What A Waste (2): Outwardly Wasting Away

2 Corinthians 4:16 | “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”

For every child of God, your destiny is to become like Jesus Christ in every way.(Romans 8:29) Daily, the Holy Spirit is at work in your life to bring to pass this desire of the Father for you. To achieve this, the Holy Spirit will lead you to make choices and sacrifices that look foolish to the world. He will take you through paths that don’t make sense to a worldly mind. And outwardly — that is, when judged by worldly standards– it will look like you are wasting away your life.

This is why Jesus gave a quick warning in Luke 14:26 that the one who loves his life cannot be His disciple. A stage in the metamorphosis of an egg of the butterfly to the beautiful adult butterfly is the pupa stage. At this stage, the caterpillar stops moving. Not much goes on outwardly. But inside, a lot of processes take place to convert the fat sluggish wormlike caterpillar to a beautiful adult butterfly.

In the same way, as you obey the Holy Spirit and make choices that look foolish to the world, He is producing Christ in you. Do not bother competing with the world at all. You will never fit in. Your life may not make sense even to you, but the Master who loves you is using the very things that the world despises to produce Christ in you. He is creating for you the glory that far outweighs them all. Bliss be with you.