“Are we there yet?” – the whine of any child who has ever been on a car trip.
While adults may not whine about it, we’ve all experienced that feeling of the never-ending trip. Will we ever arrive? When we left home we didn’t realize it would take this long, nor have this many twists and turns.
Our journey with God is a lot like a road trip. As we pull away from our old home to journey forward with God, we often believe it will be a short trip too. He’s going to do a quick remake of our life and we’ll have a happily ever after. But as days become weeks and years we realize it is a slow and constant process – this life is the never-ending journey. We will never arrive as long as we live.
How many times in our journey with Him do we come through a trial and pruning with the unspoken feeling that God must be through remaking us into His image because we can’t imagine what else He could possibly prune out of our life? We feel as if we are an onion that has been peeled to its very core.
In a short amount of time, however, we sense another layer of our “old man” being peeled away.
The day we set out to follow Christ, whether we were 8 or 38, we began a journey that will never end. He will chisel off the rough places, sand out the flaws, shape up the imperfections, and patch the holes until the day we die. That’s what regeneration and restoration are all about. It’s an ongoing process of remaking us into His image.
God’s got a grand adventure planned. God’s attitude toward us is not slap-on-a-new-coat-of-paint-and-send-her-on-her-merry-way. His mindset is apparent in Genesis 12:1 (MSG) “God told Abram: “Leave your country, your family, and your father’s home for a land that I will show you.” He had in mind to take Abram to new places, unknown places, places of adventure and scariness I’m sure. Places that caused Abram to grow a faith that was later credited to him as righteousness!
The destination and the route we take is in God’s hands. As He did with Abraham, God does with us. He calls us to go to a land He will show us – an unknown destination. We don’t know where the road may take us or what may happen along the way. We imagine there will be joys at the right hand of God. We fear that he will take us somewhere we don’t want to go. But do we realize that He will be beside us every step of the way?
He doesn’t send us off on the journey alone. The last phrase of verse 1 is the icing on the cake – “for a land that I will show you!” Girls, he’s not sending us away on a journey all by ourselves. He’s going with us! The only way my husband can show me the way on our road trip is to be in the car with me. That’s where our Father God is – in the seat beside us, taking us on this grand and sometimes scary adventure, trying to give us directions to this “land that I will show you” if only we’d listen to Him.
The journey is life-changing. We never stop to think of the inner impact the journey will make on our lives and the changes that will take place within us. As we journey with Christ, externally we may change our location, those who accompany us, or the job we do. But the greatest change is His molding of our inner man. He is transforming us into the image of Christ from the inside out. So I pray for you, and for myself, the words of Paul:
We weren’t created as statues. We were created as flesh and blood people that change from day-to-day, year-to-year, minute-by-minute, endlessly, until we pass from this earth. The change, the re-making is intentional on God’s part. Scripture tells us:
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17
You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians. 4:22-24
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2
Transformed. Made new. Renewed. That’s us.
On this never-ending journey of life with our Beloved, let’s embrace the word change. Let’s be pliable clay in His hands, willing to be mashed down, re-formed, made into something new! Even in the painful circumstances that try our faith, let us desire the touch of our Master Creator who isn’t finished with us yet.
The breaking and re-making. The new places on the journey and the hard places that tax us to our limits. These are part of the journey we signed up for. Let us be willing, not weary, travelers. Coming to know God and allowing Him to mature us in His ways is lifelong. We never arrive as long as we live. We are always “becoming” until the day we die. Becoming more faithful. Becoming more Christlike. Becoming more patient. Becoming more loving. Becoming more joyful, peace-filled, kind, gentle, self-controlled….
When we feel He’s shown us our deepest core, there are still other layers below. The journey is never over Girls! Enjoy the adventure of it all!
Priceless 