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

Home Page: Spiritual Transformation

What America Needs (to turn itself around)

A few thoughts: WHAT WE need to do to turn our country around–by turning our own lives around. We’re in this together, and we must do the right thing.

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
    And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
    and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:8

If there is no repentance, it’s hard to find second chances. If there is no mercy, kindness lacks the ability to affect positive change. If there is no humility, the thing morphs into prideful acts. If there is no hatred of evil, then evil proliferates unchecked. If there is no speaking the truth, there is no knowledge of God’s redeeming love.

5 things we need to do–

Repent–

  • of our arrogance–seeing ourselves as better than others.
  • of our sins–not excusing our wrong attitudes, wrong behaviors, and wrong-minded speech
  • of our pride-in self, our acquisitions, and our successes. Everything we have is from the Lord
  • of our lack of love toward our neighbor, and our inactivity–in not helping them

Love Mercy–

  • extend mercy to those less fortunate than ourselves
  • see people with merciful eyes–see their neediness instead of their failures
  • pray mercy for others, divine mercy–that God will transform their lives and renew their souls
  • offer compassion with grace, in God’s love. God’s love flows through you to the world
  • be mercy to others–this will make a difference in your daily interactions

Walk Humbly–

  • with your God
  • with your fellow man, woman and child
  • in grace to others
  • and eschew self-adoration–being caught up with self–seen in self-pity, self-focus, and a preoccupation with self and family. Give God preeminence in your life. Let God redeem your life and the life of others.

Hate Evil–

  • hate sin and excuses for sinning (the devil made me do it!)
  • hate idol worship–anything you revere more highly than God
  • hate that which offends a righteous God
  • hate unrighteous acts–that are deceptive, misleading, that destroy human life, that are falsities, immoral, harm others, that are deceitful, promote wrong-doing or lusts

Speak Truth

  • by loving God, His Word, and obeying Him and His Word
  • by remaining true to the Word of God
  • -by sharing His gospel of truth and life-through loving others–in word, thought, charity, and deed

God has given us the tools to live life redemptively. A dead seed is planted in rich soil. A flower grows, and it makes us smile. A smile transforms a face, and it blesses others. Blessings in lives are thanks turned upward. Thanks turned upward behold the mystery of God.

Live Redemptively

America needs YOU.


Photo by Bermix Studio, Unsplash