Does God Really Change People?

                I was twenty-four years old with a three-year-old son who’s mother was doing everything she could to keep me from seeing him.  His mother was my second wife.  The first one was supposed to pick me up at the hospital when I was being discharged after a seven month stay.  She didn’t show because she had run off to Mexico with a friend of mine.  On the rebound I met my second wife.  She was trying to get off drugs and was leaving her two daughters with family until she succeeded.  We started living together with the goal to bring her daughters back to their mother.  Shortly after the birth of my son we went to Reno and got married so we could continue to get welfare money for me and the baby.  A little over a year later she decided I was in the way when she wanted to bring guys home from the bars.  So, she kicked me out and filed for divorce.  I was devastated!  We had been together for three years.  I was a father to two beautiful daughters, one of which was an illegitimate child who had never known any other father, and a son who was the apple of my eye.  I was being denied fatherhood rights to the girls and would have been denied the same rights for my son if not for the courts.

                My lifelong dream of having a family had been stripped from me.  I became bitter and started acting out.  Women became useful for one thing and I sought out as many as I could find for that one thing wanting nothing else.  That is, until I met a young girl who looked past the bitterness and fell in love with me.  After a short time of dating Una informed me that if I was going to continue to date her I would have to give up the other women.  I agreed to her demands.  In due time she asked me to marry her.  I was still bitter, but I thought to myself, “Sure.  Why not?  What’s another divorce?”  As we made plans for marriage she told me that she wanted nothing to do with any church because they were all fanatics.  I quickly agreed because I felt the same way.  Three days after Una turned sixteen, her mother, my dad and his family, along with my eighty-three year old aunt, took a drive to Carson City, Nevada.  We were married at a cute little chapel.  I had no hope that this would be any different than the other two marriages.  However, being married made life easier than being single and seeking out dates.  I felt no real sense of commitment and I am sure that if something dramatic didn’t happen that I would hurt Una, and that it would be ruthless.  I think that I would have taken all the frustration from the others out on her.

                About a year after we were married, having a small baby daughter who was born about nine months after we had exchanged vows, I met up with a young man who was destined to help lead us to Christ.  Not long after Warren and Alice Bennett came into our lives Una asked me why I never tried to get even with people.  I thought about it and told her that I think it has to do with a lesson I had learned as a child.  My family had gone to a little church for about six years.  The one thing I took from that tenure was the golden rule, do unto others what you would have them do to you.  I told Una that I had always tried to live by that rule.  She said that she hoped our children would be like that.  I said that if we would raise them in a church they probably would.  So, we started going to church.  It wasn’t long before I was faced with a decision.  I knew that if I chose to accept Jesus my life would never be the same and that there would be no turning back.  It was scary.  When I committed my life to Christ I committed myself to Una.  I was transformed in some ways almost immediately.  However, the complete transformation is a lifelong process.  What happened quickly was a new attitude toward life.  I gained a new perspective and my wife gained a new man.  God had changed me.  He had done what nothing else could do.  Until I turned it over to Him I could only accept failure.  Everything in my life had failed and that was all I knew.  I had been counseled by secular counselors, had read self-help books, taken well-meaning advice.  Nothing had worked until God took over.  Since then my life has been a wonderful series of successes.  Una and I have been happily married for thirty-six years.  We raised two fantastic daughters who are now living legacies to what God has accomplished in our lives.  I have enjoyed three successful careers and earned three college degrees, as well as, completing a three-year ministerial program.  Success is a normal function of my life now that God has changed me.  He continues to work through me.  I am now proudly witnessing His transforming power at work in my son’s life.  He has given Rodney five years of a new life free from drug addiction and is providing new and exciting opportunities for him in the church and in his personal life.  Can God change lives?  What do you think?