In the previous studies, I’ve outlined three practical steps you need to take if you are to find God’s plan for your life. First you have to let God recreate you, make you over again, according to His pattern and His purpose. Second, you have to lay your body on God’s altar as a living sacrifice, to make yourself completely and unreservedly available to God. Third, as you do this, God, on His side, renews your mind. He imparts to you a different way of thinking and looking at things; different values, standards, motives, and purposes. Only when your mind is thus renewed can you begin to find out in your personal experience what God’s will is for your life. The further you progress in discovering God’s will, the better it becomes. In its first stage, it is good. In its second stage, it is acceptable. But in its third stage, it is perfect, it’s complete, entire, provides for every need, covers every situation.
Now I’m going to explain to you the fourth step which follows on from the three steps I’ve already outlined. The fourth step is finding your place in the body of Christ; that is, the corporate, committed fellowship of all true believers. We go back to Romans 12:3, the verse that we were looking at in the previous studies in connection with the renewed mind, and we’ll read on from there the next two verses and see what follows immediately from the renewed mind, verse 3 and following:
“For through the grace given to me I say to every man among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”
So the renewed mind directs us to our right place in the body. We come to realize that we’re just one member, incomplete on our own, incapable of functioning on our own as God intends us to function and that in order to be complete and to function in accordance with God’s purpose and God’s place, we have to become a member in a body. We have to be joined to other members by a kind of commitment that enables us to work together and not just as isolated individuals.
I’ve often marveled, as I’ve been in a plane and as the radar of the plane zeroes in on the particular airport and the beam that comes to it from the airport’s radar and how, as the two lock in to one another, that plane comes down in exactly the right place at exactly the right speed and makes a safe and perfect landing. I want to suggest to you that you can think of your renewed mind like the radar in the plane. When you lock in with the Spirit of God, then that renewed mind of yours brings you down into exactly the right place in the body and you become a member of God’s body, of Christ’s body, the Church.
In next part, we’ll take a further look in how to find your place in the Church.
Father, I first want to thank You for my brothers and sisters, and that I’m not alone, but part of Your Body. Please help me to know what my place is in Your Body, and what the specific task is You have assigned for me in Your wisdom and provision. Help me to renew my mind, so I may be sensitive for Your Holy Spirit’s direction. In Jesus’ Name, amen!
