belong

Growing up in the Church of God, talk of being “born again” was something about which I heard a lot. The struggle for me came when my experience and relationship with God did not reflect this one, pivotal moment, when I turned from a lifetime of sin and became a new person. Eugene Peterson describes discipleship as a “Long Obedience in the Same Direction” and that is a good description of how I have understood my own faith story. Sure, I had the time when I was 5 years old and I asked my parents to pray with me, following a church service where a Southern Gospel group had come to sing and, apparently, scare the living daylights out of a 5 year old with a hellfire-and-brimstone-type message. And maybe we could point to that moment as my moment of conversion. But as an adult, looking back on my faith journey, I see transformative seasons in my life, where I was being born again.

In his book, Vision for the Church of God at the Crossroads, Dr. Gil Stafford writes that in all of the evangelism movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, the emphasis was on being transformed by the message of the Scriptures. “Life transformation is the goal” (Stafford, 27). There has long been an emphasis on one particular moment of rebirth, but if the Scriptures are living and active in our lives, we should always be looking for ways in which we might find a deeper transformation taking place in our lives as we read, hear and are taught the message of the Bible.

I love, in his initial post on this topic, how Joe talked about us “not being born unto ourselves” but that we are born into this spiritual family; “a holy community.” When we see the one, specific day or moment that we were reborn in Christ as the end of our rebirth, we can be closed off to the ways in which God is seeking to draw us deeper in to the family of God and into the work that God is doing in the world. By setting these kinds of limits for how transformed we will be, we only allow ourselves to be born again to the degree with which we are comfortable. But, we are not being born unto ourselves. I think of the last part of 1 Corinthians 13. Now we see only in part…as in a mirror, dimly. What greater transformation might God have in mind for us, beyond what we have thought or imagined?

As the family of God, we have to give room for each of us to be transformed in the time and space that God is setting before us. For some, there is instant transformation. Though that was not my experience, I have seen God transform lives in just such a way. It is truly miraculous. But just as miraculous, though often less obvious, is the transforming work God is doing in the lives of our brothers and sisters through seasons of growth, suffering and joy. Just as any parent can tell you, who has labored for the birth of a child, or labored and waited through the pains and joys of the adoption process, the process of being born into our family is different for each of us. It takes different amounts of time for the waiting and the labor. The “paper pregnancy” of waiting to be matched to your adopted child can take a long time or surprise you with how quickly it came about. So it is with our rebirth. How can we, as the family of God make room for and celebrate the rebirth of those around us, however God has brought that transformation about? I wonder in what ways we have been blind to the transformation happening around us in the lives of those being reborn into our spiritual family?

May the Spirit of God illumine us to see where spiritual rebirth is taking place around us, even as we, ourselves, are being reborn and transformed into the likeness of Christ.