HOW do I change? - ARTICLE

HOW do I change?

The secret to becoming all God designed you to be!

I have met many sincere people who really wanted to change in one way or another in their lives. Somewhere or somehow they got entangled into something that had gotten the better of them, and that they now struggle to get free from.

Others again carry scars from their past with them and in them. Somewhere in their past they have been abused or misused, either physically, or emotionally, or in some cases, both. Some of these things stem from their childhood years and have created insecurities and unhealthy tendencies that cause them to have confrontational relationships at work or at home. Others develop bad habits in the hope of burying their flaws.

Here’s the good news – There is not a single person on earth that has not to some degree or another, experienced things in their younger years, that has not affected them as adults in some way or another! None has a perfect childhood and emerges from life unscarred in one way or another.

Here is more good news – There is, in fact, a way to change, if you really do want to change!

You see, most people attempt to change themselves, by “bettering themselves”. This always fails dismally, because in healing the one thing that’s wrong, they create another that’s even worse! For instance, let’s say someone suffered from poor self-esteem as a result of the environment they grew up in. Their parents may have been poor, and as a result, they grew up in poverty. Once on their own, they follow a self-image course that helps them to become self-confident and work really hard to counter act their poverty stricken childhood to make something of themselves and to become somebody. Eventually, they achieve their dream and their status of being someone and being rich, and now they have created a new monster - being proud! Self-made, self-sufficient, self-sustaining, and needing no one to tell them how to live their lives, or what to do or not to do! Worse than that, they disqualify themselves from ever being in a position of being willing to leaving their earthly security to follow God!

We can never “fix” our problems. But there is Someone Who can!

You see to truly change; you need to come to a place where you are willing to allow Christ to come into your life and to produce Himself in you. He needs to do more than merely heal what’s broken, and what you need to be fixed, He needs to come to fill you with all He is and pour His Life (His Character, Personality, and Nature) into you, so that all of Who He is, may become all that you are. So that your nature, personality, and character, may be soaked in His Nature, Personality, and Character!

That is the way to truly experience life long change, without any defects as a result! Not only will He restore you to the whole person He created you to be, but He will do more – He will bring you into the wholeness or the holiness or all He imaged and dreamed you and your life to be when He first planned your life and created you.

So how does this kind of change take effect? It begins in your willingness for Jesus to remake your life. It begins when you are willing to invite Him into your life, not to become a Guest, but to become the property owner of your life. When you give Him yourself and the right of way to change you, and as he begins to do that, to allow Him to change you by your willing obedience and participation.

When you are willing to give yourself to His Holy Spirit and begin to follow where He leads, and allow Him to begin working deep within you, changing your attitude, your heart, your thoughts and so on, true and lasting change eminent in your life!

You see God had a very special plan in mind to set you free from whatever is holding you a prisoner and keeping you from fully being able to serve Him.

This special plan is recorded in John 8:32 – Jesus says, “You will KNOW the TRUTH and the TRUTH Will set you free (as you become intimately acquainted with it)” That last part between brackets was added by me. I added it because it is exactly what He is saying and what this verse truly means!

If you could look at the original verse in the language of the day wherein Jesus spoke these words, you would have found that the word KNOW (highlighted in the text), to be *Ginosko.

This is a very special word, because, among others, it is the word that is used as an idiom among the Jews to describe the act of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman bound in marriage.

It is also the same word used when Paul says that he would count all things as rubbish to “KNOW Christ”

So how does this relate to our deliverance and to this verse of Scripture? How do we understand it so that it makes sense in terms of what Jesus is saying here?

Here it is – What Jesus is saying is simply this,

You will become intimately acquainted (become One with Me) the Truth, and in the process of becoming one with Me, through yielding yourself to be possessed by Me, all of Me will become a part of all of you, and everything that is not of Me, will be excommunicated from your life!

In other words, “I will come to make Myself (The living Truth) a part of you and as you allow Me, I will clothe you in all I AM and unclothe you from all you were never designed to be!”

So deliverance is not an event, but a process! It is a process of change, whereby we are clothed in the New Man, born out of Christ, and unclothed from the old man born from this world! Yes, sure someone may go through exorcism where devils are cast out of them, but that does not mean that they have been “delivered”, because Jesus warns that should such not close the doors of their lives, those same demons, with seven worse will come to occupy that man and his last state will be worse than his first.

Deliverance is the “closing of doors”, the excommunication of those areas that has been territory for the devil to occupy in our lives. Whether as a result of things we may have done ourselves or as the result of what others have done to us, in years gone by.

We are changed as we allow more of Christ to possess us, and as a result of Him, excommunicate everything that is not a part of His Character, Nature, and Personality, from our lives.

So are you ready to marry Christ? Are you ready, like Paul, to say, “I count everything else as nothing for the excellence of KNOWING HIM (by being intimately acquainted with His Living Person)”?

Are you prepared to allow Jesus to really change you as a whole person? Or do you want to remain who you are and only “change” the things that bother you?

This is the question that will determine whether you will become all God has in mind for you and for your life. Or whether you will keep fixing things in your life, to at the end create more wrongs than right’s!

Deliverance comes through a willing surrender of our lives to Christ and in becoming intimately acquainted with Him. That means to spend time in His Presence, to make Him our highest priority and our greatest love. To seek Him and His will for our lives above all others, and to be willing for Him to lead us, teach and change us in ways He chooses to.

Without the willingness for this to be affected in our lives, we remain the prisoners of our own will, and even worse, the prisoners and the products of our past!

ARE YOU READY AND WILLING TO TRULY CHANGE?

Then tell Him about it right now and make the choice to invite Him into your life, not only to live in your heart but to ultimately possess your entire life.

Surrender and yield and the Holy Spirit will be there to meet you now, I believe it! Then be willing to do whatever He tells you without hesitation, postponement or reasoning about it – Simply obey and follow and He will lead you into the way of freedom!

God bless!

- Johann van der Hoven