The definition of insanity: Doing the same things over and over but expecting different results.

Our office at work shares a bathroom with other companies on the floor so there are multiple stalls and two sinks. The sink on the left is awful. No matter how little or much you turn on the water, you get a shower. It shoots out in all directions at warp speed and your splattered wet clothes – and even face – are the casualty.

Time after time every day, I would walk up to that sink and turn it on and then give a big, loud, “Uuuuggggghhhhh!” as soon as I turned on the water. I have even asked myself out loud, “Why do you keep doing this?” Seriously. Why do I keep walking up to that stupid broken sink and turn on the water multiple times a day?

Clearly, I was not thinking about what I was doing. I was just absentmindedly heading to wash my hands and my brain was elsewhere. And every time, I fell victim to the broken spout. Finally, after days of battling the cycle of being showered in the public bathroom, I walked up to the sink on the left and stopped. I actually stopped. Frozen. And said, “Nope.” And turned to the nice, properly working sink on the right and washed my hands. Without incident. Aaaahhh.

But my little daily sink fiasco made me think about how often we keep doing the same things over and over that are not good for us. We keep walking up to the same broken spout expecting a different outcome. We do it with our finances. Our leadership. Our marriage. Our jobs. Our parenting. Even our thought pattern. We often want to make a change in our heads, but find ourselves in the same routine, creating the same actions.

The most important thing to understand about making changes is we can’t expect others or a situation to change for our benefit. They might. And we would be lucky for it. But we can’t expect that. I couldn’t keep walking up to that faucet expecting it to not hose me down. It wasn’t going to stop. If I didn’t want to keep getting my clothes drenched, I had to make the change.

Making changes and breaking cycles is hard. Some are harder than others. But change IS possible. We do not have to be stuck in vicious cycles that are not good for us. Or are not honoring to God. For me, I have never been good at being able to make a significant change in my own will power. I frequently have very little of it. But I have a LOT of it when I am relying on God’s strength and not my own. His strength fuels my will power. It is only through His power that I have any.

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is in John 15:5-8 where Jesus is walking with his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane and talking to them after The Last Supper. This is all leading up to Judas betraying Him and yet, He is still teaching His disciples and praying for them.

Jesus teaches them what I believe to be one of the most important lessons we as believers need to remember. We can bear much fruit when we remain in Christ. We have the power through the Vine to see a different outcome; to break cycles that seem unbreakable.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

You can make any change you desire. Just find your power in the Vine.

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