Mission and Vision Part 4: Become
And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.
Philippians 1:6 (NLT)
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:2 (NASB95)
Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock.
Matthew 7:24 (NASB95)
Great job doing the daily devotions! In doing so, you’re living in direct opposition to the pattern of the world. You’re in training and you’re strengthening your spirit by engaging! Well done!
Paul writes—read it out loud:
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:2 (NASB95)
The pattern of the world has us where we are in this moment:
- Polarized against one another
- Politically divided against each other
- Angry
- Fearful
- Relationally distant
We could go on, of course. Consider this: no one wakes up and says, “I am going to try really hard to despise others, to get angry with others, to be fearful…” No, these attitudes and postures towards other people are formed through the patterns in which we regularly engage.
Our world is largely formed around information-giving media and internet outlets that exist to make a lot of money. They have discovered that they can make a lot of money by heaping fear laden, polarized rhetoric and inflammatory articles into our ears and eyes. Most media moguls do not care about you, your personal formation or your life trajectory. No, to them you are a “product” to be sold to advertisers. Angry, fearful and conspiratorial information motivates us to stare at screens, to tune into radio stations or to swallow gobs of podcasts.
Charlie Warzel is a tech reporter at the New York Times. He often critiques the very thing we are talking about. In a recent interview he said:
“And I admit, even I felt this pull to turn on cable news and refresh my feed to get this deluge of content and information even though I knew none of it was actionable or useful. None of it was teaching me anything. But like everyone, I’m watching it in real time as my emotions build and I’m just sucked into the misinformation rabbit hole…And there’s just no doubt that a lot of this starts online with these platforms where algorithms are warping our emotions and continuously feeding us dangerously misleading content.”
That is the pattern of the world.
But, Paul says that we are not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, but to be transformed.
So, today—look back over your life audit from Day 1. Do you see how you might be pulled into the anger and the rhetoric and the fear and the sinister because of the time you spend watching, listening, reading or scrolling through content and delivery systems designed by people who want to get wealthy off your attention and time?
Make this prayer your own:
“Father, you’ve created a good world.
Father, you’ve been patient as humans have run the world on our terms.
Jesus, you show a better way of trusting the Father.
Jesus, you’ve helped me to trust the Father.
Holy Spirit, lead me away from the patterns of fear and anger.
Holy Spirit, transform me into a person of love.
Amen.“
