Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what Gods will ishis good, pleasing and perfect will. – Romans 12:2 It’s kind of clichéd but nevertheless immensely appropriate for this season in our lives. What am I talking about? I’m talking about the last time you decided to think for yourself and carve your own path. If you think about it hard enough, you probably can’t remember a time in recent memory when you actually carved your own path or had to think on your own. It’s a big shame that we have a hard time thinking for our own. It cripples our ability to see God’s will for our lives. We have to look at God’s will for our lives through our own lenses, the senses that He gives us, but we’re so busy looking through other people’s eyes that we forget that the only lenses that matter are God’s and He often times gives us a unique pair of lenses to see the world. Paul writes to the Romans, “stop thinking like everybody else, but be transformed in the way you think for the better” (my own emphasis). If we can’t see what we’re supposed to be doing in God’s will for our lives, we will never, ever fully be able to give our lives and bodies to God in sacrifice. If our sacrifice is coming from outside of God’s will for us, then we’re really falling short. It is unworthy of sacrifice before the God who saved us for better purposes. If our minds are supposed to be constantly renewed; we have to ask the question: well, how does this “renewing of the mind” happen in our lives? Romans 12:11 tells us, “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.” I want to weave this back a little hap-hazardously, and I apologize for that. Remember how I asked you earlier about the last time you thought something for yourself? I concluded, and you also probably concluded, that we haven’t really thought for ourselves to cut out our own paths in quite a while. Hell, we might even be willing to admit that our lives, at this point, are on cruise control and the routine bounces us from one thing to the next without much proactive thought. So we stop “renewing our minds” when we start to “lack in zeal.” When we get lazy, we stop thinking for ourselves. That statement can’t be denied. It is in our “laziness” that we start to conform to the “pattern of this world.” I’ll tell you that the “pattern of this world” in Bible terms is just death and taxes with nothing to look forward to tomorrow. Paul tells the Romans, “Don’t be lazy!” He follows that up with “keep your spiritual fervor”– or more simply, keep yourself boiling spiritually. Somebody could have lit your spiritual fire at a revival or a church service, but ultimately, it’s on you to keep that fire going. You have to feed it wood to burn. A lot of us Christians go wrong because we don’t want to feed the flames of spiritual desire. Mostly this happens because we get lazy, then we get stuck in a pattern and then we don’t have our minds transformed, but it was a result of us not feeding a fire that was lit in our hearts for God in the first place. All of this leads down the road of not having a clue on what “god’s will is” for us. Do not live this way. It is pathetic and absolutely the opposite of what God intended for your lives. We all need to stop being lazy and get into the habit of feeding our own fires because this is the only way we can renew our minds to see what God sees for our lives. Let’s pray that we can present ourselves before God as a living sacrifice to His good will for us.
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