April 5, 2004

"Invitation to Change"

God is inviting us to change.  Each day He is inviting us to change.  John the Baptist had a beautiful prayer.  He said, "He must increase, while I must decrease" (Jn 3:30).  One translation that I love says, "God must increase, I must disappear."  This is what He is really telling us.  We need to disappear into God; we need to become truly transformed into the Lord. 

Transforming union isn't an option.  I used to think that it was just for the saints to become those flaming swords, to get into the seventh mansion that Teresa of Avila talked about.  But transforming union is for everyone.  All of us are called to be taken over by Jesus.  It's not enough just to follow Him.  We have to let Him totally take over our entire being so that He lives and moves in us.

There's a beautiful story of Jesus walking along the road.  There was a crowd and this little man, Zacchaeus, wanted to see Jesus.  So Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree.  Jesus, being Jesus, stopped and saw him up there.  Zacchaeus was little, and so are we.  We're just little people, but hopefully we also want to see Jesus.  Jesus said, "Zacchaeus, hurry down, I mean to stay at your house today" (Lk 19:5).  That's a beautiful way to begin prayer.  "Hurry down.  I want to be within you.  I want to be in your house.  So come down.  Come within."  It's a wonderful way to come into a deeper friendship with the Lord and let Him spend each day in our house, breaking bread and sharing His heart with us. 

After Jesus' beautiful invitation to Zacchaeus, the next thing that happens is that sin comes up.  Sin will always come up with the Lord if we're going to take Him seriously.  However, it's not the first thing that Jesus talks about.  The first thing for Jesus is to establish the relationship.  He knows that we're not going to change if we don't really fall in love with Him, but we will change when we know Someone worthwhile to change for.  So He always establishes the relationship with us first.  So after establishing the relationship with Zacchaeus, it got around to what he was doing.  Zacchaeus came into a beautiful repentance.  Well, God is calling us there, too.  He wants this beautiful relationship with us, but He also wants us to look at our sin.  He wants us to look at our sin in His light and through His eyes.  We're not really going to look at sin until we feel loved and secure enough in His love to look at it.

Adam and Eve hid from God the moment they sinned.  They wrapped themselves in those fig leaves.  We, believe it or not, will do the same thing.  Unconsciously, and sometimes consciously, we'll try to hide our sins from God.  We will constantly put things on the back burner pretending that they don't really make any difference.  We may think, "God probably doesn't see it.  God doesn't really care.  It's just little anyway."  In this way, we can distance ourselves from God until He comes and says to us, like He said to Adam and Eve, "Where are you?" (Gn 3:9)   God knew where they were, but He wanted them to respond.  So He comes to us and says, "Where are you?  Let Me see your heart.  Let Me see your pain.  Let me see your sin."  Through the years, I have found out that God can handle sin.  He can handle rejection.  He can handle pain.  He can handle it all.  This is why He came. 

One time He gave me an image of myself on a pony as a little girl about two years old.  I fell off the pony into a mud pile.  In the image He said, "Can you get out of that mud pile by yourself?"  "No."  And so He reached down and pulled me out of the mud pile.  "You can't even get back on your pony by yourself."  So He put me on the pony.  "Can you do anything by yourself without Me?"  "No."  So God comes to us when we're in the mud puddles, when we're in sin.  St. Peter tells us that our enemy is constantly going about like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1Pt 5:8).  Satan lives in sin.  Satan loves sin.  It's almost like he's the father of sin.  So wherever there is sin in our lives, we're giving Satan a legal platform to enter.  So prayer warriors, intercessors, really have to take a closer look to see, "Am I getting rid of the sin, Lord?  Am I getting rid of the sin that You want me to get rid of? Are my open doors getting closed?"  The enemy that lurks closest to us is usually the enemy within ourselves.  We need to take a closer look at that.

Excerpt from "Stir into Flame the Gift of God: Healing," Saugherties, NY, 2002.