Sunday, 1 January 2017



Roms 12: 1-2

#transforming your mind, #daily devotion #word of God #scriptures#gospel


Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Don’t be like the people of this world, but let God change the way you think (transform your mind). Then you will know how to do everything that is good and pleasing to him.


Today is the second day of the New Year and many are still on holiday as a roll over from Sunday the 1st   of January 2017. The week before had been the holy week of Christmas which we remember as the day that God had given us the free gift of His Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins and grant us the gift of salvation.

This is the act of love from God and He does not want us to recompense Him in any way that would cost us in material things but God wants us to draw close to Him in love and the best way of doing this is to offer our lives as living sacrifices. This is not a onetime offering but the apostle Paul tells us that we are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God as long as we live.

This holy living is a living sacrifice which is our true and proper worship to God. Our worship cannot be just lip service by telling God we love and worship Him but the next moment we live like the rest of the world in sin. We need to live Jesus, talk Jesus, walk Jesus and do everything as Jesus would do.

How then can we do this, Paul gives us the instruction in verse 2, we are to “be transformed by the renewing of our mind”. This means stop thinking of the world, stop thinking like the world but from today onward let’s keep thinking about Jesus.

This is the best gift that we can give to God for 2017 everyday starting from today. We must make a New Year resolution to live for Jesus and live like Jesus every day of this year and for the rest of our lives. Jesus lived in humility; that means we too must live with gratitude for what he had done for us, we must also live in humility like Him and we must give ourselves completely to Him. Completely means all our heart, mind and will must be surrendered to Jesus and allow Him to mould, shape and fill us according to His will.

Jesus has a plan for each and every one of us.  As I have mentioned yesterday, the work in the Kingdom is varied. There are different calling and different gifting and ministries. God had not made us all to be the same. That would mean an army of robots but God gave us the five-fold ministries because there are different needs in the body of Christ. He gave us different skills and empowering.

Paul also told us in Roms 9: 21 God had ….of the same lump make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour. This means that in the household of God, some will be in the priesthood, some in other positions of leadership and yet others will be serving in lower capacities. No matter in which capacity we are called and chosen we must dedicate our lives to serve Him faithfully this year and beyond. Only then would we be living sacrifices that are holy and acceptable to God.

Irrespective of what position and calling that God has given to us, there is no difference in the expectation from God. Every priest, leader and follower must live humbly and with thanks giving in their hearts. Someone said ‘thanksgiving’ means to be ‘thanks-living,’


Let us start living each day of 2017 in ‘thanks-living’.

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