DEVOTION: April 5

He needed renewal. I didn’t even know his name, but I could tell by his actions and words he was in desperate need of a soul restoration. The way he yelled at his kids and how his body language communicated all screamed renewal was necessary. I looked on with a little bit of pity and a whole lot of judgment and sanctimoniously wished renewal for him. 

She needed renewal, too. Her bitterness and spite was repelling, her anger at the innocent stranger unwarranted. She was self-righteous in her arrogance; I looked on with shock and dismay. She needed renewal right then and there because obviously a renewed mind and spirit would never act. like. that.

And that’s the irony, isn’t it? That as I’m wishing for renewal for someone else, I run smack into my own desperate need for it. Facing head on the scores of sins and depths of darkness that lurk under my peaceable enneagram 9-ness; the thoughts, the anxieties, the judgments, the conclusions and the leaps I make to them. Yet repeatedly, God reminds me that my own mind and spirit are enough for me to worry about. So again and again, I have to choose to lay down the minding of others’ businesses and decide to be more concerned with my own.

When faced with the temptation to judge another’s spirit, all I’m called to do is pray. Pray that if they really need renewal, that God will make Himself known and they will allow Him to do the transforming power of restoration. Pray that if they’re just having a bad day, that He’ll forgive them for those momentary actions. 

And then I have to pray for myself, because there but by the grace of God go I. And give God permission to work in me, so I might be “continually renewed in the spirit of my mind [having a fresh, untarnished mental and spiritual attitude]” (Ephesians 4:23, Amplified). 

Do you find it easier to be consumed with how everyone else is living out their lives, than your own? Pray and ask God to help you live as Paul exhorted:

“This should be your ambition: to live a quiet life, minding your own business and doing your own work, just as we told you before.” (1 Thessalonians 4:11, The Living Bible)

– Monica