Beloved friends, what should be our proper response to God’s marvelous mercies? I encourage you to surrender yourselves to God to be his sacred, living sacrifices. And live in holiness, experiencing all that delights his heart. For this becomes your genuine expression of worship. Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in his eyes.
Romans 12:1-2 The Passion Translation

Today's reflection on Romans 12:1-2 focuses on a key component of discipleship, namely, a renewed mind. Most of the problems we have come from living out of our "worldly or fleshly mindset." These thought patterns are difficult to break because we have followed them for so long. Just like starting out on a "new year's diet" we see how easy it is for our old way of thinking to pull us back into the same habits.

The good news is that through the Holy Spirit we can receive a total reformation of how we think. When I came to Christ, I was living a very worldly life. I had no idea about the Lord's ways and thoughts. The longer I walked with Him, the more I realized most of my thinking was the exact opposite of the Lord's. Thankfully, I started reading the scriptures and seeing the plain wisdom that had been written for us from ages past.

I still had one problem. I found out that I could read the bible and not do it. This is where the promised power of the Holy Spirit comes in. When we submit ourselves as a living sacrifice, it is like a door is opened for the Holy Spirit to do His work on transforming our mind. We begin to sense His conviction and confirmation in our day to day actions.

Here is one caveat, especially for older Christians. Sometimes we integrate our old thinking and try to make it spiritual. We know this is happening when we stop sensing the conviction of the Holy Spirit when we overstep one of the Lord's desires for us. The best cure for this is to let someone know and ask them to pray for you.

Here is our action plan today:

Read through this scripture again in your own translation. What seems to be emphasized to you. Pray it back to the Lord.
Ask the Lord to convict and confirm your thoughts and actions today. Ask Him to show you how Jesus thinks about what you are thinking about.
Spend five minutes in silence simply loving Jesus. No requests, just being there.

Have a great day!

Love, Pastor Stuart