Saturday, May 2, 2026

Opening Scripture

We pray this so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:10-14

Opening Prayer

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, the King of the Universe, who gives rest to Your children and the promise of a new day. Amen.

Daily Bible Reading

Romans 12:1-2

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. 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.

Reflection  

Today’s passage is our core text for the entire year. As we focus on Flourishing Together: Transformed on The Jesus Way, these two verses offer a step-by-step reminder of how we are to live each day.

Throughout his teaching, Paul emphasizes that the gospel releases God’s power in followers of Jesus so that they can be righteous in His sight and live holy and victorious lives in this fallen world. Here, he offers a five-step process for that.

1. Receive God’s mercy.
2. Offer yourself to God as a living sacrifice.
3. Refuse to conform to the world.
4. Choose to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
5. Know and do God’s will.

First, we must receive God’s mercy. Paul makes this urgent plea to his listeners on the basis of God’s incredible compassion. He has just explained that mercy in Chapter 11 in the context of both Jews and Gentiles being disobedient to God yet being offered the opportunity for forgiveness.

When we begin to fully understand the infinite love and matchless grace of God, we are compelled to respond to Him in gratitude and submission. Until we have a clear “view of God’s mercy” – not just in an abstract sense, but in a profoundly personal sense – we have insufficient motivation or basis for the next four steps.

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19).

An intimate “trust relationship” with our Heavenly Father is essential for spiritual formation and transformation into Christlikeness! Josh McDowell’s principles of biblical parenting are equally true of Christian discipleship.

• Rules without relationship lead to rebellion.
• Truth without relationship leads to rejection.
• Discipline without relationship leads to bitterness.

McDowell sums up his parent coaching with the statement: “The best thing you can do for your child is to build a loving, intimate relationship with them.” It’s also the best thing you can do with God. A deep “heart connection” with God is the foundation upon which everything else develops.

Next, we must offer our bodies to God as a living sacrifice. If we don’t love, trust, and revere God, it is highly unlikely that we’ll be willing to give ourselves completely to Him. Paul qualifies the offering of our bodies to God with three adjectives: living, holy, and pleasing. The lives that we place on the altar are active and productive, set apart and dedicated to God, and, as such, well pleasing to Him.

Paul invokes every aspect of life in this directive. To die as a sacrifice is an extreme, yet singular event. To live as a sacrifice is a continuous and demanding responsibility. The care and consent we give our bodies, the values and virtues which guide our day, and our endless actions and reactions are all included here.

Under the Old Covenant, a sacrifice was required to be clean and without blemish. To that degree, it was holy and acceptable. Of course, since our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, there is an inherent “holiness” to our offering. Our intentional discipleship – the whole process of sanctification – accomplishes this function. Again, the crux of “holiness” is being set apart for God. This constitutes our “true and proper worship.”

Then, to continue offering ourselves as a living and holy sacrifice that is pleasing to God, we must refuse to conform to the world. The Greek “do not be conformed” (mē suschématizó) appears only here and in 1 Peter 1:14-15, which we read last week. “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.”

Both Paul and Peter understood the urgent need for Christians to resist conformity to the ungodly culture around them. Blending in and going with the crowd is natural. Following your convictions and denying your old impulses is supernatural.

As Wednesday’s Opening Scripture promises, it is possible. “For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:11-13).

For many, I believe the battle is being fought on social media. Chapter 3 of the 2026 World Happiness Report is entitled: “Social media is harming adolescents at a scale large enough to cause changes at the population level.” Based on surveys, corporate documents, cross-sectional studies, and longitudinal studies, the report offers the following summary.

“There is now overwhelming evidence of severe and widespread direct harms (such as sextortion and cyberbullying), and compelling evidence of troubling indirect harms (such as depression and anxiety). Furthermore, the harms and risks to individual users are so diverse and vast in scope that they justify the view that social media is causing harm at a population level.”

Last month, a California jury found Meta and YouTube liable for negligence due to addictive algorithms contributing to mental health issues. While the $3 million fine is trivial for those tech companies, the implications are significant. Notably, TikTok and Snap (also named as defendants) settled out of court before trial. Some are calling this a “bellwether verdict” akin to the “Big Tobacco” litigation in the 90’s.

At the same time, we must choose to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Philippians 4:8).

In Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard says, “Images, in particular, are motivational far beyond our conscious mind, and they are not under rational control. We must take care that we are nourished constantly on good and godly ones, without necessarily being able to see and say what is wrong with the others.

“The intention to be formed is to have the great God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ a constant presence in our mind, crowding out every false idea or destructive image, all misinformation about God, and every crooked inference or belief. As you choose to give your time and energy to, and plan your life around, the renovation of your mind, it will happen! But you must choose to do it and learn how.”

And finally, we must know and do God’s will. When we take our relationship with God seriously – by following the steps above – this last step becomes much easier. As we devote ourselves increasingly to God, becoming transformed in our minds, we begin to discover and desire God’s will. And that’s when we find out what “Flourishing” is really all about!

Flourishing Habit

Flourishing Christians

This week, we’ve focused on the theme: Formed for Flourishing. God has created each of us to flourish! As such, we only truly flourish when we live our lives as God intends. Romans 12:1-2 provides a basic framework for that. When you add in our readings from 1 Peter last week, there’s so much analogy in the mix that it’s easy to get overwhelmed and confused.

• We are living stones being built into a spiritual house.
• We are a temple for God through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
• We are devoted worshippers of God in spirit and truth.
• We are a holy priesthood serving God in sacred duty.
• We are called and chosen to be God’s special possession.
• We are a living sacrifice to God, laying ourselves completely on the altar.
• And we are foreigners, exiles, aliens, sojourners, and strangers in this world, longing for our true “homeland.”

One of the key battlegrounds in the process of spiritual formation is the mind. Paul encourages us to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Here’s what Dallas Willard says in Renovation of the Heart.

“Thoughts are the place where we can and must begin to change. There the light of God first begins to move upon us through the word of Christ, and there the divine Spirit begins to direct our will to more and more thoughts that can provide the basis for choosing to realign ourselves with God and his way.

“The ultimate freedom we have as human beings is the power to select what we will allow or require our minds to dwell upon. We have the ability and responsibility to try to retain God in our knowledge – if only in an inadequate and halting manner. And those who do so will surely make progress toward him; for if we truly do seek God as best we can, he, who always knows what is really in our hearts, will certainly make himself known to us.

“By ‘thoughts’ we mean all of the ways in which we are conscious of things. That includes our memories, perceptions, and beliefs. Our power over our thoughts is of great and indispensable assistance in directing and controlling our feelings, which themselves are not directly under the guidance of our will. We cannot just choose our feelings. You can’t evoke thoughts by feeling a certain way, but you can evoke and to some degree control feelings by directing your thoughts.

“Christian spiritual formation is inescapably a matter of recognizing in ourselves the idea system of evil that governs the present age and the respective culture that constitutes life away from God. The needed transformation is very largely a matter of replacing in ourselves those idea systems of evil with the idea system that Jesus Christ embodied and taught and with a culture of the kingdom of God. This is truly a passage from darkness to light.

“‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 2:5). This is an essential way of describing the substance, the underlying reality, of Christian spiritual formation. We are, in Paul’s familiar language, transformed precisely by the ‘renewing of our mind.’

“Paul knew we can only escape being conformed to a fallen humanity by receiving the mind of Christ himself. Spiritual formation in Christ moves toward a total interchange of our ideas and images for his. And after he has implanted new life from above in us by Word and Spirit, we can (and must) also begin to take initiative in progressively retaking the whole of our thought life for God’s kingdom.”

If “thoughts are the place where we can and must begin to change,” how is your thought life?

What do you find yourself watching, reading, and listening to most often?

How intentional are you about selecting or rejecting screen content?

If you want to grow as a follower of Jesus, think about what you think about.

Remember: Nothing changes until something changes!