Changing the way you think...

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got."

All my life, I've heard that saying. When I decided to turn my life completely over to God, I knew that big changes would need to take place in my life. Yet, breaking old habits isn't easy. Most people have little vices, things we tell ourselves are insignificant, and we make excuses to our own hearts in attempt to justify the decisions. However, if we want big results, if we want God to use us in special ways, we must first be willing to make whatever changes are necessary to give Him a blank canvas on which He will paint a new and brighter future.

Romans 12:1-2 states, "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. 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."

Think of the your life as a painting. When you give your life to God, He washes the canvas white as snow. But the canvas is just going to get messy again if you continue trying to paint a masterpiece on your own. You have to hand the paintbrush over to Him.

Your body is a sacrifice, and sinful human nature often urges us to give in to desires that don't honor God. "Sacrifice" is "the act of giving up something that you want to keep especially in order to get or do something else or to help someone" or "an act of killing a person or animal in a religious ceremony as an offering to please a god." To offer your body as a sacrifice, you essentially "kill" the old you to please God. To sacrifice means to lose something precious, surrendering something you want to keep.

What do you want to hang on to today that God is asking you to give up? I know what He is asking me to surrender, and it's a daily struggle for me. Some days, the struggle hits me so hard that I want to quit. Giving in to sin is much easier than being a living sacrifice.

That's when I focus on the verse 2. If I want to change what I do, I must first change the way I think in order to "be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Change comes from within. Changing your thoughts changes your actions. I know that I want the good, pleasing, and perfect plan God has for my life. When the sacrifice seems too much, I just remember His promises. Nothing I desire compares to Him and His plan for me.

I'm changing the way I think, and He is changing me.