Are you ‘steeping’?

Anyone who has made a cup of tea knows that tea colors and flavors the water when the bag is put into water. This process is known as ‘steeping.’ For the tea to color and flavor the water the water has to be hot. Cold water doesn’t make a good cup of tea.

Transformation of a person’s emotions is not a quick process. There is no quick memory ‘flash’ that will change habits and ways of feeling and responding in an instantaneous procedure. There are times, when treating a patient who is experiencing significant emotional or mental struggles, that a psychiatrist will prescribe medicine. Some of these medicines function to block the normal ‘electrical pathways’ in the brain and by doing so, allow new pathways to be created. Over a period of time the electrical currents in the brain find new paths to travel in. When that occurs, a person’s mental and emotional patterns and responses can change. Hopefully the new paths are healthier than the old pathways. The new pathways, if they are given time and repletion, will become the default pathways. None of this change happens quickly.

In a similar way, emotional and mental transformation of a follower of Jesus Christ is the creation of new paths and habits of living and thinking. These new paths eventually become the default habits and patterns of living. None of this change happens quickly. Paul wrote: Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2 NIV)

Transformation usually happens during these different conditions: Tension, Trouble, Transition and Trials. People often change when the tension between bills and available finances are in conflict with one another. People often change when they find themselves in trouble for some reason. People often make changes in life during times of transition. People often change when they are experiencing some sort of trial in life.

It is interesting that these are the conditions when transformation most often occurs, but people do almost everything they can to avoid tension, trouble, transition and trials, thereby removing the very conditions under which transformation takes place.

The Bible says: Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. (James 1:2-4 MSG) Could it be that followers are instructed to see trials, tests and challenges in a positive way because they are an advantage? I think so.

Going through times of tension, trouble, transition and trials is a sort of spiritual ‘steeping.’ Transformation happens in more powerful ways when we are steeping in tension, trouble, transition and trial.

Are you ‘steeping’ and being transformed, or are you trying to get out of the conditions of spiritual steeping?

Matt