Transformation

He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified Body. (Philippians 3:21) 

Rummaging through your father’s drawer—the one filled with old keepsakes—you discover an unfamiliar photograph. It’s he as a teenager, grinning. He’s standing on a dock, poised to leap into a serene lake. The photographer must have managed to capture his attention the instant before the plunge. It’s hard to peel your eyes away from his vibrant young face.

Photos of our parents in their youth can be riveting. We recognize them because their core features remain—but still, how different they look! Gazing into their eyes in an old snapshot, it’s like we’re meeting them for the first time.

If it’s this much fun to see our parents young, can you imagine how it would feel to see ourselves as we will be, when our lowly bodies are glorified, and we’re changed into the very image of Jesus Christ? “Thrilling” is probably a good guess. Paul must have felt this excitement as he wrote to the believers in Philippi. Surely, they would have also been delighted to consider how God’s power would, one day, complete their work of transformation.

Take a few moments right now to envision this heavenly snapshot. See the you that will inhabit eternity: your eyes glimmer with light reflected from the Son of God. You are grinning widely because you have been tasting the eternal fruit of years spent trying to follow the Lord. Every burden has been lifted. Every inner hurt has been healed. Your battle against sin is forever won. God’s unique imprint of his own personality within yours has, at last, been fully revealed. 

Isn’t it encouraging to recognize this person is you? It’s the you that even right now, the Spirit is working to uncover. Through the storms, trials, stretching, and monotonies of life, the old version of you is peeling away, and Christ in you, the hope of glory, is being revealed. God won’t stop until his transforming work is finished.

If this little exercise is stirring up hunger for a spiritual breakthrough of some sort, carry it to the Lord in your prayer. Ask him to help you work on one specific area. And be on the lookout for evidence of the changes taking place.

“Lord, take me! Melt me, mold me, and use me.”

from wau.org