The Pain of Being Forged Into His Image

Conformity is painless but being transformed is another thing altogether.

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

By Lauren Bragg

Reprinted from The Stand

“Please hear me: The world has enough girls who know how to do their hair. What it needs is women who know how to do the hard, Holy things.” -Ann Voskamp

Why does it seem that the holiest things, the sanctifying things, the things that push us closer to the heart of Jesus are the hardest?

Choosing to worship in the wake of tragedy, that’s hard.

Turning a cheek when someone hurts you, that’s hard.

Responding in grace when all your flesh wants to do is fight, that’s hard.

Trusting that God has gone behind and before you when you feel stuck in the middle.

Forgiving instead of allowing roots of bitterness to grow.

Holding on to hope, believing for a miracle knowing it may never come.

Putting an end to generational curses.

Depriving the flesh of its most comfortable sins in order to be more like Jesus.

It’s all hard.

The word that comes to mind is forged. One isn’t physically born with the innate desire to do these things; rather he or she is forged to understand the weightiness of spiritual rebirth and discipline.

Being forged means to change shape by way of fire, beating or hammering according to Webster. Maybe I speak only for myself, but most mornings I don’t wake up and say, “Wow! I really hope I get set on fire or someone beats the tar out of me today!”

Being forged into something new, something holy, something that looks more like Jesus is hard. It takes endurance and surrender and dying to self. It would be much easier to just … not.

It would be much easier to just wallow in the comfortable mud of monotony.

Here’s what I’m getting at –

Anybody can make a peanut butter sandwich, put pigtails in the hair, and take the kids to the park, but it takes a mighty woman of God so in tune with heaven to break generational strongholds and teach her babies by example to wash feet instead of throw stones.

It takes a mama fully surrendered to the will of her Creator to joyfully and worshipfully subject herself to the fire of refining. The greatest thing she could ever gift her children is allowing them to watch as she becomes something new; as she chooses hope, turns a cheek, and responds in grace all the while pointing them in the direction of her strength and where her help comes from.

It takes a kingdom-minded mama to raise kingdom-minded babies; someone who fully, and with much grace, accepts the synonymity of hard and holy. Someone who puts on the mind of Mary in Luke 1:38 when faced with the uncomfortable, “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.”

This world has enough girls who know how to do their hair. So are we raising up the next generation of women who know how to boldly approach the throne of their heavenly Father? Women who will hold unwaveringly to the truth of Scripture in the face of persecution. Daughters, sisters, friends, and mothers who will not grow weary of the hard good that they do in the name of Jesus?