God has way of using things in our lives that seem unrelated to each other, but collectively he brings them together in a way that shapes, heals, teaches, and strengthens us. I experienced this the other day.
It started while I was talking with someone, recalling a favorite trait an old friend of mine had. This friend had had enormous impact on my life. Unfortunately, he also hurt me deeper than anyone. God had helped me not to hold any unforgiveness towards him, however for years I have chosen to not talk about him, nor recount the various things that he did, until this conversation. As I told the person I was talking to about how I admired and learned from a particular habit my friend had, I felt the Lord lift the hurt off of me.
Two weeks later, I was attending the Hillsong church in New York City (HillsongNYC.com). 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. In was amazing! (see my tweet from October 3. I got a really cool picture).
Joel Abell, one of the pastors from Hillsong Sydney, was speaking 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 went 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.”
A few days later I was involved in a situation that normally would have “got my goat” (and had on other occasions), but I found myself calm, un-reactive, in fact even being kind. It was huge. It even surprised me. 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 Co 3:18)
“…from glory to glory” it is referring to a process where God takes different experiences and seasons of our lives and merges them together to transform us. He’s working on us, lifting anything from our lives that could weigh us down and keep us from becoming more like Him. He loves us too much to let us stay the same!
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