"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 (The Message Translation)
I love this translation of this particular verse because it makes this faith walk, this spiritual journey of transformation so real, so relevant, and so accessible to every believer. It takes my everyday life, my good and bad, ups and downs, highs and lows and makes all of it, and I mean ALL OF IT seem important to God. Now, as someone who grew up in the church, God was often this mystical, far away, daunting force that while He must love me, was always watching and waiting for me to screw up so He could chastise me. He wasn't portrayed as One who was concerned about my daily struggles or triumphs, just the BIG stuff and usually only when I really messed up. And again, growing up in the church, we read one translation and one translation only, The King James Bible. And whoo hoo, let me tell you, that book represented fire and brimstone to me! Not because of what it said, because truth be told I didn't know what it was talking about. I feared it because of what I didn't understand and how it was phrased. Elizabethan English is daunting to comprehend and I still struggle with it despite an English degree!
This verse challenges us, as believers, to give our "everyday, ordinary life" over to God. Most people are willing to seek God and His power when the life-changing events happen like marriage, death, birth of a child, graduations, new jobs, new homes or even retirement. They leave the daily routines out of it. But Romans 12:1-2 challenges us to give EVERYTHING over to God. We are to offer everything that we do to God, to submit our everyday, every moment to Him and His will for us. We are to seek His will for us, as individuals, for all, ALL, that we do. Our attitude toward our lives should be directed by God's Word and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We are to study His Word and allow it to renew us by transforming our minds by the power of His Word. Our goal, as believers, should be to allow God's power to make us like Him so that our everyday, ordinary lives resemble and model His nature and His heart. We can no longer be content with absorbing the secular culture around us so much that our lifestyles and decisions are based on the standards espoused by the secular "powers that be". We can no longer be so much like this culture that there is nothing obvious that sets us apart. When we make our will align with God's will for our lives, we will be excited about this daily transformation and chase after it like our lives depend on it. Because they do. Both ours and the lives of those who need our example.
Today's Prayer
Lord, I desire to be transformed daily by Your power and Your Holy Spirit. I long to be like You! I submit my everyday, ordinary life to You beginning right now. I offer my sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life to You and I ask You to transform me so that my nature resembles Yours. I embrace what You do for me and want for me. I know that You know the plans that You have for me and they are to prosper me and do me no harm. I trust You and know that You only want the best for me. So, I lovingly submit my will, my thoughts, my heart and my life to You for Your glory and the benefit of the Kingdom. In Jesus' name, Amen.
