Made For More (Chapter 11): Becoming Real - Living as a Work in Progress

We are God's work in progress.  How should this make us feel?  Hannah Anderson writes:

"As God transforms you to be more like Him, as your heart mirrors His more perfectly, you can expect two different things: (1) You should experience the ability to increasingly live as you were created to live and (2) You should also feel deeper pain when you do not.  And it is this very pain that confirms that you are in the process of changing.  This pain helps you remember that you are no longer the person you once were. Even on our worst days, then, even on those days when you feel so out of sorts that you hardly know yourself, you must remember that this discomfort, these growing pains assure that you are made for more.

"And this is why you must remember the past even if it is so broken and painful that you'd rather package it up in a box and shove it away in your soul's hall closet.  You must remember the past so you can rejoice in who God is making you to be.  Because as dangerous as it is to presume upon God's goodness and continue to live in your old identity, it is equally dangerous to overlook the work He has already accomplished and is accomplishing in you.

"When you do look back and you can actually see God transforming you, bit by it, ever so steadily, you can have hope.  You can remember that this is His work and that what He starts, He will finish.  You remember that because He has begun a good work in you, He must complete it.  And amazingly this faithfulness -- God's persistent, steady faithfulness -- engenders our own faithfulness in response.  When we remember all that He has been for us, it strengthens our faith in Him and our resolve to continue to find our true selves in Him.  When we turn to behold His faithfulness, we end up reflecting it in our own lives (Hannah Anderson, Made For More)."