"It changed my life"

You hear the phrase all the time on TV talent shows. People with a dream. People with a talent looking to break through. People who have lived in obscurity and nursed an ambition; then suddenly found fame, fortune, adoration. Their lives have been changed.

Type those words into YouTube and you find a whole host of videos - many with passionate looking people who promise to share their story of Life change. They promote a massive variety of things that have done that for them: a book, a spiritual experience, a new way of looking at your life, a new way of investing, surgery, confidence therapy, a life coach, a money-making scheme or taking psychotropic drugs in the Peruvian rainforest.

Seems there are as many ideas for change out there as dissatisfied people who feel they deeply need to change.

Perhaps it's boredom. Perhaps frustration. Perhaps the brooding sense that there must be more to life than what’s going on right now. Perhaps it's a desperate desire to get out of a relationship or circumstances you find yourself in. All these things drive people to hunt for the answer – to look for a way to escape from the mundane and reach for the extraordinary. To change their lives.

Maybe it's the cynic in me, but my heart tends to sink when I hear those words spill out of someone's mouth. Because change can be good or bad. And the mere changing of something - although it often brings a new rush of excitement and interest at the newness of things - does not mean the end result will necessarily be a good thing. Someone who loses their legs in an accident can say: "It changed my life". It's not a life change anyone would choose. But what comes next is actually more important.

Will they crumple in on themselves in despair and self pity? Or will the experience lead them to find new ways of living, of discovering new depths within themselves? If they are a person of faith, wIll it lead them to curse God, or grow in trusting a sovereign loving Lord? Will they discover the joy of a supporting Christian fellowship, or cut themselves off from others?

And the same with the new-found fame of a talent-show winner. Will the wealth and adulation lead them to grow as a person, or simply be the way they become more self serving? The history of pop culture is littered with the latter, but thankfully also has many of the former.

Of course, as a Christian, I want to say that Jesus Christ has changed my life. But the real question is how...

More on this tomorrow... But for now - can I have your one-sentence summary of how you would say that Jesus changed your life. Two rules: "ordinary" language (not theological); and only one sentence