Day 35 - Tuesday

Day 35

 

"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, 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."  Romans 12:1-2 (TMSG)

This is one of my favorite verses found in the Message version of the Bible.  It helps us to see that this helmet of salvation, this renewing of our mind takes place in our day to day lives.  God uses the context of our lives to work out his image in us.  Our armor is designed for not only the attacks the enemy sends our way, but so that we can live like Christ.  Christlikeness is the goal of the Christian.

 

The Message tells us that the best thing we can do for God is to embrace what He has done for us.  When we try to give someone a wonderful gift that means much to us, the greatest blessing to us is for them to receive it with gratefulness.  The same is true with God.  We honor him and his gift of salvation when we embrace what he has done for us. 

 

As we allow his salvation, the grace that he has poured in our lives, lead us in our day-to-day routines, we will find that he will change us from the inside out.  As we respond to the stirring in our hearts to do what we feel God desires, we'll find that we hear and understand his voice sooner and more often. 

 

Our daily routines performed with our hearts tuned to the Spirit's promptings train us for battle in those bad days.  It is this working out our salvation that produces spiritual maturity in us.

 

Prayer:  "Jesus, teach me how to hear your Spirit in the day-to-day routines, so that I can follow you and grow in spiritual maturity.  Thank you that you train me to walk with you in the good times so that I will know how to walk with you in the bad times too.  In your name I pray, Amen."