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Change and Growth

It is funny to see how God works. He allows some situations to repeat for us to realize that there must be something wrong here. It makes us think why these things always happen to us. For me it is the feeling of being unappreciated and misunderstood. Several cases in the past I experienced how people mistreated me after I gave my all for the team. Looking back I realize that I gave the exactly the same responses when this situation came up. I retaliated and defended myself as I did not want people to step all over me especially after what I have given up to come to that point. Everytime I retaliated it did not end very well. In the aftermath I became even more misunderstood and thus felt even worse. Nevertheless I kept giving the same response again and again because I did not find the better response as per my understanding.

Same response same results. Same situation keeps on coming. See the correlation here? God is too good to let us to be the same person whole of our lives. He knows that if we keep being us as of today we will end up hurting ourselves and others. Many times we asked God what is His will in our lives with specific situations and questions in mind, i.e. future spouse, calling, purpose, job, family matters, etc. Has it ever crossed our mind that maybe His will for our lives is to live, love, and to be like Him? Maybe that is the answer to the question why some situations keep happening to us. He wants us to change, to be more like Him, and these situations are emphasizing and magnifying our needs to change for the better. Most of the time we look outside to find the source of the problem when actually what we need to do is to reflect internally why we response in such a way. Instead of asking people, organization, or situation to change maybe it is the time to start thinking that the most significant change that would benefit us is how can we change for the better.

If we want to grow we need to change. Growth starts with changes. One thing that we can control is our own growth. We can't really control others' growth. We can control how we response to the treatment from others so we could still have joy in those situations, but unfortunately we are powerless to prevent what others are doing to us. Some people will always be some people. No matter how hard we pray if they keep hardening their hearts towards God you can expect no change will happen. However we can influence and decide if we want to change. We can pray to God to change and mold us to become more like Him. We can ask the Holy Spirit to guide us every day in every decision to choose wisely and be a better us in the process. We grow with every decision led by the Holy Spirit. When we follow His guidance we could deny our ego and our flesh from taking over and bring us to the cycle of same old me.

What we could expect from changing and growing? The least we could expect is we become a better person and more like Christ. When we become more and more like Him we could enjoy the privilege of having our warmth, hope, joy, peace in the midst of the storm. He is Love, Hope, Peace, Joy so thus when we become more like Him these traits will be revealed to us in a deeper way than before. Adding on to this very least advantage, when we grow we expand our capacity: capacity to receive from God and capacity to give to others. This capacity enlargement leads us closer to what God wants us to accomplish in our lives: His plan, His purpose, and His vision for us. Accomplishment of His will in our lives will certainly include receiving from Him and giving to others. The more capacity we have the more that we can receive from God and the more we can give to others, as we can only give what we have. Thus we are one step closer in fulfilling our potential in Him. Last but not least when we grow we initiate a chain reaction of growth for others. People will notice our growth since power, love, and excellence are flowing from our lives when God is working within us. Just like when we change one part of the puzzle other parts will have to adjust, our growth will influence others to grow as well.

I chose to stay quiet. I prayed for God to defend me in His time. I prayed that God strengthen me and cover my mouth to not to speak. The peace were just flowing in and filling my heart. There was unspeakable joy to not being able to defend myself. Not natural I know. At that time I knew that the simple adjustment has changed me. I grew.


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