"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Ro. 12:2).

Every life adopts a pattern. Every life hosts a system of habits. Every life mirrors a model. Your life is a pattern, a system, a mirror, an impersonation of what?

How important is conformity to you? Your desire for conformity determines whom you imitate, the lifestyle you adopt and the image you mirror. Each age demands its inhabitants' conformity to a worldly value system. When that expectation is unmet, the world resorts to seduction, coercion and ridicule. Be mindful, the one conformed to the age is cannibalized by the age.

What does God say about the response you should furnish to the offerings of this age? "Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy" (Ro. 13:13).

The value system of a fallen era can only be fallen. America's society is becoming less Christian and yet more spiritual. This new spirituality is attractive because it imposes no requirements upon its adherents it demands no sacrifice and it has no altar. It boasts of few detractors because it does not require its adherents to live contrary to their society.

You must reject conformity in order to embrace the reconstructing metamorphosis God demands. God commands you to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. As oil distinguishes itself from all other liquids, your motion must be contrary to this world's course. Christ's mind should be your own. This era's godless courses and customs are abhorrent to your Christian mind.

Everyone born of the Spirit is enabled to live a reformed life. Nevertheless, if you adopt Jesus' revolutionary lifestyle, the status quo will be threatened and your reception will not be warm.

The holy transformers God communicates to you as His means of grace are Scripture, prayer, Christian fellowship and observance of His sacraments. Since your mind is your navigator, it must be being constantly deconformed and transformed. Keep your mind girded for action and you will capture the eternal victory (I Pe. 1:13). Create territory in your mind to welcome spiritual matters and you will experience winged transformity.

"Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation" (I Pe. 2:11f.).