Transformados En Su Imagen: El Plan De Dios Para Transformar Tu Vida Spanish Edition Paperback 2003 Author Jim Berg
He opened to the first chapter. Berg’s words were not soft. They did not promise happiness in three easy steps. Instead, they asked a question that lodged itself in Mateo’s chest like a splinter: Are you trying to reform your old self, or are you allowing God to create a new one?
Fin
His wife, Elena, had left the small book on his nightstand three weeks ago. Transformados En Su Imagen. He’d ignored it. The subtitle— El Plan De Dios Para Transformar Tu Vida —felt like a cruel joke. He had tried plans: anger management (failed), gym memberships (abandoned), a short-lived promise to read the Bible daily (lasted until February). Each attempt left him more convinced that he was not a statue waiting to be polished, but a broken pot with a crack running straight through his center. He opened to the first chapter
Weeks became months. The book’s principles worked into his life like rain into cracked soil. Berg’s teaching on the “heart battlefield” (every thought taken captive to obey Christ) gave Mateo a new weapon: not gritted teeth, but whispered prayer. When the urge to control or explode arose, he learned to pause and say, “Señor, no puedo. Pero Tú puedes.” (Lord, I cannot. But You can.)
Elena noticed first. She found him washing the dishes without being asked. She heard him laugh with Daniel over a video game. One evening, she touched his arm—a simple gesture she had stopped making years ago—and said, “You’re different. Not perfect. But… present.” Instead, they asked a question that lodged itself
And that, he finally understands, is the plan.
The story does not end with Mateo becoming a pastor or a hero. It ends on a Tuesday. Daniel has the flu. Elena is working late. And Mateo sits on the edge of his son’s bed, holding a cool cloth to the boy’s forehead. Daniel mumbles, “Dad, you stayed.” He’d ignored it
Mateo smiles. “Yeah. I stayed.”
He nodded. “I’m being remade.”
That night, Mateo knelt beside his bed—something he hadn’t done in twenty years—and wept. He wasn’t crying for his failures. He was crying because for the first time, he understood that transformation was not a project. It was a surrender.
Mateo realized with a shudder: his “plan” had always been to make God a co-signer of Mateo’s comfort. God’s plan was to make Mateo a reflection of His Son—even if that required breaking the old man down.