As is true for many of us, if asked to name some of my best traits, my friends and family would usually include my sense of humor. I like to make people laugh. Looking back (and this is hard to confess), that used to include making jokes at other people's expense. I didn’t just do it sometimes, I did it all the time. I justified it like this: I have a diverse group of friends who don’t know each other, so there is no harm to anyone if I make people laugh by discussing someone’s ineptness and social inadequacies to a person they will never meet—kind of a what they don’t know, won’t hurt them philosophy. Then, God stepped in and changed my heart.

It was soon after the thing that happened happened, after I had received the Holy Spirit and the gift of prayer. I was praying when God began directing my thoughts to this less than admirable behavior. His countenance was one of displeasure and sternness and I immediately felt the seriousness of what He was about to lay before me. It was painful to bear the tremendous weight of His disapproval.

He began to show me the different ways in which I offended Him when I disrespected one of His children—each of His children who were fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14), who He knew before they were formed in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5). He made it clear that it was completely unacceptable to Him that I would mock those that He had created and loved so dearly that He gave His only begotten Son for them. He continued by showing me the pain I inflicted on His children (even when they didn’t know how I disrespected them) and how my behavior lessened and dishonored who He created me to be. It devastated me to see my behavior in this light.

I was so disgusted with myself. My heart ached because I saw how deeply I had disappointed my Heavenly Father. He continued by expressing to me that I needed to give honor and respect to everyone in every circumstance. At the time I didn’t know what my calling was, but I knew in that moment that this was a deal breaker. I needed to repent or I could not fulfill the plans God had for me.

God convicted my heart so powerfully that I was wracked with sobs. The last thing I wanted was for Him to have brought me this far, to have brought me to now, only to fail Him. I begged Him for forgiveness. I pleaded that He would know the sincerity of my desire to change. I repented from a depth I had never experienced before and my heart was transformed.

After this experience, it must have been easy for me to stop deriding, right? Oh, but I wish that were true! I missed the laughs I got deriding people and, in my mind, I didn't know where the boundary was. For instance, if someone did something I found funny and I only talked about what they did, without adding any of my own commentary, was that deriding or just stating facts?

I find that most of us are prone to this type of negotiating as we try to assimilate the changes God requires of us. My heart had changed, but instead of handing this part of my life over to the Holy Spirit for guidance, I continued to look outside the Spirit for direction. As has been true many times, I have to sit with the uncomfortable discord, that battle between who I am and who God wants me to be, before I realize that I need to dedicate this area of my life to God and follow the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit—only then are we truly transformed in His [Jesus] image.

For me, it’s important to take the focus off the change I’m struggling with and, instead, look at myself and the actual process of changing. For instance, if I catch myself negotiating with God in a way that would defend keeping the behavior, I know my transformation has not been great enough. I have not faithfully answered God’s call to change when I pretend the change does not have to be complete. Luke 9:23 says, “Then He [Jesus] said to them all, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” "Daily." Not deny ourselves "when it’s easy" or "when it suits us," not "when a special challenge arises"—daily.

Jacob was a loyal God-friend through this time of transition. He caught me if I was stepping over the line and I checked with him on several occasions to see if my words were derisive. I didn’t slip often, but I spent a lot of time not mentioning certain people for fear my words would deride. The adage, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it at all,” had never been more true.

I look at people differently now, with more compassion, with more love in my heart as they stumble through life, like we all do sometimes. I guess I'm not as funny as I used to be. I just asked some friends to list my top traits and only one of them said "funny," but the words “thoughtful,” “compassionate” and “understanding” made it onto the lists more than a few times. Sometimes God works in mysterious ways, sometimes He’s a lot more direct than that.

I am now firmly rooted in my calling as a vessel of prayer for others and I can clearly see there is no way I could have held both disregard for others by deriding them and the compassion for others my calling requires. In Matthew 6:24 it says, “No one can serve two masters,” and I think this is a great example of that. Deriding people was self-serving, not serving my Heavenly Father—you can’t do both, serve yourself and God—a lesson we all need to learn again and again.

My prayers book starts with a bible verse, “I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people…” (1 Timothy 2:1) and because of this experience with God, I am able to do that with my whole heart, holding nothing back. I take this scripture seriously. I pray that God will move in your life as He moves in mine and you will embrace His path for you with a heart open and accepting of the changes He needs to make in you, even if they are uncomfortable for a while. The reward of knowing you are walking on the path He created for you will make it all worthwhile.