Radically different begins on the inside

Now through the end of October we’re going to be talking about transformation.  We’ll look at transforming seven separate areas of our life.  But what is transformation and how do we do it?  Maybe the best way to explain it is to look at what it’s not.

Transformation is not change.  It’s not where we replace one thing with another, newer or better thing, like a light bulb.  It isn’t where we just switch one thing for something else like changing socks.  It isn’t even just making something different like changing our hairstyle.  No, transformation is making something radically different from the way it was before.  And we’re going to start with spiritual transformation.  Intimidated yet?  Me too, this is deep stuff.

Changing spiritually gets to the core, the elemental, the part of us at the center that everything else comes out of.  This is the part God wants.

God couldn’t care less if you switched your incandescents for halogens.  He doesn’t care if your socks match or if you have another pair in the drawer just like them and he surely doesn’t care if you’re sporting bangs or had them chopped off.  God is looking for something in you, from the middle, to go somewhere and do something and act somehow that you’ve never been before.  He wants you transformed.  Because with him, you are.  Completely overwhelmed?  Yeah, buddy!

The thing is it has to be that way.  God doesn’t want just a piece of you, he wants the whole enchilada.  He’s not after something on the surface or just under it.  He’s looking for the place where the Holy Spirit can set up shop.

He’s looking for the place where your belief lies because believing leads to eternal life.  John had something to say about that:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  (John 3:16)

He’s looking for your belief because he wants you as one of his children.    He knows that when his spirit is in you that you become the kind of rock star-superhero who is not swayed by this world but is new and transformed.

1 John 4:4 says, “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”

The new you with him on board kicks temptation in the teeth, overcomes obstacles that were you alone would defeat you and through confession purifies and forgives you.  That’s what he wants because this is what he knows.

In our transformation we are inseparable from the love of Christ, the love of God and that’s worth it all: the overwhelm, the intimidation and the who-knows-if-I-can-do this-thing; it all washes away.

Romans 8: 38-39 may say it best: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels or demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height or depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We are new.  We are joined with the Holy Spirit.  We are transformed.

This is a special series of devotionals written for our church, The Waters Edge.  You can learn more about them and what we do here.  

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