Should we allow God to change us or should we resist.
If we begin with the fact that all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God, then we would realize that we have much work to do on ourselves and that God also has much work to do in us. There is no doubting the the huge amount of changes to ensue when we receive God in our hearts. Sadly, however, the change we should realize either happens very slowly or not at all because we resist God.
When we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour, we begin to look for and adopt Godly principles, even though we could have had some of them before our born again experience. God then uses the Holy Spirit to bring revelations to us or speak through other persons to make us aware of our sins. Our job then is to act upon this new awareness, making every effort to change our wrong or bad ways. Through all of this process we should never cease to go to God in prayer, asking for strength and courage to make these changes or to overcome in some other way . If we fail to invite God into the process then it means that we might not have the change(s) we desire or that in fact we did not really want to change at all .
Many Christians are out there functioning with portions of their Christian life, that need changing, firmly stuck where it is. This is like trying to push back a drawer in place that has a broken guide and therefore gets stuck every time. Like myself, who suffer from impatience and anger issues, there are persons out there suffering from a myriad of issues.
The problem is not the problems themselves, but that we fail to deal with them or in some cases we fail to deal with them effectively. Probably the greatest inhibitors to fixing our issues are pride and the flesh! The flesh says,”curse louder, say the worst things so it will hurt”, then the pride says,”although I am wrong I will not say I am sorry and as a matter of fact I will not speak to that person anymore”. Humility would say, “I know I am wrong so I will apologize and I will repent”. It benefits the Kingdom of Heaven and ourselves when we are humble.
By being unforgiving, we walk around with plenty baggage and instead of pulling persons to us and to God, we drive them away. Many young people have dropped out of learning institutions over the years. Some because of financial problems, some because they have run ins with the law, others give up for no proper reason, while some have been left to languish, unable to complete their education because their parent(s) or guardian have withdrawn their support as chastisement for some error the child may have committed. Young children and young people in general need all the parental support they can get in order to survive. The support we give as a parent should never be to condone wrong doing, but rather to give them enough chance to correct their mistakes and to find a firm footing in life.
If we stop to think, listen and to hear we can all become better persons, better Christians. It is time we start to embrace Godly principles more and make the effort to change.
B.C.