Transforming Love #9: The God-Shaped Life (#887)
"Let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God's life" is how Peter defines transformation in the words of Eugene Peterson (1 Peter 1:15). As Kyle and Wayne have been jokingly processing 'Christianity 401', they land on a better term they will use and completion of the chart they worked through last year. Out of love, rest, and play, it becomes our nature to follow the nudges of Jesus, and in doing so, we find his life taking shape in us. Wayne offers five phrases to describe what that looks like—sincere love, resilient trust, generous compassion, tender authenticity, and bold humility. They also continue to process how we use misapply Scripture when we don't consider the original context and whether or not God permits tragedy and abuse in our culture.
Podcast Notes:
- The video recording of this podcast.
- Full Transformational Chart PDF
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Injustice, chaos, and outrage are part of the nature of evil. If bad things only happened to bad people in proportion to their badness that would not be evil; it would be justice. If every tragic event had a predetermined positive justification or ultimate outcome that would not be evil; it would be necessity. After a disaster we seek comfort by trying to force balance into the world. Instead we should seek comfort in the knowledge that God is already working to heal, restore, and redeem.
Thanks again Kyle and Wayne for processing this out loud. It’s helpful.
Bold humility – thanks for that. The opposite of Christian arrogance. I was once accused of being arrogant when ‘extolling’ something or other Xtian. Needless to say, I was rather taken aback. It took years for me to understand why I was arrogant.
For me where ‘believe’ is on the chart In my mind I put ‘hope’ there as well because my belief often wavers but thankfully so far hope seems to creep in just enough to keep me going. I think hope happens before belief and an important step towards a life of believing. I also can’t help but think that the ‘prayers answered’ while a short and commonly used wording is not as accurate as words that portray that it isn’t so much about getting prayers answered – as if that is the goal – but that instead what happens is our hearts and prayers become more aligned with God’s heart and purposes. I like the ‘ponder’ part in there. God can do all the guiding and revealing he wants but it goes no where if we are not open to it and open to questioning what we think to be true – pondering things – and making our choices from considered thinking rather than being on autopilot and living only from feelings and emotions.