How Transformation Happenes

We love stories of transformation. Marley’s Ghost and the Ghosts of Christmas together transform Ebenezer Scrooge from a tight fisted miser to a man who keeps Christmas the whole year through in one of literatures most famous stories of transformation. I think transformational stories grip us because they point towards the promise of transformation which we find in the Bible. In the Bible we read the stories of Jesus' followers who begin as a ragtag group of fisherman, tax collectors and zealots and are transformed into people who turn the ancient world upside down.Jesus makes amazing promises about his ability to transform.

One of the boldest promises is found in John 7. Jesus points to the reality that Bruce Srpingsteen hints at in his song Everybody has a Hungry Heart, and U2 gets at more explicitly in I still haven’t found what I am looking for.  We feel this discontent with how our lives are. We are thirsty and hungry for something more. Jesus says without apology that he is the answer to the thirst and the hunger that we feel.As if this promise were not big enough, he makes an even bigger promise. He promises that as we turn towards him we not only find our own thirst satisfied, we actually become people who bring life to others.  I love this. It points to the reality that we were made for a greater purpose than ourselves. We were made by God for God and for others.

Sunday after the message we had what I thought was a really great discussion at our house church. The center of the discussion seemed to be, "What does Jesus want for us?"  I talked about a narrative that I have held for much of my life, which goes something like this:  Jesus’ big goal for me is that I don’t sin.  So the purpose of my life is that I don’t mess up. In this narrative Jesus aim for me is merely the absence of the bad. However, the more I get immersed in the narrative of the Bible, the more I become convinced that Jesus actually wants more for me than just not messing up. I think that he actually wants me to be an agent of good, an agent of life. He desires me to become a person who brings a glimpse of God’s goodness to those around me. I think this is what Jesus is getting at when he says that “springs of living water will flow from within.” I think that is his purpose for us. What's more he believes that he is completely competent to transform me into the type of person who brings life to others.

I closed out Sunday morning by reflecting on how often we are bored in our culture, and I contrasted that to this story from International Justice Mission.  These are followers of Jesus whose lives are overflowing with goodness. Because they are following Jesus others are actually experiencing life. So brothers and sisters may we be a people who are transformed by the love of God so that streams of living waters flow from us.

Grace and Peace,

John