Dallas Willard defines it as a long history of behavior. How we really act – not what we say, but what we do. How do we change our character? First, we need to decide what we want to change – and in order to do that we need to change both our thoughts and feelings. They come from different places…..feelings come from deep within and are affected by past experiences that made us happy or hurt us. Thoughts involve our mind more – our human ability to reason. God gave us both for our protection. We can’t change on our own. God made us – he can repair us through His Word and His Spirit. When you examine Jesus’ life – he was the opposite of His disciples. Imagine His patience as He spend three years teaching them. They wanted the public, especially children, to give Him more space. Jesus wanted them to come to Him, for example. He refined the Ten Commandments in his Sermon on The Mount, the greatest message every delivered. He showed us how to apply it to our everyday life. Sure, most of us can say – “Well, I guess I’m OK because I haven’t killed anyone today.” But Jesus applied it to our thought patterns and equated hate as not being much better.