April 9 - John 3: The Shape Within

My middle daughter had a sleepover this weekend for her 14th birthday.  When her fun and noisy group of friends finally settled down, they began watching the classic movie, Princess Bride. (One of my favorites!)  At one point I was walking through the family room, where they were all piled in the floor watching the movie, and a familiar scene was playing.  It was the place in the movie where Wesley (the hero) is believed dead and his friends have taken him to the medicine man (played by Billy Crystal) to be brought back to life.  The greedy medicine man pronounces that he can heal Wesley with a special pill because he's not dead, he's just "mostly dead."

That phrase, "mostly dead," comes to mind as I read John 3 and think about my inner life, my spirit that is being transformed.  In some ways, my sin nature is mostly dead, but in so many other ways, my new spirit is not fully alive.  I experience my selfishness in relating to my husband; my anxieties around my children; my lack of focus on God's purposes in my circumstances; my disappointment that others aren't meeting my needs; and my independent spirit that spurns the Holy Spirit.  On the other hand, I also experience moving into difficult relationships with a freer heart; watching my children take risks that gladden my heart; and rest in the deep knowledge that Christ completely loves and accepts me.  This new shape that is forming within is mysterious to me, but it is fully known by Jesus.

Unless a person submits to this original creation—the 'wind-hovering-over-the-water' creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it's not possible to enter God's kingdom. When you look at a baby, it's just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can't see and touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.  (John 3:5-6)

This process of what's taking shape within - the process of becoming a living spirit - is often difficult to recognize.  I crave it, I desire to become alive in Christ, but more often I focus on my own inadequacies and inabilities instead of the One who is forming it in me.

"Don't look at your inability.  Look at My Son's ability.... My Son revealed what He had personally seen and heard in the unseen and unheard world from which He came (John 3:32).  He had seen perfect community from the inside.  Three persons living life as it was meant to be lived.  And He had heard the plan We same Three Persons had made to throw a party for forgiven sinners whom My Spirit would teach to dance, to really live - people who would become fully alive with the exact life that My Son revealed in everything he said and did."  (66LL)

Like poor, tortured Wesley in the movie, I am in the process of no longer being mostly dead and becoming fully alive.  There's no magic pill and it's a much longer journey for me.  My savior is not a selfish, hokey medicine man.  My Savior is the fully alive Son of God.