Did you know for a true diet to work it has to be a lifestyle change? It is a widely recommended strategy. For a successful diet a gradual lifestyle change built on small, achievable, and sustainable changes works. Rather than a drastic overhaul. Making small, consistent adjustments to eating and physical activity habits is more realistic and easier to maintain, leading to lasting results over time.
This makes sense to us in this application. For some reason though many feel like when we try to change our lives and live for God it’s supposed to be like a light switch. People seem to feel like they’re supposed to go from not living for God to being the apostle Paul in a day. Paul himself said in Philippians not that I have already attained this – that is, I have not already been perfected – but I strive to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus also laid hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this. Instead I am single-minded: Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead (Philippians 3:12-13 NET). These are the words of a man still striving to be more like Jesus.
Some feel like they have to get everything right before they come to Jesus. To those I would say that you don’t get clean to take a shower you take a shower to get clean. You don’t get clean to find Jesus, you find Jesus to get clean.
The point I’m trying to make is this. Don’t let your hang up stop you from coming to Jesus. Bring all your baggage to the foot of the Cross. Start creating small changes in your life. Read the Bible daily. Even if you start with one verse or one chapter. Then increase it over time. Start praying everyday. Start faithfully attending church. Before you know it your healthy habits will overtake your unhealthy ones. Then you’ll realize that the thing you didn’t think you could give up isn’t that hard to give up. The thing that was a wall that you felt like you couldn’t get past Jesus will reach through it to get to you.
So come to Jesus with all your flaws and failures. Then watch as He wraps His arms around you. Takes you by the hand and helps you walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4 KJV).
Isaiah 1:18 KJV Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.