Transformers

[HKHaugan]

Many years ago at Christmas it was a big deal for a child to get an electric train. I got a Lionel. It was a small one but it was my treasure. I loved going to the department store and watching where there was a huge set-up with bridges and tunnels and lots of tracks. I thought about adding tracks little by little to mine. I had a chance to visit two people who had their whole attic converted into a railroad heaven. I loved trains. I loved riding on trains. I still wave at the engineer when I’m stopped at a crossing and the engine comes by.

I didn’t understand exactly how it worked but the transformer was important. It connected to the track and sent a reduced charge of electricity to the engine. It had a dial that would make the engine go slow and fast. It transformed 120 volts to a smaller voltage because the engine couldn’t take a full 120 volts. I’m sure that is what we do today with cell phones and other electronic gadgets when we charge them. It’s a transformer that reduces the charge since a full charge would burn them out.

So what’s all this about trains and transformers? If you think about the engine that pulls the train it takes the right amount of power for it to work. Not too much and not too little. The power has to fit the engine. Human beings having been separated by sin from God are intended to be connected with Him but can’t because a full charge of the Holy Spirit would annihilate the sin but incinerate us in the process.

God’s wrath is not against us but against sin and unless there is a way to cancel the power of sin we will be eternally separated from God. This is why Jesus came, to embrace our sin, to bear the full charge of God’s Spirit against sin in each of us. He is God’s transformer. He releases the power of the Holy Spirit in each of us individually as we need to run.

But there is more and that more is His Word. It is the Scripture that Jesus uses to give us the exact power we need at any given moment. It is the Holy Spirit coming through the Scripture as we read it leading our adjustment to the Lord as we read it. It’s the streaming power of grace, love and wisdom the Holy Spirit knows will energize us in each of our unique lives. The beautiful part about this is that no two engines are the same. Each of us is different and He has made us that way. What we need to do is give ourselves to Him in such a way as to let Him personally adjust the dial in our mind, heart and spirit that will best grow us.

This is what Romans 12:2 is all about when Paul tells us to be transformed by the renewal of our minds. When we read the Scripture we have a transformer that is plugged into the full power of God. The Lord works with the Holy Spirit to outfit us, renew us, restore us and ignite the spirit in us, our reborn spiritual nature. The Holy Spirit uses the Scripture as the transformer for our mind. How He does that is unique to each one of us. That is how personal God is in each of us. From there He remolds our heart to work in concert with the mind. Then He renews our spirit to act on what His leading motivates the mind and heart to put into action. What the Holy Spirit does is to dissolve the sludge that sin has caused to slow the engine’s mind, heart and spirit. It is a spiritual oil and lube job on our engine.

Again it doesn’t just stop with each engine, each person. He is making a great fleet of engines to pull cars loaded with missions that will engage a desperate world in its needs for restoration with God. He brings them together to learn from one another in the Word and the Spirit to be the Body of Christ that runs on a track to eternity beckoning the world to hop on as they pass through. They are building track in every town and village to carry the Gospel. Yes, there are valleys of resistant unbelief, of false signals that would sidetrack their movement and of those who would kill and destroy to keep the train from moving.

There are spiritual depots, congregations and home churches, to reach out to nourish the trains, bring healing and establish ministries to the poor and distressed. As long as there are broken people there is a whole Lord, a whole Spirit and a whole Body ready to fill the gap sin has brought against God. Worship, preaching, meeting together, prayer and sharing our spiritual gifts are the points of contact for the power to allow us to receive more and more of the voltage the Holy Spirit brings.