A Lesson from a Butterfly

“And be not conformed to this world:

but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,

that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

Romans 12:2

My favorite insect is the butterfly. It have always fascinated me.

As I was reading my Bible this morning I came to this verse and the image of a butterfly came to my mind.

I was thinking about what it takes for them to transform. This led me to thinking about us as Christians.

What an example of transformation the butterfly is to us.

When a butterfly starts its journey, it is a small helpless caterpillar. It has only two jobs to do, to eat and to grow. Does that sound similar to a new Christian? When we are first saved, it is crucial that we begin to feed on God’s Word. This is how we grow and mature in order to be used by God.

The next phase is what always gets my attention. When a caterpillar has eaten and grown enough it enters into the chrysalis. Here it changes and grows until it emerges a beautiful butterfly… or does it?

As I was reading about butterflies this morning a couple of things caught my attention.

First, when a butterfly emerges its wings are limp and unusable. It is not until the butterfly has done some work that it can actually use its wings and fly. We as Christians are like this as well. We are saved by God’s grace but the transformation does not stop there. The next step that we have to take is to be sanctified, which means that we allow the Holy Spirit to come in and change us from the inside. Once the Holy Spirit has come in and done a work in us, then we can begin to do God’s Work.

The second thing I found out was very fascinating to me. Did you know when a butterfly emerges it can not use its mouth? It is true. When a butterfly first emerges, its mouth is in two pieces. It is the butterfly’s job to join the two pieces together to form a useful unit. Only then can the butterfly successfully get nourishment. We as Christians must get our mouths under control as well. If we do not, we will not be able to successfully minister for God and carry out His purpose for our lives. The Bible tells us in James 1:26: “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.”

I had this thought this morning after reading about the things that a butterfly goes through: What if a caterpillar decided one day that the changes were too hard and it just was not going to do all that hard work? What if it decided it was going to stay a caterpillar forever? Well, we know this is a crazy question because the process from caterpillar to butterfly is a natural one and it can not make that choice. Let us use our imagination for just a moment then. What if this did happen? We know that in this case, the caterpillar would never reach its full potential. It would never be all that it was meant to be. We as Christians are the same way. God may point out some things to you that need to be changed. If we refuse, if we decide that it is to hard, we will never reach our full potential. We can not remain where we are and expect to become anything more than what we are now. We need to allow God to work in us, to transform us into the beautiful creation He has planned for each one of us.

Butterflies are beautiful creatures designed by God.

We as Christians can take these lessons from the butterfly and apply them to our own lives. Just as the transformation for a butterfly is not easy, sometimes the changes we are required to make as Christians are not always easy, but they are necessary if we are going to be useful to God’s Kingdom.

I pray today that you will allow God to grow you, to transform you , and then to use you for His honor and His glory. The changes may not always be easy, but I promise you the end result will be well worth it.