We live in a world of chaos. Virtually no one would disagree with that statement. The world is constantly in crisis, and many of our individual lives are in a constant state of crisis as well. As Christians, how are we supposed to deal with the chaos we find in life? Here, at Abide Ministries, our goal is to share the good news that Christ can completely redeem and restore your life, and can lead you into a life of peace, joy, and abundance! But perhaps you are someone who has been a Christian for a long time, and you still struggle with the chaos you see both around you and in your own life. How can you find this transformation that Christ promises? Let’s dig in.
Hearing God’s voice.
Transformation is not something you can accomplish for yourself, but is rather something God must do in you. This means that, before you can be transformed, you need to be able to hear God’s voice. You may be asking: does God still speak to us directly? Is it possible for me to hear His voice? I’m not a trained theologian. I didn’t go to seminary. I’m not sure it’s possible for me to hear His voice, even if others do.
The truth is that God does speak to each of us, and He does desire to guide us through our lives. Many of us hear the word ‘gospel’, or ‘good news’, and think of the salvation we receive through Christ. While this is true, it only touches the tip of the iceberg that is God’s true ‘good news’. He desires to fully restore us and provide incredible resolution to our life’s issues, and He does this by speaking directly into our lives.
2 Corinthians 3:3-6, 16-18
3 And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
16 But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
If we take a look at these verses, we’ll see that they have something really wonderful to tell us. Paul says the competency or the sufficiency to receive what God will speak to you is coming from God Himself. Your ability to receive His revelation really has nothing to do with you. It is only based on Him, and He will give it to you. The only thing required of you is a heart to receive it. Do you have a heart to receive?
If you do, you have the same ability as anyone else to hear from God. That’s great news for all of us, because we have different life experiences. How amazing is it that these different life experiences do not alter our ability to know God? It doesn’t matter if you’ve been a Christian for a day or a lifetime, we all have an equal ability to hear from Him. This is because we all have the same Holy Spirit. There’s no junior Holy Spirit. Each of us has full access to the Holy Spirit, and He promises to speak to and guide each of us. And so the capability to hear His voice and process His revelation in scripture is not based on you, it’s based on Him. All you need to do is have a willingness to receive it.
Wait—so are you saying I’m as capable as Billy Graham or Henry Blackaby, or my pastor who knows scripture inside and out? But they seem so much more spiritual than me. Am I as capable of hearing from God as they are? Yes. And the reason is that the way we receive His words is the same way that they receive it. It’s based on God’s competency and sufficiency, not yours. We’re all equal. Christ died for everybody and offered this to everybody. Once you become a believer, you step into a new place, where you can hear God’s voice.
John 10:27
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
When you become a believer, you become one of God’s sheep. And God says that His sheep will hear His voice and that He wants to speak to them. He’s not going to force them to, but He offers that relationship to all of them. There’s no hierarchy. It’s not that some people get it and some people don’t, or that some people are gifted and others aren’t. He says that everybody can hear His voice. All you need to hear from Him is a heart to go.
Romans 8:5-8
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
If you live in the carnal mind (which is intellectual logic), then you only do what you want, or see as good. You’re going to follow through on your own self-centered direction. If you do this, Romans says there are three consequences.
- You’re at enmity against God.
- You cannot please Him.
- You’ve separated yourself away from the place where you can hear from God.
As believers, we’ve crossed over into eternal life. We recognize that He has redeemed us and that we will go to heaven and spend eternity with Him. However, we are also given a choice to make while we’re living here on earth. Either we can live in the flesh, or we can live in the Spirit. When we live in the flesh, we decide we don’t care about hearing from God. Maybe we don’t think it’s possible, or we’ve simply decided to go live our lives our own way. Our other option is to live in the Spirit, which means that we are willing to walk in God’s kingdom and allow Him to be King. This means surrendering my will to Him and believing that what He says is right. When you’re in this place, you can get revelation, because you have a heart to receive it. It’s His work, not yours.
So where do you want to be? In a position where you can hear His voice? Or living your own way in rejection of God? He says if you reject it, you won’t live the grand life He is offering you and you are going to struggle with all the things of the chaotic world. He can give you answers, but you have to have a heart to hear from Him.
In fact, when you read the Bible as letter, it kills. In other words, if you’re reading it intellectually—you analyze, study, evaluate—you’re trying to interpret it yourself. He says this approach actually kills you because it’s separating you out from the power of the Holy Spirit that is available to everybody. But if you look at the scriptures and receive it as life and spirit, it gives you life. You need to be a receiver, not a go-getter. And if you approach the Word with this heart, it will give you understanding and meaning. If you’re abiding where God has you in the Word, there’s life there. If God doesn’t have you there, and it’s just something interesting to read, there isn’t going to be any life in it. There isn’t going to be any depth, or great understanding, and it’s not because something is wrong with you. It’s because you’re chasing it on your own, apart from God. He wants you to listen to Him and go where He leads you. God has something in particular for you to learn. Ruminate on the words He has given you. He wants you to dwell there, and not go over it in just one pass. As you do this, you will find incredible depth, and it will become a joy to you.
Transformation.
As you spend time with Him and in His word, He will make clear the things that are fuzzy to you. He is going to metamorphize you, transforming you glory to glory (or step by step).
When you think of metamorphosis, what do you think of? For most of us, the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly comes to mind. This is actually a great metaphor for us, as Christians. One interesting thing about the caterpillar is that its transformation involves them technically dying. They go into a tomb—the cocoon—and then they are reborn in a brand new nature. Can a butterfly go back to being a caterpillar? Absolutely not. Why? They have been completely transformed—they’re a new creature. So, does transformation look like the caterpillar hitching a ride on something that can fly? No, that would be ridiculous. They would still be a caterpillar. The butterfly gets completely transformed and when their transformation is done, it is completely finished. They never have to go backwards with it.
Why do we say all of this? Well, a lot of us, when we deal with patterns of sin, try to manage it ourselves. When we do that, we set up boundaries and accountability partners, but somehow we always wind up back in our pattern of sin. Eventually, we just go to resignation. We say, “I guess I’m just going to be a caterpillar in this area. This is just my struggle.”
God asks, do you want to be healed? Most of us would say yes. So our job is to learn how to abide and let the power of the Word transform us. It’s not about managing your sin; it’s about being released from your sin. To be released means you’re completely free of it. When people are freed by the power of the Word, they no longer have any problem with their struggle at all. It is literally God changing your appetite, or your heart, so that you don’t even desire it anymore.
John 15:7
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
Jesus says that if His words abide in You—His rhema to you, what He is speaking to you personally—He will take you to freedom. If you allow Him, through His rhema word, to instruct you, lead you, and transform you, you will find incredible freedom. And He will do it step by step. So, will we be transforming for the rest of our lives? Yes. But as you grow, it gets deeper. Typically, you’re going to start out in what we call the first grade. But God says to enjoy first grade. It’s His job to get you to where you need to go. You’ll learn deeper, more profound things down the road, but first you have to learn the basics, and enjoy it, then He’ll graduate you to second grade. The only question you need to consider is: What is God saying to you? What steps does He have you in? If you understand that, He will help you stay there.
In our world of fast food, high speed internet, and two-day shipping, we are often tempted to desire the same immediate gratification from God. We are so interested in the end product that we are not willing to go on the journey and do the work ourselves. We have to remember that intimacy is all about walking with Him, and He’s going to use whatever He can to grow us in intimacy with Him. It just about staying with Him.
The last thing we ever want to do is be the one to tell somebody, “Just do X, Y, Z.” Instead, we want to equip them to go to the Father’s feet and let Him tell them what to do. And when they do that, they’re receiving it and processing it in a way that is personal and they can own and just thoroughly enjoy. When they learn in this way, it’s a joyful process.
2 Corinthians 3:17-18
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
The Spirit of the Lord is liberty—freedom. It’s really cool that the verses are in that order. If God would have put verse 17 after verse 18, we would have read it and said, okay, I get transformed, and when I get transformed I’ll find the Spirit of the Lord. Freedom comes when we get transformed. That’s how we tend to think. We believe that we have to first resolve the issue, then we’ll have freedom, and until that time we’ve got to struggle with it. God says it’s the other way around. He put verse 18 before verse 17. He is lifting up the veil and putting you on a journey of transformation and receiving and revelation. He’ll give it to you. And while you’re doing it, you’ll have freedom. Even while you’re in the midst of your struggle, you’ll experience His freedom. It’s an interesting and hard thing for us to get our heads around. So many of us have believed for our whole lives that we are burdened by our issues and that it is a struggle to get into the Word and be transformed. But there’s no freedom in that approach. God says, if you start letting Him do His work, you’ll start to receive freedom immediately. He will share immediate truths and you will receive immediate freedom. You have complete freedom in Christ and you will experience complete healing and transformation in Him. He is your sufficiency! And that is great and wonderful news.
As you seek the Lord and His transformation in your life, you will undoubtedly come up with questions. Don’t keep these to yourself! Talk to a fellow Christian you trust, and know that we are also always available for questions through **https://abideministries.com/contact-us/.**
