Are you conformed to the world?

Rom 12:2  And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Our minds. Our thoughts. Our actions will reveal our dominant beliefs for the most part. A person can hide a belief for various reasons, but a Christ follower will -by the grace of God and His power- live a life that relieves their belief in Christ. Our minds must be RENEWED if we are to be TRANSFORMED from our flesh nature to our spirit nature. 

We talk about brainwashing- cults and such that have people brainwashing others and we believe brainwashing is an awful, awful thing. Even those willing to be brainwashed, we consider duped and deceived. Some believe Christ followers are brainwashed, duped, and deceived.  The truth is, those words…  be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind  … sounds an awful lot like a brainwashing technique, doesn't it? Seriously, it does! …Be not conformed to this world… is that another brainwashing bit of mumbo jumbo? 

A flashy guy stands up in a crowd on top of a soapbox and cries out… BE NOT CONFORMED TO THIS WORLD!   A moment later he yells… BE TRANSFORMED BY THE RENEWING OF YOUR MIND!

So he has a lot of attention from his audience but instead of saying another word, he steps down off of that soapbox and starts to walk away. People look at one another perplexed, a few voice their confusion wondering why the guy stopped speaking. There they have it, they are told not to be conformed and then to be transformed. 

Non-conformity.

Transformation.

This is in God's word and WE are to believe in God's word.

Do we want to be true Christ followers? If we do we CANNOT conform to this world. Let's look at that for a moment.

When this was written in the days of the Apostles the world they were living in is vastly different from the world we live in today.  Yet, sin then is sin today and all the sins committed them are committed today. The outward trappings might change but the inward trappings remain the same. All sin is self-serving, not God-serving, it is self-pleasing, not God-pleasing. The world is immersed in sin that they've called good and so sin now seems to be normal, acceptable, even godly. Serving self is paramount and sinful. We conform to this world when we choose self first in anything. Those in the Apostles era and all eras since sinned in the same way, they conformed in the same way. If we are not to be conformed to this world we have to choose God-first, not self-first at every opportunity. When we fail to do this, we must seek repentance, seek forgiveness.

The renewing of our mind will transform us- more on this tomorrow by the GRACE of our SAVIOR!

In the name of our Savior, God's Son, Jesus Christ our LORD, now and forever!

AMEN.