How things change

Last night was our housegroup, and the first one that I attended on my own. Mrs H and I are both still recovering from our sleepless weekend but I really wanted to go, so I went and she will be doing the Friday taxi run :) (It’s not as grim as it sounds – we both seem to end up wanting to do the run. It’s a couple of hours out of the house for some peace and quiet and I love using the time to pray)

The Church has been doing a great series on evangelism which has really challenged me to look at where I’ve been, where I’m going, how I’ve got there and what has changed along the way… and it’s that last one that struck me so much last night.

We did a small exercise where we had to fill two columns – one “Before Christ” (or BC as a few of us put) and one “After Christ” (or AC, surprisingly – although I did have to behave and not append the /DC ;) ) – into those columns we had to write single words to describe ourselves in those states.

Boy, that was fun – I couldn’t stop. After writing about 20 words in the BC column, and still missing out loads that applied, I had to force myself to move on to the AC… and was surprised at how few words actually got written there. When we looked at the words though, it turned out that the handful of words in the AC column totally wiped out the BC list.

I was stunned as I looked and realised, once more, just how much I had changed… for example here are some of my “Before Christ” words:
Lost, Lonely, Angry, Hatefilled, Resentful, Aimless, Crude, Impatient, Hurt, Proud
And here are some of the “After Christ”:
Found, Loved, Purpose, Peaceful, Awestruck, Humbled, Confident

The changes are huge… and, in all honesty, it wasn’t until I sat down and thought about how I was that I realised just who I was, and who I am now. Some of the words in my “Before Christ” column are very strong words, and very intensly emotional, and yet they are so accurate. Yes, I was hatefilled and I was lonely and boy was I resentful (just ask Mrs H what I was like if she wanted to go out to too many meetings)

There’s only One who can change a life so dramatically overnight – and I am just so in Awe of what God has done for me. I’m a work in progress, but the work that has been done so far is miraculous as my life has completely changed.

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