One Change Makes a Big Difference for Your Future

One change lifts you above fear to a better future.

Simply ask three questions.

• What do I need to subtract?
• What do I need to add?
• What will make me healthy?

The headlines today are screaming change.

• Millions struggling with the costs of living
• Millions scarred by family history
• Millions crushed by racism

All of this blows up our peace and hope.

You are not what happens to you

Nona Jones was sexually abused over and over again by her mother’s boyfriend.

By age 11, Nona had traversed . . .

• multiple rapes
• two suicide attempts
• multiple beatings by her mother
• “failure” labels by school teachers

By 37, Nona had left behind her tragedies and became . . .

• Facebook’s global director of faith-based partnerships
• one of Essence magazine’s Under 40 Women to Watch
• a speaker to the United Nations

She has good advice.

“While I believe that the facts of our past matter, I’ve discovered in my journey to freedom that the meaning we give to the facts of our past matter more than the facts themselves.”  Nona Jones, Success from the Inside Out, p. 49.

Recovery begins with the greatest of all human freedoms.

Choice.

She quotes Viktor Frankl who survived four Nazi concentration camps.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing:  the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way.”  Success from the Inside Out, p. 52

Nona  spends the rest of her book on how faith released her to success.

“When I became intentionally and acutely aware of the goodness of God in my life, the ‘whys’ of my past became less relevant to me.”  Success form the Inside Out, p. 56

Choose faith over tragedy

I think the greatest ball-and-chain on folks today is a soul trapped in tragedy.

Nona’s trap was sprung when she accepted a friend’s invitation to church.

“Shortly after we settled into the church pews, a large man with a joyful grin stepped onto the stage and welcomed everyone . . .he asked everyone to turn to Psalm 68.  He read the Scripture passage until we came across the words that hit me squarely (verse 5), ‘A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows, is God in His holy habitation.'” Success from the Inside Out, p. 66

Allow the impossible repair

Nona details how the words of Psalm 68:5 made her long for the God who was her father.

Faith turns . . .

• brokenness into strength
• pain into possibility
• gratitude into success

When God set Nona free, she saw power greater than pain.

Nona Jones’ fuel for a successful future

• You are not your past Romans 6:6
• You have purpose Jeremiah 1:5
• You are chosen 1 Peter 2:9
• You are gifted 1 Corinthians 12:4
• You are loved John 3:16

Supernatural fuel for your future

Faith in Christ brings a unique treasure.

The indwelling Spirit of God.

Christian faith calls this the new creation.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.”  2 Corinthians 5:7

What is that?

A person made into God’s temple.

‘Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you”?  1Cor. 3:16

This is a mind boggling claim of Christian theology.

Like Nona, I chose faith in Christ and it changed my life with . . .

• lasting hope
• lasting optimism
• lasting energy . . .

even when I feel fear or run into physical and emotional pain.

I am no longer alone and neither are you when you are in Christ.

What has sustained you in this chaotic world?