God is Changing Us
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. (James 1:17 KJV)
In the past when reading this verse I tended to think that every good gift and every perfect gift were the same, or through simple deduction that good equals perfect. Therefore I was inclined to think when things went “good” that it was from God and when things went “bad,” those things must not have been from God. I was failing to see these perfect gifts as perfecting gifts.
However, now I started to look at God’s perfecting gifts through the microscopic lenses of Romans 8:28: “All things work together for good.” And John 15:2: “Every branch that bears fruit, he purges.” And Hebrews 12:6: “For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.” Through these “perfecting gifts” God is changing us, changing our character to be “conformed to the image of His Son.”
As Paul also said in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
God wants our characters to be reflections of His Son’s character. All the chiseling, sanding, rubbing, polishing, purifying, molding, breaking, making, and remaking is for one purpose and one purpose alone. It is so that when people look at us they will see in us a reflective image of His Son.
The plow and the harrow and the pruning-knife are as much His gifts as the sun and the rain. Grapes are better than mere luxuriant leaves and a tangle of twines. For that is all they would be without the pruning step. - Maltbie Davenport Babcock
[1] Anchor God’s “Perfecting” Gifts
