Those who think they have arrived never actually do. But those who realise they’ll never arrive are right in the lap of God’s will. This is a beautiful and golden paradox that has all of humanity shouting, “Amen!”
Everyone appreciates humility, but pride divides.
The world cannot stand boastful Christianity. And neither can Christians who espouse the importance of the cross. We did nothing to earn salvation, and there is nothing we can add to it, either.
Too many of us have made an idol out of discipleship. We have manipulated God just so we might bear visible ‘transformation’, after all, for some, we are hardly true disciples unless we have something to show for it. But if we take this past God’s power, we use God to make ourselves look good. (Oh, always for God’s glory, of course!)
No, the very best Christian faith recognises human paucity and the magnanimity of God. It recognises that the fruit of the truest transformation is borne not on the wings of our own victories, but on the victory already won for us in Christ. This most fundamental transformation occurs in our mind. Of course, it has an outworking in our behaviour. But it has its genesis and its blessed daily operation from our mind.
Once we have been transformed by the renewing of our mind (yes, that’s from Romans 12:2), there is a very real ripple effect that occurs; one that we cannot stop. Not one word or action from this anointing will return void.
Connected to the Vine, as branches,
we emanate fruit of the Kingdom.
we emanate fruit of the Kingdom.
True transformation is therefore nothing ever of our own effort, but it comes as a result of the God work being done in us. Therefore, nobody can take credit, because all the credit goes to God. All we could possibly gain credit for is the decision to follow in the first place.
But there is more.
The heights of transformation come from the opposite experience. To go up, we must go down. To be transformed, on a living basis, one day and one interaction at a time, we must be in touch with God’s Spirit, and then we must do what God’s Spirit says. And no human being can definitively discern this work other than our own discerning, but the key indicator of our followship is always in the fruit—what we and others see. And the fruit of the highest transformation comes about having walked as much as we need to in the valley of repentance. Many times, the highest transformations come as a result of remaining in the valley of repentance.
This is not about staying in our guilt or our shame or feeling condemned. This is simply about being prepared to walk with the Lord. It surely has very little to do with our own performance, the pressure is off, more praise to God.
The deepest work that God wants to do in us requires our devoted pledge of allegiance to simply walk in the ways of the Lord. This is no harder than giving up what is eternally irrelevant for what is of everlasting relevance, which for us human beings is actually hard.
We all too quickly become entrapped in attitudes and behaviours that keep us from walking with God. And this is okay, if only we can admit that it does occur, and truly it always does.
When was God possibly most pleased with David, the king? Not long after he had sinned with Bathsheba. That would be my answer. When we’re honest, especially in brokenness. A broken and contrast spirit God does not despise.
When we most feel we have disappointed God,
God is most pleased in us, for us, through us.
God is most pleased in us, for us, through us.
This is because we are truthful in a brutal situation. We have done a simple thing and a hard thing simultaneously. We turned back to God (which is both easy and hard) and realised—and this is the case all along, God be praised—that God never does turn his back on us.
In the valley of repentance, in what seems a dark and destitute place, where it looks to be full of discomfort, we actually find we’re catapulted to transformation.
And let us not discount the losses we endure in the face of tyranny. Sometimes these very losses gain for us what the world cannot touch. But we must keep repenting in faith, bending our will to God’s, prepared to lose many battles to win the ultimate war—which is the fight for peace.
This, I think you’ll find, is the truth:
The heights of transformation
are ascended from valleys of repentance.
To go up, we must first go down.
are ascended from valleys of repentance.
To go up, we must first go down.
Photo by Dyaa Eldin Moustafa on Unsplash
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