#4 Beholding is Becoming

How do we change to become the kind of joyful, loving people we genuinely want to be?

Just as we are saved not by striving but by looking to Jesus, we are transformed, not by striving, but by beholding Jesus:

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 Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:18

John Piper put it so simply: 

Beholding is Becoming.

That is my goal for the heart of the book I’m endeavoring to write. The first portrait we will be beholding is that of “Stonecutter.” For He is alone is the One who can turn our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh.

 Sunday: Thankful for His Presence

Only the Judeo-Christian faith has a personal God who can be present with us.

1. How have you experienced His presence this week in little or big ways?

Monday: Beholding His Holiness Reveals Our Sin

I’ve mentioned my friend Marty before, who was frustrated with our Bible study because she said, “Dee, the problem is I’m not a sinner.” So she skipped Bible study and went for a bike ride. During that bike ride, God gave her a glimpse of His holiness. She came late to Bible study, flushed with excitement, announcing: “I’m a sinner!”

2. What are some ways, early in your Christian life, that God gave you glimpses of His holiness? How did it impact you?

3. Isaiah was a wealthy, educated, and respected man. Then God commissioned, but first gave him a glimpse of His holiness. Read Isaiah 6:1-8.

A. What stands out to you upon first reading this?

B. What did Isaiah see, hear, and feel?

C. How did this impact him?

D. How did the Lord then show him grace?

E. How did Isaiah respond?

Tuesday: Seeing the Stones in our Hearts

I think the women on this blog will laugh along with the counselors John Piper was speaking to, because you are women of insight, and you know, like a good Christian counselor, that the root of the problems in our lives and our relationships is sin. This five-minute opening is golden. Please watch. (I’ve included the transcript, but I really want you to watch!)

I feel honored and humbled and exposed as a speaker to the American Association of Christian Counselors. I assume that of all the audiences in the world, you are the ones who can see right through a speaker. I take that to be a good thing. It forces the issue of hypocrisy. It makes real for me at the horizontal level what is always true vertically. God always knows if we are hypocrites. So it’s good to be among people who make us feel emotionally naked. It’s a wake up call from the dangers of pretense.

So to spare you some analysis, I will tell you that you are listening to a sinner. A man

• who must crucify the love of praise every day;
• who struggles with the same adolescent fear at age 63 that he had at 15, the fear of looking foolish;
• who is prone to feel self-pity and pout when he doesn’t get loved the way he wants;
• who is almost never sure he has used his time in the best way and therefore struggles with guilt;
• who is short on compassion and long on critical analysis;
• who can freeze up emotionally when he’s tired, and feel instinctively that it’s someone else’s fault;
• who loves to praise God in the great assembly and feels a constraint on his spirit in his own living room;
• who has loved his wife of forty years imperfectly and spent with her over three of those years with a Christian counselor trying to become better images of Christ and the church;
• and who never feels sure that his motives are pure, including right now, for why he is telling you all this.

At one level, I want you to be open to what I have to say, and I thought that being open with you might help you be open to me. At another level, a better one I hope, I want you to see why I love the grace of God. 

4. Watch the above and then answer:

A. Why were the counselors laughing before Piper could even finish his first sentence?

B. Why is it so good that we realize the depravity of our hearts?

C. Piper confesses his daily struggles. I could identify with all of them! Which of them particularly resonated with you, and how might it shed light on something with which you are struggling right now?

Wednesday: Being Delivered from the Penalty of Sin

This happens the moment we put our trust in what Jesus did for us at the cross. If you came to Christ as a little child like Patti or Sharon, or several others of you, you may not remember. You cannot identify with Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress, who knew the moment the burden fell from his back. But it is such a good picture of how we are saved, not by striving, but by looking to Jesus.

5. What illustration did Jesus give Nicodemus for how to be born again in John 3:14? What did the Israelites have to do to be rescued from the lethal snakes? Point?

6. Does anyone know the short story of how Charles Spurgeon came to faith? It’s a great illustration of the above. If so, share here.

7. Do you remember how God revealed your sinfulness and His grace to you? If so, share in a sentence.

Thursday: Being Delivered from the Power of Sin

As John Piper’s honest confession demonstrates, it is a struggle we will face until we see Him face-to-face and are delivered from the presence of sin. However, if we are aware that whenever there is a problem in a horizontal relationship, there is likely a problem in our vertical relationship with God, we may be able to see the idol and turn from it. Watch the following short clip from counselor David Powlison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSFVnECHzr0

8. Watch the above.

     A. What stood out to you and why?

     B. List some of the verbs that describe our relationship with God.

     C. What question does Powlison tell us to ask when there is a problem that will help us examine our vertical relationship?

9. Now — think of an area in which you struggle — Piper named so many — let’s us each just name one and consider how seeing the sin beneath the sin might set us free. (I will share as well tomorrow!)

Friday: Letting the Stonecutter Work

A pediatrician I know tells children, when removing a splinter, “If you hold still, it won’t take so long.”

When confronted, it’s easy for pride to rear its head. But if I can hold still and take it before the Lord in private, He will show me what is true and what is not. If it is true, it is a splinter I want out. One quick story: It was the seventies, and I was endeavoring to reach the other residents’ wives for Christ. Their marriages were falling apart because their husbands were gone all the time, and they had little children. I thought Marabel Morgan’s book Total Woman might be the answer and began passing it out. They were SOOOO angry. Here they were, doing everything by themselves, and she told them also to take a bubble bath, dress up, and make a gourmet dinner before their husbands got home.

A godly woman came to me after much prayer and gently confronted me, telling me she loved my concern for them, but it might be backfiring. She helped me see they weren’t rejecting Christianity, but this distortion of Christianity. When she left, I wept before the Lord, and He strengthened me to go to them and tell them how wrong I’d been. Those four years were amazing, and we saw so many put their trust in Christ — but a big stone had to be removed before it happened.

10. Do you have a story of true repentance that bore fruit? If so, share.

Saturday:

11. What is your take-a-way and why?