Growing: Spiritual Transformation, Part 2 of 5

A spiritual awakening changes everything.

The best thing you could ever do for yourself is to have a spiritual transformation. A spiritual transformation is like a spiritual makeover. It changes everything about you, inside to out. However, a spiritual transformation is not just about growing in the Lord. It is much, much more.

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”

–Matthew 7:7

What spiritual transforming entails.

  • Spiritual transformation is when God becomes your enough.
  • Spiritual transformation is when God comes first.
  • Spiritual transformation is when you quit doing spiritual life your way.

Why would you want to spiritually transform? It will give life to your spiritual walk. You will strengthen in your daily interactions. You will know the Source of life, God Eternal, in a very real way.  You will walk with God, and that is truly amazing awesomeness.

Spiritual life is a journey, not a destination.

I never set out to have a spiritual transformation. After it had changed my life, I knew what to call it. I set out to know God without holding anything back. I wanted nothing to block my pursuit of Him. That was it. God took it from there.

Did you ever have something happen to you that knocked you down and changed your life, your thinking, the way you process life, and altered the way you interact with others?

When life happens.

I had one of those life events when I lost my younger sister. She was 33, and I was 38, when she passed away. My kids and I had just been to visit her three weeks before at her home in Beaverton, Oregon. We went for a walk in the park and ate a meal at her home. My kids loved their Aunt Lou.

My sister committed suicide. When we lost Lois to suicide, it destroyed me more than all the other bad things that had happened to me. My sister and I were raised in the same home, with the same parents, with a strong Christian presence in our lives. She had followed the faith until the last two or three years of her life.

What was missing?

My sister’s suicide made me question why this had happened to her. Why hadn’t God been enough for her. Where had we failed her? Why had her Christian life and heritage failed her? I wondered what had been missing that had caused her to be empty and lost. Lois was successful at work, had loyal friends, and was talented, intelligent, and witty.

This started me on a hunt. I wanted to know what had been missing in my sister Lois’s life and why Christianity had not been enough in her life. I believed part of the answer involved our ‘brand’ of Christianity, a lack within fundamentalism to go beyond spiritual obedience and head knowledge to address human need and human suffering.

What I found.

The first answer to the complex question came in the form of an awareness. The more I pursued the path to knowing God, the more I became aware that our Christian life is about a living relationship with Father, Son, and Spirit. This relationship with the Godhead is life-changing, life-giving, and life-enabling. It’s not that the other was bad in and of itself, it was that it fell short of the most important aspect of following Christ, a spiritual relationship.

If you are like me, and you were not taught about living relationship with the Father, Son, and Spirit, then here’s your opportunity to spiritually awaken to this phenomenal truth. God wants to be known. He wants to interact with you. God desires living relationship with you. This living relationship with God will cause you to become spiritually real, personally authentic, and fully alive.

I want you to want it.

Next in series: Middle: Spiritual Transformation, Part 3 of 5

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Pitfalls Ahead, Grace Abounds

You’re on a journey. It’s a journey that requires you to follow a guide. The guide knows what you don’t know. Your guide knows the pitfalls that lie ahead on the journey. You soon learn you must follow His lead no matter what happens. At first you fight it. You’d rather do it your own way.

Then you come to realize the wisdom of following an experienced guide. That Guide, of course, is God. You learn to place your trust in Him on your spiritual journey. It becomes easier once you begin to see that grace accompanies everything God does as He leads you.

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.

John 10:27-19

I used to think it was all about love for love is the nature of God. As His beloved, forgiven, redeemed, justified, and sanctified children, we have the nature of God in us. Now I think it is as much about grace as it is about love. Love has grace attached to it. To some extent the two are inseparable. By grace you are saved through faith.

Where you see love you will also see grace. Where you see grace you will also see love.

If a person believes they love their neighbor but there is no grace toward their neighbor, it appears they don’t really love their neighbor. I’ve never heard a sermon about the connection of love with grace in the way I’m presenting it–that you can’t have love without having grace–but it’s something I’ve noticed on the practical, spiritual side.

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.

2 Corinthians 9:8 ESV

Our Guide, King Jesus, says the least of these shall be the greatest in God’s kingdom. I wonder why we hold back on loving others and grace giving. Little things happen all the time where we make choices whether to do or not to do. One happened to me tonight.

A friend called and I debated whether to answer the phone. I wasn’t in the mood for a long conversation. But I picked up and was glad I did. She immediately burst into tears. She was emotionally reeling from a work-related incident. While we were talking, she learned from her son that someone dear had just passed on, which meant more tears and that we needed to cut the conversation short.

I’m going to stick my neck out and make a statement that is my own. Grace is a measuring rod for the amount of love is outworking in your life. Little grace, little love. Lots of grace, lots of love. I think it works that way.

Follow your Guide and you won’t lose your way.