Simple, but Not Easy
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. (2 Corinthians 3:18)
Back during the first months of COVID, I picked up jogging, mostly as an activity to get out of the house and release some energy. The habit stuck, and I continued to jog regularly for a couple of years. However, persistent knee pain began, prompting a visit to the physical therapist. Not five minutes into the appointment, she asked me to walk normally across the room and back. She smiled and said, “I know your problem, you don’t know how to walk correctly.” I am certain that the dumb look I gave her was hilarious. Imagine, one of life’s basic skills, one that I learned when I was a toddler, and here I was doing it wrong for almost forty years? I was unknowingly walking through life in such a way that I prevented myself from living a healthier, happier existence.
I was reminded of this revelation when listening to someone recently who spoke about their sin, “I had to keep falling down, so that I could learn to walk correctly.”
Sanctification, our lifelong ascent toward Christ-likeness, is a pretty word to describe an often painful and difficult process. Purging the persistent sins of our lives requires spiritual amputation, sawing and hacking away at the pieces of us that God hates, and therefore we must hate. Often our sins are so incorporated into our being that we do not notice them; they are as natural to our life as walking. But we are doing it wrong, and it is causing real pain… to ourselves, to others, to God.
The pain is the indicator, bringing our attention to the unseen selfishness and pride in our lives. God, in his enormous grace, provides a simple treatment of repentance and forgiveness (simple but not easy). Allow for the Spirit to be the surgeon; do not treasure the malignant pieces just because they have always been a part of us. We will have to relearn how to perform the basics of life: how we love, how we enjoy food and drink, how we approach money. However, the difficulty of the transformation pales in comparison with the result, when we realize that the pieces we discard were the cause of all our pain and anxiety.
In loving fellowship,
Thomas Goodrich