The Essential Ingredient for Change

New year. New resolve to become more this year. We create goals to achieve in the coming months. We sign up for a new health program or spiritual training, full of hope that this time real transformation will occur.

New Year’s Resolutions: a common tradition that sometimes alters behavior, but more often dwindles into quiet frustration, even shame.

I get it. I’ve done it (more times than I can count!) The ‘ol trying-harder-to-do-better to fulfill our hearts desire to become more like Jesus. Somewhere, there has to be a missing piece, right? There is! And it doesn’t begin with more knowledge or effort.

“It’s about grace that expands our capacity
to receive grace as we travel in grace.”

Our world is very destination minded. Start at point A, do points B through Y, end at point Z = success. Point Z becomes our standard for “success” or “failure.” We can become like the characters in the old movie, If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium, sucked into a whirlwind tour where the goal is completion, not actually experiencing life in those places.

God’s true self loves to walk and talk with us.  As early as the Garden, we see Him enjoying the company of His creation. Jesus chose not to open a ministry school. He gathered a few friends to travel with, transformed by what they saw as much as by what they heard. Even when they didn’t understand initially, He trusted the Holy Spirit to transform them eventually.

“The purpose of the grace journey is relational. 

It’s experiencing WHO we’re traveling with, not just how, 

when and where we’re going to arrive.”

The change that God desires for us comes daily as we walk and talk with Him. We are transformed by His look of delight in being with us and begin to realize that there are no “good” or “bad” days. There are only days of grace.

In that place, our confidence grows in whom we have believed. Our experiences of His empowering, relational grace take the burden of change off of us, as the joy of His presence fuels our transformation.

”If grace is missing, my attachments to God and His people
are too weak to govern my behavior.” 
Ed Khouri in Becoming a Face of Grace