Brand Nu Mind

Okay, so I failed to post yesterday. I can make excuses, but I won't. So here is a brief recap from Sunday's message...

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. (Romans 12:1-2, NLT)

What do you think about yourself? How do you think about your self? Is it a high view? Do you have good self-esteem? Or when you look into the mirror are you unsure of what you see? In order for us to transformed into the creation God wants us to be it starts with our mind, our thinking. Paul said, change the way you think, especially about yourself!

Jesus was the Messiah and his disciples knew it. They didn't always voice it, nor did they always believe it (sometimes they believed, doubted, rejected and believed all in the same day!). And it was this understanding of Jesus that made them follow him, yet he didn't want them to make this their teaching. He wanted to be defined not by his title, but by his life, his actions, for who he really was, not just what people might think a Messiah was about. (There were great expectations for the Messiah, that had little to do with God's purposes for Jesus.) So he showed them who he really was through his mercy, love and grace. He challenged his disciples to see his real identity and to look closely at their own.

When we are defined by outside expectations, we fall into molds that usually do not fit us. In other words, sometimes (all too often) we work at living our lives according to others expectations of us instead of us becoming the people God meant for us to be. Paul said not to be defined by the world. We have already been defined by the creator, that's why we need renewal, to rediscover the original God made us to be; to scrape away the layers of falsehood and find the original, just as we came from the showroom floor. We need to get back to how God made us to be, to recognize that this is the person God made and loves, as we really are.

You are a child of God, made in God's image and you are loved. Look in the mirror and see this person then let your life be defined by that. That's radical thinking and it changes our world!

Peace ><>
PC