Have you ever had different unrelated events merge into one kind of collective experience? I experienced something like this a few years ago.
It started with a conversation in which I was recalling a favorite trait that an old friend of mine had. This friend had had enormous impact on my life. Unfortunately, he had also hurt me deeper than anyone. With God’s help I had not held any unforgiveness towards him, however for years I chose to not talk about him, nor recount the various things he did, until this conversation. As I told about how I admired and learned from a particular habit my friend had, I felt the Lord literally lift the hurt off of me.
Two weeks later, I was attending the then new Hillsong church plant in New York City. Although the church’s official start date was still months away, we had to wait outside with hundreds of young people before piling into the Fillmore Theatre in the Gramercy area of midtown Manhattan. The worship was unbelievable! People were pressing into God’s presence. Joel Abell, one of the pastors from Hillsong Sydney, spoke about growing pains. He explained how the church and we as believers go through growing pains. He had me right in the palm of his hand until he started talking about the need for people with apostolic gifting, and prophetic gifting, along with evangelists, pastors, and teachers. I quit saying, “Amen!” because what he was saying was against my doctrine. Then God nudged me to look up to my left. In the balcony where there was standing room only, I saw a young man and girl shaking their heads as they held their Bibles. Then the Lord spoke so simply to me, “Joel, quit arguing.”
Finally, a few days later I was in a situation that normally would have “gotten my goat” (and had on other occasions), but I found myself calm, un-reactive, in fact even being kind. It was huge. I was surprised with myself. As I stood there thinking about what was happening, this verse came to my mind:
“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
(2 Cor. 3:18)
That “glory to glory” part is referring to the process of change that merges together different experiences and results in becoming more like Jesus. I realized that these three experiences above have worked changes in my life, and I am becoming more like Jesus.
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