THE LAW OF RENEWAL
Romans 12: 1-10
Renewing of mind according to Romans 12:2 means interpreting of life through the lens of God’s word and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, rather than through the lens of your experience, wounds, preferences, or the opinion of others. Renewing your mind aligns your mind with the truth of God’s word by learning to recognise the lies of the enemy, replace them with the truth of God’s word and then reinforce that truth every time the enemy comes with those lies. 2 Corinthians 10:5 ESV.
Renewed thoughts resulting in new beliefs help you engage with God’s plan for your life because thoughts fuel beliefs. Every time you are flooded with those same types of thoughts that don’t agree with God’s best for your life, simply reject and replace them with God’s Word.
There are habits and beliefs that can only take you to certain level in life. Renewal is so important if we are to grow progressively. Just as the palm tree sheds old branches to develop new ones; while growing we also experience renewal in various aspect of life. This represents the chance to drop old patterns and beliefs that reflection had shown could no longer serve in the journey toward self-actualization. It is a process of reinvention that should help you to break free from stagnation and ultimately tap into your full potential.
Renewal is a continual process of self-discovery, improvement and self-actualization. With renewal, you have to be willing to view the past as the past, learn from the mistakes and let go of it while with an open mind you embrace the future and its promises. Change is constant, embrace it. Challenges will always exist, confront it. The potential for growth is enormous, you have to explore it and leave your comfort zone. The renewal process will not be complete if we only shed the old, we must also embrace the new and evolve into a better version of ourselves.
Isaiah 40:31 contains a great promise of strength for the weary. Using the metaphor of the eagle, Isaiah urges us to wait on the Lord to have our strength renewed. The eagle is a bird like no other. It is said that when it grows old, it undergoes a program of self renewal. This doesn’t come cheap. It is painful. The process requires that the eagle fly to a mountaintop and sit on its nest. There the eagle knocks its beak against a rock until it plucks it out. Afterward, the eagle will wait for a new beak to grow back, and then it will pluck out its talons. When its new talons grow back, the eagle starts plucking its old-aged feathers out. At the end of the process, it comes back with renewed strength and vigour.
Renewed strength is one that would compare to mounting up as an eagle or running without fatigue. How do we get this strength? We may expect Isaiah to share the wisdom of physical rest, exercise, diet, etc. But while those are all God – given sources of strength, they cannot give us the deepest strength we need when we come to the end of ourselves. Isaiah acknowledges this, “even youths shall fail and be weary; and young men shall fall exhausted” (Isaiah 40:30), in other words, even those in their prime with perfect health have limits. We need a stronger strength to match our deep discouragement.
So, how do we get it? There’s only one answer, and here we come to the great promise of this text: “they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.” Not those who work for the Lord, but those who wait for Him. This isn’t about doing our part and asking God to do the rest. Here, we admit that we don’t have the strength we need. We acknowledge that we need the strength only He can give; and we wait for Him, which is more than just passing time. In Hebrew, this word carries with it a sense of hopeful expectation. In the midst of hardship and when going through a stressful phase of life, we look to Him as the one who works all things together for our good.
REFLECTION: Wait and be renewed.
