transformation – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

February 26, 2026February 25, 2026

inconspicuous

My friend from Asia had come to faith while studying at an American university. I smiled as he later shared an account of bringing Jesus along to a game of poker.

The family member who invited him for the friendly match had grown indifferent to the faith and was considered a non-believer.

While my friend shuffled the cards his phone stayed busy looping a melodic playlist. As the song “In Christ alone” quietly sounded in the background, the relative was drawn to the tune and began softly whistling along. Soon, she was giving voice to the lyrics in sing-along style.

Reflecting on my friend’s happy retelling of the experience, I realized that he was then and there exercising a spiritual discipline – that of meditation or of contemplation. I was reminded just how the various disciplines or practices, when exercised in everyday life, serve as a powerful means of grace – forming the believer further into Christlikeness.

Jesus meditated. He practiced contemplation in inconspicuous ways – much as any of his fellow human beings might. Consider the 70-plus Old Testament quotes he offered up as he conversed with various individuals and gatherings of people over time. Jesus, the son of God, had purposefully given time down through his earthly years in committing to memory truths that carried real meaning. My Asian friend has, likewise, given himself to scripture memorization – as well as to contemplations on being an active witness to loved ones. He has been following the savior’s lead while aligning with God’s encouraging counsel, to “think on such things”.*

John Mark Comer makes a bold call to the person wishing to grow. “My thesis is simple. Transformation is possible if we are willing to arrange our lives around the practices, rhythms, and truths that Jesus himself did, which will open our lives to God’s power to change.”**

February 19, 2026

All That Matters

The exercise of talking with God (praying), was invented by the Lord himself. . . to make way for communion and (as importantly) for transformation.

God talks. He comes with worthy things to say. All his communications are like that.

God also listens, wishing that his children grow to know him as companioning friend and not simply as “rescuing deity.” He speaks. He listens, and surprisingly to some, he seems quite content at just sitting with his image bearers in unstrained silence. This is itself a form of prayer. The practice carries a label. The discipline of silence.

But whether it is God speaking or the person speaking or simply an intentional time of God and his beloved sitting voiceless in one another’s company, he ever has this matter in mind. Transformation born of closeness.

The creator is ever in the business of saving his people and of growing his people to become much like himself. This is the only way his children are able to come to know him as he intends. In rightly practicing the discipline of silence within the discipline of prayer, the devotee to Jesus is sure to undergo metamorphosis. Change of character is underway as the disciple discovers that the really great thing going on is not a cosmic movement rattling the universe. Rather, something is happening at the interior level of the apprentice as they engage the practice. Such practicings of silence are, paradoxically, bringing forward inward transformation.

“Everyone thinks of changing the world”, Foster writes, “but where, oh where, are those who think of changing themselves? People may genuinely want to be good, but seldom are they prepared to do what it takes to produce the inward life of goodness that can form the soul.”*

For the believing Christian whose heart cannot stop yearning for more of Christ (where God’s presence may be getting routinely manifest in the ordinariness of daily living) nothing short of inside-out change will do.

January 8, 2026

Best Ever

With the sure knowledge that the loving Trinitarian Presence is alongside us, we discover that partnering with God himself is life-giving. And indispensable, in the day-by-day process of spiritual transformation.

Scripture (as usual) helps us reset our internal compass – the Spirit aiding us with course-corrections at every needed juncture. “And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image”*

Now comes the other non-negotiable amidst our yearnings to see his ongoing favor bringing growth to our lives. We ask afresh, what again is the goal?

As members of the ragtag company of individuals that Jesus calls his disciples, we are not left to flounder. No one needs to feel they are “adrift at sea”. A disciple (apprentice to Christ) is anyone earnestly pursuing life with God in the ever-unfolding enterprise of growing to resemble Jesus more and more.

That essential (non-negotiable) element that is linked to our partnering with God is our engagement in practicing, or training.

If you are anything like me, a lot of yardage stretches out ahead between me and the finish line. On some days the goal post (representing a consistent resemblance to Christ) appears like a faint mirage far downfield. Welcome to the apprenticing life!

A wonderful and gratifying discovery in any persons’ forward movement – regardless of the amount of yardage gained – in Christian apprenticeship is this. We travel in the company of other pilgrims, guided along by the best-ever mentor.

Our Lord is patient and encouraging beyond words, our brilliant and gracious guide. He, Jesus, shows himself to be the best friend and companion one could hope for on any pilgrimage. Ever.

December 11, 2025December 16, 2025

Learning Curve

Christ-followers hold that our amazing “sweet-society God” is the only Divine Being in all the cosmos. He’s the God who through the centuries – indeed, through eternity – has joyfully collaborated within his own triune being. This is a thing that challenges, if not defies, our imagination. Self-existent and self-sustaining, nothing of good is absent. Nothing lacks.

Perfect completeness, it can be attested, finds its definition in God. The triune Father and Son and Spirit relish one another’s presence. Each takes extravagant delight in the others. God requires nothing beyond himself to be. Within himself is utter perfection and completeness.

Yet, astonishing as it may be, God has chosen to insist on bringing along others (we, his own image-bearers who’ve been brought into existence by the Lord himself) into this mysterious, glorious mix. He ever works to mingle and play and collaborate with us in bringing about our inner and outer transformation for the good. (and, what higher good for a family of humans could there be than to come to embody and reflect the pure likeness of the Father’s distinctively beloved Son?)

Partnering with God, of course, involves more than merely being together in the same room. The road to spiritual transformation is one of training. What is one of the father’s primary aims? His goal is our joyous, flourishing growth in becoming the best version of ourselves – just as we were created to be. Easily recognizable as a people continuously brimming to overflowing with the qualities and nature and the very life of our Lord. Jesus – the undiluted, non-pretentious embodiment of love. Such a lofty aim may at times feel impossibly out of reach. Until one gladly recalls they are on a With-God pilgrimage.

December 4, 2025December 3, 2025

A-Team

Camaraderie – Collaborating – Companioning.

The three words share common ground with yet another ‘C’ word – a special kind of word capturing what the others might reflect. Community. And, the very creator offering a believer his companioning presence – what a treasure!

“Faith was never meant to be done alone”.

Whoever coined the line understood, and must have surely prized, its profound truth. It reflects the human order when at its best.

The wonder of collaborating with God as a principal partner in life transformation means discovering that he brims with community within himself.

God’s three-in-one Community – boundless in love, delight and power – defies our capacities to imagine or describe. The nature of the divine trinity – God the Father, the Son and the Spirit – intrigues and stupefies the finite mind.

The old Puritans of centuries past coined a pithy term that calls up the warmth of their image of God. A glorious personal being of extravagant love, joy, goodness and peace. God (the Puritans testify) is, in himself, “a sweet Society”.

May we dare to imagine our sweet-society God, radically partnering with his children in the forever enterprise of shaping us, day by day, into the likeness and nature of Jesus. He, who is all goodness, through and through.

November 13, 2025

Mentored

“Follow me, as I follow”. It is interesting isn’t it, that the best of leaders tend to be the best of followers?

Paul’s invitation language makes something clear. His offer to model the faith for the “Christ-disciple wannabe” is a statement flowing from humility, not arrogance. After all, this man Paul is the Jesus-hating ‘Saul of Tarsus’ of yesteryear. His resume reads in part, “Paul – the worst of sinners”.*

The Difference Jesus Makes.

Saul of Tarsus had met the Master of masters. His life-altering collision with God in Christ on the Damascus Road initiated a hundred-eighty-degree turn. The former homicidal Pharisee plunged into the deep end of Christ-centered discipleship. With Paul, as with others (Matthew, Peter, James. . .) he took up an apprenticing posture under the direct tutelage of his savior, the Lord Jesus. So that a while later, Paul’s transformation still ongoing, he wrote younger believers in the faith, offering his invitation: “Follow me as I follow Christ”**. Walking purposefully – one day after the next after the next – in the company of his welcoming mentor, the trainee had grown suited to train others. Paul the apprentice (never ceasing to be follower) led.

Continuing to follow after – striving himself toward Christlikeness (“that I may know him”***) – the humble disciple-maker could speak from his established identity in the Lord.

His life one of mentoring, instructing, of modeling Christ.

Electrician apprentices (when intentional in their cause) get transformed into electricians. French language understudies who, over the long haul, devote themselves to the cause, advance in time to become easy conversationalists. . .even in Paris!

Whether a person is Italian tenor Adrea Bocelli, Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, or Okmulgee’s dustbowl-escapee-turned-Journeyman Plumber Clyde Lout. Each of them is marked by a feature that keeps propelling them forward.

Intention.

October 30, 2025

Crossroad

Life-altering decisions call for action.

Once I choose to lay aside poor patterns of living in favor of speech and conduct that better reflect God’s life in Christ, I must engage my will. I take action. I come to terms that I am shifting from spectator mode. I’m in the game for real.

Thinking will play an important part in moving into a better kind of living. But mental pondering alone over a crossroad lying before a traveler fails to get them a centimeter onto the new direction.

The fork has appeared in the road ahead, and I know I must act on my decision. Taking “the road less travelled”, I engage a powerful thing known as the will. My will.

Willpower alone lacks the necessary energy to bring about spiritual transformation. Nevertheless, the long journey of change into Christlikeness will never occur apart from my will – and my ongoing actions of choice stemming from it as I pursue him. And my pursuit of him marks the terrain where my will and the Lord’s companioning presence merge. I have willed to begin letting him be in charge.

Jesus supplies his powerful presence, but even so, he avoids seizing the steering wheel of my personal volition – my will. He offers his presence and his power right along with his offer of partnering with me throughout our good and marvelous life-altering adventure together.

It is so with all his disciples – each one a work in progress – God’s beloved children. We engage. We yield. Shifting our posture, we set our feet in motion alongside his companioning presence. It is when this happens that the load becomes light.

When the economic crisis of 2008 descended on the United States, several industries were broadsided. Among those profoundly impacted by the financial earthquake was the oil industry. Several of our international friends who had been majoring in Petroleum Engineering at our city’s university were swept into an academic crisis. Career-altering decisions were made in a matter of days. At a major crossroad, their futures felt at stake

Almost overnight graduate students at the PhD and Masters levels found themselves redirecting their attention to very new fields of research. Fresh learning curves met them at every turn, sharp and steep!

While these scholars were endowed with very keen minds, to shift from their petroleum engineering specialty to another demanded of them not only a new focus but a new set of disciplines. The students could not make the daunting change by merely wishing for it or by thinking it into being. Learning of and then entering into a new set of practices had to be embraced. Whole careers rested on this proposition.

In a similar way, when a Christian proceeds past something called their profession of faith, and embraces their actual identity as disciple-of-Jesus, they have embarked upon a life-altering path. Profession of faith becomes Practice of the faith. Humbly and decidedly with both will and their yieldedness in place, they strike out on the new path. A decision has been made – one of many lying ahead of them.. They have chosen the with-God life.

October 23, 2025October 22, 2025

Pulsing Cries

Ruth Haley Barton, author and consultant who specializes in bringing clarity to otherwise murky waters for individuals and ministry teams alike, offers this,

“Your desire for more of God than you have right now, you’re longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation then you have experience so far, is the truest thing about you.”*

Isn’t it interesting how quickly we can point to features about ourselves and mistakenly assume they are the things that most accurately define who we are?

Ruth continues,

“You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife mother or father somehow defines you. But in reality it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are. . . From this place we cry out to God for deeper union with him and with others.”

The Apostle Paul, who penned a large portion of the New Testament, voiced his own longings, even after long years had piled up in his companioning journey with Christ.

“For my determined purpose is that I may know Him, that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly. . .”**

His words were not an expression of mediocrity. We may wish to pause a moment, draw in a slow breath, and re-read them.

This single-focused messenger (Paul) surely yearned that the same kind of longing he knew might characterize every Christ-follower getting introduced to the way of the Master,

“My little children. . . I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!***

Such pulsing cries breaking from the heart of those early messengers (and the many who followed after), call the believing world to run after the resurrected Lord. Marking those who do as a people given over to desire.

This gives me pause. Some of my desires can use some realigning. Others, if I am honest, likely call for drastic action. Some may well need killing. Getting soon replaced with desires that are worthy of the name.

May 9, 2024

Poised

Mr. Tang’s baptism was warmly celebrated at our Thirty-fourth and Garnett Rd Church. Pastor Steve Morgan administering the sacred rite. The sacrament affirmed, as for so many others across the centuries, evidence of a brand new identity. Mr. Tang was a reborn creation, his old life yielded up in exchange for his new life of Christ within.

How wonderful of the Lord, bringing a precious man with essentially no knowledge of Jesus from the far side of the globe to this place – in this time – for this purpose.

People are different from one another. An understatement. In each of our world’s seven-billion-plus souls, there is written a unique human story. And, while every story varies, all our journeys pulse with deep yearnings. Amazingly, the Designer God who formed us can meet us where we are – poised and ready to lead us toward himself. Some of our personal narratives may feature, as with Mr. Tang, a case of disentangling from chemical substances. Step by slow step our transformation gains traction. We may suffer setbacks. He is faithful still.

For others, the prevailing vice is the obsessive drive to excel in education or business. Human beings have a notorious capacity for succumbing to hard-driving taskmasters.

Our friend, Nguyen, from Southeast Asia pursued a common aim in the world of higher education, to advance as a leading scholar in his chosen field.

One evening at the student activities center an English conversation volunteer introduced Nguyen to a series of fantasy pieces. One of these featured a wardrobe and a lion and a witch. Nguyen’s own narrative was poised to turn a corner.

February 9, 2023February 4, 2023

Wanting

Apprenticing to Jesus bears fruit of the finest variety – kingdom fruit. God’s kingdom is that place where his will is done, “Thy kingdom come”.

Once a clear “Yes, I’m in I will be a Jesus-apprentice” is resolved, a new kind of season gets underway. And, hopefully, goes forward into a lifetime.

This is the season of habits, but habits leading to something far richer than the mere exercise of repeated practices. The season of habits, employed under the guidance and power of the Spirit offers promise of immense gratification.

This is the joy of inside-out transformation. Think of it. You and I humbly growing/changing through clearly laid out movements, into a vivid likeness of the one who invites, “Learn of me”.

We need to ask ourselves a question. Is the average, everyday Jesus-follower called to this radical kind of thing? Incorporating specific practices into routine life that would lead the believer to full-on Christlikeness? What about you?

Over and over the New Testament makes clear that every Christian is granted salvation with an assumption that life-long growth and change lie ahead,

“. . speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ”*

Men and women through history affirm the high aspiration, A spiritually mature Christian is “one whose whole character—dispositions, words, and actions—emulates the character of Jesus Christ himself.”**

Want.

Training for a life as a bull rider when you are, at your core, wired to work with spread sheets in the accounting field is a path that might well lead to despair (if not an injured spine).

Being a Jesus’ apprentice happens only in the life of the person who wants it. A genuine inner desire will mark the man or woman, youth or senior, who chooses discipleship to Jesus as their core life aim. Without a hungering for life in the company of Jesus, any ‘choice’ of apprenticeship can take the person to one of two places. Neither, a really fun place to be.