As we enter Fallautumn, many people begin to assess this year and make plans for next year. But in such an uncertain world, how do we find our way?. In the coming This month, we’ll be focusing on God’s will and decision-making. This second devotion helps us understand the process where God informs our decision-making:

IN WORD – Life and peace. Every human being craves such blessings. Every human being strives for them too. The striving can take many forms. Some seek their life and peace in work, others in relationships. Some focus on their sexuality, others on intellectual inquiry. Some even reduce life and peace to such things as eating and drinking or spending and acquiring.
Pleasure, passions, and people become the objects of our desire, as we try to construct our life and peace from the things around us. And though we seek the blessing of life and peace in such things, we are really accomplishing death for ourselves. Nothing will satisfy apart from the Spirit of God. Nothing. The mind is a miraculous thing. It’s also corrupt. It doesn’t know how to worship God until it is told. Even then, it must be empowered. Fallen flesh does not worship God naturally, so our only hope is beyond the natural.
If we really want life and peace, we have to realize that the mind will not find it with its own intuition or inquiry. It has to embrace an outside Guide. It needs the Spirit of God. Contrary to the tradition of many Christians, the mind is a critical locus of worship. The heart has its passions, and God loves it when those passions are directed toward Him. But God is worshiped logically and reasonably as well. The Logos who designed all of creation with unfathomable brilliance and precision is worthy of our worship, and our worship of Him is not to be a worship from ignorance. The Creator gave us our own minds so that we might begin to understand His.
IN DEED – Use your brain. That’s the encouragement of all the Scriptures that urge wisdom and intelligent worship. But submit your brain to the guidance of the Spirit. Make this your prayer: Lord, fill my mind with Your thoughts; give me insight into Your ways; help me to appreciate Your wisdom. Let my mind behold Your glory. Grant me life and peace through Your Spirit. “Sanctification is the mind coming more and more under the Holy Spirit’s control.” —David Jackman (in “Walking with God” by Chris Tiegreen)

Today’s devotion reminds us that we will not naturally follow God. We have been corrupted by a sinful world and the tendency is to do the opposite of God’s plans for us. But our heart has a God- shaped hole that only God can satisfy, – and it beckons us to something beyond this world. Our daily struggle is to listen to our heart and turn to the Holy Spirit to renew our minds so that we will conform to God’s original design for us.
Romans 7 – 8 are the best description of this battle between flesh and Spirit. Take time to reflect on it this week and consider what drives your life, then ask the Holy Spirit to transform you and empower you to be able to choose the right path of life. Have a blessed week! – from Singapore, Pastor Sam