How God's Word Transforms Me: Incrementally

When I hear and read about how Scripture should “transform” my life, I flinch a little.

I think it’s the word “transform” that has always thrown me.

Yes, there have been moments when a phrase or a verse has arrested my attention in a kind of epiphany. I see something in the Scripture that creates a paradigm-shift, and I can never think the same way again.

But frankly (and this used to trouble me), those experiences are not the norm. Looking for startling insight every time I open my Bible is likely to be a fruitless endeavor; it just doesn’t often happen that way.

Years ago I followed the advice of a friend and spent a day alone with God.

I went to a local part with hiking trails (Sugarcreek Reserve). I took with me only my Bible, a devotional book, and a journal. My aim was to spend time talking to God and listening to him. I thought such a day would surely be life-changing. After all, how I could I spend an entire day alone with God and not be radically transformed by the experience?

It turned out that day did change my life, but not in the way I expected.

When I finished that day alone with God, I was tired and hungry from the walking and the fasting. But it didn’t take long for me to realize I was still the same man: I hadn’t experienced the dramatic inward change I expected. The same temptations were present in my heart and mind, the same distressing tendencies: I was the same Paul.

So, no, that day didn’t bring about the dramatic change in my heart and mind that I expected.

But that day did change my expectations, dramatically.

As I reflected on what happened and didn’t happen that day, I realized that God had changed my life. He had been changing my life, gradually, over the years. I realized that over the course of years I could see incremental changes in my outlook, my thought life, my frame of mind, my habit patterns. None of these changes are the kind of thing that can happen overnight; they had all been taking place quietly, subtly, almost imperceptibly.

God’s Spirit – always the expert in playing the long game – had been working in my heart my entire life.

He had used the Scripture I committed to memory at my mother’s knee.

He had used my vanity and competitiveness: I had come to deeply know certain books of the Bible – James, Galatians, Romans, Gospel of John – through Bible quizzing as a teen. My motives were surely mixed: I wanted to impress people and be the star quizzer. But God used even those childish motives to take me deep into some of the key books of the Bible.

He had used my own study as I taught adult Bible classes for years.

He had used the preaching of the Word week by week.

All this long-term exposure to God’s Word had been slowly working in my heart, and God had been using his Word to transform me.

So, yes, that day alone with God transformed me; it transformed the way I think about how God is changing me.

God’s transforming power usually works like 3D printing.

A 3D printer lays down one thin layer at a time, slowly forming the desired shape. And in that slow, pains-taking process 3D printers can build anything from a cute figurine to a tool, even a house.

But there’s no hurrying a 3D printer: it simply takes time for the printer to do its work as the layers slowly accumulate and harden.

So it usually is with God’s work in the lives of his people.

Sure, there are stories of people’s lives being changed by God’s power dramatically, overnight: they are suddenly delivered from their sinful habits and addictions, their lives of darkness turned upside down by the power of God’s Spirit. These stories are glorious and worth celebrating.

But there are far more stories of people whose lives – marriages, families, interior lives – are slowly changed over time. They sit under good preaching and teaching week after week, they study God’s Word with others in classes and small groups, they engage with Scripture daily. And God uses that constant exposure to his Word to bring about a sure and gradual change.

Yes, God’s Word does transform our lives, but it usually does that transforming work quietly, slowly, over time.

This means that I must abandon my expectation that change will come about suddenly and dramatically, and I must be committed to methodical, long-term engagement with Scripture.

I must create the time and space to let the Spirit and the Word do the work, allowing God to do his slow, incremental work by his Word, by his Spirit, over time.

Persevere, 
Paul Pyle      
Pastor of Discipleship