One of the purposes of your life is to become like God. Christlike. Are you trying to be like God, doing all the right things? How is that working for you? God gave us butterflies to show us how to become like Him.
The Way of the Butterfly
The caterpillar lives a very busy life, crawling from bush to tree, devouring and growing. Always moving. A caterpillar grows through five stages, shedding old skins, sometimes adding stripes or spots or even changing colors, but still clearly a caterpillar.
Then a caterpillar reaches a stage in its life when it loses its appetite; the things that have always satisfied it no longer do.
The caterpillar stops its frantic life. It goes off by itself and creates a safe place to change. The chrysalis is safe but transparent. Others will see the gooey mess the caterpillar is about to become.
Get Still and Surrender
Now begins the most amazing process in all of nature. The caterpillar gets still, surrenders and dies as a caterpillar.
When it surrenders, powerful enzymes break down the body of the caterpillar. The caterpillar turns into a gooey mess. The caterpillar is forever gone, dead. But powerful life-giving forces are at work in the goo that was the caterpillar.
Imaginable discs, DNA, placed within the caterpillar from the time it was an egg come to life and direct the creation of an entirely new creature from the goo that was the caterpillar. Every part of the caterpillar is replaced with a new creation: a new heart, new eyes, wings instead of feet, new appetites – everything.
The old caterpillar has passed away, a new butterfly has come.
No one mistakes a caterpillar for a butterfly.
Butterflies are breathtakingly beautiful, caterpillars, not so much. Butterflies fly, caterpillars crawl. Caterpillars spend their whole life destroying and devouring to satisfy their desires. Butterflies bring life wherever they go as they pollinate flowers.
The way of heart transformation is the journey from caterpillar to butterfly.
We live busy, productive lives and we grow. But there comes a time when we lose our appetites for the old things; they no longer satisfy.
God replaces our character with His.
Then, if we are willing, we go to God and find a safe place to be changed. What we surrender to God begins to die. As we let go the Holy Spirit replaces our character with His.
Parts of us we’ve always kept hidden are exposed. The masks we’ve hidden behind break down. We become a gooey mess. Transparent. Vulnerable.
Then the life-giving Holy Spirit replaces what we give to Him. And from the gooey mess that is us, He creates a new creature – a new heart, new eyes and ears, new appetites, new desires and the ability to fly.
Transformed people are breathtakingly beautiful.
The man of the transformed heart lives a life far above his old self-life. He has a higher purpose and the character of Christ to live it out. He brings life wherever he goes. He pollinates the world around him with the life and presence of God within him.
The change is real, lasting, and unmistakable. It is true inside-out, heart transformation.
Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from… God….
2 Corinthians 5:17-18 The Message
Few people make this journey alone. The pain of dying to self is real. The journey is messy and, at times, confusing. We need others to help us on this journey.
What is your heart response to the way of the butterfly? Write a comment below.
About Dave Milford
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