By Pastor Jon
We must continually be talking to ourselves about how easily our good external patterns can slip into old internal habits.
This can actually happen for a number of reasons, which highlights the challenge of staying engaged in-and-through the process. This can morph from doing-the-same-things-we’ve-always-done to going-through-the-motions-when-locked-in-a-good-process, which is really doing-the-right-thing-for-the-wrong-reason, or more to the point, not-being-clear-about-the-right-reason, which should always be before us.
It is too easy to skip-like-we-slip into a type of automated auto-pilot.
Paradoxically, this is our default without daily intention, and this can be our destination because of a daily process. Life is subversive. To further contort, daily intention will not happen if we don’t have a plan. A plan is unlikely to take place if it is not grounded-into-the-pound, and written down. And we won’t write it down unless we see the priority. Do you?
I know when I did. Like the lights inside went luminescently bright. This is the type of vision that once you see it, you will never finally forget. Emphasis on the finally part is important, because we too easily betray in the moment.
I have been reminded about this the-day-after our final Sunday in what is now our previous local church.
When everything is new, bright, and shiny, the honeymoon of – this-is-new – easily intoxicates. I have been reminded how routine can easily become routine. Like that line, life is most often about the outworking of nuance-through-resistance in a context of tension. If it was easy, and all that jazz, we’d all be doing it!
This reminds and challenges about applying Romans 12:1-2, each and every day, so we stay inside the process of life; don’t live like we assume it will just happen, and because we were re-born to worship the One who is only worthy.
The text reads:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Hiebert states:
The first verse calls for an explicit act; the second commands a resultant lifelong process. These verses are a call for an act of presentation and the resultant duty of transformation.
When we talk process, it easily reads like a monolithic trudge. This is not the rat on a wheel. It is not even the mouse on a treadmill, because history is entirely purposeful, and more to His point. We live, move, and have our being, on His trail. Pressing on to the Summit.
On the second verse, Moo says:
This re-programming of the mind does not take place overnight but is a lifelong process by which our way of thinking is to resemble more and more the way God wants us to think.
Life-long. Think marathon and not sprint. However, like any long-term race, there are important intervals that often define the result. In the course of life, this can really be any day, and so, every day.
Are you convinced on this any-day-you-could-be-reading that your living is reflective of the priorities of God; or, are you more like, just going through the e-motions?
Consider. The Gospel gives every Believer the right set of empowering wings.
Live in light, which is really asking whether you are positively defining and using?
The right answer gives order.
Cultural Value: God’s Truth is Not Rocket-Science, but Rocket-Fuel.
For the Fame of His Name