We will soon have a new year to start or begin again in, so what will you do with it? Will you just hope for a little less waistline or maybe a better job? Maybe you will decide that you will be a better person this year and be nicer to people who you would’ve ignored in years past? All of these good things…these good intentions are wonderful, but if you haven’t changed, if your heart and your soul hasn’t changed, how will you do this?

I am not writing this to criticize people in general, it’s just that problem of character that all of mankind has. If our character hasn’t changed in the past year or two, how can you just decide to be better, when you aren’t really any better than you were? Making resolutions to lose weight or to be a nicer person is great, but if the person doing this or attempting to do this hasn’t truly changed, then it is impossible. Man cannot change himself just by willing it, just as you can’t grow any taller or change your hair color by wanting to do so.

God is the only One Who can change your heart, which changes your character and allows you to be that better person and live a better more productive life through Him. We can’t do it on our own nor can we seek help from someone else to achieve our goal! Being associated with Jesus every day, praying for strength daily, reading God’s Word daily, is the only path that leads us toward Him and being the person that He knows we can be.

Many people don’t like and won’t like the things which I have written here and I really don’t care. I am tasked with the job of telling people, all people, that the only way to get to Heaven and be a better person here and now is by asking Jesus into your life and your heart. Then living it out daily!! You can’t just say the words to the sinner’s prayer without conviction in your life and your heart, and then just go back to doing what you were doing before! Living a changed, ransomed life through Jesus every day, praying and asking for His strength to get you through every day, reading and learning more about Him every day from the Word, that is the life of someone who is seeking to know God and Jesus! Not just say, “Hi!” one morning in church or in your living room, and then go on as if nothing happened!

How can anyone truly and honestly meet the Creator of the universe and not be changed?! It shouldn’t be possible but many people do it every Sunday or whenever they go to church. They hear the message and seem to agree with it and sometimes they even respond to it physically by walking down and bowing their head and maybe even getting wet in the baptismal pool, yet they go back to their lives without much of a change inside and sooner or later, the lack of change becomes evident. How? Because, there was no conviction from the Spirit that brought them to their knees and made them realize how far away from God they really are, that is how you can go through the motions and still not have Jesus or a change in your life! How do I know this? Because I did it. Three times I went down front and three times I went through with the baptism in water, but nothing changed because God had not made that evident in my life that I needed the change!