What Are People Saying About You?

How can we find the inner strength to give up practices and habits that have harmed or controlled us for a long time? Is there hope for someone who has been living a disorderly life and wants to set their course straight?

A saying often repeated in Cuba and some Latin American countries claims to teach that there is not: “A tree that grows crooked can never straighten its trunk.” It is repeated so often that people tend to accept it as an absolute truth for which there is no remedy. At other times, people stubbornly insist: That’s just the way I am. Or worse still: God made me this way. In this way, they insist that everyone, including they themselves, must accept them as they are because the possibility of genuine change is almost nonexistent.

While it is true that giving up lifelong habits and ways of living is a difficult and sometimes painful process, there is no doubt that it is possible. No one, absolutely no one, should think that there is no possibility of improving their conduct and giving up habits that have led their life away from the right path. What is true is that one’s own efforts rarely succeed and that many outside forces and influences conspire to keep people from taking the right path. Nevertheless, the Bible teaches that such a transformation is possible and can be so radical and lasting that the experience is called “being born again.” The Lord Jesus first used those words when explaining to a man named Nicodemus how the Spirit of God could work in people so that they would find within themselves the strength to change their lives and do God’s will.

Millions of people in this world, upon repenting of their sins and accepting Christ, have begun a process that leads them to live a different life. Many of them have remarkable stories they would gladly tell you if you approached them and asked.

Often, when someone tries to change their life, they are criticized. Nonbelievers love to say:

“Would you look at that! They did all sorts of things in the world, and now they’re going to church.”

It is interesting that sometimes the very people who reproached such individuals for their former conduct are the ones who most doubt the reality of their conversion. The truth is that when new converts begin to experience change taking place, they feel that their lives now truly have meaning and are very happy with their new way of living. Few experiences in life are as beautiful as beginning to live the Christian life.

Never let the passage of time make you forget—or stop valuing—all that Christ has already done in you.

God bless you all!