Prayer of Transformation!

Dear friends

The process of transformation and transfiguration of a Christian must be done permanently. Generally, however, at the beginning of each year we usually make resolutions to change our lives for the new year. This is a time of the year where we used to make resolutions. Where we dedicate ourselves to plan what will be the new period in our lives. Every year we make them and in February we forget the pounds we were going to lose, the money we were going to save, the books we were going to read, etc.

Is something wrong with us? Do we not have willpower?

It may be so, in some people, but a simply resolution does not make us change, it is the transformation of mind and heart that produces the change.

In Christians this change only comes when we allow ourselves to be transformed by Christ. The clearest example is in Nicodemus (John 3: 1 to 15). This religious dignitary is faced with a challenge of life, he realizes that everything he had considered as achievements did not work. His life dedicated to religious discipline, to the strict compliance with more than 300 laws, had been wrong, almost a waste. The solution to meet God was very different from what he had thought.

Today, more than 2000 years later, we Christians continue to make the same mistake: we think that discipline in not sinning or doing good deeds brings us closer to God. Going to church, praying, reading the Bible, are a necessity to be well with God, and even in some circles requirements to enjoy his blessings.

Let us ask ourselves, what is my Christian responsibility? We can always answer again and again: what it is to do this or that, not to sin, to have certain disciplines, etc., things that are good but that are not even close to what a Christian should look for.

Ours is to seek to have intimacy with God, to have an increasingly close relationship with Him, to seek him not by blessings but by relating to Him. As the singer Juan Luis Guerra says in his song (in spanish): “I have only come to to be with you, to be your friend, to share with my God, to praise and thank you, just thank you for what you have done Lord, with me.”

We must ceaselessly seek a relationship of trust with Him and as in every relationship, I cannot trust who I do not know, so if we want to have a Christian responsibility it is to know Him and relate to Him. (Jeremiah 9:23 and 24; Hosea 6: 6).

When one understands this then it is easy to acquire disciplines that are not my responsibility, but my pleasure. That they are not something that I have to do but something that I want more and more, that I long for when I don't have it and that I take full advantage of when I am reading or praying or any other spiritual activity.

It can be read in Ephesians 4:17 to 32 what it is about:

• What we were before (17 to 19) Look at the importance of my thoughts. Gentiles have frivolous thoughts, they have obscured understanding and ignorance dominates them, and it is because of this that they lost their shame, they are immoral and indecent. The scriptures contrast the power of ignorance and error to corrupt and that of truth to liberate, ennoble and purify.
  Look at the downward path of unbelievers: First the hardness of the heart, using the word "pores" which is a marble rock, all sensitivity has been lost. Second, they have obscured understanding, as a consequence they move away from life that comes from God and end up losing all shame, surrendering themselves to immorality and no indecent act satisfies them.

• What transforms us (20 to 24) The first part evokes the image of a school: learned, heard and taught. Our transformation begins when we learn who we are in Christ, and understand the unconditional love of God, which does not depend on what you do, but on who you are.
  The following is how to change. We shed the old and the new enters. I change for the wedding, to go from prisoner to free or from soldier to civilian. It can't be done if I don't know what is new and what is old. We have become a new creation and as a consequence we have received a new mind that must be constantly renewed.

• A transformed life (25 to 32) Look what comes out and what comes in, but does not do so as a result of discipline, but of the increasingly intimate relationship I have with God the more I know Him.