What do you INTEND to do about transformation?


 VIM*: INTENTION - The problem of spiritual transformation among those who identify themselves as Christians today is not that it is impossible or that means to it are not available. Rather, the problem is that it is not intended. People do not see the value of transformation and decide to carry through with it. They do not decide to do the things Jesus did and said. 

This is largely due to the fact that they have not been given a vision of life in God’s kingdom so that such a decision and intention would make sense. The entire VIM of living the life of Christ is not the intentional framework of their lives. Those who minister to them do not bend every effort to make it so. 

The vision of life in the kingdom through reliance upon Jesus makes it possible for us to intend to live in the kingdom as he did. We can actually decide to do it. 

First of all, we trust him, rely on him, and count on him being the Anointed One, the Christ. We intend to obey the example and teachings of Jesus. This is the form that trust in him takes. Trusting Christ does not take the form of merely believing certain things about him. Moreover, knowing the “right answers” does not mean we truly believe them. To believe them means that we are set to act as if these “right answers” are true. 

Perhaps the hardest thing for sincere Christians to come to grips with is the level of real unbelief in their own lives: the unformulated skepticism about Jesus that permeates all dimensions of their being and undermines the efforts they do make toward Christlikeness. 

Projects of personal transformation rarely succeed by accident, drift, or imposition. It is choice that matters. Imagine a person wondering day after day if he is/she is going to learn Arabic or if they are going to get married to a certain person—just waiting to see whether it would happen. That would be laughable. But many people live this way with respect to their spiritual transformation.

VIM: Have a VISION; fuel your INTENTION; creatively establish the MEANS to transformation.



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