Transformation

My heart has been renewed.

I was talking to a friend today, and he made an accurate assessment of my situation.

You’ve made some comments about not wanting to believe in God. Not, “I don’t believe in God,” but stuff that (at least I interpreted) says you just don’t want to be a Christian. You have made some comments about not wanting to abide by different rules that you don’t necessarily agree with. So, sometimes (and it’s not often) I wonder if maybe you DO know there’s a God, and He is YHWH, but you don’t like what that means.

Pretty much. Another friend of mine suggested I listen to some sermons from Imago Dei in Portland. I had time to listen to one today, called “Transformation.” I think I’ve definitely been undergoing a transformation in the last week. I am shedding a cocoon and turning into a butterfly, just not the kind some people thought. And the last week was really about me saying I don’t want to follow the rules and I want to be autonomous. So what do I hear today?

When we start talking about transformation and the process of sanctification…some things can creep in that twist the focus and end up making us really focus on ourselves and on the process of transformation. What happens is as new Christ followers, we have been living in a way separate from God and really trying to chase after our autonomy, trying to express our self in ways that are pretty indulgent. They don’t represent the image of God within us very well. They don’t tell the truth about God because God is a God of love and a God of sacrifice and grace and others orientation. He’s a God of relationship, even within the tri-community, within the godhead. And so when we start chasing after our own way and expressing our autonomy from God we’re really offending Him because we’re not telling the truth about Him.

Okay. That kind of sucks. Later on he said:

We become really passive and then we’re not engaged in the process in a different way than separating from the world. Then we just sit around and our passivity calcifies and we’re not really making any progress or development. There’s a fine line between this passive learner posture—even when we’re being really passive we’re probably going to church and going to Bible studies and home community and prayer meeting and stuff like that but we’re just kind of sitting and waiting for God to do it. But we can, in that posture, turn to a really consumeristic orientation. So now as I’m going to church or Bible study I’m thinking about what I liked about the sermon or didn’t like, what really clicked for me, what music I liked or didn’t like. And now we’re just consuming and being entertained rather than cooperating with God’s Spirit as He wants to bring transformation to us.

This is why I got disillusioned with Christianity. It became something to me that was all about the rules and doing what we’re supposed to and not doing what we’re not supposed to and somehow it lost the focus – Jesus. Being like Jesus.

This (the story of Jesus and God) is an awesome story. Why don’t I feel more thankful? And I wonder at times whether it’s because we’re not engaged in telling the story, and so we’re just not attuned to all the great things that we have in Christ.

Philemon 6 says, “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.”

I didn’t do that. Some would argue that I have, in the form of this blog, but I really didn’t. Although I have made some incredible relationships through ID, writing this blog is pretty impersonal and Christianity is all relational.

Thank you, to all of you, both Christian and not, for sticking by me this past week. I’m an incredibly lucky gal to have so many people who care for me.