Changed by Looking, Not by Straining

Most of the advice a struggling man gives himself is some version of try harder. Grit your teeth, watch yourself more closely, build a stronger wall. There is a place for effort, but effort aimed only at yourself tends to leave you exhausted and unchanged, staring at your own failure until it fills the whole frame. Paul points somewhere else. He writes, And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. The verb that matters is beholding. Transformation, Paul says, happens as we look at Christ, not as we obsess over our own reflection. We become like what we behold. When shame keeps your eyes locked on your sin, you actually feed the thing you hate, because you are gazing at defeat all day. The way forward is to lift your face, unveiled, unhidden, and look at Jesus, at his mercy and his steadiness and his glory. The change comes as a byproduct of that looking, one degree at a time, slowly, the way morning light grows. You cannot rush it and you do not manufacture it; you receive it by keeping your gaze in the right place. Today, when you catch yourself staring at your failure, turn your eyes and behold him instead.