Transformation sounds like this beautiful process of change in one’s life. I was often told that transformation was like a caterpillar becoming a beautiful butterfly. While that is nice, to be honest, I don’t get it. I don’t know what a butterfly goes through. I know my life has been transformed by Christ. It has been a slow process. At times it has been a painful, seemingly endless process.
These past weeks we have been residing our house. I knew it was a big project. What I didn’t know was how slow, difficult and exhausting it would be. Once we started pealing back the layers of the old house, more repairs became apparent. Some rot around a door and window needed attention. What was supposed to be simple and straight forward became complicated and a struggle. What was to be completed in a day took five days. Three weeks into the project and there still isn’t any new siding on the house. The transformation has been slow and painful. I want this project over. I want my house back. I believe and have faith that it will get finished and that I will love it.
[ Place Your Life Before God ] So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Romans 12:2 MSG).
Scripture talks about such transformation. When we choose a relationship with Christ, we are offered the opportunity to be transformed into His likeness. We are changed from the inside out. God does bring out the best in us. It can be incredibly hard to give up the old self. We begin taking off that first layer and begin to see that there is more work to do than we ever imagined. The easiest thing for us to do is keep the old self. Doing the work of transformation can be long and hard to accomplish.
The good news is every step we take toward transformation results in change. Every step moves us closer to His likeness. Every step changes our hearts, opens us to compassion, makes room for forgiveness and reconciliation, and increases our understanding of grace.
Transformation is a process that is worth every step. I am far enough along in the process that I can look back at my old self and see a person who I’m glad is no longer in my life. I’m thankful for every difficult, painful, stretching, humbling moment with God.
Are you on the journey to transformation? Are you willing to start the change process? What helps you keep going? Share your story here and celebrate what God is doing in your life.