Romans 12 and Your Mental Wellness
At Ready to Hope, our goal is to offer a place for young adults to come together and bring whatever is on your heart and mind, so that you can grow your faith and your mental and emotional resilience, and build meaningful relationships.
We are excited to kick off our fall study and group meetings by digging in and discussing Romans 12!
Romans 12 encourages believers to dedicate their entire lives to God as a “living sacrifice,” transforming their minds to live transformed lives by using their unique spiritual gifts to serve others within the unified body of Christ.
What’s even greater is that, when viewed through a mental health lens, it also contains rich insights that promote emotional regulation, identity formation, resilience, and empathy- all of which help us to lead the kinds of life we wish to lead, which Jesus wishes for us, and which enables us to better connect with others!
What a great way to start our fall and set the stage for some incredible growth and connection, right?
Let’s dive in!
We are going to break Romans 12 into two sessions, beginning this week with verses 1-8. There is so much in each verse to think about and discuss and absorb, so we are going to be really purposeful about it and take it slow!
(The version shared here is the NLT version…)
Verses 1-2:
1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
These verses are talking about the ‘renewing of the mind,’ which is a beautiful idea that we can continually hit the reset button, as many times and as often as we need, to build the habit of living according to God’s good and pleasing and perfect will for us.
When you are hard on yourself or judge yourself or struggle with where you are in your life, Romans 12:2 especially can be a reminder to focus on how God loves you.
Around here, we like to use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy a lot (check out more info about it here), and a great way to think about our struggles is that we can surrender to the challenge because God’s got us. It doesn’t make the challenge go away, but it allows us to focus on his love and how he wants us to live our lives.
Present your challenges to God, let him renew your mind and spirit. As often and as many times as it takes.
For most of us, that means often, and indefinitely. Think about renewing your mind as a practice.
So as an example, if you are beating yourself up over not getting up to work out or not finishing a project at work? Give it to God. Renew your mind. Focus on what matters most about you. Remember what it is to walk in love.
Step back from judging yourself as the world may judge you, and instead focus on the truth that you are a child of God and loved wholly and completely, imperfections and all.
Yes, you still want to do your best. Yes, you still want to do what you can to take great care of your body, as it is a gift from God, but when you struggle continually remind yourself of this. Continually renew your mind.
Verses 3-8:
3 Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. 4 Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, 5 so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.
6 In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you. 7 If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well. 8 If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly.
In our spring session, we began to dive into spiritual gifts and how to serve others well, and here Paul gives us another reminder about our spiritual gifts, and a wonderful opportunity!
In verses 3 to 5, we are reminded to look at our gifts with humility, recognizing that we are all an important and essential part of the body of Christ, and each of us has gifts to share and contribute.
Earlier in the year we discussed 1 Corinthians chapter 12, which is another chapter where Paul talks about spiritual gifts. You can check that post out here.
We will definitely come back to a deeper dive on spiritual gifts in our group, but for today, let’s look at these verses through the lens of mental wellness.
First, we want to recognize that Paul here reinforces your individual value and uniqueness!
You have strengths and gifts that will help your community- and if you don’t know yours yet or aren’t sure how to use your gifts, hang around! We will absolutely be working on helping you figure that out!
Additionally, when you realize that every believer has gifts and talents to share, hopefully it makes you realize: you belong. You have a home and a family and a community. Others will share their gifts in an effort to see you grow and find joy and peace, and you get to do the same.
Finally, we want to turn back to an important principle in ACT therapy, which is values-based action.
When you are serving others according to your giftedness, you are doing something! You are being active, and not only are you being active, but you are living out your values of Christian service and love. And simply moving forward with clarity and purpose can bring a sense of accomplishment, supporting and uplifting your mental wellness!
We have covered a lot of ground in just a few short verses here!
And we have so much more to discuss! But for now, it is our hope that today’s verses inspire you to remember these two important ideas:
One: you can continually renew your mind. And we want to support you to do so.
Our mission is your mental wellness, in Christian community.
So we aren’t going anywhere! We want to support you to build the habits and relationships that will help you feel that you are living the rich and fulfilling and meaningful life God desires for you.
And two: you are uniquely designed and gifted, and leaning into your giftedness helps not just your Christian community, it is good for you as well!
Feeling a sense of purpose is a wonderful and powerful way to make your heart lighter. As we move forward together, we will be sure that everyone in our group not only knows their unique gifts, but can find a place to use those gifts to serve others.
We hope that you are as excited about these weeks and months to come as we are!
