Michael Kelley's Blog, page 27

3 Ways Waiting Shapes You as a Christian

Though you could describe the advancement of technology in many ways, you might say that technology is an attempt to eliminate waiting. If you think about it, that’s what every new innovation does – it keeps us from waiting for information. Or for response. Or for food or movies or whatever. Because we live in this world, most of us are not acquainted with waiting for many things. And there’s a good reason for that, for when it comes to waiting…

We do not like it.

Of all people, though, Christians ought to be the most comfortable with waiting. That’s because “waiting” is something we are really doing all the time. For most people, “waiting” is just a means to an end. You bide your time until the waiting is over, and you get the meal you ordered or the promotion that you’re due. But for the Christian, waiting is not just a temporary time; it’s a perpetual state. Our whole identity, in a way, is built around waiting, for we are the people who believe in things that we cannot see. That are not readily apparent. That are coming, and yet have not yet come. To be a Christian means to be someone who waits, whether we like it or not.

Because we are Christians, we are also people who wait. But also as Christians, we should be uniquely positioned to understand the value in waiting. We should know that even though it seems like nothing is happening, God is busy in us as we wait. Waiting, in fact, is one of the most formative times in our lives. And while it is not only impossible but also arrogant to say for sure exactly what God is doing in our souls as we wait, we can describe, I think, some general ways that waiting shapes us into the people God intends for us to be:

1. Waiting redefines our desires.

Imagine it’s the week after Christmas, and your child comes to you with something he or she wants. Of course you could go out and get that thing for them, but chances are your response is going to be something like, “Christmas just happened. If you really want that, you’ll need to wait.” And a funny thing happens the longer that waiting period goes on. Something else catches the kid’s eye, something else captures their hearts, something else arrests their attention. Their desires change, and the same thing is true with us, albeit in a more redemptive way.

Now imagine that you are praying for something. Maybe it’s a new job. So you pray, “Job, job, job,” and nothing seems to be happening. But as you focus your attention on this singular issue for more and more time, you realize that the better thing to be praying for is not a job, for the job only represents something else that has now been exposed. You find, over the course of waiting that your prayer changes from “job, job, job” to “trust, trust, trust.” Your desire has changed to something deeper. Something more lasting and more true.

2. Waiting exposes our hearts.

Here’s another scenario – imagine that are waiting in an everyday way like at in the black hole of the DMV. You wait and wait and wait… and then you wait some more. Chances are, the longer you wait, the more frustrated you become. Self-entitlement starts to bubble up inside you, and you begin to feel that you are being wronged in some way because you have to wait. Your rights as a consumer and a citizen are being challenged. And you begin to boil.

Now where did those things come from? Of course, you could blame it on the DMV, but if we are honest with ourselves, we know that the DMV didn’t plant that frustration in our hearts; it was there all the time. The waiting only exposed it. So it is with this period of waiting – there is a near daily “exposure” that is taking place in all of us – exposure of fear, of anxiety, of frustration, and yes, of self-entitlement. Until these things are brought into the light, we cannot really bring the gospel to bear on them because they would have otherwise remained hidden.

3. Waiting gives you margin to think.

Waiting provides space if we are willing to accept it. Space to ponder. To consider. And for the Christian, these are important things that help us surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We aren’t just thinking small thoughts any more; we are thinking about the future. About our source of identity and security. About the nature of faith and trust and hope. These are things we don’t typically think about, not only because it’s uncomfortable to do so, but because the world around us is just too noisy.

We have places to go, people to see, and conversations to have. But now? While we wait? Now there is nothing but time. Time to confront these issues and more on the battlefield of the mind. And time to guided in our thoughts by the Holy Spirit who knows and searches all.

Waiting is not easy. It’s not comfortable. But it is profitable, if indeed we are willing to embrace it and not just wish it away.

The Spiritually Mature Don’t Take Themselves So Seriously

There is a natural progression to things, or at least there should be.

Physically, we grow and change and mature and develop as we grow. The same thing is true intellectually. And emotionally. And with every other part of ourselves. We are not who we were yesterday, much less ten years ago. If things work like they are supposed to, we grow in knowledge, wisdom, and maturity over time. That means the older we are the better we can make decisions, handle money, deal with conflict, and a host of other things.

Of course, the same thing is true spiritually. The older we are, the longer we have walked with Jesus, and the longer the Holy Spirit has been at work to mold us into the image of Christ. And as with physical age and maturity, there are certain signs or “fruits” of spiritual maturity that develop over time. There are many of these listed in the Bible – love, joy, peace, patience, and so on. But these lists aren’t necessarily exhaustive in nature. In light of that, here’s one more mark of spiritual maturity that is a little more surprising:

The spiritually mature do not take themselves too seriously. That is, it is a mark of maturity to be able to laugh at yourself.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that only those who are spiritually mature can laugh at themselves, just as not only those who are spiritually mature have patience. For the Christian, though, the ability to laugh at yourself is a bit different than the rest of the aging population. That’s because our willingness to laugh at ourselves demonstrates that we are not thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to. Read the words Paul wrote on that subject:

“For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think” (Rom. 12:3).

Other versions translate Paul’s admonishment to be that we should have a “sober estimation” of ourselves. What does that mean?

Maybe most simply, it means we think neither too highly nor too lowly of ourselves, and we might be tempted to do either one. This verse comes in the context of Paul’s discussion of spiritual gifts and their use in the church. In that discussion, we might think of ourselves too highly when we think that the church – and God Himself – is certainly fortunate to have us on the team. That we are more important than others because of our gifts. That we are absolutely indispensable to the purposes of God. But then again, we might think too lowly of ourselves when we think that we don’t have anything to bring to the table. That if we suddenly disappeared there would be no loss to the people of God. Neither one is a sober estimation.

So what does our spiritual maturity have to do with how seriously we take ourselves? It is that growing spiritually comes through time and time again meeting with an eternal God. And each time we do, we are forced to reckon with our own frailty, weakness, and laughable smallness in light of Him. Take just one example:

Here is God, who does not slumber or sleep. In fact, in His lack of slumber, He watches over us day and night (Ps. 121:3-4). And yet here we are, so creaturely that we must every 10 or 12 hours fall into a bed with our mouths hanging open. We are, in this sense, ridiculous in our weakness.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for some kind of social irresponsibility or laughing our way through every day life, but I am saying that in faith, we can acknowledge that the fate of the known world does not rest on our next move. Furthermore, there are far fewer people thinking about our next move than we would like to think. So because we know that God is the God who makes the sun rise and fall, the rain come down in its season, and changes the human heart, we are actually free in faith to acknowledge who He is by loosening our grip on our carefully crafted personas a bit.

Now here is a trait I long to embody, for being able to laugh at yourself is a rare quality. It’s a trait I hope I don’t have to wait until I’m very old to develop. As Christians, we should be free from the need to manufacture and protect our reputations, and as such, we are free to see the absurdity of life – and to see the absurdity of ourselves.

Jesus? Oh, we take Him seriously. And yet there is a personal lightness that comes from walking deeply with Him. We know we will make mistakes, say silly things, and embarrass ourselves again and again. And yet the sun continues to come up again and again.

Perhaps here we can find, in the midst of social media, platforms, and fabricated images of ourselves, a resolution worth committing to this year. That perhaps 2023 will be the year when, by God’s grace and even for His glory, we stop taking ourselves so seriously.

If God is Sovereign, Every Situation is Both Preparation and Fulfillment

God’s sovereignty is a comforting thing, especially if you find yourself in a life circumstance that doesn’t seem to make sense. This is not a scenario of sin; it’s not a circumstance that came as a result of bad or unwise choices; it’s just a season that you have “fallen into”, in a sense, and you wonder how you got there.

Perhaps it’s a time when you are in a job you don’t enjoy or you don’t feel like makes the most of your abilities. Or maybe it’s a time when you had to move into some kind of temporary housing because the house you were trying to buy fell through. Or maybe it’s a time when you moved to a new place with great hopes and you haven’t been able to make good friends. These are tough times, and in some ways, times like these can feel like a step in the wrong direction. That is, you were at one point in your life, and then things went backward despite your best intentions and attempts to follow the Lord’s will.

These are moments when it’s good to remember that:

A king’s heart is like channeled water in the Lord’s hand:
He directs it wherever he chooses (Prov. 21:1).

and…

{God} changes times and seasons;
    he deposes kings and raises up others.
He gives wisdom to the wise
    and knowledge to the discerning.
He reveals deep and hidden things;
    he knows what lies in darkness,
    and light dwells with him (Dan. 2:21-22).

Even when it seems like you have taken a step backward in life, God is sovereign. And if God is sovereign, then that tough situation is two things:

It is preparation, and it is fulfillment.

Let’s think about it in terms of a simple example – a living situation. In most of our minds, there is a logical progression in housing. We start out living at home. Then we move into a dorm. Then comes the apartment. Then comes the starter home. Then comes the bigger home. Then the last home, eventually paid off, and happily ever after. That is our paradigm, and it works not just with houses, but with careers, budget, and overall life situation. Each lesser situation prepares us for the greater situation, and that fits, because the greater situation always means more. More money, more space, more responsibility. It’s an upward trajectory, at least from an earthly perspective.

And when that progression is broken in some way, it can be very discouraging. It can seem like your past experiences have been wasted; that you are starting over at the beginning. You find yourself wondering what happened; what you did wrong; why you should be “here”, when based on that trajectory, you should be “there.”

But here’s the thing…

Who can know the mind of the Lord? His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. We must be careful, then, not to impose our own sense of logic and timing on our circumstances. Because what we perceive to be a step back is still a step forward – one that, even if it might seem to be “lesser” in some way – God has been preparing us for.

This is the chain from God’s perspective – it’s not the same upward trajectory we assume to be true. It’s that even when we seem to be stepping backward, we are still living in the fulfillment of what God has been doing in our lives. That step backward, in other words, is exactly what God has been preparing us for.

And it doesn’t stop there. That step backward is simultaneously the fulfillment of what God has been preparing us for, and still the preparation for what comes next. That is true if God is sovereign.

If you find yourself living in one of these tough spots right now, be it in your career, living arrangement, relationship status, or whatever – be encouraged. You are where God desires you to be. You are living in what He has prepared you for, even as He is preparing you for what’s next.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. Secular Liturgies Leave Me Longing for More

In the culture, we find liturgies of self-fulfillment, but they ironically leave us empty.

2. Good (and Bad) of Transparency

“Transparency” has shifted into yet another means of hiding and permissiveness. So if we want to be real, we should make sure we are doing so in a God-honoring manner.

3. How to Pray When the Prognosis is Grim

I think we have all struggled with this – we want to pray, and pray rightly, but when circumstances are so dark we often don’t know how.

4. Big George Foreman Trailer

Okay. You got me. I’m here for this.

Transparency is Not an End in Itself

“Words create worlds.”

I’m certainly not the first person that’s said that, but I am learning it to be true in many areas of life right now. Whether at home, work, or church I’m finding over and over again that because the tongue is the window to the heart, it’s important to say what you mean and mean what you say. And then say that thing over and over again because you become what you celebrate. One of the strongest ways to create a culture in any environment is through the language that you use.

But here’s the problem. We’ve seen over and over again that using a term, even when it’s a good and right term, especially when it’s not explained, causes an effect of dilution. The words, which once upon a time, had great meaning and significance, eventually become a sort of catch phrase that now means something very different than the original intent, or even worse, means nothing at all. Think about it:

– Saved

– Missional

– Community

These are good words. Right words. Powerful words. But for many of us, including me, they’ve lost their punch because they’ve become so ingrained in my vocabulary that I rarely stop and consider their true and full implications: “I’m saved. But saved from what? Saved to what? Was I in danger? How much danger? Who saved me, and at what cost?”

Something great is lost when words of value become catch phrases of a culture.

Such is the case, I think, with another word that got its 15 minutes of fame some years ago. That word is transparency. Or maybe you’ve met its cousin, authenticity. Or “being real.” The word rose to prominence as we were all talking about community, and having community, and being community, and in that community one of the keys was to be real. To not act like we have it all together. To not answer “Fine” when someone asks you how you’re doing. To admit and confess sin in the context of brothers and sisters in Christ.

That’s a good idea. It’s a biblical idea. It’s an honest idea. But, as happens with words when they get popular, it has become diluted. The dilution in this case was a morphing of seeing transparency as a means to seeing transparency as an end. Here’s how James saw transparency in that way:

“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The urgent request of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect” (James 5:16).

This verse is transparency at its best. It’s a picture of someone who, convinced of the limitless grace and promised forgiveness of Jesus, confesses their sin. They lay themselves open and bare before others, not expecting shame or guilt, but instead expecting healing. It’s a crucial step on the road to holiness, but that’s just the thing – it’s one step on the road. It’s not an end in itself.

We have been right to value transparency, but in so valuing it, we have come to measure the depth of our relationships and our groups with how real we are. So there might be confession, over and over again, but nothing more. Just a bunch of people sitting around “being real.” Our transparency has become like a 2 day old open can of soda – diluted down so that it’s worth not much more than being spit out when it’s drunk in accidentally.

We confess to one another not so that we can be real with one another; we confess to one another because we have a desire to be made holy. To be healed. To stop sinning. And we are responsible and even blessed for aiding one another on that journey. James continues on in verses 19 and 20:

“My brothers, if any among you strays from the truth, and someone turns him back,  let him know that whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his life from death and cover a multitude of sins.”

Let’s be transparent. Let’s be real. Let’s be authentic. But let’s not stop there. Let’s remind each other of the good news of the gospel, that Jesus not only has secured our forgiveness but also chosen us for holiness, and move each other along that road. Let’s keep going together and not camp out in the ditch before we get to the destination.

A Different Way to Think About What It Means to Grow Up in Christ

Living things grow. It’s true for every organic life form, but it’s also true of us spiritually. When we are born again in Christ, we are set on a trajectory of spiritual growth. The Holy Spirit is in us in order to empower this transformational process by which God grows us up into the likeness of His Son, and that growth fleshes itself in all different kinds of ways.

It means that we continually grow in the fruit of the Spirit as our character is developed. It means we continually pursue purity and godliness in our lifestyle. It means we share the gospel more and more freely with others. It means our priorities shift from safety and comfort to the priorities of the kingdom of God. It means we hold more and more loosely to the material things of the world as we pursue the imperishable things of heaven.

But here is one other way we grow up in Christ over the course of time. Perhaps this is one way we don’t often think about, and yet one that might in the end bring us tremendous joy:

Growing up in Christ means an ever-increasing alignment between what we desire, and what we know.

Let’s use a simple example to flesh this out – that of reading our Bibles every day.

We know this is a good thing for us. We know that this is the inspired Word of God. We know that if we want to grow spiritually then the best thing in the world for us is to every day crack open God’s Word and prayerfully read it, believe it, and obey it. We know these things. And yet at some point this very week – maybe tomorrow – you won’t feel like opening God’s Word. And neither will I.

We will feel like sleeping. Or we will feel like scrolling through Twitter. Or we will feel like watching TV. We know we should read our Bibles, but we don’t want to. In fact, we might even know it so deeply that we want to want to do it. And that’s the state in which we live much of the time:

We want to want.

And it’s not just about Bible reading. We want to want to pray. We want to want to be holy. We want to want to be generous. We want to want, but there is still this war inside of us by which our flesh battles with the Spirit. We are torn on a daily basis between what we know and what we desire.

But, friend, consider the hope of gospel if you feel this acutely today. Consider the wonderful promise that God, who began His good work in you will indeed carry it onto completion (Phil. 1:6). Consider that it will not always be this way. For there will come a day when we will no longer want to want, and instead, there will be a glorious unity between what we know and what we feel. This is the work the Holy Spirit is doing, slowly, patiently, over the course of time in us – He is bringing unity to our whole selves.

As we embrace His work now, often times through the practice of self-discipline, it is entirely appropriate for us to long for the day when that work will be done. For that will be the day when faith is sight, and at long last we will not only know the truth of the gospel, but we will feel it as well.

3 Opportunities the Trials of Life Bring

The older I get, the more convinced I become that much of life is about responding.

That’s the because the older I get, the more I see how much of life is actually out of our control. We do what we can to be proactive, prepared, and anticipatory of all different kinds of issues, but none of that preparation will ever make us completely ready for the things that happen to us every day. And every day, nearly without exception, we encounter something unanticipated. Something unexpected. And, in many cases, something troubling.

The question, then, is always how will we respond. What will we do in light of the various trials that come our way through the week? What will we do with the argument in the relationship? With the suddenly disgruntled coworker? With the distressed child or the unexpected financial downturn?

Because the trials are many and varied, it doesn’t do much good, I don’t think, to try and plan out in advance exactly how we will respond in every scenario; that’s a fool’s errand because, again, it’s impossible to know exactly what to expect. But we can make general plans. That is, we can think about the general attitude and posture we want to take whenever these trials come our way.

Now to be clear, by “trials” I do not mean the kinds of trials that truly do upend your life. I don’t mean the trials of tragedy; of life and death; of dramatic realignment. At least for the purposes of this article, I mean “trials” in a smaller sense – those unexpected irritations and interruptions that cause us a measure of grief. What will our disposition be when those inevitably come our way? To this, we look to 1 Peter for some council:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls (1 Peter 1:3-9).

Before getting to the subject of trials, Peter writes in beautiful detail about the great mercy of God that has been given to us as Christians, and what has come to us as a result of that mercy. And then he leads into the reality of life, that we will all experience all kinds of trials, big and small, that will result in a measure of grief. And yet the disposition he wants for his readers is not one of self-pity; it seems, in fact, that Peter is viewing these trials as an opportunity. That’s the disposition we are after. But an opportunity for what? At least three things:

1. Trials are an opportunity for faith refinement.

Trials give us the chance to display what we truly believe. We might say we believe that God is good; that He is powerful; that He is wise in all things, but trials show the genuineness of those statements. How we react during moments of trouble isn’t just a reflection of whether we are having a good day or not; it’s a reflection of our faith.

2. Trials are an opportunity for joy clarification.

We tend to find joy in all different kinds of things, and many of those things are good. Family, friends, food – these are all good things. And yet they cannot be the ultimate source of our joy. It must go deeper than that, and because of God’s mercy, He has given us the true reservoir or joy. It is in Him. Trials, because of their very nature, threaten our temporal sources of joy, and therefore give us an opportunity to clarify to ourselves where our ultimate joy lies.

3. Trials are an opportunity for hope sharpening. 

Similarly, we hope for many things. We hope for a job change or for an end to illness; we hope for relationships to get better or stronger; we hope that we will have enough money saved for retirement. And yet all of those things that we hope for simply might not happen. That’s one of the reasons why trials bring grief – it’s because they threaten our hope, just as they threaten our joy. But what an opportunity for the Christian to remember that we have a better hope – a living hope – that grows in our hearts and minds day by day as all living things do.

Chances are there will be some trial that enters your life today. The question, then, is less about whether it will happen, but how we will view it. Will it be a threat, or an opportunity?

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. Not Like Any Other Book

We would acknowledge the uniqueness of the Bible, but how do we display that belief when we are reading it? This article gives us five ways.

2. Will God Provide for Your Needs?

Yes, He will, but how do we remind ourselves of that fact? The answer comes in remembering, reflecting, and expecting.

3. Generous Patience

When it comes to our sanctification, God is generous in His patience. And that ought to motivate us in multiple ways.

4. Rocky’s Surprising Reception

As one of my all time favorite movies, I loved reading about how the movie was initially received.

Beware the Intellectual Gluttony of God’s Word

“Mirrors on the ceiling
The pink champagne on ice
And she said, ‘We are all just prisoners here
Of our own device”
And in the master’s chambers
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can’t kill the beast…” (Hotel California, The Eagles)

What is Hotel California about? Lots of people have offered opinions over the years, including the band members themselves. And even among them, it doesn’t seem like there is a full consensus. But these lyrics, at least, do a pretty good job of describing one of those things that the Bible talks about more than we tend to in modern Christian circles.

Gluttony.

When the Bible talks about gluttony, it almost always does so in the context of food, and it’s a habit that’s often paired with drunkenness:

They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard” (Deut. 21:20).Do not join those who drink too much wine
    or gorge themselves on meat,
for drunkards and gluttons become poor,
    and drowsiness clothes them in rags.(Prov. 23:20-21).The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds” (Matt. 11:19).

Not that lyrics from The Eagles are tantamount to Scripture, but they seem to be describing the same kind of thing – it’s an insatiable need. A compulsion for more. The inability to stop and simply say “enough.”

And while we should think of gluttony in the context of food, especially in America, we might also think more broadly and understand that gluttonous behavior can really have most anything as its object:

We can be gluttonous in our media consumption.We can be gluttonous in our work.We can be gluttonous in sexual appetite.

But one area in which we don’t often think of the word is in our consumption of Scripture. Isn’t this a place where there is never enough? When we could always do with more? Where our appetite should be insatiable? After all, it’s certainly not doing us any harm to consume ever more quantities of Scripture.

That’s true, and yet it’s true with a corollary, because we must readily accept that the Bible isn’t meant to only be consumed; it’s meant to be practiced. If we don’t pair those things together, then we are deceiving ourselves about our true spiritual state:

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do (James 1:22-25).

In an affluent society, we have the luxury of all kinds of potential gluttony. Food? Clothing? Entertainment? Leisure? We can be gluttonous in all these. And we might also, along with these, fall prey to an intellectual kind of gluttony that loves the study of God’s Word, but doesn’t necessarily love the living of God’s Word. We love the parsing of verbs, the study of words, the mining of golden nuggets – and yet the way we live our lives does not change at all.

Is this not also gluttony? Whereby we are “using” God’s Word to stroke our egos, growing ever intellectually fatter while never exercising what we find there? Surely we should beware if we find this compulsion in ourselves. And perhaps, in such a potentially gluttonous society, we would do well to ask ourselves the very basic question:

When was the last time I made the conscious choice to do what the Bible said?

What in the World is God Doing?

What is God’s will for my life?

It’s a question that can cause you a lot of angst, because most of the time we ask that question at a time of significant crossroad – when you are confronted with a life-altering decision. These are decisions about careers, about family, about moving – the big moments in life, and if you’re a Christian, this is the right question to ask. And yet there are two significant problems we will face when asking that question.

The first problem is that much as we want to, we won’t generally have the kind of watershed moment we are looking for. That is, we won’t find the answer written in our Alphabits, or spelled out in skywriting in the clouds, or just turning blindly to a page in the Bible. You will not find the name of the college you are supposed to attend or the name of the person you are going to marry in the pages of Scripture, much as we might want to, and much as it might be a very simple way forward.

The second problem is deeper than though. The second problem is that we typically look at the will of God in a different way than God Himself looks at it. Think again about the moments in life when we are most prone to ask that question – these are moments of big decisions. Of choosing this way or that way. You might say that we tend to ask that question in response to “destination” kinds of issues. And therein lies the problem, because when we open the Bible, we find that when it comes to His will, God is generally more interested in who you’re becoming than where you’re going. This is not a question of destination; it is a question of formation. 

If we were able to change our perspective and ask that question again, we would see that the answer is very simple, and also very consistent: What is God’s will for my life? Well, God’s will for your life is the same thing that it is for my life – to become more like Jesus. Always. And this is precisely why God is with us by His Spirit – to make us more like Jesus:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17-18).

Now if that is true, it also brings a good deal of perspective to whatever it is that you might be walking through at a given moment, especially if those circumstances are causing you to wonder just what it is that God is doing.

That is to say, you might find yourself in a set of circumstances in which you haven’t stopped believing that God is in control; you haven’t stopped believing that God loves you; you haven’t stopped believing that He is involved in the affairs of your life; and yet you are very, very confused. But because God is with us by His Spirit, you may not know a lot of answers, but one thing you can say regardless of any circumstance, no matter how confusing – the answer to the question, “What is God doing?” is always, “He’s making me more like Jesus.”

This post originally appeared at thinke.org.