Renovated

"Without the renewed mind, we will distort the Scriptures to avoid their radical commands for self-denial, and love, and purity, and supreme satisfaction in Christ alone.” ~ John Piper


As the New Year begins the New Year resolutions begin as well. And because it’s January 10th they have already ended for most people. Just teasing! But it’s the truth isn’t it. It is for me anyway, guilty as charged! When it comes to the physical resolutions they tend to be quit smoking and start dieting. On the spiritual side we think of reading our Bible more frequently and serve the Lord greater.


Recently I heard one spiritual speaker talk about reading the Bible daily. One by one he listed the do’s and don’ts of reading the Bible. One of the don’ts was to DO NOT distort the Scriptures to make it read what we want it to read. There probably has come a time in most of our lives we have all done this very thing. Guilty as charged! Although it may give us a temporarily good feeling as we break our spiritual diet but it’s only momentary. It lasts about as long as that “need for chocolate” fix we are after as we break our physical diet.


The best solution is to renew our minds as we renew our resolutions. Dropping what doesn’t belong and keeping what needs to stay. This is done by setting for ourselves good reachable and obtainable goals that we strive for daily with the help of the Holy Spirit and self discipline.


It’s easy to join a gym or get on the “patch” to quit smoking but how do we renew our minds. To renew means to renovate, refurbish, repair, restore, mend, make good, and revamp. One day as I watched a remodeling process going on at an old business office I noticed them taking out lift-truck bucket loads of dirt out of the building. I thought maybe they were trying to dig a basement or a sunken waiting room or office space. Being a person who works around construction my husband informed me they were tearing out the old concrete floor as well as the old pipes and electrical wires to start over with their own layout.


That’s the kind of renovating, restoring, and revamping process we need to do ourselves spiritually. As we draw closer to Christ we should be taking out buckets full the old stuff that doesn’t need to be there and replace it with our own new wiring furnished by Jesus. We can’t make the mistake of thinking we can do it on our own and renewing with things we want dancing around in our heads. As if that ever worked! Guilty as charged, been there, tried that and it doesn’t work.


Things have a tendency to get into our minds way to easily that doesn’t belong. It takes a good look and a long commitment to decide to clean it up and replace it with things from above as Paul put it. Twisting the Bible to read what we want it to read only puts more of the wrong instead of right things into our minds.


Bottom-line is we are in charge of our own renovating process and it would do us well to read the Bible every day. To apply it to our lives, to use it to dispose of the old as we prepare for the new on an every day basis. Just as we would never renew a subscription to a magazine we didn’t like we need to stop renewing our subscription to the things that harm us spiritually. The Bible and its author is all the renewal we need to refurbish what needs to be in Christ, for Christ, through Christ for the benefit of all and to the glory of God’s kingdom.




Therefore, next time the Holy Spirit comes around knocking on your door asking you if you want to renew your subscription to the Bible tell him, “You bet I do and forget this 2 year, 10-year plan I’m going for all eternity!” Amen? Amen!!!!!!! I’m renewed, I am renovated!




Our host today is Urailak at LivingforGod . Run on over there and read and share with the others about today’s quote. Better yet for the New Year join us and be one of the Tuesday morning contributors to the quote of the week. We’d love to have you on board.