Struck by the Sermon

One of those sermons where I was kinda uncomfortable...several of those lately.  Guess God has a lot of work He wants to do in my life right now.  Several things stuck out:

God does not want to make me into a better version of Janet.  He wants to transform me into the image of Jesus.

When it says in Romans that God causes all things to work together for good...it doesn't mean He's promising that life will be easy...it means that He will use everything to transform us.  Four main ways that this takes place:
--Pain of Circumstances (when bad things happen, seemingly for no reason...a friend finds out he has cancer, another loses her job, a friendship is lost due to distance, etc)
--Punishment of Consequences (though there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, we still face the consequences of mistakes that we make daily)
--Persecution of Faith (those times, even in our country, when we seem to be losing something because we chose to stand by the truth of Christ)
--Power of the Word (every time we take the time to read or share Scripture, it does not return void, what a precious promise!)

While I think most of us (myself included) know this on a head knowledge level, I know in some cases it hasn't totally sunk in.  Pastor Jay asked us whether we pray for the difficult things to be removed from our lives, or if we pray for God to use them to change us into a closer image of His Son.  Ouch. I know that I am guilty of asking for pain, punishment, and persecution to be removed more frequently than I'd like to admit. 

But we were also reminded that spiritual change is not getting to a point where we need Jesus less because we've gotten better at life, but realizing that we need Him more and more.  Spiritual change is the life of Jesus coming into us; it happens by abiding in the gospel.  And John 15 describes how that happens; the Father vinedresser prunes our lives, only removing that which is a loss to keep but would be a gain to lose.  Even though it may seem painful at the time, am I willing to endure His pruning blade?  Lord, might my answer be always "Amen, transform me" when You choose to prune.