One of my daughters recently stated that she thought our family’s besetting sin was pride. Immediately, I agreed. I remembered half a lifetime ago, when I was thirty, and I thought I had everything figured out. I had “arrived.” This was the same thirty year old who had grown from the high school senior who said this: “I just took that personality test in Seventeen magazine, and I got all the answers right.” Ugh.
If you remember that moment, high school friend, I’m sorry. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. I learned a know-it-all, straight-A-student demeanor quite well. Thankfully, the Lord loves me, and he is patient. He began his work on the Potter’s wheel immediately. The School of Hard Knocks seems to be the only way I truly learn anything.
Thus, I marveled at God’s sense of humor when I was asked to speak on humility at our church women’s conference. These decades of growth have taught me a few things, mainly that I will always be growing in this. The Lord is at work. Praise God!
Romans 12 contains some significant words on growing in humility. Let me expound. Earlier in Romans, Paul wrote these words: “Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:13-14 ESV).
As a sinner, I’ve turned to Christ, asking for his forgiveness and yielding to his lordship, therefore, I am under grace — the unmerited kindness and mercy of God. I know that I have no hope but him. Because I’ve accepted him as Savior, sin no longer has dominion over me, not because of anything I’ve done or hope to do (conquer pride), but because of what Christ has done for me on the cross and continues to do to transform me.
I am now a recipient of the new covenant, one in which Christ has paid for all of my sins past, present, and future. I have his Spirit within me convicting, prodding, and nudging me toward growth. He changes me, bit by bit. I’m not under law, but under the kind and gracious mercy and guidance of a good and loving God.
Let’s look at Romans 12. This shows how the Lord causes us to grow.
Romans 12:1-2 is the turning point of the letter where Paul takes the beautiful redemptive theology of the first eleven chapters of Romans and applies it, turning his discussion toward our personal implementation. Now, he presses in hard. What are we to do?
1 “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:1-2 ESV).
Our merciful God says, “You’re really a mess. But, I love you and died to pay for all of that mess, so let me help you. First, let me have your heart, and then give me your body, your mind, and the keeping of your soul.”
“You want all of me?”
“Yes,” he responds.
I pause to consider. “I give myself to You,” I tell him. “Have at it!”
My eternity hinges on that response.
God is telling us here to make a once-for-all-time decision. We are to sacrifice ourselves, offering the entirety of who we are and what we will become, to this God who sacrificed himself for us. This pleases God. It is holy and acceptable to him. He embraces us as his own, and he then transforms us into holy people, making us new.
In the Greek, those verses are telling us that the only logical choice when confronted with such a God is to surrender everything to him.
His love is unstoppable. His mercy is unmatchable. His kindness is beyond our wildest imaginings. He died for us, for goodness sake!
In light of these truths, the only rational response is to place ourselves entirely at God’s disposal. Serving him for the rest of our days is the only reasonable choice.
Now on to verse two. Our God is concerned with our minds, our thought lives, our inner wonderings, and what results from all of that contemplation. He wants us to test his words and the personal choices our world throws at us, to poke at our assumptions.
One Greek study tool said: “Stop being molded by the external and fleeting fashions of this age, but undergo a deep inner change by the qualitative renewing of your mind.”
God is concerned with the very essence of us, the place where our actions, decisions, and thoughts originate. We need renewal of our thought processes and of our reasoning, to change us to be like Jesus and to squash our prideful view of ourselves.
The only way NOT to be an assembly-line, form-punched replica of the current model of human being our world produces is to be transformed by the renewing of our minds via God’s Word, our resistance of the world’s model, and the work of his Spirit.
The only way NOT to be an assembly-line replica of the current model of human our world produces is to be transformed by the renewing of our minds via God's Word, our resistance of the world, and the work of his Spirit. Click To TweetIn fact, we are commanded here to habitually do the mental work required to be aware of how our culture and/or our family may tug us the wrong way, and to conform ourselves instead to Biblical truth, resisting the fashion, model, or method of society or family unit.
This is how we come to know God’s will, how we are transformed and our minds renewed, a process that takes all of our lives and into eternity. When we reject our family’s or our culture’s ways of doing things, and we focus on what God says and wants, our inner reflections put us here:
“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Romans 12:3 ESV). This is humility.
If we are in God’s Word, regularly considering, reflecting, and digging into our whys, we grow to see ourselves rightly. The greater our faith, the greater our humility, because we recognize that we cannot think of ourselves more highly than we ought. We now know ourselves too well. Our inner reflection acquaints us with ourselves quite thoroughly.
Thus, we know then that we must humble ourselves to serve others as our equals and to step into a helping role. The greater our faith, the clearer our vision, the greater our service to others.
Is this what we are doing, consistently or in a newly beginning form?
Do we see our flaws and sins more clearly the older we become?
Do we recognize our weaknesses with increasing clarity?
If this is happening in our lives, thanks be to God! We are growing! This is evidence of our salvation. This is good news!
Accept God’s offer. Let him have you. Examine yourself. Be transformed as your mind is renewed in his Word and in your obedience to him.
The more our faith increases, the closer to the Lord we become. The closer to the Lord, the more we see ourselves with sober accuracy. Is this what we see in our lives? Do we recognize our weaknesses with increasing clarity? Click To Tweet
I’m so excited to finally share the sequel to No Longer Alone with you! Be encouraged as you read about faith in action during hardship.
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“You want all of me?”
“Yes,” he responds.
I pause to consider. “I give myself to You,” I tell him. “Have at it!”
My eternity hinges on that response.
Oh Melinda, the way you captured our passionately loving Father and our meager and weak response says it all. The God of all creation, of all eternity, of all good, desires to redeem us, both all at once and bit by bit. May our lives testify to a powerful, patient and masterful Creator, who finds just as much joy in re-creating as creating in His image.
Thank you for picking up all of that from inside this one interaction! That’s what it’s all about, the yielding and the letting go, so that he can “have at it” in us, in our character, in our idiosyncrasies, in our habits, in our deepest thoughts, in our prideful considerations, in our thought processes toward others. We judge others when we should first be poking, prodding, and judging our own motives, thoughts, and reasoning.
Melinda, this is excellent. I, too, have been SO guilty of imagining I have it all together. My pride is something I’ve battled all my life and continue to battle! Thank God for the ability to change and shift and grow in HIM.
Thank you, Jessica, for the kind words! This is such a challenge for the well-trained, competent, people-pleasing, high performance people like me, too. There’s often true brokenness behind that facade of competence. We tend to be more concerned with what we’re DOING for the Lord, not with how we’re drawing near to him to be transformed and renewed by actual application of his words that change the inner woman, and hence, bring about real transformation. Paul starts with “not thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought” as the intro for all the remaining transformation he details in Romans 12-15. God-breathed words. The Holy Spirit is wise! He knows human nature so well!
This is such a huge word Melinda. I’ve been working on just this concept recently. I feel like I’ve got so much going on that God cannot use me. I’m not in His Word enough. My faith is not strong enough, but He knows what a mess I am – when I’m flying high and think God is privileged that I am sharing Him (I know right! ?) as well as when I feel like I just can’t get it together so He needs to use someone else until I can find my way back.
This is the lifelong challenge for the competent and the capable. We know what we can do, and that sense of pride when we do it well swells inside of us making us feel just what you described—isn’t God fortunate to have us on his team. Ugh. Meanwhile, we know the reality of our hearts, our thoughts, our judgmental pride, our inner arrogance, our ugly hidden parts. Thankfully, praise God, Jesus knows those parts, too, loves us anyway, and wants to help us lay those down and overcome the ugly side of ourselves. It requires work, the place where grace and mercy have covered it, but our efforts must be exerted. And that requires first a change of heart and mind. We can start this work by grabbing hold of whatever truth the Lord has given us for that day, mulling it over as we drive, pondering on it during our break, seeking applications throughout our day, and then incorporating it as our new way of thinking and doing. God knows it’s going to take us a lifetime. I see you doing this, Brittany. I read your words. I see what choices you’ve made and how you’re living your life. You’re headed toward Jesus, sister. Press on!
Melinda, as always, this is a soul-stirring article that makes me want to pursue Christ with a passion. And surely our renewing does absolutely hinge on our response to give God all of us! Love this quote, “Stop being molded by the external and fleeting fashions of this age, but undergo a deep inner change by the qualitative renewing of your mind.” Often, the problem is a humility one as 1 John 2:16 notes the love of the world is the lust of the flesh, lust of the yes, and boastful pride of life. All things that got Adam and Even in hot water in the Garden. I need to revisit Romans 12:1-2 often and evaluate where I’m at. Because the problem with living sacrifices is how we often keep trying to crawl off the altar.
Yes! That is the problem with living sacrifices! It’s a good thing the Lord never gives up on us, and he never stops pursuing us when we crawl off the alter or fall by the wayside. He carefully shapes our circumstances and moves our hearts to turn us back to him. I’m so grateful for that! The Holy Spirit exhorts, urges, encourages, and convicts. He draws us close, and we want to obey and to follow. This is the evidence of our faith. Thanks so much for your kind and thoughtful comments.
I’m So Very Thankful
God uses our Flaws to
Show our Need to Grow-
& is Faithful to Perfect
Us with Sufficient Grace.
That We Become More
Christlike Beings-
Renewed Daily in Our Minds
Affecting our Bodily Infuence
Instrumental of Doing Good Works HE Forordained Us to Do
And to God Be the Glory!
That is so true, Allison! Thank you for stopping by to comment. It’s so nice to hear from you!