Change Them – Josh Journal
One of the most difficult things to do is to get grown humans to change.
The fact that children are this much amenable is a blessing that many of us take for granted. When you try to point someone to the errors of their ways, that is when you’ll realize how impossible a task it is.
I have had reason to point out people’s mistakes to them. The most common response I get is defense.
People will go to any length to defend their actions rather than apologize or accept that they were wrong. If you are lucky to get them to accept a change in approach, after putting up their defense, then you are lucky.
The next most common response is justification.
People will twist and jump through hoops to justify their actions. Even when the folly of their ways is clear for all to see, they will rather insist that everyone else is right, but they are also right.
According to them, both methods are right, though theirs is just slightly less right. And that is only because it is not as successful as everyone else’s own. Although it is still right.
Sometimes, I wonder, can’t they hear themselves? Don’t they have an idea how silly they sound right now?
Other common responses include what about? What if? But others are… And “but then.”
The moment I repeatedly get this response, I know this is one of the moments to ask Jesus to “take the will.”
As the Yorubas will say, if a situation is bad, it requires prayer. If it is good, it requires prayers too.
For me, the moment an organization, a person or a thing is proving resistant to my desired change, I hand it over to God.
The most important lesson I have learned from this practice is that when we pray for others to change, sometimes, God changes them. Other times, he changes our ability to notice or bear it.
Then there are times heaven is more interested in something else.
Wilson Joshua is a Video Editor, Content Creator, and Creative Writer.
You can follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. @IJOSWIL
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