Day 23: More than a part of the world

Matthew 5:43-48 NIV
43 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Romans 12:1-2 NIV
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

I don't know if you noticed or not but I didn't post anything yesterday. I think I thought so much about what I was going to post that I actually thought I posted it. But today I found that my post would have been incomplete. God wanted me to connect what I heard at the women's conference I attended with the sermon I heard today.

The main thing I took from yesterday was that God wants us to do more than what an unbeliever would do because he lives in us and calls us to greater things. Today I learned why: God calls us to be set apart, to be holy, because he is holy and he wants us to belong to him. This doesn't mean perfect, but rather it means that we are not doing what we did in our past nor are we living as our culture tells us to live. Living as though you are set apart is what being a living sacrifice is all about - sacrificing what you once would have done to live differently, to live as one set apart for God's purposes.

This is also the response that God asks from us. Changing the way we live is not a requirement for salvation, payment for grace or the cost of mercy. It is a response like saying thank you when someone gives you a present that you didn't earn or deserve. It should flow from your gratitude as the holy spirit comes and dwells within you because the holy spirit has begun the process of making you holy - the process of changing you that you might be set apart as an example for Christ - sanctification.

Process, as in not completed in an instant and perfect for ever but continually changing and improving over time. The pastor used an example of the river Thames in England. In general the river flows south into the english channel. At various points along the way there are inlets or eddies where the water does not flow the same way but over all the flow goes in that same main direction. You also need to move in the generally same direction. Maybe you backtrack or make mistakes, but you need to be continuing to make you way toward God and away from the world and its ways.

I challenge you (as I myself am being challenged) to live as more than the world lives. May this be your response to the grace and mercy offered you through Christ's death on the crossed.