I heard someone use a term today that made me stop and think. Someone that I was talking to spoke of a time when the profoundness of their Christian faith reached a new level. They called this moment their “deeper conversion”. When I think about that as a category, I think about some times when my faith deepened – times like working through my faith in high school, times like going through seminary training. All of these were moments of “deeper conversion” for me. Moments that I recognize didn’t make a difference in my place in God’s Kingdom (that was solidified for me on the day of my Baptism), but moments that made a difference in my experience of His Kingdom.
These moments of “deeper conversion” are present in the lives of many Christians. We are not required to experience them, but nonetheless, sometimes they show up. Sometimes they are intellectual – learning something new that changes our perspectives and opens up a new world of awareness. Sometimes they are experiential – a moment of sadness or joy or some other emotion that brings new animation to the faith within us. Sometimes they are volitional – choosing a certain path and seeing how that path is met by the Holy Spirit. These moments of deeper conversion most often don’t come at prescribed times. They are not even required to show up. But sometimes they do.
I wrestle with the word conversion in the phrase, because it isn’t like going from being a non-Christian to being a Christian. But still, there is some sense of turning a corner, a change that happens within us because of what God is doing in deepening our connection to Him. Whatever the right word is, however, the sense of His grace is there. God could have left us all to be generic Christians – to have the same intellectual, experiential, and volitional experiences of His grace. But He didn’t. He not only created us as unique people in His Kingdom, but He also sanctifies us uniquely – making each of us holy in a way that is custom fit to us.
Perhaps we should all spend some time in prayer around this “deeper conversion” term. Pray in thanksgiving for when or if it has happened in our lives, and pray that if it would be His will, God would send us (another) moment of deeper conversion that fits us uniquely.