Becoming Whole

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure . . . Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Isaiah 58:3-4

In chemical dependency treatment, everyone was committed to following God’s path . . . when it came to drug use. There were those guys though, who in group, talked a good talk about following God out of addiction, but later, revealed other areas of life in which they obviously took no consideration of God’s will. This offended me because I knew God wanted all of me. God wants all of us. I’ve figured that out. Why haven’t you?

I was right about God wanting all of us. I was just profoundly wrong about how far along I was in giving everything up to him. As I later found out, like those other guys, I too, wanted God’s help with my addiction, while I remained in charge of other areas of my life.

This is the condition of God’s people in today’s passage. In it, God chastised those who were sort-of seeking him, while they actually pursued themselves. They made a show of fasting, but they still tolerated wickedness, oppression, and hunger all around them. They claimed to follow God but failed to love his people.

As Christians, we are all in this condition in some way. We call ourselves followers of Christ, yet we all cling to control in some – or many – areas of our lives. This is why Christ called us to daily abandon ourselves and follow him.

We are all fragmented, in a process of becoming whole, but will never arrive in this life. In Christ, we have a perfect spirit life, but as long as we exist in this flawed flesh, we will struggle with complete surrender.

The measure then, of whether or not one is following Christ, is not how far along one is in the process, but whether or not the process is actually occurring. It’s a false faith to believe that once we’ve found Christ that we no longer need his transforming power. The truth is, we all are fragmented and we all need to be made more like Christ. If we are disciples, we are being transformed. If we are not being transformed, we are not disciples.