Second: you must take responsibility for your life. ‘Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin’ (vv. 24-25 NIV). First, Moses refused to be anyone but himself. Next, he chose to go God’s way. One thing we can learn from this is that we can always replace a negative with a positive. For example, we don’t just stop doing something bad – we should replace it with something good. Living a Christian life isn’t about following a list of negative rules and regulations. It’s about relationships with other people, with yourself, and most importantly, with God. Moses made his decision ‘when he had grown up’. It’s a sign of maturity when we can resolve to take responsibility for ourselves and our actions. 1 Corinthians 13:11 says: ‘When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things’ (NLT). When Moses was a baby, it was okay to postpone the decision about who he was. But when he became an adult he had to make a choice, take responsibility for his own life, and move ahead. It’s easy to blame other people or situations for the problems we face, but we can control how we react to those problems. We can’t choose all the circumstances that come into our lives, but we can choose whether those things will make us bitter people or better people.

What Now?

Write a list of some of your negative habits or thoughts. Tell God about each thing on your list, then next to each one, write something positive that you could replace it with.