The Desire for Transformation

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

–Philippians 2:12–13

Perhaps you’ve been in a meeting where everybody comes up with great ideas for your organization. The person writing it all on the whiteboard can hardly keep up! Everybody leaves the meeting pumped up about the future. But when you reconvene several weeks later, nothing has been accomplished. Why? Because the group never clearly defined who was responsible for each task.

The Bible says our hearts have been corrupted by sin, but they can be transformed. So who is responsible for that transformation? The fact is, even if you want all the benefits of living in God’s kingdom, it’s not going to happen until you understand who’s responsible for your spiritual transformation.

You may remember in our study a few weeks ago, I said the process of sanctification–that is, becoming like Christ–is a joint effort between God and us. In Philippians 2:12–13, Paul said, “Just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” To Paul, salvation was not just a free pass to heaven; salvation in its fullest sense meant complete deliverance from the sinful patterns of thought and action that keep us from experiencing God’s kingdom in our lives. And that’s what we have to “work out.” God jump-starts our hearts, but we have to supply the effort.

Let’s talk about God’s role of jump-starting our hearts. God is responsible for giving us the desire to submit ourselves to His rule. The desire to be saved comes from the heart (Romans 10:9). But once we’re saved, the desire to obey God also comes from the heart. In Ephesians 6:6, Paul wrote about “doing the will of God from the heart.” God has to enliven our hearts to want to follow Him. In Ephesians 2:4–5, Paul wrote about the miraculous process by which God changes our desire: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.” Before we are saved, our hearts are spiritually dead. We are dead men walking. But God zaps our hearts so they’re beating and full of life and energy. That’s what happens when we become a Christian. God is responsible for giving us the desire for spiritual transformation.

Today’s devotion is adapted from “Heart Surgery” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2008.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.