This is part 5 of Grant’s Reluctant Obedient devotional series.

Part 1 – The Reluctant Obedient
Part 2 – The Journey of The Reluctant Obedient
Part 3 – The Discipline of The Reluctant Obedient
Part 4 – The Crisis Point of The Reluctant Obedient

We started this journey with a C.S. Lewis quote, so it’s fitting to end it with one as well.

God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature. Of course, once it has got its wings, it will soar over fences which could never have been jumped and thus beat the natural horse at its own game. But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do so: and at that stage the lumps on the shoulders—no one could tell by looking at them that they are going to be wings—may even give it an awkward appearance.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

This is what awaits the Reluctant Obedient, and it’s something Lewis knows not just intellectually but by experience. Once he pushes through the crisis of faith, there is transformation. To be clear as to what we are talking about, this refers to the spiritual blessings we have in Christ. In an instant, Christ gives us all of the privileges of being God’s sons and daughters. Spend some time in Ephesians 1 to get a grasp of the immensity of these. Adopted. Gifted. Called. Ordained. Forgiven. Made righteous. The list is impressive. It is all accessed by grace through faith in the person of Jesus.

He gives us these things, and THEN He makes us worthy of them. That’s transformation. The order is everything here. Many a Pharisee has been made by reversing this order. After He gives us these spiritual blessings, Jesus goes about the hard, messy, long work of turning us into sons and daughters worthy of these gifts.

Here’s the scandal of the thing. Even when we don’t measure up, He never takes them away. He insists on us continuing to have relationship with Him. Still adopted, still gifted, still called, still ordained.

There is a fierceness to the grace of God, and it cuts two ways. There is nothing in heaven or on the earth that can remove the Christ-follower from relationship with the Father. Nothing. Not even our own actions. And there is nothing that will stop Him from working in us and on us. Nothing.

There comes a place where the Reluctant Obedient finally realizes that Christ cares nothing about our comfort. Or even about making us kinder, nicer versions of ourselves. He is out to make us completely new and completely like Him, and comfort is the mortal enemy of transformation. We can seek comfort or experience transformation. But we can’t have both.

God developing wings on us is a process. Nothing is instant or easy. He uses everything. Good. Bad. Joy. Pain. This journey of being changed is full of awkward moments and uncomfortable silences.

Eventually the Reluctant Obedient must surrender his skepticism. Accompaning this is the realization that worship, study, prayer, serving, giving – all of those spiritual disciplines that were once seen as the actions of the super-religious – now are seen for what they really are. They are avenues to experience more transformation.

Here’s praying that we all get to that place.