"But my question now is - not only how do I live Your story of slow change in me but also how do I find the energy to keep telling that story when so little of the slow change is visible in others? ...
"I know Paul was after real change, the kind of spiritual formation that puts people in touch with their desires to love and supplies the power to release those desires at any cost to themselves...
"And even when the Corinthian Christians kept living more like Corinthians than Christians even when they turned against Paul, and even when he went through a near-death experience and debilitating sickness and personal heartache, Paul kept right on living Your story as best he could and telling Your story as well as he could, and he lived and told it really well. How did he do that? I think I'd have felt so annoyed, so futile, that I'd have told the Corinthians to shape up, then moved on to more rewarding ministry....
"How did that happen?
"I [God] planted real hope deep in Paul's heart, the kind of hope that I wired him to long for more than any other kind. 'With this kind of hope to excite us,' Paul wrote, 'nothing holds us back' (2 Cor. 3:12)." (66LL)
And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. (3:18)
It's the gradual-ness, the slowness that pushes me to the edge of that hope. I have recently experienced this in conversations with friends I've knows for years any real change is barely evident, they're still stuck in their woundedness and selfishness. Then the crawling-along-transformation in my own life responds in a disappointed, unloving way. I fall short of God's standard of love, making it about me, and I lose sight of the hope that Christ, His resurrection and His Spirit have freely given to me. I long for Paul's confidence in God's plan in the midst of the tears and suffering.
So we're not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace.... The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever. (4:16-18)
1 comment:
Finishing 1 Corinthians and starting 2 Corinthians is just so convicting, so encouraging and so freeing. In every conviction, I'm reminded of 2 Cor 4:16. We don't lose heart because we're being renewed each day. On the outside it may look like we're wasting away but on the inside, we don't go a day without God's grace unfolding in us and making us new.
He's making me new. Even when I can't see it. But as I continue to walk closely with Him and pursue Him. As He even gives me the strength, passion and desire to see Him more clearly, i'm refreshed by His Spirit in me.
And instead of judging others as I so often do and condemn them, I will beg the Spirit to help me to forgive and to encourage and to love. As God does for me inside every moment with His grace. Thankful for these letters!
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