Romans 12:2 (CSB)
“Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.”
It is a good time to be alive. Sometimes, life can feel monotonous and dull, but in this spiritual battle, we are in a fast rushing river together. Everyday there are changes happening that seem unimaginable until they occur. In this new year, we can remember this and take it into account.
Proverbs 19:15 (CSB)
“ Laziness induces deep sleep, and a lazy person will go hungry.”
When we are living a life of boredom and dullness, living a life of sloth, we aren’t doing the work required to truly transform into our true selves in Christ. We will go hungry for the life of a striving Christian and a relationship with God because the fruits of His word won’t be showcasing in our lives. The Christian life requires daily transformation, and it can be hard. We will fail at times, but it is fulfilling and brings true joy in our lives.
I am a person of complexity. I have a lot to give and creative thoughts bubbling in my head, thoughts to contribute and do good, thoughts about how I envision my future to be (which doesn’t embody what I’m doing then), and I just waste that energy that would’ve been enough to do as much as others by overthinking, procrastinating, and making clouds of falsity that I don’t really want or need to do things and lounging around is better. What God has helped me learn is that the root cause of sloth is actually fear. Fear of failure, fear that a task may be too difficult or draining, fear that we are not ready to do the task, fear of being mocked for your work not being good enough, etc. When the fear of doing nothing trumps the fear of doing something and might fail, that’s when you’ll begin to heal. These traits can look like carelessness, nihilism, half-hearted efforts, easily discouraged by any difficulty. If you’re looking for the opposite of sloth, these traits are having diligence, being active, eager, careful, and persistent.
Isaiah 41:10 (CSB)
“Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; I will hold on to you with my righteous right hand.”
When we truly submit ourselves to God’s will, the hindrances that were preventing us from doing so will dissipate. Fear will not have a hold on us, laziness will not have a hold on us, pride of thinking we can do it all will not have a hold on us. Because when we’re with God, he strengthens our body and mind to let go of these things.
What I do is use rest and entertainment as a reward system like I won’t watch the new episode of whatever show I’m watching, or I won’t watch another YouTube or Tik Tok video until I’ve done whatever task is at hand. The reward should match the task like a 30 minute video or break time as a reward for doing the chore you hate or have been procrastinating on. And after doing the task, like picking up your Bible or praying, becomes a habit over time, eventually, you won’t even feel that same constant urge to do that reward system, or at least just less of it because your true reward you will really crave is gaining that new knowledge, wisdom, connecting with the Lord, and living that out.
Through working with the complicated depth of reality and developing both old and new ways of seeing, we can advance toward a transformative wholeness of living. I want to shed light on this emerging ecosystem in our world over and against the rhythm of what is destroyed and breaking.
Proverbs 27:17 (CSB)
“Iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens another.
As someone who loves writing, (although I can never seem to finish a full fledged book besides two of them because I get sidetracked with new ideas) I have begun to write and have written many stories where the main message was something along the lines of “change is coming”. You can be prepared for it, and you don’t have to be a victim of it. You can actually shape it. So in my life, I always find myself returning to the work that will fulfill me in my spiritual walk, over and over again. We are natural beings, and the natural environment is capable of many things. Anything that occurs elsewhere can also occur within ourselves. And we are able to work, grow, and help each other do both together; we are able to coexist and be symbiotic, within ourselves and with others if we act out on God’s word daily. Successful life is adaptable, opportunistic, tenacious, interconnected, fecund, and understands this. It uses imagination to make the world and remake the world.
And to think that we have this amazing, awesome Earth that God created and we are just fumbling the bag to make this planet the beauty humanity can really be. We do this because we are so preoccupied with creating hierarchies between us by using our intelligence against one another.
I began to pay attention to the natural world compared to God’s word and it is so evident to see what lessons it might have for us on how to live our lives with Christ at the center and with others more effectively. I also recognized that we are living inside of imaginations that other people have told us are true and have described to us as the way the world is. It takes radical imagination to do this. Therefore, a large portion of my work in radical imagination revolves on the question, “What does it look like to think beyond the constructs?” What does it look like to see a time in the future where everyone is present, no one is harmed, and there is so much?
Luke 16:10 (CSB)
“Whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and whoever is unrighteous in very little is also unrighteous in much.”
When we believe in small things that God can do, then we can grow into trusting in the big things. This is radical imagination: trusting in the small and the big. When we don’t believe God can transform even our minor issues, then how can we believe that we can truly and wholeheartedly live a Christ-centered life and think and live beyond the confinements of our own constructs?
Finding practices and responses, visions and plans that embrace complexity, interconnection, and transformation, while also highlighting that this strategy has been witnessed in the natural world and is both old and consistent, is the idea of acknowledging the true force of change.
But as a human species, we are always trying to hold onto stuff and not let it die that actually puts us in rocky situations. One of our biggest issues plaguing us is we’re so scared of death and growth. And so we think about how we can make people live forever, how long can I be comfortable while not changing, and how can we look young forever, and do all this stuff instead of being like, “How can I learn mastering death?”, “How do I get to where I’ll be at peace when my time comes while in this world now, because there’s other generations that depend on the resources I will create to survive?”
Matthew 5:6 (CSB)
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
There is going to be important conflict and contradiction in the process of ending cycles of harm, but we have to work on how to fight fair, struggle in principled ways, and practice accountability beyond punishment with each other.
In God’s word, we are to treat Him like we treat others, and to love thy neighbor. Therefore, there is undoubtedly a lot of disappointment and dissatisfaction in humanity when we aren’t fixated on Him and His practices. This is particularly evident when examining social justice movements because they are created when there is a great deal of hope and desire trying to dismantle the hate we wish to change. When the pandemic first started, and even now, everyone was canceling each other on social media, but when I came back from my participation, I believed we could handle it in a different way, with love. I observed that individuals who were relatively new to the movement or to whatever their political understanding was frequently made the same mistake. I believe that instead of genuinely dismantling and unlearning hateful practices, people are instead punishing everybody who makes a mistake, and this isn’t just in cancel culture but in our daily lives too.
Ephesians 4:29 (CSB)
“No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear.”
There definitely needs to be a new approach to treating others with godly care, love, and forgiveness, and guiding people with the fruits of the Spirit to transform their mindset instead of belittling them. That doesn’t produce change, that produces shame and guilt. We can’t design compelling paths from being harm-doers to healing and growth. Calls for action rooted in violence, hate, bullying, and threats as a method of resolving disputes make us into cancers within our own movements and communities, and we become the toxicity we wish to destroy.
We live in a time of transformative wholeness. A new year is upon us and we can bring about a lot of change and history, and that starts within ourselves. Stepping outside of our comfort zones and pushing to transform into who God created us to be. The action heroes are us. We would much rather live in a world where we wake up and realize that we have the power to direct our own lives instead of everyone being lost, frustrated, and dissatisfied because we aren’t following our guide to completeness: God’s Word.
2 Corinthians 5:17 (CSB)
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!”
We must transform ourselves before we transform the world. We can practice whatever’s in alignment with our largest vision every day, but take it day by day and that’s the ultimate spiritual practice. And it’s absolutely beautiful. Going back to what I mentioned about me barely finishing stories I write, I find myself in this bind of wanting the big picture to come right away and not embracing the process it takes, all the mistakes and rewrites, and this is not only with me writing but in my life as a whole. But the beauty of the process is that you’re really internalizing in your bodies that what you do is part of a larger pattern that you want to see.
We’re always practicing things we don’t want to do unknowingly, so we might as well practice things we want to practice by choice. Once we start practicing on purpose, we can actually practice conquering the wholeness of the amazing person God calls us to be. I’m shifting to a new rhythm of life in this time of change, and God willing, I’ll be able to share how God has helped me finish numerous well thought out stories that go above and beyond my human ability that I could have never seen but God did, and so much more with the years to come. And for you, learning in this new year some tools for living to defy your own odds and to live the life beyond your imagination that God has in store for you.
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