As a man thinks so he becomes. Your mind is powerful in becoming who you want to be in life. Your decision affects your total being. Apostle Paul, in today’s Scripture reading, is urging us to first make a decision concerning our bodies by surrendering them to God. Decisions generally serve as guidelines in people’s lives, helping the individual to make the right choices and to take decisive action. Therefore, Apostle Paul encourages us to renew our minds. A renewed mind leads one to make choices and take actions that bring glory to God. If we can lead pure lives in this present world of evil, we must be people whose minds are renewed.

Apostle Paul calls for presenting the body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to the Lord. This kind of sacrifice is living towards God but dead towards sin. It is dead to the flesh but alive to the Holy Spirit, consecrated and well-pleasing to the Lord. As Apostle Paul teaches, this will be our reasonable act of worship.

The believer is not to be conformed to the specifications of the world, where pre-marital sex, cohabitation, masturbation, watching of pornographic materials, and orgies are condoned but rather be transformed through the renewal of the mind. Overcoming the world and not living by its standards is enmity against the things of the world. For instance, to treat pornography as an enemy, you must put resistance against watching television shows and movies that ignite negative passions and lust in you. Declare war against immoral content on social media which soils our righteous linen before God. To keep yourself on this trajectory, you may have to make it your aim to work on yourself daily with the Word of God and prayer, keeping yourself in the discipline of fasting, etc. Other measures such as seeking counselling from mature Christians and church leaders, and keeping constant fellowship with the people of God also prove helpful. This is how you can live a chaste life in a perverse world!