Spiritual Transformation

[Pastor Dr. Michael M Sherrod]

As a leader in your church , the most important thing to grasp about spiritual transformation is its source . Spiritual transformation is a God-thing . At its nucleus , spiritual transformation requires repentance and total trust in God to dramatically change what we could never change ourselves . Being in every worship service or taking every church class offered won’t make it happen . Participating in a multitude of ministries won’t bring it about . Fasting won’t cinch it . Realizing that spiritual transformation isn’t something you can do is a hard pill for us to swallow as egotistical humans-and perhaps even more so as church leaders . We hate to admit we can’t do something . It’s easy for us to try to take spiritual transformation into our hands-without even realizing that’s what we’re doing . We’re compelled by the Christian and secular culture and propelled by personality quirks to get busy doing the things we perceive Christians are supposed to be doing . We have places to go , spiritual activities to do , people to see . But there exists a discouraging disparity between our efforts and the results : and , to top it off , we’re exhausted . We’re working at ministry . We wonder . What’s wrong ? Shouldn’t we be energized by serving God ? The truth is , as church leaders , we are too often caught up in the momentum of ministry that we’ve forsaken our own needed moments of intimacy with God . We need to stop what we’re doing , listen to our hearts , and honestly assess our own spiritual status before we can effectively lead other believers to a face-to-face relationship with God .