Are You Being Transformed—or Just Improving Yourself?

Bottom line upfront: No. Self-optimization does not lead to life transformation. But something that looks a lot like it does.

Before we go further, I want to invite you into something we’re building: a ten-minute tool called the Life Transformation Index. It asks a question most believers struggle to answer honestly: Is God actually changing me? The first version is live here. I’ll come back to it at the end of this email, but if you already know you want to help us test it, take it now and tell us what fits and what doesn’t.

Last week I left you with an important question. Does self-optimization ever lead to life transformation… or is it just a very sophisticated way of staying exactly who we already are?

When I was a kid in the 1950s, it was easy to know if you were growing spiritually. At least I thought it was. Seven in ten American adults belonged to a church, and the kids came along. You earned Sunday school pins. A bar for every year of perfect attendance. Your own copy of the New Testament if you could recite the books of the Bible in order. Those badges on our shirts and blouses were the scoreboard. Years in the pew were treated as proof of faithfulness.

Nobody ever found that attendance produced growth. We just measured it as if it did. And we still do—we traded the pins for attendance and small-group sign-ups, and sixty years later most of us are measuring the same way.

Then the body got a scoreboard.

About seven in ten American adults now use a health app. Half wear something on their wrist that tracks steps, sleep, heart rate and more. Tracking how your body is doing is the new normal.

Tracking how your soul is doing is not. Roughly one in three adults has used an app to help them read Scripture or pray. Daily use is closer to one in ten. And here’s the part that gets me: far more people pray—44 percent say daily—than ever track anything spiritual. We want to grow. We just have no idea how to tell if we are.

Which brings me back to a verse I keep tripping over. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2).

It’s clear Paul assumes you can tell if you are being transformed. So… can you? If you’ve followed Jesus for thirty years, be honest. Is your life still transforming, or did it plateau somewhere?

Here’s the bad news for the app store. We don’t find transformation in people who are simply “working on their spiritual life” as another self-improvement project. Statistically they look almost exactly like people doing nothing. Unfortunately, this can lead people to believe that Scripture is weak. But I think it tells us that effort without surrender still leaves the self at the center.

So where is the line between trying to improve ourselves and experiencing genuine spiritual transformation? If our goal is self-improvement, we tend to measure our progress by what we're doing: how consistently we read the Bible, how much time we spend praying, or how successfully we manage our habits. Those things can be valuable, but they don't necessarily tell us whether we're becoming more like Christ.

Optimization focuses on improving ourselves. Transformation changes how we relate to God and others.

We need to look for evidence that God's grace is actually changing us. Our research consistently identifies four indicators associated with this kind of transformation, whether we're studying believers in the United States, Kenya, or Zambia. First, people experience a stronger sense of purpose. Second, they experience a genuine closeness to God that’s evident on a normal Tuesday, not just Sunday. Third, they don't merely understand forgiveness; they accept it and live in the freedom it brings. And fourth, the changes become visible to other people.

Those are things grace does in you, not achievements you manufacture.  And you can see them, if someone asks the right questions. That’s what the Life Transformation Index I mentioned earlier is built to do. It gives you a plain picture of where you are today. Retake it every 90 days, and you’ll begin to see where you’re moving—so you can watch the direction of your own life instead of guessing at it.

And remember this is just the first version of it. I need you and your participation—the people this survey is built for—to help me finish it.

So here is the ask: take the survey here. It will only take ten minutes. Your results come straight back to you, and nothing about you goes anywhere else. If a question doesn’t fit your life, tell us. If a result rings true, tell us that too. Every answer you give sharpens the questions… and once we finalize it and take it worldwide a believer you will never meet—in Lincoln, or Nairobi, or Lusaka—will get a truer picture of their own life.

To my friends over 50: you’ve been measured by attendance your whole life. First by achievement pins in Sunday School, then by your church attendance. You are the people I most want in this. Nobody has more years of real transformation to show—and nobody is more likely to have decided they’re done growing. You’re not. Go first.

For twenty years I have watched the Church measure almost everything except whether people are actually changing. I’d like to spend whatever time I have left fixing that. Help me.

All in, eyes up!

P.S. Often the biggest test of whether transformation is taking root is how we handle loss. This week on Spiritually Fit Today, we walk through how to process grief without letting it derail your spiritual momentum.