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Until Christ Be Formed In You
…until Christ be formed in you.
– Gal 4:19
One of the great pleasures of life
is watching our children and our grandchildren grow up. They come to
us a blank piece of human clay and we watch as they are formed into
the person they become. They start with nothing – no knowledge, no
experience, no understanding about a single thing, but they are born
with an eagerness to learn and so they begin to gather knowledge
about the world around them. They watch people and learn from them –
especially their parents, grandparents, and whoever is close to
them. They must touch and taste everything for themselves. They
begin to form an opinion about everything. They develop their own
view of the world, of the people in the world, and what life is
about. They do this by putting pieces of knowledge, understanding,
and experiences together like a jigsaw puzzle. Therefore, what they
are exposed to and influenced by are of the greatest importance
because those things will determine, to a large degree, what they
become as a person. If the right things are put in them we have
something to rejoice about when they finally come of age and are
mature in their mind and stable of heart. When they finally grow
into an adult that is responsible and understands the world around
him rightly we can say, “A wise son maketh a glad father.”
Another great pleasure in life is watching a person who has been
blind to spiritual things and in darkness all his life, get saved
and begin to grow and develop an understanding of spiritual life and
the spiritual realm. He starts just like the babies God gives to us
parents, with no understanding or knowledge, but just like our
little ones do with the physical world, he does with the spiritual
world. He begins to learn the things of God line upon line, precept
upon precept, here a little, and there a little. As he learns things
he begins to put together in his mind and soul a view and an
understanding of God that is more than just a few simple facts of
knowledge. He begins to really understand! It takes time, though
…sometimes a LONG time, before he REALLY understands.
Most people go through stages in their spiritual growth where they
are focused on one issue or another, and during that stage that
issue will be the most important thing in the world to them. When
children are little they place GREAT importance on things that, to a
mature person, are quite unimportant or even silly sometimes. When a
grown person acts that way we say they are childish. We mean that
they are way off base in placing such importance on an issue when
they don’t see the whole picture yet.
There is a stage in spiritual growth that is similar to adolescence
in a child, also. This is a period when they are absolutely sure
that they are right and everyone else just doesn’t understand. If
they could only get others to see how much they really do
understand, that would solve most of their problems. This is a
period when they seem quite unteachable because they are not
listening to anyone – they have attained to a level of maturity, in
their opinion, where they should be the ones doing the teaching. .
Everyone who is older has had to acknowledge that something we were
so sure of when we were younger now looks very different and we see
that we were wrong. We were young and immature and didn’t know or
understand as much as we thought we did.
It is on down the road that the spiritual understanding matures and
blossoms. Just like with our children, it is after a lot of hard
experiences in life, and after investing years in relationships,
that our eyes begin to see so much about God and life and what is
really important that we never saw before. It is after suffering
great loss and learning how bad a broken heart can hurt that we
begin to see our mistakes and recognize our foolishness in having so
much confidence in ourselves. It is then that we begin to see God
more clearly. It is then that He begins to be more real and more
important to us. Our field of vision is increased drastically and we
learn about that “large place” that David was talking about.
(Psa 118:5) I called upon the
LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place.
It seems that everyone wants to
stay young or pretend that they are young. The search for the
fountain of youth is as old as the human race. But there is a period
of life that is far better than youth, and that is when you finally
grow up – spiritually. When Christ is formed in you and the life you
now live is not yours, but Christ living in you. When you stop
thinking you have all the answers and that you are always right you
will find that unexplainable pressure is gone and you have peace and
rest in your soul. When you truly stop trying to impress others and
let God be Lord in your life you find that your spirit is free. When
you reach the place where you stop trying to “live for the Lord” and
let Him live in and through you, you will have found what life is
about and the abundant life that Jesus was talking about.
…until Christ be formed in you.
– Gal 4:19
Mike Miller
Sunday, April 12, 2009
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