Review: ‘You Can Change’ by Tim Chester

You Can Change: God’s transforming power for our sinful behaviour and negative emotions
Tim Chester
IVP, Leicester, 2008. 192pp.

Picking up Tim Chester’s You Can Change, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a self-help book. It has all the trappings—a title promising transformation, testimonies of change, an invitation to choose a personal “change project”, ten chapters with titles like ‘What would you like to change?’ and questions for self-reflection. You Can Change is designed to communicate to a society obsessed with personal change, but it turns the self-help genre on its head.

It quickly becomes apparent that the only change Tim Chester is interested in is transformation into the likeness of Christ. The power for change is not inner strength or willpower, but the grace of God through the death of his Son, applied by his Spirit. The method for change is not rules and programs, but faith and repentance. The context for change is not the counsellor’s office or a solitary retreat, but the community of God’s people speaking the truth in love. The goal of change is not to find yourself, but to forget yourself in love and service. The message is not so much that you can change as that God can change you.

You Can Change is honestly and engagingly written. Chester is an experienced pastor familiar with the messiness of people’s lives, and he includes many reallife examples. Instead of using superficial proof texts, he prints Bible passages in full and exegetes them clearly and carefully. Chester outlines the building blocks of the Bible’s teaching on change, such as becoming who we already are in Christ and sanctification through faith not law. He doesn’t shy away from controversial issues like sinless perfection and the place of counselling, responding to these with discernment and clarity. Chester writes, “I’ve read books full of good theology and I’ve read books full of day-to-day advice. What this book tries to do is connect the truth about God with our Monday-morning struggles” (p. 13). He succeeds: his book is both theologically astute and practical. As Alison Payne puts it, this book is “like cognitive behaviour therapy driven by the gospel and the character of God”.¹

Many of us have lost confidence in the sufficiency of the gospel to change persistent behaviours and negative emotions. We’ve lost the skill and sensitivity of previous generations as they applied the Bible to issues like addiction, anxiety and depression. We’ve forgotten the days when Puritan pastors like Richard Baxter cared for individuals suffering from delusion or “melancholy” (see The Reformed Pastor) and when popular preachers like D Martyn Lloyd-Jones counselled discouraged parishioners (see Spiritual Depression). In recent years, their wisdom has been recovered by the biblical counselling movement (see Jay E Adams’s The Big Umbrella, Tim Lane and Paul Tripp’s How People Change and Elyse Fitzpatrick’s Idols of the Heart). These books have clearly influenced Tim Chester, and he combines their insights with classics on holiness by authors like John Owen, JC Ryle, JI Packer and Jerry Bridges to produce an unusually readable and practical book on Christian growth.

You Can Change has a tight argument. Chapters 1-3 lay the groundwork: the what, why and how of change. Tim Chester exhorts us to give up our small ambitions to be emotionally healthy or relationally secure for the greater goal of transformation into the likeness of Christ (the ‘what’). He invites us to stop trying to change in order to prove ourselves to God, others and ourselves, and instead realize that we are already acceptable to God through the cross (the ‘why’). He encourages us to put aside rules, vows and programs, and depend in faith on God’s work in us through the gospel (the ‘how’). Chapters 4-6 form the centre of the book’s argument. Chapter 4 establishes that we can’t blame emotions and behaviour on our circumstances, for they come from the heart. With our hearts, we think and believe, and with our hearts, we worship and desire. The key to change is therefore “the only two spiritual disciplines” (p. 153) —faith (turning from lies to the truth that God is great, glorious, good and gracious²) and repentance (turning from our sinful desires and worship of idols to the God who is better and bigger than anything or anyone else). Chapters 7-9 spell out the practicalities of change, identifying obstacles that stop us changing, outlining strategies that support faith and repentance, and encouraging us to turn our ‘pious churches’ into ‘messy churches’ of honest confession and mutual encouragement. Chapter 10 invites us to a life consisting of daily warfare, slow but certain change, and hope in God’s power and grace.

There are four areas in which I can see You Can Change proving invaluable:

• Personal change: Over a ten-week period, I used myself as a guinea pig to test the book’s claims. Week by week, I worked through the chapters and exercises, choosing as my “change project” an issue I’ve avoided for many years. You Can Change brought me to the foot of the cross again and again to rejoice in God’s forgiving and transforming grace. It helped me to change unhelpful thinking patterns, turn from my idolatrous desires, and establish good strategies to support my faith and repentance.
• One-to-one ministry and counselling: If you’re anything like me, you often feel at a loss for words in one-to-one ministry. Men, what do you say to that young man who’s been sleeping with his girlfriend or indulging his addiction to pornography? You’ve looked at Bible passages condemning his behaviour and you’ve encouraged repentance, but he doesn’t change. Women, what do you say to a Christian sister who suffers from depression or panic attacks? Do you speak hesitant words of comfort, send her to a counsellor or skirt around the topic? You Can Change gave me the confidence to bridge the gap between the big truths of God’s transforming grace and the struggles people face. I wish it had been published before certain sinful behaviours became entrenched in my life and before I had ineptly attempted to help the people I met one to one.
• Small groups, prayer triplets and training courses: I’ve been nagging my husband to use You Can Change in his university ministry ever since I finished reading it! It’s ideal for a seven or ten-week training course or Bible study group: the chapters are clear, engaging and not overly long, and each one concludes with questions for reflection and practical exercises. A church could use it to help its members to grow in godliness and equip them for mutual ministry. A small group or prayer triplet could use it to help one another work through issues of godliness.
• Pastors and Christian leaders: An experienced minister once told me that he would look at his congregation each week and know that every married couple was thinking the same thing: “All the other marriages in this church are stronger, healthier and happier than ours”. Many of us argue on the way to church, but play ‘happy families’ once we arrive. We wouldn’t dream of confessing to an addiction to gambling or pornography. As a result, many individuals avoid church because that’s where the people who have it together go. Tim Chester’s alternative of a “messy church” where people speak the truth to one another in love is a welcome remedy that may help pastors and other Christian leaders as they shepherd their flocks.

The book has some potential weaknesses, but Chester anticipates and responds to most of these. Firstly, with books that encourage us to examine our lives and thought processes, there is always the risk of becoming self-absorbed, but Chester warns against “idol hunts” and introspective self-analysis (pp. 120-21). Secondly, I’m not sure I agree that Romans 6 is about freedom from the power as well as the penalty of sin, but at least Chester (unlike many writers) explains exactly what he means: we’re free not to commit particular sins, but we will always be sinners in this life (pp. 55, 191-2). Thirdly, Chester’s encouragement of honest rebuke and confession could lead to thoughtless communication, even though he makes it clear that not all honesty is appropriate or loving (pp. 171-79). Fourthly, I found his comments on the wrong beliefs that may underlie depression personally helpful and challenging, but some readers will find them con – fronting and even simplistic (p. 82).³ I wouldn’t give this book to someone experiencing severe depression or anxiety; instead, I’d give it to their counsellors, or to young people to prepare them for such experiences.

Tim Chester’s You Can Change is a marvellous book. It belongs on the shelves of leaders, pastors, counsellors, trainers, mentors—indeed, every Christian. I encour – age you to read it if you struggle with persistent sin or debilitating emotions, if you want to encourage and disciple others more effectively, or if you’re responsible for teaching and training people. It is doctrinally sound, and covers an immense amount of material. But it is short, readable and practical enough to give to friends who usually struggle to get through Christian books. It has joined the classics on my shelves as a work I will read, refer to and recommend again and again.