Bible Reading
- John 13
- 2 Corinthians 3:18
Devotional Thoughts:
We learn best when we do something with the information we are given. There is a place for classroom teaching, and for Sunday morning preaching. But the lesson that stick the most are ones that involved hearing, feeling, doing… and ultimately having to teach it ourselves.
In John 13:14-15 we see Jesus instructing His disciples in this way. Before he gives the command to love each other (John 13:34) he displayed love to them in a very practical way! John 13:1 says, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” The action of washing his disciples feet was an incredible display of his love for those guys. And it communicated that without question. Once they saw, heard and felt what Jesus meant, then he tells them, “Now go and do likewise.”
In his devotional for today, Miles Stanford said something really interesting. He said, “You will ONLY be transformed by looking upon the glory of the Lord Jesus; for they who live looking and beholding, though they know it not, are being changed.” As the disciples looked and beheld Jesus. As they experienced Jesus love for them, it changed them! As they followed him and watched him, they began acting like him and became more like him.
Jesus himself said that is what will happen, if they continue to follow him. “just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this people will know that you are my disciples…” By this… by acting like I do… but doing the things I first did to you… washing your feet, loving in practical ways.. people will see that and recognize you but your actions.
1 John 4:12 comes back to this idea when it says, “No one has ever seen God; if you love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected (seen practically here on earth) in us.
The more time Jesus disciples spent with him, the more they talked like, acted like, thought like Him. That will be true for us as well. God promises to finish the work He has begun (Phil 1:6), the work of conforming us to the image of His son (Rom 8:29). But, one of the biggest things that will speed in that process is when we behold him (2 Cor 3:18), abide in him (John 15:5), look, watch and listen to how He lived, loved, walked and worked. As we do that, we will be transformed, we will begin to talking like him, acting like him… and Lord willing we will begin thinking like Him also. (Rom 12:2)
Declarations
- Transformation does not take place only by focusing on what we need to change. Transformation takes place as we become more and more occupied with Christ.
- The more time I spend with God, the more I study how Jesus lived, the more I will start looking like him.
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