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 MSG)
This has recently become one of my favorite practical Bible verses. I love the simplicity, the beauty, and the truth.
I love that it states, "This is what you do, God helping you," because it is only through God that we can and should do all these things. Often times as Christians we can get caught up in "high and lofty" goals of what we can "do" for God. This verse takes "these fantasies" and brings them right back down to real life. It lets us know our everyday life, our ordinary life - placed before God, walked out with Him and His help is our offering.
But how do we do this? By fixing our eyes on God. This is how we get changed from the inside out! Being obedient in the little things He is asking you everyday will result in maturity.
As I think about "maturity in Christ" I have a couple women that come straight to mind. When I am in their presence there is an immediate peace and calmness. They listen to fears and problems and they don't freak out. They always point you back to Christ. As I reflect on these verses, I see that they have lived these verses out and that is how they have come to maturity. They haven't had "any measurements of success" by the world's standards, yet they have done great impact in the kingdom of God, with fruit that will last.
I Thessalonians 4:10b-12
Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, 11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
In Christ,
This is Part 5 of a 13 part series. The entire series is available to read here.
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