Again quoting Paul Tournier, who reflects, in the following passage, about how being transformed by God is not a one-time event, as if the moment we are “born again” we have God, ourselves, and life in general all figured out.
If an individual, Tournier says, “is the fruit of a special creative act of God he is responsible before God, and remains dependent (on God). He (the individual) may use the gifts which God grants him—liberty, power, reason—but only within the limitations of the will of his Creator, limitations which he can know only to the extent that God reveals himself. At that price he (the individual) will find harmony in his person, in society, and in his relationship with nature.” Paul Tournier
Christian growth and maturity is a process, which, thankfully, comes with a guarantee from God Himself through Christ that when we fall and fail along the way—when His path is still so new to us even after many years—He will lovingly teach us through our blind spots so that we eventually look back on them with wisdom, grateful for God’s provision of progress into the current day.
Peace and confidence is built up over time through an inner open-minded commitment to step outside of ourselves and our religious and political posturing and spiritualizing to instead be truly led and enlightened by God. Through the brains he alone equipped us with, He is then able to train us, not in what to think, but in how to think about all that he reveals through His Spirit, and has revealed through Jesus Christ.
Copyright Barb Harwood
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