Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Are we aware that our lives are being conformed to something – it’s just a matter of what that something is?  What is right?  What is wrong?  What is appropriate?  What is wise?  The more we do things or see others around us do them, the more susceptible we become to accepting those behaviors as the norm.  Sadly, we can accept some very wrong things as being okay, simply because we have unknowingly been conformed to a worldly standard.

Think of typing a note in an email that requires us to hit spell check in order to have errors identified.  But then we only do that if spelling and grammar are important to us.  Even if we reread the email carefully, we can miss all manner of mistakes – that are only caught by clicking on spell check.

Now, think of typing in word processing software where as we type, misspelled words or duplicates have red lines under them.  Grammatical problems have green lines under them – the warnings are there as we type.  We then have the option of correcting them or leaving them.  The choice is ours.

The Lord wants us to live lives where we become aware of problems, issues, sin, etc… as we encounter them or are making decisions.  He provides the warnings if we but have eyes to see and ears to hear.  The Holy Spirit is a fully functional “Spiritual Check” that we don’t have to click on for him to work.  But, the more we are conformed to the pattern of the world, the less we notice the still, small voice speaking within us.  Worse, we can lose any awareness of even caring that we are doing what is right.

Suppose our lives were laid out as documents with all our thoughts, intentions, beliefs, actions put into grammatical form with a fully functioning “Spiritual” spell check in place.  What would our ‘edited documents’ look like?  Do we know or have an idea?  Would they be filled with red underlings?  If so, how would we respond?  Would we experience remorse from the recognition that all the red indicates a life that doesn’t love our God?  Would we have the desire to repent and make the needed changes?

This illustration is far more accurate and applicable than you might imagine.