ROMANS 12:1–2 – 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.
THEME OF THE DAY: BATTLE FOR THE MIND. The Bible says much about the mind. After the fall in the Garden of Eden, the minds of all men and women became totally depraved. The Lord describes our minds under the control of sin –
The LORD observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil (Genesis 6:5). And this horrible condition of the mind is not curable by human effort. It only comes through being born again by the Spirit of God (John 3:3-6). In new birth God gives us a new heart and the Bible frequently includes the renewed mind with the imparting of a new heart to the believer.
So radical is the new birth and the ability to think right as a result, Jesus gives the command to love God that includes our mind – And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live” (Luke 10:25-28). Don’t you think this is radical? Here is just how radical. When is the last time you heard someone tell another person, “I love you with all my mind”? Or a person so close to you looked you in the eye saying, “I love you with every bit of my mind”? We don’t talk that way, but the Bible does because the mind is critical in every area of the Christian life.
Loving God with all our minds demands the application of today’s scripture. By nature, we do not naturally gravitate to Godly thinking and that is what it takes to love God with our minds. We need our thinking renewed in God’s truth. It is a true statement that never grows old – as we think so we believe, and as we think and believe so we live. The conclusion is this; whatever is informing or conditioning our minds – the world and its things or God’s Word and spiritual things will determine who we live for – Jesus or ourselves. And this is a daily battle for the mind requiring a daily posture of warfare. It is a warfare posture of refusing to be conformed by the world’s thinking patterns so we may be transformed by God’s Word; a transformation enabling us to proclaim our love for Him “with all our minds.”
PRAYER: “Father, help me to understand the priority place my mind has in my walk with You”
QUOTE: “What we think on determines how we live – for this world or eternity.”