Turn It Around: Make Your Last Fall Be Your Last Fall

By Chaplain Paul

Life is hard. Really hard. Between the opioid epidemic, failing marriages, broken homes, child abuse, and rampant selfishness, we live in a very broken world that leads to very broken people. Broken people go on to make bad choices in their lives. God sees this. God loves us. God gives grace. His grace is the key to turning it around. God is willing to forgive the past, heal the past, and help us in the future. That is an amazing offer that with one sweep of His hand (based on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ), God would remove the stains of our past and let us start life over. No one wants to fall again and again, but that is what we tend to do. This book embraces the grace of God and the strength of God for turning a life around and helping us make that last fall be our last fall.

Chaplain Paul's previous book was Convicted: One Hundred Days: Devotions to Help Physically and Spiritually Incarcerated People, which is a devotional book for anyone seeking to understand God's word more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888326213

Book preview

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Turn It Around

Make Your Last Fall Be Your Last Fall

Chaplain Paul

ISBN 979-8-88832-620-6 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88832-621-3 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Chaplain Paul

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

All scriptural quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the English Standard Version. Copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

To the men of York County Prison. May you turn it around in Jesus and make your last fall be your last fall.

Chapter 1

Where You At?

Chapter 2

The Decision

Chapter 3

Change

Chapter 4

What a New Life in Christ Looks Like

Chapter 5

How to Stop Bad Habits

Chapter 6

How to Start New Habits

Chapter 7

Dealing with the Past

Chapter 8

Healthy Relationships

Chapter 9

The Danger of the 3 D's

Chapter 10

Visualizing the Future

Conclusion

About the Author

To the men of York County Prison. May you turn it around in Jesus and make your last fall be your last fall.

Chapter 1

Where You At?

Are you happy with your life? Maybe you are pleased with some aspects, but you realize you need a change in other areas. Where do you see yourself heading in life? Do you see a good future for yourself? We always hope for that, but getting there is another story. Besides, what is your goal for the future? Is it to get to retirement so you do not have to work every day? Maybe your goal is just to stay in your marriage—unless that ship has already sailed. Maybe your goal is just to get a job or stay off drugs or stay out of jail. Perhaps you had a lot of good goals, but you feel you have already blown so much of your life that you are thinking you will never be able to turn it around. Maybe your goal is to stay out of depression because this paragraph is getting a little too real.

I do not want to be discouraging (because there is hope!), but I do want to face the facts. The facts are that life is hard, life lies to us, and we wind up in situations that we did not want to be in. Some people do not realize that they need to change their life until they are in some type of desperate situation. When we are in those times (and they might be physical times of pain and desperation or mental desperations because our panic in the moment has left us paralyzed), we can make very rash decisions. We feel so much pressure to get out of our current disaster that we make a bad decision that seems better than our current state right now but is actually just another bad choice. We are desperate for a shortcut or some fast way to solve our issues and turn our life around.

See, this is how we wind up making a shady (illegal) deal for quick money, not realizing that a lifetime of payment for that one act could be the result. This is how I wind up on that guy's couch when I know this is a house that is doing drugs or some other activity that I should not be near. But I need to do something, and I need to sleep somewhere, so I make a decision that puts me in more danger of ruining my life than where I was before. Or I rationalize that somehow, I deserve one night with that girl because of all the suffering I had in my past. Maybe this time, I will find love, I reason. Or I really need to go there (wherever I think it needs to be), so I get in that guy's car, but that decision puts me under his influence and in even more danger and is a worse choice than doing nothing. I need life to get better, I think. I really need to turn it around. All I do is keep falling.

Does this sound like you? Are you on that path to the bottom? Many people do not get serious about change until they hit rock bottom. Some people think they have hit the bottom only to find out that, nope—their troubles were just beginning. Do not wait until things are worse, though, because we can never be sure we will get that second opportunity when we are nearing the bottom. What is the answer to all of this?

The Answer

I know the answer. I know the answer to all this mess we call life. That is a bold statement, but I really do. The answer to all of life's questions is Jesus. I used to tell that to my Bible class students, and when there was a test question they did not know, some of them would put Jesus in the blank regardless of the question since He is the answer to everything. I did not always give them that point in class, yet in real life, He truly is the answer, and that is what this book is about. Jesus is the key to turning our lives around and making our last fall truly be our last fall.

Now some of you are scoffing at the idea that Jesus is truly the answer. The world certainly discounts Him, but I just can't shake the thought that money, fame, easy friendships, stuff, status, partying, and popularity cannot be the final answer. Meanwhile, some people find causes that are nobler than what I just listed—so now they live for a cause that will help save the world. The cause will supposedly make life on earth better, but people have been thinking that for thousands of years. How is that working out today? Not that well and, besides that, what about death? Are we preparing for eternity, or are we just trying to make heaven on earth?

I would argue that we need to prepare for eternity, and if we do this well, the earth will become a better place to live. For example, for some people, helping the homeless and poor is what to live for. Great, but why? We need a reason for why we will live for that cause. I would argue that if everyone lived for Jesus, then the poor and homeless would be taken care of because Jesus told us to love other people and show that we are His disciples this way. Jesus is the deeper answer to helping the people on earth, and He gives true reason for life to those whom we are helping. He gives us the motivation for living and the answer to everyone's questions about the afterlife. Did you catch that? He is the answer to the afterlife. See, we can never have peace in the book of this life until we know how the last chapter plays out. Life fits when we work backward from the end to now. Are you ready for the end?

How is your relationship with Jesus? He can step into your life and turn it around. You may say that you are beyond help or that you have fallen so many times that you do not know if you can do it. You do not know if you can do life in a successful and stable way. You also have concerns about what happens after this life. Well, a deep relationship with God through Jesus Christ answers all these questions. Are you ready to change? Are you ready to start life anew? That is what this book is about. We will look at these topics in more detail in the coming chapters because nothing is more important than you getting on the right track. God said we are new creations in Him, and all things become new in our lives when we let Him in (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Won't you let Him change you and turn your life around? Imagine someday being able to say, I was in prison, but God changed me or I was addicted to many things, and now I am addicted to Jesus or My family was so messed up I did not know what normal even meant, but then God took over when I joined His family. God wants you to be able to turn it around. God does not want you to fall again.

Is this even possible for real? Listen, I work in a prison. Why? I work there because I believe that God can help everyone and anyone turn it around. For real. He is not a God for only a certain class of people or a God who can help with little clean sins. No, He is a God who wants to help those who are far from perfect (which is all of us) and make them whole in Him. If you read the Bible, you will find a bunch of people who were violent, angry, deceivers, womanizers, and killers—and those are just the ones who did get on God's team! Do not sit there thinking that you cannot change or that you are so far gone that God does not care for you. That is what grace means. Read these pages so you can see how big and powerful the grace of God is. Please.

From My Heart

Jeff is dead. Daniel is