Here is the revelation that is shaping my life today- the mercy of God is not earned by the life I love, rather it enables me to live the life He intended for me.
Romans 12:1-2 NIV
[1] Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. [2] Do not conform 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.
Observation
Paul has just reviewed in chapter 11 the mercy of God is inviting people into His family by grace and not by works. He then says “therefore,” because of God’s mercy, live this new life. It’s not to get God’s mercy but in the overflow of already receiving God’s mercy, live this new life that is enabled because you live in His mercy. God’s mercy brings us into His family and His mercy and the intimacy of life in the family, become the means, the empowerment, the passion, for the life He now calls us into.
This life is a beautiful life of sacrifice. It’s a life of living holy, that is separated from the patterns of the world, and in the ways of God. It’s a life that brings pleasure to God as it is the life He intended, the abundant life He intended, for all His creation. This is how we bring our worship and praise. It’s living in Him, through Him, in His ways, and to His purposes. It’s not to earn something, it’s because we have been gifted His mercy and His intimacy. It’s because you can now live this way, and because it’s the best way to live life, that God calls you into His way of life. Again, no earning something from Him, He has already given you everything of himself. It’s the overflow and the natural response to the gift of His mercy.
And it does not start with new behavior, it starts with new thinking. It’s as I renew my mind into this new amazing life, and renew my mind with the fact that this life is now mine, it’s once I position myself securely in my thinking, in the family by His mercy, can the life of the family flow from me. And as this life flows naturally from my new framed thinking I will see just how amazing God is and the amazing life He has prepared for me, and that this was always His “good, pleasing, and perfect will.”
Application
I will continue to walk my days postured towards a renewing of my mind in the ways of God. I will seek to understand and become aware of the areas in my life where the patterns of the world are structuring my responses, my thinking, where they are the lens and shaping the truth in my life, and I will invite Jesus to constantly renew my mind in the ways of the Kingdom of God, the life He intends. I want to see His good, pleasing and perfect will lived out in my life, for this would be the most abundant, amazing, fulfilling way to live.
Response
Thank you that your mercy is purposed towards my living an abundant life. Thank you that you call me by your love, to live in your love, that I might live the life that flows from your love. Thank you that you do not leave me at the mercy of this fallen world and its structures, but you call me into a new way of thinking, seeing, and living. I am blessed to have been revealed your mercy, that I may now explore all my days your food, perfect and pleasing will for my life.
Meditation
Meditation truth – Good has a good, perfect, pleasing will for my life.
Consider:
How often do I live under a burden of holiness not the flow of holiness?
Do I live postured towards the revealing of God where my mind requires renewal?
JOURNEY DEEPER
