What would you like to change about yourself? How would you change it? To ask it another way, what would your spouse or your best friend like you to change? Maybe that would be more enlightening. How would you end the sentence, ‘It’s just like me to…’? Always be late? Not stay on a diet? Say the wrong thing? Burst out in anger? Be sad? Jeremiah puts it this way: ‘Can a leopard take away its spots? Neither can you start doing good, for you have always done evil’ (Jeremiah 13:23 NLT).

You say, ‘I guess it’s hopeless.’ No, this is where God’s life-changing power comes into operation: ‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come’ (2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV). Once we commit our lives to Christ, we’re not the same any longer; a new life has begun. That’s why the Bible calls it being ‘born again’. We immediately have a new nature, plus the indwelling Holy Spirit. A set of ‘spiritual batteries’ is included to supply the power! That makes all the difference.

Just as your first birth was the beginning of your life, so the new birth is the beginning of this new life. And it’s followed by a lifelong process depicted in Romans 12:2: ‘Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity’ (PHPS).