A Challenge For Change

       So many people feel stuck, beat down, alone, and hopeless. There is pain, emptiness, hurt, and anger in the eyes of so many, I see it everyday, I recognize the prison that once held me.  It grieves my heart when I see it, because I know  it doesn't have to be that way. I know it can change, but it does require that the person wants to change and is open to it. If you are in want of change, if you desire to be free of your prison, and are open to it then I want you to take this challenge and see if it works for you.
        My challenge for change, the challenge to freedom is this, starting today and continuing for the next thirty days pray each day for your eyes, ears, and heart to be open to the Lord, pray to feel Him moving in your life, pray that God makes Himself known to you.  Then set time aside everyday to seek Him out, read scriptures and meditate on it. It doesn't matter where you start in the Bible, or even if you jump around, just try to read one or two chapters a day from any of the books in the Bible.  Make sure to do this everyday, don't skip a day if you can avoid it.
        Does this challenge work? Yes, and to be honest it was something my secular therapist told me to do. Not the praying part, but the reading of scriptures and meditating on them daily. This was her idea to help me break free from that prison of brokenness and get back onto a path of healing. Why would a secular doctor suggest this? Because she has seen it work in the past, while she herself is not a religious person she has seen that the Bible can provide encouragement, comfort, and many sound lessons. It was also a way to refocus my mind off of the negativity I was stuck in, and onto something else. I pray that if you're feeling the way I described that you take a chance and try this. You have nothing to lose and so much to gain!

Ezekiel 36:24-28
24 “ ‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. 28 Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. 


Isaiah 43:18-19        
“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

Colossians 3:7-10
 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.