves”.

For example, we might love ice cream, but we also might love being thin and in good physical shape.  If we can reorder our loves so that we love being thin and in shape more than we love eating ice cream, we have accomplished change on the inside, a change that will drive our life in the direction that we want.  We may want a closet cleaned up, but we love lying on the couch and watching TV more, and so every day we find ourselves on the couch watching TV when we could be organizing our closet.  Again, our loves are disordered and are driving our lives in a direction we do not really want.  To effect change in our life, all we have to do is rearrange our loves.  Sounds easy, right?  Not really.  If it was easy everyone in the U.S. would be thin and have a great retirement account.  So how do we rearrange our disordered loves? 

The answer lies in “going to the ant”, and observing her ways.  The ant does it one grain at a time.  No one has to tell her to do it (“no chief or ruler”), she just does it, one grain of sand at a time, together with all of her ant buddies.  Nike built an empire on this concept, with the “Just Do It” slogan.  Just do it, one small step at a time.  By taking this approach, it turns out that we slowly begin to change on the inside.  I am not sure how this works, but it does. 

Like making small deposits regularly in the bank, taking one small step every day towards our goal not only gets us there eventually, but it changes us on the inside along the way so we can stay there once we arrive.  It gives us time to grow and change into the person we need to be to sustain the change we achieved.  If we can just take the first small step towards our goal, we are on our way and can accomplish a thousand mile journey, changing into the person we long to become as we make the journey.

My brother and I used to do a lot of backpacking when we were younger, and there is nothing like looking at several 7.5-minute maps and realizing that over the next few days you are going to walk across those maps, up and down over 2,000 foot saddles, over rocks, boulders, scree fields, talis fields – through woods, over streams, around lakes, through the “dreaded Colorado wacka-doos”, down valleys, over the divide.  It was overwhelming, but we would just start walking, and days later we would have crossed all of those maps, one step at a time. 

Building godly character is accomplished the same way.  God’s word is like the map for our journey.  We must put God’s word into our hearts and minds every day, and little by little, the power of His word and His Holy Spirit will transform us into men and women who more accurately reflect Christ in this fallen world.  It works. A little bit each day becomes a changed life over time.

Notice also that the ants work together.  One ant never built anything by itself as far as I am aware.  I suspect that one ant probably dies pretty quickly if it is alone.  Christianity is the same way – it is a team sport.  In order to build godly character in our life, we need each other. It has even been said that Christianity is impossible outside of community. There is a Proverb that is often quoted on this subject:

“Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”  (Proverbs 27:17)

Fellowship is key to successful Christian life change.  We must be in community in order to properly grow in Christ.  Just as the ants work together to build their little ant-palace, so we work together to become the body of Christ.  Amazing.

The last part of the proverb warns us that the step-by-step process works both ways.  It can also result in poverty of character if we choose to let it.  We can harness this process to go from being a “sluggard” to growing in Christ to become the person we desire to be, or we can let this process work in the other direction and become impoverished of character.  Cultural drift, the CEO of evil, and the sin nature within us will carry us farther and farther away from godliness over time if we do not harness this process for good, and choose to make daily deposits in the bank of our life that move us towards godly character.

Tim Keller often tells the story of a man in prison, looking back on his life, and realizing that his prison sentence for fleeing from a hit and run incident began when he was just a child and fled the scene when he broke his dad’s favorite gold watch.  Little by little, he practiced not taking responsibility for his actions, fleeing or lying his way out of difficult situations, until it had become second nature to him.  It had become who he was, it was his character, and when he accidentally ran over and killed a child while driving his car, he instinctively fled the scene before he even knew what he was doing. 

His story serves as a warning to us all, a warning that this process is going on in our lives right now, every day.  Step by step, we are growing and changing every day, a little bit at a time, whether we realize it or not.  We are either growing towards God, or away from Him, towards godliness, or away from it. We must be intentional about our choices in order to grow towards God, or we likely will grow away from Him and experience a poverty of character in our lives. It is the little choices that we make over time, adding up over the years, that determine our character and destiny, for good or for bad.

How are you growing and changing these days? What are some of the little choices you are making that are moving you towards the person you want to be? What are some of the little choices you are making that are moving you away from it?  Do you see godly character slowly taking shape in your life, or is it getting easier and easier to sin?  Do you feel conviction when you sin, or have you silenced the voice of the Holy Spirit in some area of your life? 

What “ant-palace” are you building with the daily choices that you are making today?  What is one step that you can take each day to start moving towards godly character?  What things in your life have paralyzed you into inaction?  What can you do to start the journey of dealing with those things? What is one area of your life that you want to work on this year where you would like to experience growth and real life-change?

What godly character traits do you wish you had?  Perhaps start there, and pick one step that you can take today to move towards that character.  Then do it again the next day, and so on.  Don’t be discouraged if you miss a day or a week…..that is normal sometimes.  If you water some plants every day, they will die, for example.  When we did long backpackers, we would schedule days of rest into the trip.  Rest is necessary and good, to the point that it is the fourth commandment.  But we have to get up and get back on the trail eventually, in order to finish the journey we have set before us.

Ask God for His help.  I encourage you to bring others into your journey and share it with them.  Backpacking by oneself is pretty miserable – very few people enjoy the experience, and often they fail to reach their goal when they hike alone, cutting the trip short.  But backpacking with friends is fun and amazing and we almost always reach our goals and finish the trip when we are in community.  Doing life-change with others is the same, and we are much more likely to succeed and complete the journey if we are walking with others.

I encourage you to find some people with a goal similar to yours, who are headed where you want to go, and start walking with them.  Join them in the adventure of growing in Christ.  I encourage you today to step up your game if you are already on the trail, or begin your journey towards godly character if this is new for you today, by choosing one step to take each day, and starting right now by taking that step today.  Together, one step at a time, real and permanent life-change is doable.

Lord God Almighty, I come before you in Jesus name, and confess that I am often paralyzed into inaction by the size of the task that lies before me.  I often choose to be lazy, to be a sluggard, rather than choosing to take action.  I repent of this today, and ask that you would show me one or two steps that I can take each day to move towards the life-change I desire.  I also confess that my loves are disordered, and I often choose poorly resulting in my life moving farther away from You and from where I want to be.  Help me to re-order my loves.  I commit to putting Your word into my heart and mind each day, so that it can begin to grow in my life and transform me into the person I desire to be. I commit to meditating on Your word as I lay in bed at night before I go to sleep, and when I lie in bed in the morning when I wake up each day.  I commit to taking one step to accomplish that thing that is looming large in my life and has paralyzed me.  I choose to walk away from the TV, throw out the ice cream, set my phone down, to step away from whatever bad habit I have gotten into, and start building a new godly habit in its place, by taking that first step today.  Help me to find a group of other believers who are headed Your way, and enable me to join them on their journey so that we can encourage each other as we travel towards You.  Cause Your word to grow in me and transform me into a godly person who reflects Christ to those around me every day.  I surrender my life to You, and pray for Your guidance every day in all that I do.  I pray this in Jesus name, amen.

“Go to the ant, O sluggard, observe her ways and be wise, which, having no chief, officer or ruler, prepares her food in the summer and gathers her provision in the harvest. How long will you lie down, O sluggard?  When will you arise from your sleep? “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest” — Your poverty will come in like a vagabond and your need like an armed man.”

Proverbs 6:6-10

Additional Verses

“As the door turns on its hinges, so does the sluggard on his bed.”  (Proverbs 26:14)

“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. “  (Hebrews 4:12)

“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”  (Romans 12:1-2)

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”  (Ephesians 2:20-22)

“‘Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’”   (Isaiah 41:10)

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”  (2 Corinthians 3:18)

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”  (2 Corinthians 5:17)

“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”  (1 John 3:2-3)

“Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him.”  (Colossians 3:9-10)

“Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry…. So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.”  (Colossians 3:5, 12-14)

“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you.”  (2 Peter 1:2-11)

“My son, give attention to my words;
Incline your ear to my sayings.
Do not let them depart from your sight;
Keep them in the midst of your heart.
For they are life to those who find them
And health to all their body.
Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life.”

Proverbs 4:20-23

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”  (Anonymous)

Click here for the Tim Keller Sermon that inspired this Blog