"And be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." Romans 12:2
A better translation for this verse puts it this way: "Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect."
An Aha moment! You know what I mean, a time when a piece of the puzzle fits into place, and you suddenly see something that you never saw before? It could be as simple as getting stuck filling out a crossword, and then just like that, you see what letters are missing, but more to the point of this blog an Aha moment is one where a Spiritual truth is opened up for you to see for the first time, and you now see something more profound than you had before, and it can be something that will forever change your way of thinking.
That Spiritual truth begins for the first time by seeing for the first time the reality that there IS a Spiritual Truth!
Since the beginning of this blog I have focused on the fact that we are Spiritual beings on a Human Journey, thus the blog title. The focus is on the Spiritual part rather than the human part, because we are indeed Spiritual beings FIRST and foremost! It is very easy to forget that, as we are often so distracted, and concerned with the human part of living! While we are busy about the task of making a living, and fullfilling obligations, and interacting with others, and living daily life, it can be a constant struggle to keep it forefront in our minds that we are Spiritual beings first, and that each of the human experiences we have are for the maturing of our Spiritual man!
The problem with that is that we slip into a lower realm of thinking! Someone has aptly called it "stinking thinking." This is where we begin trying to adapt our Spiritual walk to help us with our human walk. Think of most of the prayers you have made lately. "Dear God please help me to do this or that.... " and the this or that has only to do with our earthly needs or wants. Not that there isn't a place for that too, but really don't prayers like that put our focus in the wrong place? What did Jesus say? "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Matt. 6:33 (Now, as a side note I would like to mention that we are to seek His righteousness, and not our own.) Do you see the highest order of priorities?
What is the purpose of our human existance? Fake it till we make it? Just live a decent life? Hang in there till we get to heaven? What about the noble idea of living a sacrificial life for others? If you were to ask me, my answer would be no to all.
I will tell you something about a recent Aha Moment for me. I watched a Christian movie the other day called "To Save A Life." One of the lines by a youth pastor in the movie that struck me the most was "Life is a journey; but not to a destination, but rather to a transformation." A journey to a transformation! Aha!!
You see, even I think I get caught up in thinking that the purpose of our Human Journey is a destination. The very word journey even conjures up in our minds going from point A to point B. And point B is the destination. Now, I am begining to change my focus to the fact that the point is not a destination but the purpose of God, is not to drag us through all sorts of trouble just to get us to some heavenly location, or destination, but rather it is to TRANSFORM us!
Be TRANSFORMED in the SPIRIT of your MIND! One dictionary definition of transform is: "to cause (a cell) to undergo genetic transformation" Think about that! How about we tweak that definition a bit and add a spiritual context and suggest that it means to "cause (our human mind) to undergo genetic transformation into the mind of Christ." Phil. 2:5 "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:" A genetic transformation! A transformation in our genes, or as Lynn Hiles has said it, "To be Re-GENE-erated.
Can you imagine how drastically our lives would change if we began to see everything from the point of view, that God was purposing every detail of our lives in this human journey in order to bring about a spiritually genetic transformation!! And not only if we saw it that way on occasions, but in fact knew it so fully that it changed the way we saw everything that took place both (what we think is) good and bad? Now that would certainly be a life changing Aha Moment!
