Glimpses of Hidden Glory

Posted on March 1, 2019

By Linda Rex

TRANSFIGURATION—Lately I have had to reexamine the way in which I view people in my life. I thought that I was very open to people growing and changing. But God has shown me that I’m not as gracious and open to his work in people’s hearts and lives as I thought I was.

I’m also being reminded that real love works towards the other person’s best rather than only working toward their happiness. I grew up believing it was important to keep the people in my life happy. In reality this is a very selfish approach to life because the effort to keep people happy is more about my comfort level and my convenience than it is necessarily about the well-being of those around me. It’s not wrong to want to bring joy to the people in my life, but that is significantly different in my mind than just trying to keep them happy—a task which is nigh to impossible and ultimately comes under the heading of codependency and enabling.

To bring joy to someone is more than just keeping them happy. We can feel loving toward someone but our love for them must move beyond feeling into expressions of genuine love. Real love for someone takes conscious effort and discipline. One chooses to express love to another, using one’s reason along with responding to one’s feelings. These expressions of love seek the other person’s best interests and personal growth, rather than just giving the other person what they want, when and how they want it.

When we grow up in a family in which love was not expressed in healthy ways, our efforts to love can actually be sick and maybe even destructive. In some families the parents discipline their children in the name of love, but do so in ways which are abusive and cruel. The discipline God gives us isn’t abusive and cruel but rather is laden with mercy and compassion. In fact, the curse and death we deserved because of our sinful ways and thoughts, Jesus took upon himself. He allowed us to crucify him and kill him, and did not retaliate in any way.

Love as expressed by God is self-sacrificial, humble, yielding, and gracious. And yet, God’s love always seeks our best. His purpose in taking on our humanity, living the life we were meant to live, dying our death, and rising again was so that we could fully become and be the people God intended us to be from the beginning. The apostle Paul uses the concept of having letters etched on a page, and Jesus taking our hand and writing those letters with us (and on our hearts) by the Holy Spirit. Jesus not only went before us, but by the Spirit, goes before us and with us as we grow in Christlikeness.

This beautiful love of God as expressed to us in Christ and in the gift of the Holy Spirit is meant to transform us and to draw us deeper into loving relationship with God. The reality of our human brokenness doesn’t alter God’s love for us, rather it awakens his compassion and moves him to do everything possible to bring healing, renewal, and transformation. God is ever working to transform us into the image of Christ, because even now Christ bears our true humanity in his Person as he is united forever with us in hypostatic union.

When I say that we work towards another person’s best interests and personal growth, I do not mean that we work to change them. Changing people is the sole dominion of the Holy Spirit. We can participate in the Spirit’s work by allowing our own selves to be grown up in Christlikeness and by expressing genuine godly love so we are a positive influence in someone’s life. We can tell them about our own broken path which Jesus has worked to heal and transform by the Holy Spirit. But we do not and cannot change another person. Often our efforts to change someone actually cause them to become more deeply entrenched in unhealthy ways of being and living.

I learned this the hard way and never want to try to do it ever again. The human tendency is to try to fix people and situations which in reality only God can fix. It is the Spirit’s work. And sometimes he will not work his transforming work in someone’s heart and life until we get out of the way and allow him to do it. Even the twelve-step program recovering addicts follow teaches that we cannot change another person—we can only work on ourselves. And as for me, even changing myself is problematic—I need God to change me, as I really struggle to change anything about myself.

What if someone in our lives is actually changing? What if they are growing up in Christ and beginning to manifest new ways of being and doing? How supportive are we of those changes? It is much too easy hold someone to their past ways of being and doing and to their brokenness, and not allow them to move into their new life in Christ. At the first sign of struggle or failure, we say, “They’re just the same as they’ve always been” and turn away in disgust.

I’m grateful God has not done that to me. When Paul uses the Greek word we draw our modern word “metamorphosis” from, I cannot but help think of the process which turns a caterpillar into a butterfly. The change from a leaf-eating monster into a beautiful nectar drinking butterfly is a long and difficult process. It actually includes the complete destruction of the caterpillar’s body and its reconstruction into something new. And this takes time.

And in exiting the cocoon, the butterfly goes through an intense struggle. If it did not press its wings through the small opening, it would never be able to fly. So the struggle is part of the process. We, as well-meaning friends and family, often snip the hole to make it larger so the struggle is not so difficult. But that only harms the butterfly. We can participate through being present, encouraging, praying, but we don’t want to do for the butterfly what it needs to do on its own.

I’m committing myself to becoming more aware of what God is doing in another person’s life and how I can be a helper in their joy. I want to encourage, pray, and be present as the people I encounter walk the road of transformation. I want to embrace and thank God for the work he has done and is doing to grow people into the likeness of his Son Jesus. And I want to fully participate in what God is doing to transform and change me. I hope you will join me in this commitment.

We are approaching Ash Wednesday this week. It is a good time to reflect not only on our brokenness and need for God’s mercy and rescue in Jesus, but also on the deliverance God has given us through his death and resurrection, and on the power of God to heal, transform, and renew given to us in the Person and presence of the Holy Spirit. May God bless you on your own personal journey of transformation.

Thank you, Abba, that you love us so much you want us to reflect your glory, the glory which shown in the person of Jesus Christ. Enable us to see what you are doing to grow those around us in Christlikeness and what you are doing to grow us up in Christ as well. Holy Spirit, we trust you to finish your perfect work in them and in us. Thank you for never stopping, but always working for our best, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” 2 Corinthians 3:16-18 NASB