Following Judah's Lion

Transformation

Rom.12:1-2 - I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be ye not conformed: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Two very powerful verses of exhortation from the Spirit of God. These verses are discipleship in nature and process in application. What I mean is that there is no quick shortcut to transformation into Christlikeness, first in our minds and then revealed in our lives. The process is a sacrifice and there are many believers who have gone some distance on that road only to grow weary of either the distance or the difficulty and they have pitched their discipleship tent on the side of the road and been content with how far they have come but ignoring how far they have to go.

The operative word in verse two is “transformed” or transformation which comes from the original word metamorphosis. It indicates a change at the most substantive level, a change from the inside that manifests itself on the outside. This is no shallow or surface accommodation, no, this is deep spiritual surgery that is sometimes painful, but always a work of faith in the Holy Spirit. No man can conform to the Son of God through the flesh, some have tried but theirs is a mirage, a worthless shell that is devoid of life and only fools the carnal man, never God Himself and most times not even the person himself. This kind of transformation changes the very fiber of our spiritual beings, its process follows the statement of John the Baptist, “He must increase but I must decrease”.

This journey must begin with a deep desire that will withstand attack and weariness and even discouragement, and it must overcome the inevitable failures and use them as lessons rather than excuses. And in a very real sense the destination has less to do with our own transformation than it does with the Transformer Himself. He, the Lord Jesus, is our Finisher and we must not only keep our eyes upon Him, we must draw the strength for each step of the journey from the Destination. A man will confront any obstacles and endure any sacrifices to reach his lover if his love is deep enough to empower his desire with action. So is our journey of transformation if indeed our love for our Lord is sufficient enough to re-energize us along the way.

So what happens when we get tired and discouraged? Where do we go when we have fallen and not only disappointed our Lord, but have disappointed ourselves and we begin to tell ourselves it is too hard, let me be content with not going back but going forward is not within me? These are the tests that come with doing business in deep waters, they separate those who will find particles of contented accomplishment from baby steps but never embrace the demanding reward of pleasing Him through strides of sacrifice. Does the test only reinvigorate the determination that God’s Spirit has made available to us, or does it allow the flesh to focus our eyes on our pitiful selves and not on our Glorious Savior? This is our choice, will we surrender to ourselves or to our Master?

Now like a man that has fasted for so long he no longer feels hungry but his strength is so weak that he must force feed himself, when we have reached the end of strength we must go to the Spiritual fountain of the Word. We may not feel hungry at the time and we may have lost our thirst for God’s voice through His wonderful Word, but we must drink nonetheless. The Word guides, the Word directs, the Word feeds, the Word strengthens, and the Word of the Living God transforms us from glory to glory, step by step, and the Word gives birth to the faith that will carry us forward. The Lord will not share His glory with another, so He will not bless the efforts of the flesh, but He will move quickly to reward the crucified desires of a committed heart that follows hard after Him and His will. Our Lord is not willing that anyone of His children fall and give up, but He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him. And when those diligent seekers stumble and grow faint, the Lord rewards their journey with a renewed strength that can never be attributed to the crafty designs of man, but only to the wings of the eagles of God’s Spirit.

So again we come to transformation. Notice the Scripture indicates the process is through the renewing of our minds. This is no head knowledge and many times compiling Biblical knowledge without surrendering to that knowledge can lead to a bondage of misunderstanding that deceives us into stagnation and tells us that we have arrived by our knowledge and the comparison of ourselves to the journey of others. Anyone can read God’s Word and anyone can understand doctrine, but not anyone can allow the painful process of that Word having Lordship over our entire being, that my friends is the journey to which we are called. Just the basics of what the Word declares are enough of a challenge to last a lifetime. Who can love their enemies in the way that mirrors the cross without a constant maintenance of our spirits? Who among us can die to ourselves without a magnificent battle complete with self justification, self deception, past thoughts, unforgiveness, time restrictions, the cares of this world, and the relentless pressure of the flesh?

Is our desire to be transformed into being conformed to the likeness of Christ so deep, so transfixed, so determined that we will bring our minds into submission to the dictates of the Word through the Spirit? One of the greatest deceptive enemies of that journey is our good intentions. We have so often become blind to what the Spirit is communicating to us about the next step in our journey because we are busy speaking, writing, living, thinking, and generally going about our business that we have not only failed to hear His voice, we have neglected to ask Him to speak to us. Our minds have been bent to accommodate our flesh personally and it resists any future scenario that might require sacrifice and spiritual pain. The only remedy is God’s Word.

And even among those believers who do read God’s Word, we have been deceived into a habit of reading the Word as a purely doctrinal book that substantiates our view of Biblical truth, but we have lost the process of opening the eyes of our hearts as we read the Word and let it search our spirits to see if there be not only any uncleanness, but where the Spirit desires to transform another area of our hearts and lives. And so many times our understanding of doctrinal truth can only be seen on paper, and not in the visible revelation of our lives. Our minds have become so used to seeing and understanding what we’ve always thought that we are stagnated in the most important aspect of our lives as Christians, namely our journey to be like Christ through the obedience of faith. We accept most forms of judgment and defend them as discernment. Our attitudes have no resemblance to I Corinthians chapter 13 and yet with that we are content. We defend the uncovering of a brother’s sin that has already been uncovered by the world with no regard or defense of compassion. Our prayer lives are in disarray and yet we claim to embrace all the necessary doctrines that make us Biblical. Can we not see that our minds need a significant correction that alters our thinking by the totality of the Word and not just the narrow and comfortable avenues in which we now live? Succinctly, we need to again pursue transformation personally.

So if we are desirous to be obedient to Him and surrender again to His will for us, we will have to forfeit much of the time we have given ourselves to inspect the lives of others. Wow, that right there may free up hours of prayer and Word time! How can the Spirit do surgery on us when we are constantly attempting to do surgery on others? And if we are honest, while we stand over the operating table ready to open up others, we should soon realize that we do not have the expertise, authority, or surgical tools necessary to open up anybody, much less transform them. We have succumbed to the lie that most of the surgery that God desired to perform on us was accomplished in the first two or three years after our conversion. That just might be one of the greatest deceptions ever perpetrated on the body of Christ.

So I ask us, have we redefined the journey that leads through a sacrificial but rewarding thoroughfare that presses toward Him? Do we hear and experience the convicting power of the Spirit that reflects before our own eyes just how far short we have fallen personally? And with that loving knowledge, do we voluntarily submit to the chastening and correcting power of the Spirit for His glory? To regain the core of Romans 12:1-2 just might require a major shift in our Spiritual focus and devotion to Him and His will. It will be difficult and it will necessitate a considerable change of understanding concerning the process of His will in our personal lives, but without controversy it will glorify the One with Whom we have to do.

To be transformed into the image of Christ is our reasonable service considering what He alone has accomplished for us.