In Eugene Peterson’s The Message Bible, under the heading “Place Your Life Before God,” Romans 12:1-2 says:
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.
My life was completely ordinary, at least to me. Every day seemed like a continuation of the last, nothing extra-ordinary, nothing all that exciting or worth your time to read about. Then, I did just as this passage said—I placed my life before God. I embraced all that God was offering me just by making room in my life for Him. All the old bad habits I cut out, He replaced with better ones. All the time I used to waste, He has now filled with relationships, fun, fulfillment and joy. All the distractions I allowed to hold me captive, He has refocused and recentered my heart on its purpose in the joy I have found helping others. Now I realize that this “70 in 7” project is a new story in my life, one I’m going to be telling until the day I die.
Changed from the inside out. It started with surrender—a surrender of my spirit and body and mind. I began to recognize what He wanted from me; I quickly began to respond. And just as He promised, He’s bringing out the best in me and is developing well-formed maturity in me too. What started on the inside has started making its way out, and people can see it all over me. Not just from the weight loss, but from a deep and joyful radiance that is just starting to spring forth. Tonight and many nights I find myself coming to the end of my day thinking, “I’m so happy.” Maybe with a little bit of surprise, a bit of shock, a lot of awe. The contentment I sense is so much more tangible than these words I type, so much bigger than all the pain I’ve left behind, so much more alive than I ever dreamed. And over the next month as I round out the 70 blog posts I first committed to, I will endeavor to explain in more concrete and visual illustrations just how I have seen God’s hand at work bringing this all to pass.
The Art of Choosing True Life 