“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”

— Romans 12:1-2, The Message

While Romans 12:1-2 are deeply helpful in the NIV and other translations, The Message paraphrase brings something out of this passage that is important to not miss. "Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking." Huh. How often is that the case?

If I'm going to be "transformed by the renewing of [my] mind" (v.2, NIV), I need to be able to recognize what messages are true (align with scripture) and what messages are from the culture. I find that many of the world's messages are so familiar that it's hard to even notice them.

Over the next few Sundays, we're going to work together to really notice. We'll set up some of the most popular messages we hear against the Bible and see what happens. I'm sure it's not a spoiler to let you know that there are some big differences between them.

Is God trying to make things difficult for us to follow His way? Not at all. We're going to talk about some of the reasons why He instructs us the way that He does and, again, no surprise, they are for our benefit and flourishing, now and for eternity.

We're starting off with the plot of countless feel-good movies and some of the most common advice you've heard: Follow Your Heart.

Is it a good idea to follow your heart? Give it some though and let's get into it on Sunday!

See you then,
Pastor Tracy