|
“And so, dear brothers and sisters,[a] I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.[b] 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”
-Romans 12:1-2 (NLT)
A number of people have recently asked me, “Don’t you get bored driving back and forth on I-71 between Columbus and Cincinnati?” I tell them, “No, because I’m fascinated with the transformation that I witness during my trips.
Currently, there are 5 major projects in progress that will improve traffic flow and create at least 2500 permanent jobs. Two of these are related to the construction of additional lanes in both directions, and the rebuilding of the rest stops just north of the Washington C.H. exit.
But what fascinates me the most is the new Honda battery plant being built just east of I-71 and north of exit 65. Where there was once hundreds of acres of crop fields, a new manufacturing plant is rising up that is large enough to hold 78 football fields. As part of that project, a 20 mile long two-foot water pipe is being laid alongside the south bound lanes of I71 from Caesar Creek Lake to the new structure.
I’ve also observed the construction of very large steel poles and cabling that will supply the power grid being built to energize the plant. I wondered how they would get the high-tension lines across the highway running from northwest to southeast. The answer finally came when we had to drive through an area where cranes were on the highway lifting these cables into the air and across the highway. Fourteen in all, they will each carry 13,500 volts.
Now all of this may not be a big deal to most, but I think that there is a parallel here to our spiritual lives. For the past year I have witnessed the unfolding of this amazing transformation of several square miles of landscape. God wants to do the same for us. He wants to transform us so that we are new, we are changed, we are different so that each day we become more and more like him.
I really like the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases these two verses in The Message:
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.
Paul certainly understood this change, this transformation, having gone through it himself. Change is not easy. Sometimes it is scary. But if we are to be who God created us to be, then we need to let him continue to transform us into what he wants each of us to become, to be like him.
Have a blessed week,
Dave
| 
