Renewing Your Mind

“We must keep reminding ourselves what we have and are in Christ. One of the great purposes of daily Bible reading, meditation and prayer is just this, to get ourselves correctly orientated, to remember who and what we are. We need to say to ourselves: ‘Once I was a slave, but God has made me His son and put the Spirit of His Son into my heart. How can I turn back to the old slavery?’ Again: ‘Once I did not know God, but now I know Him and have come to be known by Him. How can I turn back to the old ignorance?’ By the grace of God we must determine to remember what once we were and never to return to it; to remember what God has made us and to conform our lives to it”–John Stott, The Message of Galatians, 110.

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer 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 God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:1-2, NIV).

“The Spirit ‘changes’ us and enables us to offer ourselves completely to God. This takes place in the mind, which is renewed or changed (literally ‘made new again and again’) by the Holy Spirit. [This is a] ‘re-programming’ of the mind, a lifelong process in which the mind is taken from the world and more and more made to ‘have in mind the things of God’ (Mark 8:33)”–Grant R. Osborne, Romans, 321.

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6 Responses

  1. I’ve been observing and photographing butterflies and dragonflies for some time now. They both go through a process we call metamorphosis: a process in which they are “transformed” from one creature into a totally different one–so different that unless you knew it, you would never guess that it was the same. A caterpillar looks nothing like a butterfly. The dragonfly nymph is a drably-colored water-dweller before it emerges from its skin into a brightly-colored master of the air. I firmly believe that God has placed this phenomenon in nature to give us a visual example of the renewal–rebirth–transformation that is an ongoing experience in Christ. And get this: The Greek word that is translated “transformed” in Romans 12:2 [see Waylon’s entry above] is [you guessed it] “metamorphoo”, the same word from which we derive “metamorphosis”. Jesus perpetually transforms us from worried, vain, selfish little caterpillars into beautiful air-dwelling butterflies, feeding on the nectar of His Truth; living in the Sonlight of His Love for us all.
    Thanks Waylon, for calling us into mindfulness of this great, ongoing miracle.

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