Your were taught with regard to your former way of life, to PUT OFF YOUR OLD SELF, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires. to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to PUT ON the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Eph.4:22-23
Have you ever met someone for the first time and come away feeling like you met an actress playing a part and not a real person? Have you ever gone to work or church or a party and came away exhausted because you had just given an award winning performance?
It takes a lot of courage to let people see who we really are. It takes a lot of humility and vulnerability to become the person we were meant to be.
I learned something fascinating about the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly. A caterpillar does not create a chrysalis, it exposes it. You have to watch this! its amazing! The caterpillar even starts out in a J shape!
The caterpillar has to do all the hard work of getting the old skin off, it has to surrender ALL of its old self COMPLETLY in order for the metamorphosis to begin! likewise, For our transformation to begin, we must be vulnerable and humble enough to shed our protective skin.
This makes me think of the scene in Voyage of the Dawn Treader when Eustace is a dragon and trying desperately to rid himself of the dragon skin. He painfully gets the top few layers off but he is not able to get all the layers off, only Aslan (Jesus) can remove the deepest ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InAukk4DuRw://
some layers are harder to get off than others, Jesus is there to help us in that walk. HE knows how hard it is to give up all you are in order to become all you are created to be. HE was GOD and became human, HE was a healthy 33-year-old and surrendered HIS earthy role in order to fulfil HIS heavenly one. He knows what it means to humble himself…HE suffered the cross!
It is PAINFUL to do this work! It does not feel natural to “Put off our old self” I think that is why churches are filled with caterpillars trying desperately to make their own wings. filled with advice on how to make the best wings, What colors to avoid, how to fashion them just right in order to fit in with the rest of the butterflies….
The problem is caterpillars can not fly, no matter how beautiful the wings. It breaks my heart to watch people strap these “wings” onto their backs, and then spend years feeling guilty because they can’t figure out how to fly.
I spent WAY to many years creating my own wings, and telling others how to make theirs better! Complete surrender for a control freak does not come easy. Here’s the thing, we can never fly with wings we have created… no matter how good they look. In fact I have found that the better they look the harder they are to surrender.
There are still days when I walk around on my tiny butterfly feet because I forget that HE has given me wings. OH, but HE has! I am so thankful for the days when I feast on HIS nectar and enjoy a treetop view.
Some of us have to have our created wings torn off in order to begin the process of complete surrender, I did, I hope you do not. My prayer for you this week is that you will have the courage to lay down your own wings, have the courage to shed your caterpillar skin, surrendering every cell of your being to the only one who can create a butterfly out of a caterpillar.