Anthony Sweat: Why You Can't Change Yourself by Yourself

In his book Christ in Every Hour, TOFW presenter Anthony Sweat shares why we can't become "spiritually fit" over night. It takes time, and we can't do it on our own. We all need heavenly help to spiritually progress so that we can return home to our Heavenly Father. We need help from one who has already paid the price for us to be "spiritually reborn." Enjoy this inspiring excerpt from Christ in Every Hour.

We live in a fast-food, instant-answer, “great abs in thirty days!” society, and we can get disillusioned if we don’t become spiritually fit overnight. That isn’t how spiritual conversion happens. Elder D. Todd Christofferson taught: “You may ask, Why doesn’t this mighty change happen more quickly with me? . . . For most of us, the changes are more gradual and occur over time. Being born again, unlike our physical birth, is more a process than an event.”

Thus, one might lament, “I know I shouldn’t, but I lose my patience with my kids!” Another might say, “I want to be a better person and loving like Christ, but I still find myself being critical of my family and friends.” Someone else may say, “I don’t want to do this sin. I want to be obedient. But I keep slipping up and I hate it.” The mere fact that you are thinking those things shows Christ is working in you, showing your weakness, and conversion is happening. Don’t give up, and don’t lose hope. Remember, spiritual transformation through Christ is described in scripture with words like patience, diligence, and long-suffering (see Alma 32:43). Great things take time, effort, oft-repeated failures, and persistence. To behold “the glory of the Lord” and then be “changed into the same image from glory to glory,” as he is (2 Corinthians 3:18), is a lifelong pursuit. It takes years of immersing ourselves in the “righteous cycle” (as opposed to the “pride cycle”), of seeking to do God’s will in faith, repenting of our failings, committing to him by covenant, and striving to receive of his Spirit—and then doing this over and over and over again. Peter says this continued process purifies “your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit,” resulting in “being born again” (1 Peter 1:22–23).

Some may read the preceding paragraphs and disagree, saying, “I don’t think that can happen to me. I think this is just the way I am. I try to change and just fail. I’ve read all the self-help books. I’ve been to countless classes and conferences. I’ve even tried yoga. No matter how hard I try, I can’t change myself.” And you know what? That’s true. You can’t. One paradox of being spiritually reborn or converted is that you cannot do it yourself. You can no more rebirth yourself spiritually than you can birth yourself mortally. It isn’t something we do ourselves, it is something that is done to us by Christ. In a 1672 work by the Puritan pastor Joseph Alleine, published after his death, we read, “Conversion then, in short, lies in the thorough change both of the heart and life. . . . If ever you would be savingly converted, you must despair of doing it in your own strength. It is a resurrection from the dead (Eph. 2:1), a new creation (Gal. 6:15; Eph. 2:10), a work of absolute omnipotence (Eph. 1:19). Are not these out of the reach of human power? . . . [Conversion] is a supernatural work.”

Spiritual transformation is different than trying to be a better person. We don’t merely, Benjamin Franklin–like, make a list of all the virtues we want to acquire and then focus on them one-by-one until we have perfected them in our lives. As noble as personal improvement efforts like these are, we don’t need Christ nor his gospel for that. Otherwise we should just go to the self-improvement section in the bookstore instead of the Savior. No, similar to our first birth, our converting, transforming spiritual rebirth is brought about by heavenly factors beyond our own control. Nowhere does Jesus teach this more plainly than in John 3 when he interviews—or humbles—the great Pharisee teacher Nicodemus. Jesus wastes no time and cuts right to the heart of an issue which he discerns Nicodemus doesn’t understand: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). This saying may well have rattled Nicodemus who, as a legalistic, checklist Pharisee perhaps thought that salvation came by strict adherence to the pharisaical rituals and extrapolations of the Law of Moses—things that he did and controlled. But being born again? This was beyond him.

Sensing the profound implications of what Christ has just said to him, Nicodemus asks in return, “How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” (John 3:4). Here we must give Nicodemus some credit. This famous teacher in Israel was not, as we sometimes hear taught in church classes, actually thinking he had to literally reenter his mother’s womb to be born again. He was actually picking up on Jesus’s use of birth as a spiritual metaphor and saying, “How is it possible for me to change? I can’t change myself. Especially as I’m an old man now. I am who I am. I might as well try to go back into my mother’s womb as well as try to make myself become a new person. This is impossible!” And Jesus’s answer was that, yes, it is impossible—on your own. You’ve got to be born of the Spirit, Nicodemus! The Lord adds, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). While we may control if and when we are baptized by water, we don’t control the cleansing and sanctifying influence of the Holy Ghost upon us. It is a gift from God, something that isn’t earned or dictated, just freely sent and received. Thus the gift of the Holy Ghost—a gift of grace.

Jesus illustrates this with a metaphor: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Nicodemus doesn’t cause the wind; he experiences it. Nicodemus didn’t control his birth; it happened to him. Similarly, just as you and I don’t control the element of the wind and its influence upon us, we don’t control the elements of heaven and their spiritual effects upon us. We may ask, we may seek, we may desire, and we may strive—of necessity—to place ourselves in the right way to receive of its influence, but like the breeze we aren’t in charge of how and when the Spirit comes upon us. Go watch anyone try to fly a kite in the dead calm of a summer’s day and see how well that works out. And go watch someone try to become like Jesus without the wind of the Spirit to lift them up and make them soar. It won’t happen. You may as well try to birth yourself. You may as well try to turn water to wine. Notice Jesus’s use of the word I in the promise of born-again change made to Ezekiel: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And Iwill put my spirit within you” (Ezekiel 36:26–27; emphasis added). Transformation is a spiritual gift from God, not an accomplishment earned by our efforts. That’s an important lesson that Christ wanted not just Nicodemus to understand, but all of us. It causes us to be humble seekers and receivers, not prideful earners and accomplishers.

Want more from Anthony Sweat? Find him at a TOFW event near you! But if you can't make it (because, you know, life can get pretty crazy) then be sure to check out his 2017 TOFW presentation available on Deseret Bookshelf and deseretbook.com.