To Encourage You

Romans 12:2 “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.”

What are people in your life talking about these days?  Maybe it’s politics and everything that’s wrong in that arena of life.  Or perhaps it’s things in your job that aren’t going well, like the failings of your boss.  Perhaps it’s crime, or COVID, or some other bad news.  Maybe it’s money issues, or health issues, or other everyday problems and challenges.  Or maybe it’s the weather, the playoffs in some sport, or some new movie that just came out.  Whatever it is, the way the majority view, speak, and act about things the Bible calls “the pattern of this world.”  

This “pattern” consists of the attitudes, opinions, and approaches to problems and issues of the majority.  It’s a pattern that is often not a good one, unfortunately, and one that is in need of transformation if we ever hope to be in the “good, pleasing, and perfect will” of God.  So, what’s the answer?  The Bible calls it “the renewing of the mind.”  That renewal is only possible if the Holy Spirit is in our lives and we are in the Word of God, which details God’s view of everything of importance in the human experience.  He’s the one Who created us, and He’s the one who knows how things should actually be in contrast to the way things are as a result of the impact of sin on the world.  

God’s way of thinking is alien to this world, and in fact, those that follow Him are called “strangers and exiles on earth” (Hebrews 11:13) by the Holy Spirit.  Believers are transformed by God to think in ways that are completely foreign to the majority and it is God’s will that this be the way we view everything.  He wants us to see things in the supernatural way He does, which is perfect, rather than the natural way humans typically do, which is so very imperfect.  

May God transform our minds by the supernatural “washing of water by the word” (Ephesians 5:26).  It’s the thought life that the apostle Paul describes to us in the words that follow from 1 Corinthians 2:6-16, words inspired by the Holy Spirit, and thus coming to us from the mind of God:

“Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,     nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’  But we have the mind of Christ.”