Romans 12:2

Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. 

Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.

Today’s passage presents us with a real challenge.  It is easy to change your hairstyle (if you have any).  It is easy to change what you wear (to cater for seasonal changes in weather or to try and keep up with fashion).  It’s easy to change the supermarket you shop at.  It’s easy to do quite a lot of things but when it comes to changing our thinking, that’s quite a different matter.

During my working days, two of my colleagues and I attended a training course run by a Management Consultancy.  When we returned to the office, there was an extended period of silence.  One of us eventually spoke and said: ‘we’ve been doing it almost totally wrong up until now’ and the other two had no other option than to agree.  At that point and after that training session, we were thinking differently.  It wasn’t a short-term thing, our thinking had been effectively changed from that day on and there was no going back to the old way of thinking.  We had moved on and for all the right reasons.

Trying to share this with others was however a totally different matter.  The three of us had recognised it immediately and we expected others to react in the same way but this was not the case.  Some did ‘get it’ and understood, but others refused to change, whether it was due to us not explaining it properly or whether they were just comfortable with the position they were in.  This was a great source of frustration for us.

Maybe the spreading of the Christian message is similar.  I have been fortunate to have had many great friends over the years.  Very few of these friends had any Church attachment.  They seemed to accept that I did, and it never got in the way of our friendship but none of these folks to my knowledge were brought closer to Christ by knowing me as far as I am aware, and this is quite possibly down to a failure on my part in being unable to change their thinking to what we, as Christians believe.

As Christians, we have no option other than to change the way we think about things.  We need to have the awareness that God is all around us and, if we truly believe in Jesus, his Spirit is within us.  The difference is instead of reacting to a situation or making a decision, or choosing words in a conversation impulsively, we have that extra but important step of just pausing to think if the Lord would find our response or our decision or our reaction acceptable in his sight.  A small step but an important step that non-believers do not possess.

Prayer – Heavenly Father, too often our minds are distracted from Jesus due to the things of the world, especially when times are difficult, but we want to keep our minds on Christ, knowing that this is Your best will for us. Help us become increasingly aware of the Spirit's promptings in our lives, so that day by day, our hearts and minds may become more aware of our Lord Jesus. May His nature be reflected through our actions and attitude and may our lives be transformed daily, by the renewing of our mind. Help us to prove in each of our lives what Your will for us is, and may we do only those things that are good, and acceptable in Your sight - for Your praise and glory, and for the benefit of others. This we ask in the matchless name of Jesus, Amen (with thanks to knowing Jesus.com)