Change is inevitable and is commonly associated with pain, growth, or happiness. These experiences are connected to the memories that you hold. You may not decide to embrace change, but one thing is certain, people and the things around you will eventually change. It is important to know that you are a spirit in a body; constantly exposed to information that traffics through your sense of taste, sight, touch, smell, and sound. You cannot embrace change without your mind being involved or the progress of your actions toward improving your state of being.
What is change, how do we change, and what are we changing for?
Change is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary to make or become different; to improve the bad parts of your behavior; to change over from one thing to something else is to stop doing or using one thing and to start doing or using another; or to improve.
Take a minute to quickly review your life from the day you were born. Wow! How far back did you recall? You probably could recall as far back as age three or four. There may be some vague moments of you playing at kindergarten school with friends or eating spaghetti and meatballs out of a wooden bowl or from your school’s plastic thermos somewhere outside on a bench. At age six or seven there about, you may have experienced a series of physical, mental or sexual abuse from family members or family friends. Perhaps you’ve lost your mom, dad, or family guardian. Around the time of your junior high school years, you may have begun experiencing peer pressure; wanting to fit into what society has portrayed as normal. Later you may have had to drop out of high school to help care for your family, or you became a college graduate or maybe dropped out there. You may have become a working-class citizen who experienced mental and financial abuse by those you love and trust in authority. You may have used and/or sold drugs to survive or became addicted to alcohol or narcotics. You may have been a victim of rape, beaten, robbed or even sodomized, and then coping with raising the child/children conceived during rape who grew up in search for answers. Many in this world did not survive an abusive encounter; while others decided that ending their life as a way of escape from all the heartache and pain. All these experiences allow you, a spirit, to feel what it is like to survive upon the earth. Every decision you make will be based on what you’ve experienced; how someone or something has influenced you.
” Despite great risks involved during transitions, you were designed to emerge from the darkest state.” – Teena J. McDonald
Influences are all around and the biggest is being born into a society which dictates how you should live. Its foundation can be found in school programs, churches, legislative and the judiciary, hospitals, and private sectors, just to name a few which are constructed to prevent you from maximizing your potential; instead, it seeks to manipulate, restrict, enslave and destroy you. You reach a level that allows you to barely be able to survive. Your journey of struggling through life seems endless, and how does one end this mayhem of the mind?
Your brain is so unique in its nature that it has the ability to process information and gives you the option to choose what you want to do with it. All the experiences you’ve encountered from the day you were born has either produced a positive or negative impact on you. You must decide if you want to live in darkness or light. John 3:17-19 says, ” For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”
It is important to have a positive outlook on life, and how you see yourself. The more you pay attention to negativity or as I refer to it, ‘darkness’ the more it will consume you. Not only will you begin thinking negatively, but your conversations and actions will correspond.
When you are at a breaking point and it seems all hope is gone, you may enter a state of depression. How do you change? Although born into sin and shaped in iniquity, you were born with a purpose. Designed and equipped with resources to live bountifully in every aspect of your life. Genesis1:26-28 says, ” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. According to the Merriam Webster, subdue is a transitive verb. defined as, to conquer and bring into subjection. You cannot continue to be entrenched in this worldly system of darkness; not knowing the power that was invested in you from the beginning of time.
Choose to awake from the darkness which you have experienced. Many pray and hold faith that God would change them from a bad habit, or deliver them from a difficult circumstance. Yes, God is a miracle working God, but some things are quite practical and in most cases, all that is required is for you to stop making those choices that continue to yield the same unwanted results year after year.
You must recognize your circumstance or behavior. Is that who or where you want to be? Determine the main contributor(s) of your current state, and implement ways to counteract it. Sometimes you can be a hindrance to maximizing your own potential because you’re comfortable where you are or may be thinking that’s all there is to life. You may have a desire to start a business venture, feel the need to advance your career, finances, education, physical, spiritual, or family life. You may face circumstances that are abrupt, forcing you to make a decision you may not have necessarily looked forward to embracing, such as catastrophic events, natural, financial, or technical disasters, untimely death. People choose to change because of a desire or need to improve their disposition. Your mindset, belief, or even your habits must be conducive for the change you want in life.
You must claim the authority you were created with, and if you don’t you will be overtaken by the darkness which seeks to restrict you. Romans 12:12 says, “And be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Your choices are actions that color your life’s story on the pages of time. Teena J. McDonald
You need to change because you were created to transform; manifesting your true self and purpose for existing upon the earth. Safeguard your mind from negative influences. If you are trapped in self-doubt or hate, this blocks you from seeing what you are truly capable of accomplishing. You are responsible to make sound decisions that allow you to embrace change and maximize your potential.