There was a vending machine in the monastery. Slot your cash in and out drops the answer to your physical needs: water, sparkling or still, chocolate and snacks. Having just walked over the Pyrenees from France to Spain for 26km it was an appealing vision to me. But something troubled me about the idea of a vending machine in a place of holy renewal. Not that I scorn the physical and believe in a disembodied faith. No indeed! I went for a more savoury offering at a nearby café!
However, the idea somehow planted in my head that the vending machine in the monastery was a metaphor of our approach to Christian growth, to our development into Christlikeness. Self-development is a booming business these days and we are all encouraged to do what we can to become “the best version of myself”. Perhaps that overspills into our approach to spiritual formation in Christ – or “sanctification” as it used to be called. Growing in Christ can become an exercise in self-assembled practises and principles based on our “felt” needs and pragmatic concerns. What do I think I need, or lack? Press the buttons and out pops a ready-made action plan. Of course it’s important to develop our skills, and seek knowledge, I applaud all of us who show some gumption and press on to learn and grow in Christ. Yet my disquiet formed around the idea that I, me, and myself was competent to know what I needed to become like Jesus. My transformation needs something more than self-help – heavenly help and power.
That’s why this weeks’ sermon topic is stirring me up.
How do we grow in Christ? How can we cooperate with the Holy Spirit to become more holy? What does the Holy Spirit want to do in me, and what’s my part?
What do you think?
I am reflecting on 2 Corinthians 3:18 this week. Come on Sunday and find out where I land!
“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
Scripture tells me that I grow by gazing on someone beyond myself: Jesus. Intentional God-awareness is essential to Christian holiness and the Holy Spirit pulls us godwards to Jesus as the mould and model into which we are conformed.
“Contemplation” is the under-used word for this spirit-led posture. Now before you accuse me of new age mysticism I am talking Christian contemplation, as we are commanded to embrace in Colossians 3:1,2
“Set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things”
How can I set my heart on supernatural things? That can look like multiple things – I plan to make some suggestions on Sunday! Essentially it involves ordering our heart, our desire, our spiritual hunger around Jesus as we invite the Holy Spirit to help us see and comprehend the breadth length height and depth of the love of God (Eph 3:17-19)
But here’s a starter: J I Packer in his classic “Knowing God” invites Christians to fill our hearts with Christ through Christian meditation. This is not a practise of emptying our minds but chewing over in our thoughts the truth of God revealed in Jesus:
“Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God.”
This is the wonderful and challenging truth that we are deeply shaped by what we love, that we become what we behold. Our souls are moulded by what we pay attention to.
So here is the Spirit’s invitation to grow: “Fix your eyes not on what is seen but in what is unseen, for what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal”
May we all seek and see the good, beautiful and true that is revealed in Jesus and in so doing be re-formed into Christ’s image.