September 19

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. — Rom 12:2 BSB

As worldly conformity is subdued and departed from, the transformation process that the Apostle speaks of begins to take place, renewing us in the spirit of our minds. This means that the Holy Spirit, through His work on our souls, revives the life of God within us—renewing our faith, hope, love, prayer, praise, spirituality, and all the tender feelings and godly emotions that stir in a living heart. As the Spirit of God renews His work in our hearts, He gradually leads us out of conformity to the world. He shows us the evil of such conformity, making our consciences tender and sensitive. We come to realize that when we conform to the world, we lose our spiritual evidences—they become dulled and obscured. We are deprived of communion with God and the comforting access we once had to our heavenly Friend. Our taste and appetite for spiritual things fade, and even our profession of faith becomes a burden.

When our conscience becomes more awake to these realities, we see and feel the consequences of worldly conformity. The Spirit of God presses this awareness home to us, sometimes through painful experiences—long days of darkness and heavy, dragging nights of desertion—until we fully understand the cost of clinging to earthly things.

As the Spirit leads us away from this conformity, He shows us that by cleaving to the things of this earth, we rob ourselves of our happiest hours, sweetest hopes, and dearest joys. The Spirit then draws us nearer to Christ, constantly renewing our minds with precious truths that revive our faith, renew our hope, and communicate love. He draws forth prayer, bestows a spiritual mind and heart, and brings about a transformation process where we are gradually brought out of worldly conformity and shaped more into the likeness of a suffering Jesus.

How much we need the blessed Spirit of God to renew us daily in the spirit of our minds, transforming us into the suffering image of the sorrowing Son of God! There is no middle ground between spirituality and carnality, between the image of Christ and conformity to the world. Just as there is no middle path between the narrow way and the broad way, so there is no middle way between fruitfulness and barrenness, prayerfulness and prayerlessness, watchfulness and carelessness, repentance and hardness, faith and unbelief, the life of a Christian and the life of a worldling.