When a boy imitates his dad, or a girl her mother, it is certainly flattery, because the child thought the person they were imitating was worthy of their doing so. Thought of another way, the child values the parent enough to spend time and effort to be just like them.
Recently, I again saw this true-ism:
Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian
any more than standing in your garage makes you a car ...
It is true that the transformation must be in substance, not just in location.
In my mind - oh, wait, that's where the battle is: in our minds. Our thought-life is key to the way we live our lives.
Recent articles I have read about the synapses in the brain discuss neural pathways, and that science still cannot exactly pinpoint the process of how the brain stores memories, or how certain medications actually help people suffering depression or other mental illnesses. Yet, several articles did say that the use of either toxic drugs like crack, or viewing pornography, create neural pathways that transform the brain, and alter the ability of a person's gray matter to recover to a state of normalcy. It is well-documented that crystal meth use over time literally turns the human brain into something akin to swiss cheese - holes in the gray matter.
Now to the point: trusting God starts in our thoughts. We have to think, but we get to choose what we think about at any given point in time. The mind can be trained to focus on one thing, or to notice tiny details, or to discern musical pitch, or a wide range of things that interest us. As followers of Jesus, we choose to think about who He is, and what He has done, and what that means for us each day.
When we stand in His garage called a church, He wants to go to work improving our life performance. He wants to replace old thoughts with new ons. He wants to give us cleaner input like a breath of fresh air so we can work freely. He wants the fuel of our lives to be pure so we can go and do things that we are designed to do: love, forgive, encourage, rejoice with others, cry with them, have compassion, check how they are doing; all because we are clean-breathing and purely fueled people of His workmanship.
The kind of transformation is our choice - or that we will be transformed at all. We can tell God to stop working on us, and not even realize that we have stopped the process. We can just stand in the garage, if we want. Or, we can get interested in what positive effect His work will have one us. He never gives us something bad. And if there is something bad in us, He transforms it into something good in the long run. He has our best interests at heart.
Thanks be to God for His grace that covers us even if. or rather when, we choose badly, and need His care again the next Sunday.
Our heavenly Father is worth imitating.
