My question is: Do these people change? If you once did this "how" and or "what" caused you to change?
My abusive and violent behaviours within my defacto marriage of some 15 years were like a
prison that I was unable to break out of. My wife was pretty abusive back to me as we were
both junkies. No drugs caused pain.
No amount of good intentions brought about any change. Alcohol and drugs were our masters,
and we both lived to scrounge more supplies by whatever means.
The word dysfunctional was the best description for our 'marriage' and family life. Oh yes,
we had children in the middle of all this.
Although I had gone back to attending Sunday Mass because I was seeking for Jesus to save me,
nothing changed and I ended up attempting suicide. It almost worked.
But God had his hand upon me and the very first person who pulled up in a car next to my body
said "Don't worry, I'm a doctor." It was unbelievable, I should have been killed by that truck and yet
I survived with minimal injuries; no broken bones.
When I was 41 years of age I was challenged one day in a shopping mall by the Pentecostal gospel
of Mark 16:15-18 and Acts 2:38-39.
I kept on going to my RC church on Sunday mornings and started checking out this Pentecostal Church
that had its meetings on Sunday afternoons (how convenient).
Eventually, I got water baptized by full immersion and confessed my faith in Jesus as my Lord and Saviour.
And then something wonderful and marvellous happened to me.
I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke out in a new tongue as the scriptures said that I would.
Then things began to change immediately in my life. No more cigarettes, no more marijuana, no more
heroin and speed, no more alcohol.
But also as I went on praying in the Spirit and reading about becoming a new person in Christ Jesus
the power of the Holy Spirit transformed me from within.
The Lord healed my heart and my soul, he healed my mind and body. The violence and the abuse and
my previous lifestyle all diminished. I am still a work in progress.
Now after 20 years of the Spirit-filled life, I understand what it means to walk with the Lord; to walk in the Spirit.
9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom
of God.
11
And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11