WHAT SHAPES YOU?

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“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.”

Romans 12:2

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Human beings are easily influenced.

Wouldn’t you agree with that?

Go back to your earliest years when you were a young child. You were completely dependent on your parents, right?

They taught you how to talk. They taught you how to think. They taught you how to behave.

In fact, the parents influence is so great on their children that there is actually a line of commercials where a fictional self help expert keeps younger adults from turning into their older parents. If you haven’t seen them, they are quite funny.

Well, parents aren’t the only influencers out there. For what happened when that little child grew up and became a teenager? There were more than a few people in that teenager’s life who tried to get them to do things they hadn’t been taught to do, even things they had been warned to avoid. Maybe you can relate to this in your own life. It seems we were experiencing temptations to move away from doing the right thing at a very early age, a primer for what adulthood would bring.

For this is what happens to that teenager. They soon become an adult and often move onto a college campus to continue their education and it is there that they see that the influencing picks up the pace quite a bit. You see, the adult now is beyond the daily scrutiny of their father and mother. No one is holding them accountable for their actions anymore. And so the very impressionable young adult is vulnerable to the shaping by their peers and their professors, those who seem to have all the wisdom and knowledge.

This often is a recipe for disaster and where we are seeing the moral fabric of God’s people torn at the seams. A majority of our college campuses are liberal hotbeds where everything but the way of God is sanctioned and endorsed. Christianity is an enemy of these institutions of higher education and it’s treated that way, sometimes subtly while other times aggressively. You see, God shines a light into the dark recesses where sinful practices are promoted and those in the dark hate being brought into the light. They definitely don’t want those they are molding to see the light and possibly reverse course.

I think you can see what happens next.

These young adults graduate from liberal universities and then infiltrate society with what they have learned. Some of them end up being teachers in our schools where they can begin to indoctrinate our youngest minds. Some become elected officials and then push liberal laws and governing philosophies on the people. Almost all will have children of their own and you can bet that the Lord won’t be a point of emphasis. And then those children grow up and go to college but now, the influencing has already been done in the home. College education just becomes a continuation of what children have learned, not a radical departure from it. And then these adults graduate and just feed the perpetuation of liberalism and the disconnect from God, the disconnect from His Word and His Spirit.

This is why verse 2 of Romans 12 is so critically important for it calls a person back to where they need to be with a warning and then an exhortation.

First, the warning.

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world”

The world here is to be used in a broad context. It represents anything or anyone that would influence someone in a way separate from God. Or in other words, influence a person in any way that would be sinful.

The world is Satan’s domain and he has many followers, those who he has placed under his manipulation. In fact, I would say a majority of people who live without God in their lives would deny Satan has any control over what they do. Unfortunately, they live in denial and thus is the main issue, right? For is you knew that the devil was leading and guiding you in your thoughts, words, and behavior, you would probably want to look for a better option unless you were a self proclaimed Satanist, of course.

Thankfully, we find, not just the better option, but the best option period in the exhortation part of this verse:

“...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.”

The sinfully influenced mind need transformed and renewed, deprogrammed from any sinful encoding. The Lord brings this to anyone who places their trust in Him. He loves a person from wanting to satisfy the longings of the world to conforming to His will and desires. A person tuned into God can analyze everything they face to make sure it is appropriate and proper in His sight. They can “test and approve” their thoughts, words, and actions to make sure they are in line with God’s “good, pleasing and perfect will.

Want to know you are always doing the right and righteous thing?

Run things through God first for He will never guide you wrong.

So this leads to the question posed by this message?

“What shapes you?”

Are you formed and reformed by the ways of the world? Or are you continually transformed and reformed by the Word and Spirit of the living God, clay in the hands of the Master Potter who is making you into the person you need to be?

Only you can answer that question.

And only you can make the change if it’s needed.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com