Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for the daily challenges.

Our daily challenges are meant to help you explore what it means to follow Jesus, even if you don’t have a lot of time. We have a rhythm that keeps us in sync, even if we’re not a community that meets together in person regularly. Every Monday we introduce the week’s idea. Every Tuesday we study it in the Bible. Every Wednesday we see how that challenges and transforms our thinking on the topic. Thursdays we try to apply and live it out. Friday is a day for prayer and reflection before we take a rest on Saturday, and Sundays we meet together with others in community.

Our series right now is called “We Are”. It follows on two other series – “God Is…” and “Jesus Is…”. Our attention now turns to us, human beings, and what knowing God and following Jesus actually means for our lives.

This week we’ll see how Easter, which we celebrated just last week, changes people.

Easter was a huge moment in history, when many people had to change their minds about Jesus. Those who thought he was nothing, definitely not the messiah or king of the Jews, had to confront the amazing events around his death, and the claims that he was resurrected.

Those who’d followed him, and gave up when he was crucified, had to wrestle with the surprise of his resurrection, and what that meant for them!

Everyone in between changed, too! And people have been changed by this story in the centuries since then, even today.

It’s hard to change our lives – not something to take lightly.

I read an article on Fast Company all about changing our minds. A few important points were made. First, when we’re confronted with information that contradicts the rest of our web of beliefs, our first inclination is to discount it.  We need to receive information slowly, from multiple reliable sources.

There are emotions involved. The sense of coherence we think we have is about both knowledge and emotion. We don’t like that being disrupted, and feeling like things aren’t making sense any longer.

When confronted, people maintain the strength of their initial beliefs for quite a while. The more information that people get that supports an alternative, though, the more likely it is that the initial web of beliefs will collapse and be replaced by a new, no less coherent network. Many simply go from strong support for one position to strong support for another.

From the outside, it may look like someone’s changed their mind suddenly, but that’s seldom the case. It takes time.

Deciding to follow Jesus is no different – many people find God has been working on them for some time, even if their decision to follow Jesus looks quite sudden, particularly in the case of a man like Saul, whose story we’ll read tomorrow.

Question: Today I’d like you to think about a major change that occurred in your life. Is change difficult? Why? What’s the most important type of change we’ll experience in our lives?