A Transformative Work

You were made for mission.

You, yes, you.

And me too.

Did you ever think about that? You have ambitions and hopes and dreams and they point to something greater, something you hope to or will become. And into that very particular set of talents and experiences and dreams and desires that make up you as a human person, God is longing to speak.

The Holy Spirit is longing to take over, not in a dictatorship or controlling manner, but in the way that a fire longs to consume wood and give light. In a thrilling way that we will never quite fully grasp perhaps until we reach Heaven itself, the Holy Spirit, God Himself, desires to dwell within us. And not just passively dwell there! But to live within you to breathe into life all of your desires and hopes in the particular way that you specifically are called to become fully alive.

Maybe it doesn’t make a lot of sense, I can get quite philosophical and wordy when trying to describe the very weight of such magnificent things as this. To be honest, I myself don't understand it fully. Yet part of me just longs and cries out until I put these words down.

He wants to be all of you, so that you can become more perfectly you.

The Holy Spirit wants to live and breathe in you not to take anything at all away from you, but you make you more fully and perfectly you! What strange purpose would it serve if God sent Himself in His Spirit to make us all robot copies? No! I say again, the Spirit longs to dwell within you to make you more fully you! To transform all of those desires, dreams, talents, loves, and passions that are wholly you into their maturity. To take all of you as you are and to bring you to the next level. Like a complete transformation in which the presence of the first is still wholly there and yet transformed into that of an entirely new thing.

It is in the same way as a caterpillar becomes fully formed as a butterfly. Does the caterpillar lose any of itself in the transition within the chrysalis? No! The same atoms and molecules in the caterpillar are the same ones in the butterfly! Yet somehow, the caterpillar knows that caterpillar-hood is not the end of its story. So, it allows itself to climb a stick and hang upside down where it is transformed into a case of goo, entirely broken down into something nearly non-living, until a week later it emerges completely transformed. From the same atoms and molecules of the caterpillar, from that chaos of goo emerges something entirely new, the butterfly. What was once a leaf-eating worm is now a winged, beautiful creature. If you were to look at a caterpillar and a butterfly with no scientific knowledge, you would quite likely classify them as entirely different species, for they appear to share nothing in common. And yet they are one in the same.

So too, it is with the work of the Spirit which He longs to begin within us. No, we will likely not be transformed into mushy cases of not-quite-human goo (there are certain limits to our nature of human reality) but the transformative work is perhaps even more extreme than the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly. Yes! Even more intense and dramatic than a worm becoming goo, becoming a creature with wings!

And in the same way as the caterpillar, we are made for such a transformation. We are designed to be changed. And dare I say it boldly:

We are not fully human until we allow the work of the Spirit to begin within us!

A caterpillar can no more force itself to become a butterfly, than a butterfly could change itself back into a caterpillar. We cannot rush the transformative process, we cannot change ourselves of our own free will and design. Yet once God has begun His transformative work within us, there is no going back! We are made entirely new!

You want to work in me!

And I desperately desire to be your instrument.

This is what, in part, compels me to write this post, though I but half know or comprehend what I am putting down. I am still confused, but this is a mystery I want to lean into, to desperately devour as if it is to be a last meal before a long journey.

So, I beg for it to be mine. Not just because of the great joy that is burning, burning, within me as I type (and for which I must pause repeatedly to speak forth without being confined to human English or sentences in a document!) but for also the need for it to be true. I am called deeper by both the Joy and by something more, a hunger, the need of a fire to consume fuel, the need of a bird to make song, the need of a cloud to send forth rain.

I cannot cage You.

The wind blows where it wills, though you cannot see where it comes from, or where it is going.

But my hands open and you teach me a great lesson, I must always come to this posture of reception and never try to grasp. Whatever you try to work within my life, it is to be done in your way and in your timing. You give and you take away, but the Father gives only Good gifts to His children.

This, it cannot be contained.

Cannot be contained any more than I could tell a fire to stop burning, or a butterfly to cease to emerge from the goo of its chrysalis state. It will continue happening whether I “like it or not” and I for one am exceedingly ecstatic that you have chosen to move today!

Thank you for my not fully understanding it, but being able to catch a glimpse of that great thing which mortals try to contain in the word “Joy”. You are Mighty and Magnificent indeed.

Now let me take this to heart and to action! Let me not go about in idleness or with the sameness of before but let me be changed and lean into this transformative work which you desire to begin and to continue within me!

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I am yours.

Make me, me.

And let all that is me cease to be only me,

but to be yours and fully alive in you, as only a child can be in her Father’s arms.

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Author's note:

This post was written several weeks before posting, though the joy and fire had been present in my heart for nearly a month. A few days after writing this post out, life got really tough (and perhaps there shall be more on that in the next post). Although that did take my enthusiasm down a bit, and for a few moments I was tempted to despair, I realized one important thing, Christ tells us: "In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have conquered the world."

The thing about real Joy is, it doesn't leave you. Not when you keep your hands open to receive all that the Father has to give.