Romans 12:1-3 (click to view Scripture below)
In the 1980’s and 1990’s, ChildHope did a series of short films that we showed to churches to highlight the ministry. One of those films featured the story of a little girl named Wendy. She lived in El Salvador with her brother and father. Her father was blind and supported the family by selling lottery tickets on the street corner. When Wendy was asked what she wanted to do when she grew up, she said she wanted to sell lottery tickets, just like her dad did. To this day, her response still evokes deep sorrow in me. Her dad was doing the best that he could, but the world that Wendy lived in didn’t allow her to break out of its prison like hold on her mind. She could not see a future that went beyond what her dad did for a living.
Our reading today is a short, but powerful statement about the power of the Holy Spirit to break the prisons in our mind that our world can confine us to. The culture we live in has a way of shaping us to its desires, which are always to control us. But the renewing power of the Holy Spirit frees us to consider the goodness of God. We are given a “chance to dream” as the Lord fills us for the role and place that He has assigned to us.
Wendy did not follow in her father’s footsteps and sell lottery tickets. That’s because an education at a ChildHope school embodies what our text describes. The transformation that comes with an education at a ChildHope school fills a young mind with hope-filled thoughts and dreams. The poverty these students grow up in is pervasive, but it does not control the good and acceptable future which the Lord has assigned for these children.
Vice President, ChildHope
Prayer: Lord, I pray that you will renew my mind and fill me with your will: good and acceptable. May I discern that role you have created me for and assigned to me. Give me the power to serve you for your Glory!
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Romans 12:1-3 (ESV)
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
See other devotionals in this series.
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.