Romans 12:1 (The message) vs 1-2
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life- and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.
Instead, fix your attention on God.
You’ll be changed from the inside out.
Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
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I read this today and it stirred in me a new thought.
This is saying, give an offering of our lives to God, daily.
Dictionary.com said the meaning of offering is : ‘it is a show of intention.’
So this means we intentionally offer our lives to the Lord. Intentionally.
Dictionary. com said ‘it means, deliberately or willfully, done with intention or on purpose, by choice.’
So we choose to give all that we do, to the glory of God.
Is that possible always? Some days are not so good. We all have bad days, I certainly do.
The verse says to us “you will be changed from the inside out.”
As we choose to fix our attention and heart towards God, and embrace what HE wants for our lives, we grow and we change.
We become mature in our thinking.
We become discerning in the ways of our world and culture.
Yes we have to live here, yes we have to work and do every day things, the challenge for us, is to decide what do we want to embrace?
What values do we want to hold onto.
The verse said “readily recognize”, that means we choose to look with our spiritual eyes.
To recognize something, we would have to know it already. It is a place we have been before.
That would mean, we have experienced it and have a memory of it.
I see it as a ‘God moment’–Oh now I realize God is doing something here.
To be changed from the inside out is an intentional act.
Our choice to embrace the good and the bad.
As he moves us to a mature direction.
The beginning of the verse said “God helping you”. That means we ask.
We can’t receive help unless we are willing to accept it.
I think we all can relate to our ‘cultures desire’ to pull us down. Turn the TV on and you will see and hear all kinds of messages. They are not necessarily positive or good for us.
If we embrace those messages we loose the message of God.
Let us not compromise our purposeful intent. Let us allow God to change us from the inside out. So we can be strong in his word, spirit, and truth.
May we encourage each other always, as we allow God to bring out the best in us.
