Transformers

This past week I went on a Prayer Retreat at a Monastery outside of Charleston, where they allow ministers to get away for a time and get revived, refocused, and refilled. My prayer life has been lacking for some time so I wanted to put my major focus for the week on my communication with God. I came back with a number of things from my time there but I quickly want to share some thoughts about relationship with God.

We were created for a relationship with God. There is no denying that. The hard part…at times…is figuring out how that relationship is going to grow. Throughout the week I kept coming back to John 4:23 where the “…true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth.” As I sat around sitting and thinking on that verse I began to realize that I spend a lot of my time living in the “truth side of God.” What I mean by this is that, if you asked me to write a paper about “Who God is,” I could write a lot of great stuff for you. I’ve got the information side of God down.

I am setting out on the journey to figure out how to connect my head with my spirit…to where my spirit and the truth I possess both are in the relationship with God. I feel like Augustine captures this pretty well in his reflections on the Lord’s Supper. He talks about how Jesus is Bread that, no matter how much you eat, will never vanish. As you eat of this Bread, Augustine says, you continue to eat to the point where you are so filled with Jesus that you no longer exist but that Christ has transformed in you. I find these thoughts amazing since we are constantly being called to be like Christ.

So what does this have to do with the spirit side of the relationship with God? When you take the truth of God, i.e. “…your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36b), and apply it to your life, i.e. “Be merciful…” (Luke 6:36a), you are then transformed by the merciful nature of God…to where you are merciful. This causes the truth of God to then be lived out through your spirit. Here is my challenge for all of us: Make a list of the characteristics of God/Jesus. Look at the list and see where you need to be transformed (do not help your neighbor decipher this unless they ask for your help).

God will continue to call us to a deeper relationship with Him. As you grow with Him, you’ll grow to be more like Him. I’m not sure which comes first…will we understand God’s love first when we begin to love others like He loves or will we better love others when we find God’s love inside of us first? Let’s continue to be transformed by Him in this relationship so we can be better worshipers of Him in spirit and in truth…then we can tackle Luke 10:27, “Love the Lord your God with all your…heart…soul…strength…mind,” and go deeper and deeper into a transforming relationship with our Father.