Give Yourself Grace

 Transformation: A thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance. 

I have believed in Jesus since I was about six years old.  Lately, I have been impatient with my journey to transformation.  I am less loving than I want to be.  I am less generous than I want to be. Less patient, less Holy.

I can see the progress that God is making in me, but I long to be fully transformed.

As I study the book of Genesis, someone pointed out that of the 50 chapters of this book, half of them are about Jacob.  Jacob and his transformation. 

God told Jacob that He would be with him.   Then the Lord said to Jacob, 'Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you'” (Gen. 31:3).

But one of the first things Jacob did was to try and manipulate his relationship with his brother Esau by sending a contingent of gifts ahead of himself because 20 years earlier Esau had threatened to kill him.  This was shortly after Jacob had an amazing encounter with God where Jacob wrestled with God all night and was left with a permanent limp from where God touched Jacob's hip.

This marked the beginning of Jacob's transformation.

We all need that initial encounter with God that gets our undivided attention.

Mine came in 2004 when our oldest son left this earth at the age of 25 from cancer.

But here I am, 20 years later, still in the process of being transformed by God.

But, maybe I should give myself grace.  Jacob was about 130 years old when he went to Egypt and saw his lost son Joseph.  At that time Jacob was a new/different man.  God had transformed him.

The point to notice here is that God transformed Jacob.  He did not transform himself.

From the writings of Witness Lee we can get some advice on how we can allow God to transform us.

"We should lay our inner condition before God and even tell Him that we are short in every matter.  No matter what our inner condition is, we should bring it to God. There is a hymn "Just as I Am."  This means that we should come to God just as we are without trying to improve or change our condition [ourselves].

....The more we come to God according to our [true] condition, the better.

Instead of caring about our condition, we enter into God's presence to contact God by looking to Him, worshipping Him, beholding Him, praising Him, giving thanks to Him, and absorbing Him."

This is how we become transformed.  One day at a time.  We need to relax in God's plan of transformation and give ourselves some grace.