True godliness isn’t a matter of personality. True godliness turns sinners into saints. Look at any godly saint and you will learn that they weren’t always that way. God grew them, and it took years, decades, for them to become who they are today.

I visited someone I greatly respect, an elderly saint whose husband passed away some time ago. This couple has been such an encouragement in my life, and I let her know how much they both meant to me.

Her daughter, also present, let me know that her father wasn’t always that way.

“What do you mean?” I asked. He had been one of the godliest people I know.

It turned out that when he came back from World War II, he wasn’t such a nice man. I don’t know what he saw or experienced over there, but whatever it was changed him. He was surly and withdrawn. He wasn’t the man that I came to know later.

I asked what changed. The daughter pointed at her mother. “She changed him.”

The love of his wife helped him heal. I don’t know how long it took. I know it must have been hard. A veteran with what we’d now call PTSD and this war bride figured it out together and became the godly couple I knew later, two people who modeled grace and godliness to me.

I learned a couple of things that day.

First, saints weren’t born saints. Sometimes we see godly men and women and think they’ve always been that way.

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