THIS is it.

Have you ever heard something before...possibly several times before...and all of the sudden you have that "lightbulb" moment and it just makes sense?

Such was the case yesterday when one of the teaching pastors at church read Romans 12:1-2 from The Message. 

"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you:  Take your everyday, ordinary life--your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life--and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. you'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what He wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you."

As I already stated, I know I've read this before and I know I liked it when I read it. But yesterday, everything He's been calling me to...every reminder to trust the process...ever instance when the Spirit has reminded me or I have reminded my children that if we call ourselves by the name of Christian that our lives will look very different from the culture around us...every time I have told them that the only difference between us and other mammals is that we have the gift of being able to "stop and think"...every one of these and so much more can be summed up in these two verses.

You see, He wants all of me...my "sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life". And He wants me to ask the questions of why our culture is the way it is and acts the way it acts and accepts the things it accepts without ever questioning. He gives us the Holy Spirit so that we can beg for discernment and then we can readily "recognize what He wants from (us), and quickly respond to it."

What happens when I live by these principles that have been making more and more sense to me individually and blew me away yesterday when I heard them all together in the context of letting the Spirit transform me? "God brings the best out of (me), develops well-formed maturity in (me)."

This is what He's been moving me toward all along. Funny how just this weekend I've had conversations with friends about praying for discernment and the Spirit's been asking me to ask Him for more of it. Then this beautiful passage drops in my lap and I just get it. I get what He's asking. He wants me to be ready at a moment's notice to recognize what He wants and to obey instantly. In order to do that, every day I need to give my ordinary life to Him as an offering.

Not having to figure out all of the details of how I should be living this life, yet trusting that He will tell me each step of the way, and knowing that it will look so different from the culture around me that people will see the reflection of God's Spirit in me and be drawn to Him???

Yep.

Sign. Me. Up!