July 13, 2018
by Pastor Chuck SwindollScriptures: Romans 12:1-3
Wouldn't you love to live courageously in spite of the odds? Doesn't it sound exciting to be divinely powerful in day-to-day living? Aren't you eager to become independently authentic in a day of copycat styles?
Wouldn't you love
to live courageously in spite of the odds? Doesn't it sound exciting to be
divinely powerful in day-to-day living? Aren't you eager to become
independently authentic in a day of copycat styles and horrendous peer
pressure? Of course!
It all begins in the
mind. Let me repeat it one
more time: thinking right always precedes acting right. I cannot overemphasize
the importance of the renewed mind.
It is really
impossible to grasp the concept of serving others—or to carry it out with joy and without fear—until our minds are freed from the world's mold and transformed
by the Lord's power.
I feel the need to
add a warning to my urging. A warning against anyone who might "use" others to
accomplish his or her purposes. Be very careful not to do that! How easy it is
to encourage servanthood so others might serve us.
That is not the
way our Master walked and neither should we.
Servanthood starts
in the mind. With a simple prayer of three words: "Change me, Lord."