Train yourself for godliness

"Train yourself for godliness ... For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe." [1 Tim 4:7 & 10]

At breakfast this morning with 2 friends and fellow Christ-followers we pondered this Scripture. One friend reminded us that when Paul talks about toiling and striving, it is not about "huffing and puffing" to make something happen, but ultimately about yielding to the Spirit and his work in us. This is meant to take the pressure off of us, especially as we increasingly rest in the knowledge that God is with us (Immanuel) and for us. He is willing as Jesus once said to the leper who said, "if you are willing, you can make me clean". Peter would also want to encourage us by reminding us that through the gospel we have been given everything we need for godliness ALREADY. "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence" [2 Pet 1:3]

The heart of the new covenant message of the gospel is 'Christ in us, the hope of glory'. So we always have hope, we are never totally at a loss, though there is still a part we play in the process of yielding. At Larry Crabb's School of Spiritual Direction we were reminded of this same truth in thinking about how we are being transformed into the likeness of Christ. He puts it like this:

Brokenness --> Repentance --> Abandonment --> Revelation --> Confidence --> Release

Abandonment equates to yielding, a turning from a self-obsessed lifestyle to a God-obsessed one. Though we would like to think that this was all done at conversion, when we first turned to Christ as Savior and Lord, the reality is that spiritual formation is a lifetime of repeated repentance and abandonment as God reveals to us new areas of our lives that still need to be conformed. This is not easy 'work' nor something that is meant to be done alone. This is why the Lord sets us in families/communities - the primary place where our self-centredness gets exposed. Hopefully within these communities we will also foster the kind of closer, more intimate friendships where this work can be embraced.