Friday, August 5, 2011

The Delightful, Advantageous, Full-Blown Will of God

Intimacy with Christ is only possible as we surrender ourselves completely and totally to the purposes of God. But to do THAT, we must believe that God's heart toward us is good and that whatever He calls us to let go of or to embrace is good. I've been meditating on Romans 12:2 to help me get to that place of trust.

Here's how I would paraphrase it:

Don't be pressed into the mold of the world or the spirit of the age. Don't adopt their perspective of this life. Don't buy into the world's blueprint for fulfillment, security or significance. Rather, like a caterpillar in a cocoon, be metamorphisized, changed, transformed by the renewal of your mind, by a fresh approach to thinking patterns; get rid of all those old tapes and upgrade to a new sound system, and start listening to new songs with better lyrics; with this new approach to your thought life and the new melodies and lyrics coursing through your brain, prove to yourself both experientially and existentially that God's ways, methods, plans, purposes and all His sovereignly ordained circumstances for our lives (both His revealed will in Scripture with all its promises and commands; as well as His secret, mysterious will that just happens) are good, beneficial, advantageous, acceptable, well-pleasing, delightful and perfect and complete (nothing could be added or subtracted to make it better!). Embrace this perspective and world-view by faith in God's character!