What if the thing you’re trying so hard to change isn’t actually the real problem?

Every new year, we make lists of everything we want to change—our bodies, habits, homes, spending, schedules, relationships—but what if we’re trying to solve the wrong problems? In this solo episode, Collide founder Willow Weston challenges us to look beneath our surface-level resolutions and ask what’s really happening in our hearts. Through Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus and God’s promise in Ezekiel to replace hearts of stone with hearts of flesh, Willow reminds us that real transformation doesn’t begin with trying harder; it begins when we allow Jesus to collide with the deeper places of our lives. Instead of covering pain, insecurity, loneliness, anxiety, or brokenness with temporary fixes, Jesus invites us to open every room of our hearts and let Him do what we cannot do for ourselves: make what has become old, hardened, and broken new again.

Meet Willow Weston

Willow Weston is the founder and director of Collide and host of The Collide Podcast. Through her teaching and leadership, Willow invites women to authentically collide with Jesus in the real, messy, painful, and beautiful places of their lives and allow Him to bring healing and transformation.

In this solo conversation, Willow gets personal about our desire to fix ourselves and challenges us to trade surface-level solutions for the deeper work Jesus wants to do in our hearts.

Key Takeaways

• When you’re trying to change a behavior: Look deeper. What appears to be the problem may actually be the way you’re coping with a deeper hurt, longing, fear, or insecurity.
• When you’re focused on changing the outside: Remember that God starts with the inside. Scripture reminds us that while people look at outward appearances, God looks at the heart.
• When you’re frustrated that you can’t change yourself: Stop believing it all depends on you. Willow reminds us that ultimately, God is the One who makes us new and restores what has become broken.
• When your heart feels hardened: Don’t lose hope. Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones reminds us that God can breathe life into places that seem completely dead.
• When you know something isn’t right: Get honest about the condition of your heart. Recognizing where you’ve become bitter, calloused, fearful, hopeless, or distant can be the beginning of allowing God to heal it.
• When you’ve invited Jesus into only part of your life: Open another door. Willow compares our hearts to houses where we sometimes allow God into the living room while keeping Him out of the bedroom, office, relationships, finances, parenting, or other private spaces.
• When you want a fresh start: Ask God for something deeper than a new habit. Pray with the psalmist: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

How This Episode Will Encourage You:

Jesus wants to collide with the deepest parts of your story—not just change your habits, but bring healing to what has become broken, hardened, or hopeless. The God who made your heart wants to meet you there and make it new.

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Welcome to the Collide Podcast. We're a growing community of everyday gals colliding with Jesus in our mess, our pain, our joy, and our stories. We value showing up as we truly are.

So that's what you'll find here, walls and masks being torn down so that we can allow Jesus to meet us where we truly are and hear about other women doing the same. We can't wait to collide with you.

Welcome to the Collide Podcast.

I'm Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide, and I just love that every week I get to sit down and think about what it is that God would lay on my heart to share with those of you listening.

And, you know, this week, as I think about how we're a few weeks into the New Year, and I don't know how many of you have set New Year's resolutions, but it feels like every year, as January 1st approaches, we sort of take stock of our life and decide that this is the time to get it all in order, right? And change our ways and make new what has gotten so very old.

And as women, I think we're so hard on ourselves when we look at our lives, it feels so easy to write a list of all the things that we think, think we need to change. And according to Webster's Dictionary, the word resolution means the act of finding an answer or solution to a conflict or problem.

And I find this interesting because this definition tells us that as we look at our culture, what we tend to think our problems are.

The solutions to many of our problems, if you look at our resolutions, are to drop 20 pounds, to stop eating sugar, including whole pints of Ben and Jerry's, to exercise daily, to quit online shopping, or wake up earlier than we have been, because then maybe if we do all of these things, our problems will be solved. So we set these New Year's resolutions, and when we do, we are in essence saying, hey, maybe if I do this or I do that, I will solve my problems.

We might not think that's what we're saying, but that's actually what we're saying. You know, we're. We're saying, hey, if I organize this room, that could be in hoarders.

That will result my problems, or if I fit in a smaller size Jean, people will like me more. Or if I stop watching the Bachelor and start reading the Bible, maybe I won't feel so empty.

And don't get me wrong, I mean, many of these things might be healthy habits that we could stand to lean into, but what is troubling to me is that when you think about these New Year's resolutions, they are not the answers to our problems. Your problem is not that you are fat, if that's what you describe yourself to be. Your problem is not being disorganized. Your problem is not tv.

Your problem is not binge eating. Your problem is not a dry well of men to date. Your problem is not being lazy. Your problem is not drinking too much.

And maybe you're listening right now and thinking, how does this lady know what my problem is? Well, I know that the thing we think will solve our problem is often actually not our problem.

In fact, I remember sitting in a coffee shop with a friend who counsels women with eating disorders and I was expressing to her some frustration I had around gaining quite a bit of weight after some grueling years in ministry, not taking enough self care time and having some thyroid issue fun. And I was super discouraged and I wanted to meet with her and just sort of pick her brain.

And I kind of, I think on the inside wanted her to just say, go on some extreme diet that's gonna, you know, solve all your problems and shed this extra weight that you've put on. And she looked at me and said, don't go on a diet or limit any foods. And I thought what? That was the last thing I thought she would say.

Here this woman who's an amazing nutritionist that works with people with eating disorders, challenged me saying, food is not the problem. There is something else going on within me and food is maybe what I turn to because of the problem.

I have to get to the root of the problem, just like you have to get to the root of the problem. So let me try and explain. If someone eats too much, their problem is not eating too much. Their problem is something deeper. So what is it?

Maybe it's a way to self soothe when they're feeling anxious. The problem then is not overeating.

The problem is a weighed down hard and a misguided understanding that turning to food will take that nagging feeling away. But rather than looking at the actual problem, we seem to locate the problem on a severely shallow level. We say, I have an eating problem.

So we stop eating gluten, sugar, fat and find ourselves gnawing on carrot sticks.

And even if it works and we get used to eating like rabbits and looking hot in jeans, we have not dealt with the deeply rooted problem and we're still heavily weighed down. And our heavy heart does weird things to us, right?

Because maybe it starts turning to trying Too hard in relationships or controlling circumstances or birthing and eating disorder. Now, this is only one example, but the point is, is that when you and I resolve to do something, we are saying that is the answer to our problem.

And I would challenge us to be women who go deeper to the heart of the issue. Maybe your problem isn't drinking. Maybe it's deep, unresolved pain from your past. And the wine won't heal you.

It will only numb you, which leaves you never getting whole. Maybe your problem isn't sexual promiscuity. Maybe it's a deep desire to feel chosen and loved.

And sleeping around just keeps leaving you feeling unchosen and unlovable. But yet your heart prostitutes itself in the hopes of getting what you long for. And when you do, it never seems to come.

If we're going to resolve anything this year, you guys, we need to resolve to get to the heart of our problems. Don't resolve to solve your problems with shallow band aids that leave you worse off.

One thing that I think makes Collide such a unique and beautiful movement is that we desire to take women deeper below the surface, to get really real and go there. And though that might feel uncomfortable, it's right and it's good and it's raw, and it's there that God can truly heal and work reside.

Jesus always got to the heart of the issue with people. In fact, Jesus starts there when he collides with people. And God knows what our issues are.

And he desires to make us fully whole, to truly resolve our problems. In the same way that we want things to be made new. So does Jesus. But maybe in different places, spaces and ways than we're thinking.

See, Jesus suggests a complete makeover too. He suggests a total restart, a new birth. And this new birth might not be what you think it is.

In John 3, Jesus collides with this man named Nicodemus, who is a pretty important guy. He was a Pharisee and was looked to as an example of what it means to follow God.

He was in the Sanhedrin, which was basically like the Jewish Supreme Court. So here's this big deal Jewish spiritual leader and he comes to Jesus. And what is super interesting is that Nico comes to Jesus in the night.

Most commentators agree that the reference to night is a picture of a man who was in an uneasy state of unbelief. That's what the new American commentary says. Maybe he didn't want people to know he was hoping to talk to Jesus.

But this guy is clearly not feeling right enough to come in the light of day. And when he surveys his life, something's off. Something needs to happen, to change, to be made different. And he's like us.

He's got a problem and he seems like he's looking for a solution. And so he goes out of his way to collide with Jesus. And this is what he says.

He says, rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform the signs you're doing if God were not with him. Nicodemus greeted Jesus as rabbi.

For Nico to make Jesus his equal is super fascinating because most of his counterparts would not have seen Jesus as an equal, but less than them.

Most Jewish leaders, spiritual leaders, would have seen Jesus as a man with a hammer, a carpenter, maybe naive or ignorant because he had little time to study the law. But Nico calls Jesus Rabbi. Either Nico is flattering Jesus to get what he wants, or he sees there's really something special about this Jesus.

He's been watching Jesus do crazy things. And Nico recognizes that it would be impossible for Jesus to do those things if God were not with him.

Jesus himself has never been one to encourage belief based on signs. In fact, Jesus called for belief all the time.

Without signs, Jesus can see right through Nicodemus just like he could the woman at the well in Zacchaeus. We have a God who knows when we sit and when we rise. He knows our thoughts from afar. He discerns our going out and our lying down.

So here God in the flesh stood with this big deal spiritual boy. And he knew exactly what Nico longed for, and he knew exactly what Nico needed.

Jesus knew what Nico's problem really was and why he came hiding in the night. And Jesus said to him in verse three, very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.

Here, Nico wanted God to do something inexplicable so life could be good. He thought his problem was that he just couldn't see God.

So if he had some signs, then he would believe in this crazy Jesus, then he would do whatever God asked, then he would say yes. And we sort of get this line of thinking. Jesus reply makes it clear that what Nico's hoping will fill him won't work.

What he thinks will restore him won't do the trick. So often we fixate on the one thing we think will make us new and solve our problems. And yet it might not be what will.

And Jesus says, in a sense, oh no, what you need to be is born again. The word in Greek is and know Then and can mean born from above.

Jesus said to Nicodemus, what I believe, he says to you and I, something bigger, something greater, something inexplicable, something beyond you, needs to happen in your life. What is this total makeover, this restart Jesus is talking about when he says we must be born again?

In the same way that this brings up questions for us, it also did for Nicodemus. Jesus answers him very truly. I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the spirit.

Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the spirit gives birth to spirit. This is where we get super confused. But Nico would have most likely understood exactly what Jesus was alluding to.

Most likely Nico wouldn't have liked it.

In verses 10 through 13, Jesus was calling Nicodemus to a faith beyond knowledge, rule following, status, ethnicity, inheritance, site and going to church. The connection between water and spirit was very familiar to Jewish people and comes straight out of their own story.

See Israel, God's chosen people had been driven from their land because they continued to over and over again make ugly, damaging, destructive, selfish and sinful choices. They said they honored God, but they didn't. They cried out to him when they needed him, using him like a tool for their purposes.

They were about as loyal as a 2 timing, no good cheater. They had blood on their hands and no way to get it off. They ruined the future for their children and their children's children.

They stopped being a light and went skinny dipping in darkness. They adulterated themselves to whoever would take them. They no longer revered God and no longer showed respect for one another.

They didn't deserve God's forgiveness and grace. And yet look at what God says to his people in Ezekiel 36. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean.

From all your uncleanliness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you.

I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

These words from Ezekiel are the words of regeneration. That sounds like a big, lofty, textbooky word, but it just means to be formed or created again, to be reborn.

Nicodemus would have known exactly what Jesus was saying. Nico, you know what your problem is? You need a new heart. Niko would have been tracking with what Jesus meant.

He would have been taken all the way back to that passage. In Ezekiel, Jesus was suggesting that Nico needed a new birth because with new birth comes a new heart.

And in 1st Samuel 16, 7, the Bible says man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. Isn't that funny?

Because so many of our New Year's resolutions have to do with our outward appearance and not as much on what's going on in our heart. But God isn't looking at your big booty.

He isn't distracted by your small house or your mom jeans or your inexperienced resume or your status on Facebook. God looks at the heart. And here God stood, his eyes piercing right through Nicodemus chest and he saw a heart of stone.

I wonder what God sees when he looks at my heart and your heart. Maybe what is wrong with us is not that we need to look prettier, but we need a new heart.

Maybe what is wrong with us is not that we need to save up money to get the house of our dreams, but maybe we need God to clean out this because our heart has gotten dirty.

Maybe what is wrong with us is not that we need to make new friends, but we need God to do surgery on this heart that seems to give up so easily on the relationships we already have. Maybe it's not a drinking problem, a husband problem, a weight problem, a job problem, a lazy problem. Maybe friends, it's a heart problem.

And somewhere along the way you and I can get messy, in need of cleansing. Our hearts can turn into stone and we end up in need of new ones.

It's crazy how our heart can travel places and we don't even know that it's on a vacation in Chile, Antarctica.

While we're here working in our hometown, we can just wake up one day and realize that our heart daydreamed itself right into a brothel and we didn't even know it. We can come to our senses and find our heart caught the first flight it could to a deserted island hiding from people so it doesn't get hurt.

I have conversations with women all the time where they become surprised by the state of their own heart. And perhaps even you might be amazed at where your heart has traveled to if you were to allow yourself to see where it is.

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And here's the problems with our solutions. We're hoping for the wrong things to be made new. We start with the outside and God starts with the inside.

We say, if I just stop drinking, if I just go to the gym, if I just save up money, if I just. And God says, if you just let me. If you just let me give you a new heart and a new spirit.

Another problem with our solutions is that we're trying to recreate ourselves. You cannot make yourself new again. Think about it. What can we possibly do? We can barely train puppies. We fake Spanish.

We can hardly get along with the people we love most. We burn Pinterest recipes. We avoid cleaning toilets and put off cleaning sheets. I mean, what can we do to change ourselves?

It is only God who can change us. You might need a new heart, and no one can give you a new heart except for God.

The surgery that needs to take place in your life and my life life to mend up and make us whole again. What has gotten so very broken can only be stitched by God himself, the Restorer, the Creator and the Redeemer.

The other problem with our solutions is that we are used to our heart of stone. And frankly, heart surgery sounds scary. So we stay where we've traveled. Antarctica has become home. Wine does the trick.

We know this heart of stone, so sometimes we just decide to keep it. God saw Israel's problem was their heart, and God saw their solutions. And their solutions were only making their problems worse.

After he said, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit, he gave Ezekiel a vision of a boneyard. In chapter 37, God set me in the middle of a valley. It was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them.

And I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, son of man, can these bones live? And I said, sovereign Lord, you alone know.

Then he said to me, prophesy to these bones and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones. I will make breath enter you and you will come to life.

I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin. I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded.

And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them, and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

Then he said to me, prophesy to the breath, Prophesy, son of man, and say to it, this is what the Sovereign Lord says. Come, breath from the four winds and breathe into these slain that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them.

They came to life and stood upon their feet a vast army. Then he said to me, son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say our bones are dried up and our hope is gone. We are cut off.

Therefore, prophesy and say to them, this is what the Sovereign Lord says. My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them. I will bring you back to the land of Israel.

Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord. When I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my spirit in you, and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land.

Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord. See, God showed Ezekiel that his people were up a creek without a paddle. God's people had a flat tire with no spare. God's people were in deep water.

And God's people had gotten themselves between a rock and a hard place. No, in fact, they were a rock and a hard place. God's people were dead as bones. God's people had problems, and their solutions weren't working.

And it was then that God said, your hearts have become like stone. It's almost like you're dead.

And the same God that breathed life into dust in the story of the first birth in Genesis 2, that same God showed up in a boneyard and breathed life into what was dead. To a people who had gotten so far from who they were intended to be, this God was promising restoration.

What God wants to do for Israel here in Ezekiel is what God longs to do for you and I.

He wants to restore us back to people with hearts of flesh who are no longer hardened and unresponsive and callous, but soft, open, sensitive, loving and compassionate. And if God can make us once, he can make us twice, three times, and one Jillion times new. God can make us new again and again and again, again.

God is a God who can take what died and resuscitated back to life. God is a God who can get to the heart of a of the problem. God is a God of new starts.

God is a God who made your heart once and he can remake your heart over and over again. And he is a God that when you collide with him you will never be the same. Just look at what happens with Nicodemus.

It's crazy because Nicodemus came to Jesus and wanted signs. He thought signs were the solutions to his problems. And what did Jesus give him himself? It's like this guy wants miraculous signs from God.

And the greatest miracle of all is that God is standing right in front of him. They occupy the same space, they're breathing the same air.

And Jesus said, you need to be born from AB and the one who is from above, he came down and he stands right in front of you. Not only does God stand right in front of you, he wants to move inside of you and make your messy heart his home.

Is there a miracle more miraculous than that? Something miraculous did happen within Nicodemus heart in this collision. Because when they collided again. Look at what happens if you look in John 7.

Nicodemus defends Jesus in the light of day in John 19. Nicodemus loved and cared for Jesus body after his death. And Nicodemus knew when Jesus died it was so Nicodemus could live.

Jesus told him that way before the cross in John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he would give his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

We are a people who want solutions so we can change. We want to have something to do to become new.

And because of that, I kind of feel like you want me to give you three things you can do in the new year to see the changes you want to change become your reality. You want me to give you a formula, a step one through three plan of solutions to replace yours that aren't working?

I'd love that too, but I can't give you those. Here are a few ideas of some solutions to our problems. Verses that we need to realize that we're not the solution to our problems.

God says what to Nicodemus? He says I, I will, I will, I will. I will make you a new heart. I will give you a new spirit. I God is the solution.

And you can try everything else, but everything else is only causing you more problems. We can recognize the place our heart is in. The beginning of getting a new heart is often recognizing our heart of stone.

And Nico had a moment where Jesus made clear the state of his heart. But it was up to Nicodemus to recognize it.

And I challenge you in this new year to spend as much time as you are, you know, in your new gym, also taking some time to evaluate where's my heart at? And allow Jesus to collide with you in that place. And then one thing you can do is pray the prayer of the psalmist from Psalm 51.

Create in me a few clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me. And know this, your heart is like a house. Allow God to move in.

God says in Revelation 3:20, I stand at the door and knock. Anyone who hears my voice and opens the door, I will come and eat with him and he with me. I liken our heart to a house. And God is knocking.

And you can hear someone knock at the door. And you can hide because you don't want to talk, or you can yell through the crack, I'm busy.

Or you can turn all the lights out and pretend you aren't there, but the doorbell will start ringing incessantly. And you can keep fighting opening that door, or you can open the door.

And for some of you who've never opened that door and let God move in and you're listening today, that will look like a complete overhaul of your house. It will be like a house cleaner, an interior designer, a chef, a dj, a handyman, and a plumber came in and spiffed things up.

And I can promise you that you will love your house so much more than you ever have. I can honestly say that is how I feel since the first day I let God come into my house.

But what's interesting is that you can open that door and just let God into the living room.

And some of you, you know, you've let God chill on your couch for years, but you've never let him go into your bedroom, or you've never let him into your bathroom, or you've never let him into your work office, or maybe you've let him kind of move around, but really only occupy one space at a time. And you kind of put limits on where he can go and when he can do it. And that's when things get messy.

And those rooms you haven't been allowing God into, the ones you've left vacant, those now, they are why you might feel like you have a heart of stone.

So allow God in all the rooms, all the time if you have been what you call born again, which by the way is not a term to brag about and one up other people as if to say you're somehow more spiritual or tight with God or you arrived.

But if you've been born again, if God has moved in and given you a new heart and put His Spirit in you, if that has happened, then you should be walking with his spirit. Galatians 5:25 says, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

You should be brewing coffee with the Spirit, disciplining your kids with the Spirit, dating with the Spirit, spending money with the Spirit, allowing God to move in looks like Stop fighting him. Don't hide anymore. Let go of pretending God is not interested in a one time visit. That's why your heart is in the place it is in.

So invite him in and allow him to stay.

The only part you can play in God changing your heart is to recognize your heart of stone, recognize the rooms that you haven't let him into or the entire house and receive. You can simply open the door and he will walk in. And as Jesus says in John 14, he will make his home in you.

In you, the cold, hard, drab, abandoned, vacant, bitter, ugly, hateful, jealous, selfish house you sometimes call your heart. And that's when what is old becomes new again and again and again.

So today I'm actually going to end by praying for you and I and inviting God in to our hearts.

God, I come before you and I know that you are bigger than I can imagine and you can meet people where they're at right now, wherever they're at, whatever is going on in their life and whatever state of heart they might currently have.

And God, I pray that you would give them the ability to open the door and let you in and that you would come into those places with such grace and tenderness, God, that you would sweep the house with forgiveness and that you would free us. God, I pray that you would come in and take occupancy and where there's hopelessness you would replace it with hope.

God, where we've gotten calloused and bitter in relationships, that you would instead give us love and compassion, God, move into our lives and give us new hearts. That is our desire. This year we pray this in Jesus name, Amen.

Thanks for tuning in to keep up with us.

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