Be conformed

M THOMPSON (Bahamas), number one in the Draft of the NBA, and world champion with the Lakers, met the Lord Jesus when he was young, and his order of priorities soon began to change. In first place had been girls, second were motorcycles, thirdly came sport and, finally, God. In 1986, when he arrived in Los Angeles from Portland, he explained that his life was changing and that God had to have first place. Before, he had just "conformed" to what all his friends were doing.

Letting the opponent set the pace and style of a game can be the cause of innumerable defeats in the life of a sportsman. It is the same danger that time after time causes defeat in the spiritual life of a Christian - to conform to what the world wants from us. To conform is nothing less than taking on the way of those around us. When we conform, we allow ourselves to be led along and we submit to the rules and customs of the world. And this means defeat and failure for us.

How does it happen? Well, the majority of times, it is a process of which we aren't even aware. Everything begins in the mind. Yes, our mind. If the enemy begins to control this, he knows he has gained a lot of ground. The Devil tries, by all and any means, to place thoughts in our minds that are not according to the will of God, and he does it in an almost subliminal way. He puts ideas into our minds that are against God's word in the areas of pleasure, life motivations, and the character of the world. He uses the television, radio, cinema, internet, the press, information from friends, and individual conversations. We forget that if we allow rubbish to saturate our minds without weighing it against what God says, we will have our hearts full of things that don't make sense and we are destined to failure.

We have a duty to renew our minds every day. How? By learning to think like God thinks and feel like God feels, seeing people and things the way God sees them, and always doing what God would do. Does that sound a bit too spiritual? Even so, it is possible to live that way. We renew our mind when we get rid of all the rubbish that the world wants to feed us with, and we fill it with the word of God, with the knowledge of Christ Jesus, and give control of it to the Holy Spirit. We must pray constantly and be obedient to God in all that we do and wherever we are.

To conform is to stop striving for the best. It's always easier to conform to being second, than to fight to be first. In the same way, it is easier to be like everyone else in this life and be dominated by the world, than to strive to see things the way God does. But remember, if you renew your mind and do not conform to this world, everyone will want to imitate you because they will see that being different is worth it.