Adjusting My Thoughts

O Lord, You are my God. I will exalt You, I will praise Your name, for You have done wonderful things; Your plans formed of old are faithfulness and truth. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” [Isaiah 25:1; Isaiah 55:8&9]

Holy Spirit help me to understand and follow the message from Paul when he wrote: What shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, yes, who is risen, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities nor powers, neither things present nor

things to come, neither height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. [Romans 8:31-39] So I will make sure that I am taking my everyday, ordinary life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for me is the best thing I can do for Him. I will not become so well-adjusted to my culture that I fit into it without even thinking. Instead, I will fix my attention on God. I will be changed from the inside out. Readily recognizing what he wants from me, and quickly responding to it. Unlike the culture I live within, which always trying to drag me down to its immaturity and sin, I will let God bring the best out of me, developing maturity and righteousness instead. [Romans 12:1&2, The Message Version]

Now may my Lord Jesus Christ Himself and my God and Father, who has loved me and given me everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort my heart and establish me in every good deed and word. Now may the Lord direct my heart into the love of God and into the patience of Christ. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen [2Thessalonians 2:16,17; 2 Thessalonians 3:5; Psalm 19:14]