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The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10. 

We have just come into a new year, a time when many people reflect on the recent past and consider how to approach the near future. Last year was a particularly difficult one for many of us. The tribulations included, but were not limited to, the pandemic, political unrest and a spectrum of challenges in our livelihoods: some suffered great loss while others became busy to the point of being overwhelmed. All of these difficulties in the visible realm signify real spiritual conflicts. The powers and principalities that govern the world system have set themselves to oppose Christ and His truth. This opposition comes home to all of us, because we live in the world and are constantly exposed to its messaging. 

“The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning” C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity. “All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. and the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day.” 

At the beginning of the new year, and at the beginning of each new day, you may find it helpful to behold your Lord Jesus Christ—returning your thoughts to Him when they wander—and open yourself to His thoughts. Many believers through the ages have found this practice to be beneficial. Jesus told us, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” By our willingness to receive Him we demonstrate our love of the truth. And our responding to the truth, as He reveals it, vaccinates against deception. In this way His life has the opportunity to expand its influence within us as individuals and among us as a body.

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Happiness is a temporary emotional state that we experience when we get our own way. Joy is a deeper and more enduring condition that we may experience when God has His way—to the extent that we are invested in seeing His will accomplished. True joy always comes from satisfying God. The shepherds witnessed rejoicing in heaven when Jesus was born; those angels were rejoicing because God’s plan was on the move in the earth in a tangible way. There is, as Jesus remarked, rejoicing in heaven over every sinner who repents because in this, too, God’s plan moves forward. We also can rejoice in seeing God’s fingerprints on our present circumstances, even adverse circumstances. In Luke 10:21 we read of Jesus that “In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.’” We can find joy in looking back on God’s past accomplishments in and through our lives. And we can find joy in looking forward to God working out His eternal purpose. That is the joy that was set before Jesus: “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1). Happiness, although fleeting, is commonplace. Joy is rare among humanity because it follows from an unselfish love for God, and unselfish love is itself a gift of God to us as we discover who He is and keep pressing in to Him. 

We read of the joy of a number of individuals around the birth of Jesus:

The joy of Mary, the mother of Jesus. “And Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever’” Luke 1:46-55.

The joy of the shepherds. “When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.’ And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them” Luke 2:15-20. 

The joy of the wise men. “After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh” Matthew 2:9-11. 

This Christmas, may we be aware of the joy in heaven over us each time we take another step along the way of transformation. May we find joy in looking back on the ground that God has already gained in our lives. And may we anticipate a day when we will hear Him say, “Well done, enter into My joy!”

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Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 
Hebrews 11:1

On the transformation trail we who have experienced redemption by the blood of Christ are in the process of unlearning many old things and learning many new things. There is an American saying that goes something like this: it’s not just what you don’t know that hurts you, it’s what you know that just ain’t so. We are coming to recognize, in the light of God’s Spirit, that many truths we have taken for granted, perhaps even adopted as the basis of our lives, are not really true. Instead we are learning to rely on the life of another: the life of Jesus who indwells us. 

Some of these so-called truths that we are unlearning have to do with the visible world. The way we relate to the world. The way we get along in the world. Jesus did not ask the Father to take us out of the world, but to keep us from the evil one (John 17:15). And growing up in the world we have been conditioned to depend on education, experience, information and input from our physical senses. All of those sources contradict what Jesus is telling us. It takes faith to stand firm in Christ while being assaulted by contradictory evidence all around us. 

So it’s a good thing that we have many helpful examples in the scripture. Here are a few that are cited in Hebrews 11: 

• Abraham had a promise from God. We read that “no distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God.” But given his advanced age—and that of his wife—it was impossible that the promise could be fulfilled. Sarah laughed in disbelief and received as a reply, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” The Lord is full of wonders, and able to keep His promises. The numerical value of Abraham’s years was no barrier to God.
• Moses grew up in the court of Egypt, a wealthy and powerful nation in the world of that time. When he learned of his heritage and God’s regard for the enslaved children of Israel, he turned his back on the personal wealth and power that he had gained from Egypt. It was impossible for Moses, by himself, to extract his people from the grip of Pharaoh. Nevertheless, Moses resolved not to pay allegiance to Egypt any longer. When the time came, all of that great nation’s wealth and power could not prevent God from using that same Moses to execute His plan and deliver His people. 
• God sent Gideon to confront a large army with a ridiculously lightweight band that was not even armed in any conventional way. The overwhelming numerical advantage of that enemy meant nothing to God in terms of achieving victory. 

Centuries later, Jesus was passing through Samaria. He arrived at one of Jacob’s wells, exhausted. His disciples went to a nearby village to find food. Meanwhile, a woman from the village came to draw water. His request for her to give him to drink sparked a conversation. It was an amazing, revelatory conversation during which he stated, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 

The kind of life that he refers to as eternal has to do with more than enduring for all time. That term encompasses all of the aspects of his own life. Jesus is eternal life, and he gives us eternal life by coming to live within us. As we learn to depend less on ourselves less and on more his life, we will be less influenced—or depressed—by the “facts” of age, political power, wealth and other temporary attributes of the world we live in. 

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And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son of God has not life. 1 John 5:11-12. 

When God created the visible world, He made many forms of life, the greatest of which was human life. He created humans alone with a spirit as well as a soul and body. This spirit gave them the ability to “understand,” as Elihu put it as he began to speak to Job (Job 32:8). The understanding that God imparted to Adam allowed him to name the other forms of life that God brought before him; naming implies an insight into the character. 

Although the first humans possessed understanding, they had a choice to make: from what source would they draw? In other words, would they take God as the basis of their life, or something outside of Him? God had presented them with the tree of life in the center of the garden, and with an alternative source of life—the tree of knowledge of good and evil—and left them free to draw upon one or the other. Spiritual life and understanding as opposed to natural, soul-powered life and knowledge. They could have chosen to share in the tree of life, and they would have received into themselves divine life with its characteristics. Instead they joined themselves to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and received the life that we have all inherited, our fallen nature, having characteristics with which we are so familiar. 

But what if the humans who were created first had made a different choice? What would their lives have looked like? The answer is in God’s idea of the perfect man, Jesus Christ. Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine. Jesus, like our first parents, came into this world without a fallen nature. Jesus, in comparison to them, had the disadvantages of arriving as an infant rather than as an adult and living in a fallen world rather than the more favorable setting of Eden. But when he arrived at the Jordan River to be baptized, the Father declared from heaven: “You are my beloved Son. In you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).

The Father made this statement before Jesus had preached publicly, attracted any followers or performed any miracles. It was a response to the life he had led as he grew up in Galilee. He was poor, working class, part of a large family that eventually he became responsible for supporting, a Jew sharing in the oppression of Roman occupation. Nevertheless his life was one the likes of which the world had never seen. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). During the brief years of his ministry Jesus openly talked about the source of his life, the Life that he always drew his own life from, the basis of his life. In public, and privately among his disciples, he said things like:

For as the Father has life in himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in himself.John 5:26

As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. John 6:57

Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father?” Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? John 14:9-10

The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does His works. John 14:10

Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. John 14:11

(Praying for his followers) I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. John 17:20-21

As man, Jesus lived by the life of another: the Father’s life. The author of Hebrews describes this as the “power of an indestructible life.” And what is God’s idea about our life as Christians? We also are to live by the life of another: “And because of him [God], you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1Corinthians 1:30). What the first humans rejected we, in Christ, have the opportunity to welcome back. We can enter into Christ who overruled the fall of humanity. Jesus not only is God’s idea of the perfect human, he is God’s idea of the perfect basis for our Christian journey. By receiving the life that is in the Son, which is eternal life, we gain everything that has everlasting value. 

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Who is this coming up from the desert, leaning on her beloved? 
Song of Solomon 8:5

This past Monday was a holiday at my workplace. My wife and I enjoy spending time out in nature, and we have a number of parks not far from our home. So, I asked her which one she would like to visit that day. Her answer was, “I don’t care, as long as I am with you!”

This reply made me think, not because it was unusual for her to respond in that way but because it captures something of our relationship with Jesus. In the last post I quoted Brennan Manning regarding faith, about it growing to the point that we want God, and we want to want nothing else. To be with Him is our objective rather than where He takes us or whether we become enriched in some way. 

In the resurrection, Jesus gave Peter a preview of the future: “‘…when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.’ (This he [Jesus] said to show by what kind of death he [Peter] was to glorify God.)” (John 21:18-19). Peter would not want to go there, but he would accompany Jesus for the sake of glorifying God. This willingness to place God’s interests above our own is a sure sign that a death has taken place, and new life has come. 

Lately I have been spending some time re-reading Watchman Nee’s wonderful book, The Normal Christian Life. He takes as the starting point our crucifixion with Christ, as the apostle Paul describes in Galatians 2:20. God the Father has placed us, as baptized believers, in His Son. Eventually we awaken to the fact that when Jesus died on the cross our old sinful nature died with him. And when he arose from the dead we were given a new life in him. As Paul put it in Romans 6:3-4, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” The nature of this new life is inclined to love him and seek him, to long to be near him—because now we share in his own nature, and this is how Jesus himself relates to the Father. This is not something that God regards as extraordinary for followers of Christ; it is, to Him, a normal Christian life. The Father placed each of us in Christ, and Christ in each of us, so that Jesus “became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). 

I am astonished to find myself coming up from the wilderness, leaning on Jesus. Astonished because I always thought that this experience of walking with him and leaning on him was reserved for the far-advanced, super-spiritual giants of the faith. Instead, our Lord intends for all believers to know Him in this way. The young woman in the poems of the Song of Solomon was not extraordinary in herself, but she was extraordinary in the eyes of her Beloved. As we learn His love we grow in trust. Trust leads us to greater openness, dependence and intimacy. As we walk in intimacy with the Son, our Beloved brings us up from the desert of individualism and into the family life of the Father.

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What are the most wonderful words in our vocabulary? There are many to choose from, but among them must be Grace, Faith, Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Fellowship—all of which are ours in Jesus and completely out of reach without him. Here are a few observations on the first two of these.

Faith and grace complement each other. On one hand, grace is God’s enabling power toward us, the source of which is His love. Grace empowers us to be and to do that which would otherwise be impossible. On the other, faith grows out of a favorable response to God and enables Him to do that which would otherwise be a violation of our free will. 

Faith begins as a seed that comes from God. It settles in a human heart that has responded to the outreach of the Holy Spirit. That response may be provoked by life circumstances or prompted by observing others who happen to be faithful Christians. No matter what, right from the start faith is a gift from God to a human heart—really, a kind of grace. Even the smallest spark of a response gives God something to work with. Ultimately, the apostle Paul points out, “…faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). Our walk with Him starts in faith (Galatians 3:2) and proceeds by faith (Galatians 3:5). Our initial belief in God establishes a bond with Him, because the life of Christ comes to dwell in us and that life is unbreakably bound to God Who is all around us.

In the nativity hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” we sing:

How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.

Faith comes to our hearts just like Jesus came to Bethlehem—small, weak and apparently insignificant. Yet it is the occasion for new life as the life of Christ is imparted to us. Everything is changed! It is the beginning of a relationship in which, by grace, faith can develop and mature.

Faith can grow to the point that “you want God and want to want nothing else” [Brennan Manning, Ragamuffin Gospel, chapter 9]. Manning continues: “It always means a profound dissatisfaction with our present state. In faith there is movement and development. Each day something is new. To be Christian, faith has to be new—that is alive and growing.” 

Faith is an inclination to say “yes” to God. It is an inner disposition to turn to Him and away from everything that holds us back: complacency, fear, personal failings with their guilt and shame, and distractions of every kind. Faith also has the dimensions of trust in God and loyalty to God. They come into play when external circumstances contradict the truth that He has revealed to us, and when we encounter human opposition or betrayal.

Our transformed lives are a miracle of His workmanship; ongoing faith on our part gives Him the opportunity to work that miracle. Where He encounters hardness of heart, however, He withdraws His hand out of respect for our free will. “And he [Jesus] did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief” (Matthew 13:58). Even when we find ourselves in such a condition, He keeps looking to us for a renewed response of faith so that He can resume the work of transformation.

This great exclamation of the apostle Peter in his first letter (1 Peter 1:3-9) illustrates the ongoing interplay between what God has accomplished through Jesus and what God brings home to us through faith. The outcomes are, for Jesus, praise and glory and honor and, for us, the salvation of our souls—

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 
Though you have not seen him, you love him. 
Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

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Allow me to share something of our Lord Jesus Christ. It comes from Isaiah 11:1-3. 

1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. 2 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3 And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear….

The first verse in this passage establishes that it refers to the Messiah, who is to come from the same lineage as David, son of Jesse. In the next verse, the prophet foretold that the Spirit of God would rest upon him. Here is how the New English Translation presents verse 2:

The LORD’s spirit will rest on him—
a spirit that gives extraordinary wisdom, 
a spirit that provides the ability to execute plans, 
a spirit that produces absolute loyalty to the LORD.

The third verse begins with an expression that is commonly translated, “And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.” The Hebrew text reads literally, “and his breathing (or smelling) is in the fear of the Lord.” The expression suggests a lively perception of the Lord and a loving response to His presence. Robert Alter, in his recent translation of the Hebrew Bible, renders the expression, “his very breath in the fear of the Lord.” Alter notes, “The Hebrew here is literally a verbal noun that has somewhat perplexed interpreters, but the context indicates a sense like the one proposed in this translation. One should note that this verb reflects the same root as the reiterated word for ‘spirit.’” (He is referring to the reiterated word “spirit” that occurs in verse 2.) This man’s wisdom, ability and absolute loyalty to his heavenly Father would be the outcome of a constant connection to the Spirit of the Lord. 

Regarding the remainder of verse 3, Robert Alter writes: “This is reminiscent of God’s words to Samuel, which have to do with making the right choice, that is David, for the kingship: ‘For man sees with the eyes and the Lord sees with the heart’ (1 Samuel 16:7). The ideal king breathes the spirit of the Lord, and that, rather than appearances, guides him in judgement.”

Old-fashioned diving suits had a long tether to the boat at the surface, along with an air hose. Now underwater divers carry tanks of compressed air, but that air came from the atmosphere above—as it were, a different realm. This provision of air is necessary to sustain human life in a hostile environment. Jesus drew His life from the Father through the Holy Spirit. In the same way we can draw upon him, our crucified, risen and ascended Lord. His life dwells within us. The Spirit of God sustains that life. We need only to be open and breathe. 

When God created the first human, He breathed into him the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). Human life was of His making, His craftsmanship. Our new creation life also originates in Him, as Paul points out in Ephesians 2:10, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works…”

Breathing in the life of Christ keeps our spirits alive and keeps our focus on Him rather than ourselves. He protects us from becoming preoccupied with our past, present and future. In Him we have wisdom, ability and loyalty to God. He is our complete provision. He directs us in good works. He keeps us on track.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Fill me with life anew, 
That I may love that which You love
And do what You would do.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Until my heart is pure,
Until my will is one with Yours,
To do and to endure.

(Edwin Hatch, “Breathe on me, Breath of God” verses 1 and 2.)

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Every Christian leads a double life. One of the two is fading away, while the other increasingly comes to the forefront. 

Consider Adam, the first human, the progenitor. This is the man who was placed in a perfect environment, who lacked for nothing, who had access to the Tree of Life but never drew from it, and who chose as the source of his life the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He turned his back on God and God’s plan, exchanging allegiance to God for allegiance to himself. 

His legacy was the desire to be a god unto himself, to live independently of the only true God. This kind of humanity, naturally speaking, is our inheritance. The old man, the natural man, the old creation, the Adam in us, is not in right standing with God (here I’m drawing on a series of recorded messages by T. Austin-Sparks entitled “Right Standing with God”). He is the “wrong man”. He is by his own choice estranged from God’s family. In seeking freedom from the authority of God he falls into slavery to invisible forces of evil and has no power to liberate himself from them. In fact, in many cases, he lacks the awareness of his state of bondage. He is incapable of appreciating the things of God, and actually hostile to the life of the Spirit. This humanity is ingrained in each of us. The apostle Paul refers to this person as “the man of dust.” God’s decision regarding this man: he came from the dust and to the dust he would return. And He turns his attention to a new humanity. 

The new humanity owes everything to Jesus. In the gospel of John, Jesus “is presented to us as God’s thought concerning man.” He is, by God’s reckoning, the Right Man. The incredibly good news is this: “What is true of the Lord Jesus as man is to be made true of all the children of God.” This is our new inheritance as believers, our right standing with God. God has made Jesus to be, according to Paul, our wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Jesus took our old nature with him when he went to the cross. As Paul writes elsewhere, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (1 Corinthians 5:27). The term “sin” here refers the old humanity. The resurrection of Jesus brought the new creation to the light of day. This is the new humanity that, in Christ, is in right standing with God. As this new creation in Christ, we have the right to stand in the presence of God. 

However, the old creation does not disappear from view for a long time. “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven (1 Corinthians 15:49). As T. Austin-Sparks puts it, “We are to be made according to God’s Right Man.” This is one way of describing our transformation: the process of coming into conformity with the image of Christ and relegating the image of the man of dust to the dustbin of our personal history. Transformation takes a long time. God knows me and He knows you. He sees how the process will unfold in each of us. More than knowing us, He loves us. He has a deep interest in our transformation. He knows how to intervene in each segment of the journey, to keep us on track and guide us back to the trail after every wrong turn. 

This being so, what would be an appropriate response?

Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee. 
Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee. 
Take my voice and let me sing always, only, for my King. 
Take my lips and let them be filled with messages for Thee.
Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold. 
Take my love, my God, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.
(After Frances Ridley Havergal)

This is my eleventh post. I want to take a quick look back on the first ten, to make sure that I’m staying on course with the purpose of this blog.

The long journey to transformation, with its daunting demands, begins at the trailhead. We have cast in our lot with Christ. We have experienced the free gift of redemption by His grace. We recognize, however, that negotiating the transformation trail will require giving up old ways and patterns of thought to enter into a new reality: bearing the genuine image of the Son of God. We start out toward this tremendous opportunity because we know Him—at least something of Him—and we find ourselves drawn to Him.

The initial posts had to do with prayer, with seeing Christ in everyday events, and with scripture. We start out with these essentials. They will help us “hike our own hike,” following the unique path through life that Jesus has laid out for us. The last couple of posts touched on Jesus as our security. This fundamental understanding will keep us from losing heart when the going is difficult. Much more could be said on these subjects, and I have begun to share some valuable resources that all of us can draw upon. I need to look to other believers who are more experienced, more spiritually mature. Although it may seem to me that I sometimes have to walk alone, I cannot experience the fullness of transformation all by myself.

Likewise, transformation is not primarily about me or for me. Maybe you knew this already, but this concept came to me only recently. So then—why transformation? So that God can have the purpose for which He created. So that we can take our place in that purpose, as partners with Him in achieving that end. 

Now the question naturally comes up—what is my part in this? Jesus was asked about this by a crowd, when he admonished them to “labor for the food that endures to eternal life” (John 6:27): what is this labor?—”what must we do, to be doing the works of God?” The immediate reply of Jesus: Believe! “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:29). Believe in a Christ who will never leave or forsake us. Believe in a Christ who will not compromise. Who brings the dead to life, and calls into existence things that are not. Who is passionate about accomplishing His Father’s purpose. Believe in Christ rather than promises. Keep turning to Him, beholding Him, pressing in to Him. Yielding and surrendering and decreasing in the magnitude of my powers, so that His power can be on display. Persistent believing redirects our attention from “our work” to the work of the Lord. 

This kind of belief leads to active participation instead of passive waiting. Patient endurance without anxiety. Full commitment rather than divided loyalties. In saying this I admit to going well beyond the limits of my own experience. Furthermore I am told (and I believe it is true) that the work can progress only so far in an individual who is living as an individual. Its completion requires community life, in the company of other believers who are on the same journey of transformation. Certainly those of us who want full transformation look forward to this part of the journey.

And what is the work that God has assigned to Himself? The work of conforming us to the image of the Son, producing in us the characteristics of Christ. This reminds me of a couple of things. One is an observation about Daniel’s friends made by Nebuchadnezzar, emperor of Babylon, in connection with the divine intervention that delivered them from the fiery furnace: they “set aside the king’s command” (Daniel 3:28). The other concerns Jesus himself who, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). On behalf of his faithful ones, who mark their determination by setting aside the commands of “king self,” Jesus makes His own determination: once again he sets his face, this time to see his work of transformation accomplished in them.

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