Transformations

Romans 12:2 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. The Message Bible

Change from the inside out is change that lasts and that is just the kind of change God brings us through the Holy Spirit.  A most practical matter of transformation requires clarity to discern our wants from our needs.

Financial needs may require family meals at home, rather than Outback. You may discover new fun occasions  to enjoy friends with home cooked meals, rather than dining out. Most of us really want that newest pair of shoes or an up-to-date outfit, yet often that is not a legitimate need. Has God helped you make good choices about wants versus needs? Has He bestowed such discernment upon you?

One of my seminary professors made this statement: “When people live as the Bible prescribes they are automatically counter-culture.”  How different ARE you from the culture? This is such a personal matter between you and God. Begin to praise God for His transformations in your life.  Realize that choosing God’s ways are ways that will enable you to be pleasing to Him.

Rejoice to observe ways He has changed you from the inside out. Pray today that God will clarify such choices for you, and give you faith and courage to stand against the allurement of cultural norms. Ask Him to teach you how to live in the world, and not be of the world.

Anita Onarecker Wood

Author/Devotional Writer/Speaker and Teacher Anita writes from a God-given passion and the overflow of His activity in her life. She was a young mother of two when her husband Dick Onarecker, recognized God’s call on his life. Suddenly she was a minister’s wife! For years they worked together, so when Dick died suddenly in 1996, her life changed in every conceivable way. More…