Here is Hope That Every Person Can Change

Is there someone in your life who has become your greatest challenge?  Does it seem their character is in concrete and nothing will change them?

Here are the changes you can make in yourself that will give you hope that they can change:

1.    Believe that God is “at work” in them.

Construction is so slow.  It seems like years for a bridge or a highway to finally be completed.  You grow tired of the “men working” signs!

God’s grace and saving mercy is at work.  Elijah saw a cloud “the size of a man’s hand.”  Never doubt that God is at work to change the life of every single human being…even in a very small beginning.

2.   Hold them in your heart.

It’s so easy for your heart to turn loose of people.  We write them off.  They can be so difficult! 

Ask God to help you hold them “in” your heart.  When I no longer inwardly think about or care about what is happening to someone, my heart has become hard.  Hold them there…you may be the only person who is.

“Love has to have boundaries. ”

3.    Love them with Christ’s love.

Let’s face it.  We run dry on love for some people.  We go to the well and the bucket comes up empty.

Go to a different well. Go to the well of Christ.  It is bottomless and endless.  He was sitting at an actual  well in Samaria when He met and forgave a woman who had been married five times.   

There are endless resources of love down in the well of Christ’ love for mankind.

4.    Love and discern at the same time.

“Love” and “discernment” have to go together or you will be taken advantage of continually.  When you don’t exercise discernment, that does not help them.  It enables them.

Love has to have boundaries.  Give them opportunities to grow and change but don’t change your convictions.  You have to draw a line in things illegal, immoral, or life-threatening.        

5.    Listen more than you lecture.

What are the roots of their difficult behavior?  Are they nursing a rejection or bitterness?  Do you hear anywhere that you may be contributing to their anger? 

Seek to “hear.”  Seek to “understand.”  Seek to change yourself.  Often, they have heard every lecture and now they completely tune it out. 

There will be a time when they will hit “rock bottom” and be broken enough to listen.  Until then, seek to listen and understand.

That’s plenty enough to get you started!  No one knows how difficult it can be to live with a broken, unhappy, belligerent or even addicted person. 

You do. 

Pray through these 5 things every morning before you physically encounter them.

There is hope for God to change EVERY PERSON.  He may have to start by changing me.