Someone wisely said that “People are more motivated to change when the pain of staying the same is worse than the pain of change.” I’ll give you a second to process that. Some might call this rock bottom.
Change is hard, sometimes extremely hard. But sometimes, so is staying the same. Upon this realization, the only thing left to do is “Choose your hard.”
At our two shelters, we see men and women in the throes of this decision. Staying the same is attractive because it is comfortable and familiar. And when addiction is involved, it can seem impossible to even imagine life any other way. For many, that life has become the only life they know. The shame has to be deadened because it is too much to live with. The physical cravings can become overwhelming and even life-threatening.
Doug put it this way, “I did what I wanted to do and worried about the consequences later.”
At a recent graduation at Faith Refuge, 3 women shared their stories in the most honest and vulnerable way. Each one told how their life changed when they found themselves in a whirlwind of poor choices. Relationships, alcohol, drugs, unplanned pregnancies, crime and eventually, jail. They had all experienced so much loss. Two of them had given up their children for someone else to raise. They all had become estranged from their families. And they all said basically the same thing in the end … “Something has to change.”
Looking at them now, you would never imagine that they had experienced so much pain. Even though they had lost so much, they weren’t losers. Christ made sure of that.
All three gave Jesus the glory and all the credit for saving them from a certain future of prison or even death. And without exception, they all agreed they could not have changed without Him.
1 Corinthians 5:17 says, Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
I praise God that we can offer the Gospel , the Good News, to those who enter our shelters. When He changes someone, He makes them new.
