Metamorphosis

I have a secret for you.

Shhhhhh...come in really close so I can whisper. Closer.

Change is hard.

Actually, that's not a huge revelation, but at least I have your attention.

Change is hard. Anytime you're dealing with change, there's going to be difficulty, but transforming the way we think can be the most trying.

For though we live in the body, 

we do not wage war in an unspiritual way,

since the weapons of our warfare are not worldly,

but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds.

We demolish arguments and every high-minded thing

that is raised up against the knowledge of God,

taking every thought captive.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

Recently, I wrote about a moment in a dressing room, and the resulting realization that I had given up hope of ever being at a semi-healthy weight. I was depending upon my own strength, forgetting that my God is El Gibbor, the Mighty Warrior. 

If I'll get out of His way, He will fight with me and for me, going before me in battle. In order to do this, though, I'm going to have to be transformed by the renewing of my mind, taking every thought captive.

God's word says our weapons of warfare are spiritual and powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. I looked up the exact definition of stronghold:

1. a place that has been fortified so as to protect it from attack 

2. a place where a particular word or belief is strongly defended or upheld.

Throughout our lives, Satan and our own sinful natures have created strongholds in our minds: fortresses built with steel beams of intense hurt and the bricks of repetition. These are places where our beliefs about ourselves are strongly defended and upheld.

But if these beliefs are counter to God's word and His will for us, they must come down.

Winning wars is about demolishing strongholds again and again.

But how exactly do we take every thought captive? How do we know if it's against God's will? 

Through the transformation that comes from the renewal of our minds.

Therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God,

I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice

 holy and pleasing to God;

this is your spiritual worship.

Do not be conformed to this age,

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,

so that you may discern what is the

good, pleasing and perfect will of God.

Romans 12:1-2

These are the verses I think about anytime I think about my body because it talks about presenting our bodies as living sacrifices. However, through study and a lot of prayer, God opened this verse up even more, and printed it in a brand new way on my heart.

I was not only made BY God, I was made FOR God, and for His purposes. He wants me to lay my entire being - my love for food, my imperfections, my abusive mind - down at his feet. He wants me to give it to Him, so He can transform me, so HE can renew my mind and show me His will for me. He wants to demonstrate how, though His great compassion and mercy, He can provide, when I lay myself down as a sacrifice.

In the Greek, the word for transformed is metamorphoo (with a thing over the last o that I don't know how to type). It is where we get the word metamorphosis.

The Greek word for renewing is anakainosis, and it means renovation, a complete change for the better.

Metamorphosis into the women and men God wants us to become can only happen with a complete renovation of our minds - our thoughts, feelings, and desires - so that God's good, pleasing, and perfect desire for our lives can be discerned.

And renovation can't happen without demolition...the strongholds must come down.

A caterpillar has the makings of a butterfly within him in a drastically simplified form. He can eat and eat and eat, and grow and grow and grow. But he can't just change into a butterfly. He doesn't just sprout wings and begin to fly.

He has to be transformed.

Within the chrysalis, his body literally demolishes itself so that the old can be used to give life to the new. All the energy that was once used to sustain the caterpillar is now used to compound what was within all along. Only by doing this can he grow wings, emerge, and take flight.

Metamorphosis.

It's time, my friends. It's time to give it over to God, let him demolish and destroy the bad, so the energy that was formerly used to keep us crawling on the ground can be diverted into developing those things He placed in us so long ago. It's time to sprout wings, and eventually, we will fly.