Why Doesn’t God Just Instantly Change Me?

Process, Humanity, and the Spirit’s Work

God designed and made us to be finite. Understanding the Christian life, especially in our struggle with sin and affliction, requires that we connect creation with re-creation. Far too often we have tried to make sense of Christian spirituality and sanctification without being mindful that our limitations are included in God’s original blueprint for us, that his tenderness toward us is only increased by our deep need for him, and that sin hasn’t removed any of that. Forgetting that background distorts our view of the Christian life, producing timidity instead of confidence, fear instead of hope, a sense of exhaustion and exile instead of welcome. But the Spirit of creation is the same as the Spirit of sanctification, and therefore God is working in us over the whole of our lives, not just at the moment of our conversion.

God’s highest value is not efficiency, especially considered in any simple or mechanistic sense—it is love. He is more interested in beauty than speed of process; he is more concerned to lift our gaze, to provoke song, to stimulate our imaginations than he is to just get things done. God is not wasteful or negligent but purposeful and wise, patient and intentional as he works.

It is easy for us to grow discouraged when we look at our lives and see how far short we fall of what we would desire. We see both our sin and our finite limits. We wish our ongoing struggles with troublesome attitudes, addictions, and actions would all immediately end. Yet God does not normally change our attitudes, free us from our addictions, and reform our actions instantaneously—although sometimes he does it that quickly. Ordinarily, God changes our lives by persistently picking us up when we fall and slowly but consistently drawing us to the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Spirit. In this process, he reconnects us with others, replacing our callousness with compassion, our hatred with love, and our fears with hope.

Do not lose heart: he who began a good work in you will see it to completion (Phil. 1:6).