I heard such a powerful sermon last night at youth group. It started out with "Who we believe we are will shape our intimacy with others, and with God." Yes. Oh this is true. And who we believe we are not. I could write out the whole sermon for you and maybe I will later because it was so powerful. Another awesome and wonderful thing is that I woke up and my Bible reading plan is on Romans 12 today... Romans 12:1-2. It could not be more perfect for what Hod was speaking last night. This is the journal text I sent to Dustin this morning about our reading. I had to share.
"Do not allow this world to mold you in it's own image. Instead, be transformed from the inside out by renewing your mind." Romans 12:2
Being in God's Word and with Him in the war-room (by the way have you seen the movie War-room?! You need to!) / quiet place is what truly renews our mind. It reminds us WHO WE ARE, and WHOSE WE ARE! Sons and Daughters of Almighty GOD. If we aren't renewing our mind daily with His truth, something else is going to reshape our mind with lies and tell us who we are NOT. Think about Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane; the first thing satan attacked and questioned was His identity. So we best believe the enemy is going to be daily whispering doubts in our ears of who we are and making us doubt that. If we are not firm in our Kingdom identity we will not act like children of God because we won't believe it; and that effects everything we do, say and think. Thus why we must lay our lives before Him morning by morning and worship Him with our whole being by giving Him what He has given us-- ourselves-- our whole being. We are not our own. It is all from Him and through Him that we have our being.
"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship." Romans 12:1
I need to soak in His Word and Truth and be immersed in it otherwise I am going to get spun out by this world. The minute I walk out the door I will be inundated with everything I am not and everything I should be and just lie after lie-- telling me to "conform, conform, conform, to the patterns of this world Malorie." Be more like this. Do more of that. Say this. Wear that. Act like this. Should should. Do do. Act act. Work work. Lies you told satan, lies! We become human doings instead of human beings. Besides we are truly spiritual beings trying to be human. We are just strangers and foreigners and aliens here. It's just our temporary home... Why get comfy here?!
"We are here for only a moment, visitors and strangers in the land as our ancestors were before us. Our days on earth are like a passing shadow, gone so soon without a trace."- 1 Chronicles 29:15
