The Changing Factor

May 1st, the changing factor.

Have you ever found yourself in a bad scrape that you knew you brought on yourself?

We all have.

At one time or another, we've had to face the painful result of our own poor decisions.

And this consequence, too great to endure alone, can drive us closer to God and others

in search of help.

But what exactly do we do with the help we receive?

Does it simply propel us further down our crooked path?

Or does it cause us to examine our choices, acknowledge our faults, and seek a better

route?

Today, we'll meet James, a man who is determined to follow his own way, even as he leaned

on the help of others, until he humbled himself before the truth.

James is here to share with us his true story.

On this unshackled, dearly devotional.

My troubles really started when I joined the Air Force and began drinking with a buddy.

I did crazy things like wearing an officer's rank for which I was cord-martialed.

When a drunk and sergeant and I broke into the bay shoe store, I received an undesirable

discharge.

My family gave up on me and I ended up on Skid Row, selling my blood like every other

wineau.

Then I learned to ride the rails around the country, staying at rescue missions where

I often feign salvation to get special privileges.

But my mind was closed to the gospel.

I was locked up repeatedly, but my worst offense was stealing a Treasury Department check

and trying to cash it.

I spent three years in Leavenworth for that.

During bouts of sobriety afterward, I managed to get my college degree, then a master's

degree in sociology.

On my job as a social worker, one of my clients loved the Lord and asked me to read

verses from the Bible.

As I read of God's love and the sacrifice of his son for our sins, my heart softened,

I prayed to receive Christ that day.

I had come to help her, but she helped me to find new life in Christ.

Jesus set me free of the sins that kept me in bondage for so many years.

Today I have a wife and a ministry to nursing homes and jails.

The Apostle Paul describes the gift Christians have received in 2 Corinthians chapter 3.

He says in verse 18,

But we all, with open face, be holding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed

into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord.

Brent, through Jesus' sacrifice, God's granted us intimacy with him, and this relationship

is meant to change us.

Jesus didn't sacrifice himself so he could leave us on our own path, rather he's offered

us help that can transform us.

But it will have no effect until we humble ourselves, allowing him to bring us away from

our sinful habits to become more like him.

Are you living in this truth today?

When shackled, the longest running audio drama in history airs on over 3,000 radio stations

worldwide, real people, real life stories, stirring dramatic accounts of hopelessness, and

the hope that changes everything.

This award-winning program grips the heart with compelling and relevant stories of transformed

lives.

Without Jesus Christ, we are all shackled by sin, by our wrong choices, disobedience, and

selfish motives.

God is at work, and the power of Christ sets us free of our bondage.

We are Unshackled.

Listen to a new devotional every day, and don't forget to tell your friends about Unshackled

daily devotional.