Be Not Conformed

Conformed to this World

From the time we come into this world, the world begins to conform us to itself. This happens through the various experiences we have in life, through our upbringing, through our education, and through the things that happen in our lives, all of which can affect us in a positive way or negative.

We become conditioned to think of ourselves in a certain way. Many people come to believe that they’re just average or even less than average, based on their average success in school or in their average performance in the workplace, or what people say about them, and so on and so forth. And all these things contribute to our overall self image of who we are.

A Poor Self Image Hinders Faith

We can develop a poor inner image, which can hinder us in our faith. The scriptural example of this is where the children of Israel spied out the land of Canaan and saw the giants, and it says, we were as grasshoppers in our own sight.

And this weak image of themselves prevented them from inheriting the promised land. Their own self image kept them out of what God had promised them, and instead they wandered in the wilderness for forty years.

Unable to Mix Faith with the Promise

Think about it. Because they saw themselves as small, they could not mix faith with the promise God had given them, and the word did not profit them, it did not produce anything in their lives.

But the scripture we read in Romans 12 tells us to be transformed, to be changed into a different form, to be metamorphosed, by the renewing or the renovation of the mind. Our thinking has to be changed. The way we see ourselves has to change.

What does that mean? It means to be reworked in our thinking, in our imagination, in the image we have of ourselves. How? By receiving the word of God concerning who we really are in God’s sight, who we are in Christ.

Abraham’s Transformation

Abram had to change the inner image of himself. When he was 75 years old, God had already promised him a child, but the promise had not happened yet, and his faith to continue believing for it was waning.

What was he saying? He was saying, Lord, You said you were going to give me a child, but You haven’t done it. And based on the way of the world, one born in my house is supposed to be my heir. What else am I going to do, Lord, but make this man, Eliezer, my heir?

So Shall Thy Seed Be

Notice. It says God brought him forth abroad and showed him a different image. Abram had evidently been either in his tent or just in his familiar dwelling place. And the Lord had to bring him out to a more open place to show him a different picture.

And that's what each of us must do to form a new image of ourselves. We need to break away from the familiar and sow the promises of God into our heart and allow them to create a different picture of us. We need to become who He says we are.

A Different Picture

Abram had to do that. He had to receive a different picture, a different image of himself. God said, look up in the sky and count the stars, if you can. That’s how many children you’re going to have. That became the image that he looked at.

In another place God told him that his seed would be like the sand by the seashore. And so, Abram now had something to think about and imagine. In the daytime, he would look at the sand. In the nighttime he would look at the stars.

This allowed him to visually see how many children he would have. It gave him food for his imagination, food for his faith. He could dream about having all those children. He could see it as his reality through those images.

And the Bible says that he died having not seen the promise come to pass. But did the promise come to pass? Yes.

Abraham’s Seed

Every born again believer in Christ is a child of Abraham. There are about two and a half billion Christians on the earth today, not to mention all the believers in Christ who have gone on from previous generations. Abraham indeed has billions and billions of children, like the stars of heaven and the sand by the seashore.

Abram’s Self Image had to Change

But God had to change the image on the inside of Abram before he could have faith to believe for it to happen. Confident hope activates faith. Abram looked at these images every day and every night for 26 years, and then Isaac, the promised seed, was born.

How was Abraham able to consider not his own body that was now dead nor the deadness of Sarah’s womb? He had a bigger image that he was looking at. He was looking at the stars of heaven and the sand by the seashore. What God had promised him was bigger than the contradictions.

What’s the lesson here? We all have an image of ourselves, an inner image of who we think we are. Perhaps we see ourselves as the victim of sickness and infirmity. But God says, by His stripes ye were healed. We need to change the picture. We need to allow the promise of God to change our inner image.

Or maybe we see ourselves as an average person who can only expect a mediocre life. But, you know, God never made any average people. He has a great plan and purpose for every one of us. We need to change the picture on the inside.

Maybe we see ourselves as timid and shy, but the Bible says God has not given us a spirit of timidity, and it says that the righteous are bold as a lion. We need to change the inner image.

Changing the Inner Image

It is possible to change the inner image we have of ourselves. Did you know that we think not in words but in pictures or images?

For example, think of an orange, a big beautiful orange. Now, we don’t see the word ‘orange’ in our mind. We see a big beautiful orange.

Now, as an experiment, stop seeing that orange. What do you still see? That orange. It’s still there. We cannot just make an image go away. We cannot just unsee it.

You can’t rebuke it away. You cannot just command it to go. The only way to change that image is to think of another image, to overwrite the first image.

For example, think of a banana, a fresh yellow banana. What do you see now? A lovely yellow banana. Where did the orange go? Nobody knows, it just left. You replaced that image with another image.

Be Ye Transformed

And the Bible says to be transformed by the renewing of the mind. In other words, see another image. Why? So that you may be able to examine, scrutinize, and experience the will of God in your life. We need to use the word of God, the promises of God, to create a new image in our heart and mind. If we look at a new image long enough the old image will go away.

The Father of Our Faith

What do we renew our mind with? The word of God, the promises that God has given us. We sew the word, the promises of God into our heart, and we exercise our imagination to see ourselves having what God has promised us. That’s what Abraham did, and he is, after all, the father of our faith. The way he did it is the way we do it.