Hard-Earned Lessons Series | Part 5 of 8
About this series: Some lessons don’t come from books or podcasts – they come wrapped in disappointment, misjudgment, pain, and time. This is a series of eight things I wish someone had told me earlier: real, specific, hard-won truth you usually only arrive at after you’ve already made the mistake. Each one is rooted in God’s Word, because I’ve come to believe it doesn’t just tell us what’s true – it meets us right where the hard lessons live. You don’t have to learn everything the hard way. Sometimes someone else’s scars can be your map.
About people. About dreams. About careers and convictions and the version of yourself you thought you were supposed to become. All of it is subject to revision.
That took me a long time to believe. Because I had always equated changing my mind with weakness. With inconsistency. With failing to commit. In my world, real men decided and then held the line. Doubt was a character flaw. Pivoting was quitting dressed up in different clothes.
What I’ve learned is that rigidity is not strength. It is fear wearing the mask of conviction.
Some of my most significant growth has come from being willing to say: I was wrong. I have new information. I see this differently now. The person I was when I made that choice is not the same person I am today – and the choice deserves to be revisited.
That’s not weakness. That is wisdom. That is what a life of learning actually looks like in practice.
Paul understood this. Before he was Paul the Apostle, he was Saul the persecutor – a man who was absolutely certain he was right, who pursued Christians with religious conviction and genuine zeal. And then he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, and everything he thought he knew got turned inside out. He didn’t cling to the old position because he had already committed to it. He changed. Completely. And that change became the foundation of the most impactful ministry in the history of the church.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” – Romans 12:2
Transformed by the renewing of your mind. God is not asking you to stay the same. He is asking for your willingness to be transformed – which by definition means becoming something different than what you were. That requires changing your mind.
This applies to people too – and this is the part that stings a little. Sometimes you will be wrong about someone. You will have built a story about who they are – maybe good, maybe not so good – and then time and circumstances will reveal something new. You are allowed to update the story. You are allowed to see someone differently than you once did. Holding a permanent position on a person who is still living and still capable of change is not loyalty – it’s stubbornness.
And you are allowed to change your mind about yourself. About your capacity. About your calling. About what you want and what you’re capable of. The version of you that made a decision five years ago had less information, less experience, and less wisdom than you have now. Honor where you’ve been – but don’t let your past self set a ceiling on your future. God’s plan for you is better than you can imagine, and His path may not always make sense to you. It will have twists and turns you didn’t see coming. Changing your mind, when lead by God, may represent one of those twists and turns.
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!” – Isaiah 43:18-19
God is always doing a new thing. The question is whether you are flexible enough to move with it.
Change your mind when the evidence calls for it. Change your mind when God calls you somewhere you didn’t plan to go. Change your mind without shame, without apology, without the need to explain yourself to everyone who knew what you used to think. Growth is not a straight line. And the people who resist every bend in the road are usually the ones who get left behind by it.
Dadvotionals 