If you have your Bibles with you today and you want to follow along, we are going to be looking at a passage in the Old Testament Genesis 39. Today is September 1. Summer is just about over. That is hard to believe isn’t it? Especially when we consider that really it probably in many ways hasn’t come because of all the rain going on. One sure sign that the summer has ended is that the children returned back to school last week for most families. I suspect that there were a lot of tears shed about that. We don’t have children living at home anymore, but I can remember that first day of school. You bring them to school or put them on the bus. It just choked you up. I was driving home from the Sewickley area last week and I went by the bus stop and sure enough I saw parents there with their cameras and getting their kids on the bus and shedding a few tears. I also suspected that, even though there were some tears on the outside, there might have been a little bit of joy on the inside. Joy for some people so much so that they may be able to identify with the woman who was seen on the news last week doing a happy dance when the kids got on the school bus. Did anybody see that? There was some celebration going on with the kids going back to school for the parents at least. But for the kids, returning back to school is not such a happy time. A return back to school means a return back to the books, which means a return back to study, which means a return back to tests, which means a return back to the possibility of failure. That is what we are going to address today; the idea of failure.
As many of you know, we have been going through the series through the summer called “Do not conform. Be transformed.” It is based on Romans 12:2. The idea of “Do not conform to the patterns of the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” We looked at a lot of different patterns in the world, and we came up with a number of them. What we are going to do today is just again examine one remaining pattern. That is the pattern of failure. As I already implied, we live in a culture where we pretty much realize that tests are a part of life. The context of where these tests often occur, or the most frequent context, is normally in some sort of a school setting. From the minute we step foot into school as a preschooler all the way up to college and doctoral programs and beyond, you basically are bombarded with a lot of tests. A lot of tests come in the form of multiple choice, true/false, and that sort of thing. When I was doing a little research, I realized there is a lot of criticism regarding how American kids are tested. Especially in regards to what they call standardized tests. What they have learned is that standardized tests really do not demonstrate what a child has learned but just basically how well that child can take a test. What happens often is I think the teachers teach to the test. They teach the material that they know is going to be tested on because they have to keep the test scores high. The school maintains it status and the kids graduate. The problem with that is when a child graduates from high school or someone graduates from college what happens is you leave the school and enter the real-world environment and you really don’t know what you are doing. You are not able to apply those things you have learned. Some of you know that I received an undergraduate degree from Portland State in Business Administration. I am the type of person that when I first enter a class, I figure out what I need to do to get a grade and I begin to think about how do I need to study for this and what do I need to study. Back then, a long time ago, I was very good at taking tests. I knew how hard I had to study to get a B or an A. I would just study that material. It worked. It got me through college and I think I ended up with a 3.5 average. But when I went into the work world, I had a very difficult time connecting the things I learned in the books to the things in the real work setting. Those standardized tests are not really the best way to determine what the child or adult has learned. As bad as those tests might be or as much criticism we receive about those tests, we know that tests are going to continue. Until they come up with a better system, it still is somewhat of a gauge to see what the child or adult is learning. We know they are going to stick around a while.
One thing we also know is that the testing does not stop once we get out of school. We are constantly placed in environments where we are tested. On a level of school, we are still tested often when we go into a situation like a new job and we have to take some sort of a test or we are going into the military we have to take the entrance test. If we are going to the DMV we have to take the driving test. Going to the doctor we have to take the eye test. Those types of tests are all around us and part of our day. When we begin to expand our notion of what is a test, we begin to see that the testing expands further into new areas, actually in almost every area of our life. In some sense, our entire life is one series of test, after test, after test. For example, when we get up in the morning, our patience is tested when we can’t get the car started. Our patience is tested when we miss the bus. Our attitude is tested when somebody at work says something rude to us or a relative says something rude to us or our willingness to forgive is tested when somebody does do something mean to us. Our integrity is tested when we are at a grocery store when somebody gives us too much change and we have to determine whether we are going to give that extra change back. When we begin to expand the notion of test to these areas, we begin to enter into tests of what I would call morality. Tests of morality. That is really what I want to address today. The idea of morality.
I wanted to start first with just kind of a working definition of what morality is. Morality is the system of rules or beliefs that ideally should govern human behavior with respect to right and wrong, good and evil. That is a pretty standard definition. When Christians think about morality, we get our rules and our beliefs basically from God; the moral lawgiver of the universe. Those laws come through to us through what some would describe as specifically through the revelation of Jesus Christ. The word became flesh. Really specifically through his written word that we call the Bible. That becomes our system of rules and beliefs. If we were to take the Bible and begin to apply it to the culture out there, we quickly begin to see that some things could be classified as moral failures or immorality. It doesn’t take much to realize that we are living in a culture of really a pattern of moral failure. When we watch the news wherever you get it, the internet, the TV, the newspaper, or whatever, you begin to see all sorts of people, celebrities, athletes, politicians, that seem to get caught up in some sort of immorality or moral failure. Take for example this guy. Who is that guy? [picture here] A-Rod. He plays baseball for the Yankees. He got caught up in this performance enhancing drug scandal. If that wasn’t bad enough, he lied about the fact that he was taking the drugs. I suspect from our filter of the word, we would probably consider there is some immorality in that. Then we consider this guy. [picture] Does anybody know who that guy is? It is a little bit more difficult. The San Diego mayor named Bob Filner. His problem was that he couldn’t keep his hands off the ladies in the office. He was accused of sexual harassment, inappropriate kissing, inappropriate comments, inappropriate groping, and those sort of things. Less than a year in office, he was forced to resign. Then we have my third example, which some of you might know. [picture] Who is this young lady? Who is she? Sweet little innocent Hannah Montana. She is the most purest, sweetest girl in the world. Unless you saw Miley Cyrus video last week. Did anybody see that video? I am ashamed you are raising your hands. Debbie told me there would be more people raising their hands. I will be honest with you. I did not see the video but I saw enough news coverage and enough images to know that likely what Miley Cyrus did at the VMAs could easily be classified according to Christian beliefs as immoral. Would most of you agree with that? Those are some immediate examples from the media.
Some of you think I am always picking on the celebrities or the athletes or the politicians. When we are looking for moral failure or immorality, we don’t have to look any farther than our own neighborhood and in some cases even our own family. Immorality is all over us. Moral failure is a pattern in the culture of America. If you don’t believe it, look around. Open your eyes. As we know, there are consequences to immorality. There are consequences to moral failure. Those consequences are many. Things like divorce as a consequence of moral failure. Things like a job loss or a related loss of income. A loss of a reputation. In the case of someone like Miley Cyrus, it is the consequence that someday she may have to stand in front of her sweet little kids and explain to them why she was in a video like that. When she is trying to teach her little 5-year-old or 7-year-old about the importance of purity, the little kid is going to be bringing it up on their iPhone and saying mom who are you to define purity? That is the consequence of living an immoral life. The question is with so many consequences, why would the people engage in immoral acts? The better question is why wouldn’t they? When we think of immorality, we are taking it through our own unique filter called the Bible. I don’t know their background, but some of them may not have that same filter. Some of them may not have a system of beliefs, of rules, of ethics, or codes of conduct to take the life situations through. In their mind, they are not immoral, they are amoral. Amoral basically means without morals. You are indifferent to morals. You have no moral basis. In other words, you have no moral compass whatsoever. I think most people have some sense of morality; it is just often not tied to a cohesive set of morals. When you go through life and you don’t have a set of morals or you don’t have a defined moral compass, when you encounter what we would describe as tests in life, what is going to happen? You are going to fail. The sad thing about someone like this is that they don’t even know they failed. It is like a kid that shows up at school and gets a pop quiz on topics they know nothing about because it was never even covered and they fail the test and they never even realize they failed the test. What do they do when they hit the same situation? They fail it again. They fail it again. They fail it again. Then you see that pattern of failure. That is how we get this pattern of failure going on. The Christian, on the other hand, has a marked advantage over amoral people because they have a moral compass. They have the Bible. They have a real advantage because they not only know that there will be tests in life, they know generally which topics will be covered at those tests and they also have a phenomenal resource at their disposal 24/7 to make sure they don’t fail their tests. That is what I really want to talk about in the remaining minutes. Those available resources.
First of all, think about the idea that Christians know that they will be tested. If you are a Christian for any length of time, you should have figured it out that testing is a normal pattern of the Christian life. How do we know? We go back to God’s word. If anything God’s word, we see in God’s word there is a pattern of testing from the beginning of the Bible all the way to the end. Story after story after story where the characters in the Bible hit some sort of situation, are tested, and then either succeed or fail. Think about it. Start with Adam and Eve. They were presented with temptation. They failed. Outside the garden who was there? Cain and Abel. Cain failed and killed his brother but Abel actually had succeeded. He was jealous because Abel had succeeded in bringing the right offering to God. Then you have Abraham who succeeded because he was willing to offer his son Isaac up as a sacrifice to God but failed because he was willing to offer his wife up to a Pharaoh or somebody without thinking about it because he was afraid that he would be killed. Then you have King David who as a boy was successful in fighting off Goliath but then how many chapters later was he a failure because he slept with Bathsheba. We see these patterns over and over. Success and failure testing. We see these patterns over and over and over again. Really one of my favorite stories comes out of the passage today. It is the story of Joseph. We are looking at Genesis 39. The story of Joseph goes way back. I think it starts about chapter 37. We are going to look at one situation in 39. While you are looking that up, a little bit of background. When I talk about joseph, I realize that some people don’t know that when we say Joseph we are not talking about Joseph of the New Testament, the Joseph-and-Mary Joseph. For a long time, I didn’t know that as a Christian. I just wanted to make that clear. We are talking about a Joseph in the Old Testament, the son of Jacob, the son of Rachel. He had all these brothers. Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob. Because he was the favorite son of Jacob, his brothers were very jealous of Joseph. So jealous that they took him into the wilderness and threw him into a pit and left him to die. When a caravan came by of slave traders, they found out they could make a couple shekels at that time off of these slave traders, so they sold their brother into slavery for a few shekels. God’s hand was on Joseph. We would see that Joseph was sold to a guy named Potiphar who happened to be the captain of the guard of Pharaoh’s army. He had a pretty good gig. In fact, he found so much favor in Potiphar’s eyes that Potiphar said this whole place is yours. Just take care of it. I trust you completely. Take care of all my possessions. And that is what Joseph did. As we know, Potiphar had a wife and a wife that had roaming eyes. She had her eyes on this young man named Joseph and she began to entice him to draw him in to attempt to get Joseph to go to bed with her. That is where we pick up the story on Joseph in chapter 39:1. I am going to read through that entire section before I go back and comment on it. Reading from Genesis 39:1. (Scripture read here.)
Pretty racy story huh? Some of you didn’t even know that story was in there. You need to read your Bible and quit reading those romance novels because the romance stuff is right here. We have a situation where Joseph is given everything. The one thing he didn’t want was Potiphar’s wife and she wanted him and tried to entice him to go to bed with her. Joseph, seeing this as a test, said uh-uh. I am out of here. I want nothing to do with that. We see in this story that the Lord’s favor was on Joseph. In fact, if you paid attention, you would see in verse 2 it says that “The Lord was with Joseph and her prospered.” Then you go down to verse 21 and it says “The Lord was with him. He showed him kindness and granted him favor.” This whole section is bookended by the idea that Joseph was in the Lord’s favor. He was in the Lord’s favor not simply because he ran away from Potiphar’s wife. He was in the Lord’s favor because he understood a key thing. He understood that to engage in some sort of relation with Potiphar’s wife was not only to sin against Potiphar, it was to sin against God. That is made very clear. When Potiphar’s wife is trying to entice him, he says “No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God.” You could see Joseph was a man of high morals. He got it. We see a pattern of testing in the Old Testament and we see it in the New if we take the time to look at it. One thing we have to realize is it is easy to sit back here 4,000 years later and say that is a nice story with a nice moral. But see we forget that God’s story and their story is our story. In many ways, we are stepping into that story. The minute we become saved, we step into the story. We step into God’s story. We step into History. Which means that if all these characters had been tested, why would we think that we would not be tested. Testing is a part of the Christian experience. The question is why. The answer to the why question is he loves you too much to leave you where you are at. In other words, when you become a Christian, when you accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and go through the baptism, you are at a place where you have something new going on inside of you but you have this old man or old woman or this old nature that is hanging on the back of you. That has to be worked off before you begin to experience that new creation inside of you. God loves you so much that he is not going to say okay you are done. You have been baptized. You placed a membership or whatever. I am just going to leave you alone. He is determined to chip away all the old junk that doesn’t look like Christ anymore until you begin to look like Christ. It is going to go on all your life. The way he does it is through testing. You cannot grow in your faith without being tested. I challenge anybody if they would say you can do that. Sure you can read Bible passages. You can memorize all you want, but the best growth comes through testing. It is testing where you are refined. Just like a product. Before a manufacturer will let a product on the marketplace, it has to be tested to prove its worth. Why would we think that we would be any different? From our creator who wants to put us in the kingdom, why would we think we would not be tested? We are tested. So get that in your mind and quit complaining about being tested and just realize that is part of the process. Once you begin to realize you are being tested, you become sensitive to it. You become aware of it. You begin to realize that testing happens every day almost every moment as the guy named Job would say. We don’t have time to get into the story but Job is a phenomenal story in the Old Testament where God allowed Satan to test Job to see his worth. Job came through with flying colors. Job makes an interesting statement back in chapter 17. He says “What is man that you make so much of him that you give him so much attention that you examine him every morning and test him every moment.” I sense a little frustration in Job’s voice but I sense a little honesty. It’s like Job is saying Lord just back off a little bit would you. Stop it. Every second I am being tested. I am just having a hard time with that. He might be an exaggeration, but if you would examine your life every single day from the phone calls you receive, the emails you answer, the people you talk to, the thoughts in your mind, I guarantee you are being tested. You can count a dozen a day. I guarantee it. We can expect to be tested.
You may say how do I know what to study for such a test? The reality is that we have a pretty good idea of what is going to be covered on those exams as we think about God’s word. The material is right here. Starts with book of Exodus 20 that talks about the Ten Commandments. That is some starting material. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Don’t violate the Sabbath. Don’t commit adultery. Those sorts of things. I suspect if most of you were to take the Ten Commandments through the filter or your life or your heart you would begin to say I do pretty good there. I haven’t killed anybody this week. I kind of slip up on that Sabbath thing. I don’t really hold the Sabbath dearly. I smart mouth my parents a little bit. I would give myself overall a C+ or B- but at least I passed. That is good but it is only a starting point. Because we know that we are not Old Testament Christians. We look at the Old Testament. We learn from The Old Testament, but we are New Testament Christians. To be New Testament Christians means that we are not only held accountable to the teaching of the law in the Old Testament the way the Jews were, we are held more accountable to the law of Christ. The law of Christ as revealed in the gospels. We see that Christ expanded so much on the Ten Commandments. In one part he says, talking to the Pharisees, you have heard that it is not okay to murder but I tell you if you are angry at your brother that is a sin. Then this one that is kind of well known or should be well known. You have heard it said do not commit adultery, but I tell you anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. That covers a lot of things. That means when you were watching that Miley Cyrus video you men and anything on TV and you come across something pretty provocative and you give it more than a passing glance, you failed the test. F. It means that you woman who are a little too involved in romance novels or your magazines, you too are failing the test. You men who can’t give just a passing glance to an attractive woman who walks down the street, you are lusting in your heart. You are failing the test. Jesus just expands this whole idea of the commandments and you begin to think there is a lot that this would cover. To make matters worse, you have the apostle Paul who comes along afterwards and he decides to unpack everything even more because he is living in a certain situation. He is living at a time and addressing certain churches with certain issues so he has to bring up all sorts of stuff that really are considered immoral acts such as gossip, lies, slander, greed. Those are added to the list. Those are just a short list. You think, Chuck, I read the Bible but this is a lot of stuff. Do you think that God would just give us a list in the front or back of the Bible? Just a nice long list. These are all the things you shouldn’t do. This is it. Every single thing that Jesus taught, Moses taught, Paul taught or whoever, it is right here for a nice list that you can memorize and pass the test. Sorry that is not the kind of teacher he is. I already said that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in the school system and it doesn’t work in life and it especially does not work in the spiritual realm. God doesn’t want you to memorize a bunch of facts so that you can answer the question on Bible jeopardy. He doesn’t care about the Bible quizzes. It is a good way of learning it, but what he cares about is taking that information, the facts, the stories, everything, taking it from your head and letting it go down into your heart. Because when it is in your heart is when you are really going to recall it. What you are going to do when it is in your heart, you begin to meditate it. You begin to think about it. You begin to pray about it. You begin to say what situation would this apply in? Then all of a sudden somebody says what about work. This might apply here. When I think about it relating just to school, if instead of just memorizing a list of facts, you took that information and you actually thought about it, which some people do, smart kids think about how might this apply to the situation I am going to go into, they do better. What God is not interested in is just giving you a bunch of facts and passages to memorize so you can pass a quiz. He wants you to get it to your heart. When it gets down to your heart, what happens is you begin to actually have success. You begin to approach all these life situations and you begin to get better grades. You may not get As right away, but you get a C or occasional B. You do that because really you are kind of developing a sixth sense. When a Christian is out in the world or whatever he or she is placed in, school, home, work, whatever it is, and you have something before you that resembles a test, you know how to act. I am talking about the Christians. The Christians that believe they have been born again and have the spirit of God living in them. Don’t you know when you are about to sin or when you are tempted to sin? You don’t need a list do you? It is very clear. You don’t have to say let’s see. I am watching this show and I think in Matthew Jesus talked about lusting. No you just know it is not right. Or I am about to keep this extra change that the clerk gave me and I think something in the Ten Commandments says do not steal. You don’t need that because God has written his law on your heart. Do you get that? You say Chuck how do I access that information when I need it?
This is the third thing I want to bring home. Not only do we know the test is coming. Not only do we have a pretty good idea what material is going to be covered. But we have this phenomenal resource called the Holy Spirit that is actually with us all the time 24/7 that we can call. It is like we have this built-in tutor that walks around with us. The passage I wanted to show was this. The Psalmist says “I have written your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” As you go through life and as you begin to meditate on the word and have it written in your heart, the odds are you are going to be able to pass the test and not sin against God. As we think of how are we able to do this, it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that lives within us. The passage in John 14 says “But the counselor, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” That is a lot. Everything that has been mentioned in that book. Even the stuff that is not written down. The Holy Spirit is there and he is going to teach you. He is going to counsel you. He is available 24/7 to be there with you so when you hit these things you don’t really have to fail. He will actually let you fail because some people even though they know this and the spirit is sitting there. They are like I just think I am going to do it on my own this time. What happens is they fail, they flop, but as long as that person’s heart is generally bent towards obedience toward God and serving God and success really then I think that the spirit understands that. So he says okay. You failed this time. Just don’t let it happen again. You go home. You repent of it. You remorse. You pray about it. You say God I feel bad about this situation. I know I should have done something differently in this. I know I shouldn’t have let loose my anger. I know I shouldn’t have looked lustfully at this person. I know I shouldn’t have been on this website on the internet but please Lord would you give me another chance? Work with me. I really do want to succeed in this test. I want to succeed. We have such an advantage over the people who have no system of morality available to them. Again, we know the test is going to occur. We know the material that is going to be covered. We have the spirit of God living within us to make sure that we can at least pass the test if not ace the test.
In closing, I think about why is it that Christians still fail? I don’t mean periodically fail. We all fail periodically. I am talking about the pattern of failure that we see in the world; sometimes we see it in Christians. Do you believe that? We see the same pattern of failure in the world and we see that in Christians. Why is that? I was thinking about that. I can’t pinpoint an explanation other than again the idea is that maybe they haven’t understood the concept that we are tested. That is a part of life. Or they haven’t figured out that the material to be covered needs to be studied, needs to be memorized, needs to be meditated on. Or again they have not figured out or believe by faith that they have the spirit of God and that they have that resource in them.
But there is a fourth option. The fourth option that came to me is that they don’t want to pass. There are kids that don’t want to pass. There are kids that prefer to stay back. There are people that prefer to stay in their muck and their mire and their immorality. Why would anybody want to do that? The answer is because it is comfortable. It is what they know. It is their normal. Also they know if they were to change and they were to start having success on the test of life or morality what would happen is they would move to a new level of spiritual maturity which brings a whole new level of expectations and a whole different caliber of testing. They say I don’t really want anything to do. I prefer to stay in my muck. To those people I say you know what then why were you saved? You wasted the blood of Jesus. I am being as direct as I can. When you live in your muck and you claim to be a born-again Christian, you wasted the blood of Christ on the cross. Not only that, you violated the whole command that I have been talking about this whole summer that comes out of Romans 12:2. The idea “Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” You refuse to be transformed. If you are not going to be transformed, you are conforming to the world, which means you are just adding to the mess of the world. You are ultimately adding to the immorality of the world. Again you are wasting your salvation. It is not just about getting to heaven. It is about being transformed so that you can transform others. Do you get that? It has nothing to do with getting into heaven. It is about living the kingdom life here and now and helping God unfold that kingdom in this world in the here and now. We are transformed to transform others. That is what it is about. If you don’t believe that, stop coming to church really. You are kidding yourself.
In close, I think about the Miley Cyrus thing again. I come back to that. Seriously, I did not watch the video. I was tempted to watch the video just to classify it as research or whatever, but I did not watch it. I did watch some interviews. Some of you may have seen there was an interview with Brooke Shields. Did anybody see that? Apparently Brooke Shields played Hannah Montana’s mother. In this interview, the news reporter said what did you think of Miley’s performance at the Video Music Awards? The comment that she made was she is desperate. She is desperate. Of all the things that I read about, that stuck with me. I started thinking what is she desperate for? Some people say she is desperate because she is trying to break out of this little girl Disney image and become a woman and show the world that she can be a woman performer. That is why she was doing that some would say. Others would say she was desperate simply for attention. Others would say she is desperate for the love of her father, Billy Ray Cyrus. She came from a dysfunctional home. Just read about her on the internet. She is desperate for the love of her father. I come to the conclusion that she is desperate for the love of God that comes through the salvation of Jesus Christ. She doesn’t even know that. She is desperate for the love of God in her life. I know there are some mothers out there and parents who saw the video or know their kids watched it because kids see everything. They are trying to remove it from their iPhones or iPads or whatever. They are trying to get rid of all the iTunes. Even the old Hannah Montana DVDs. That is okay. But all I say is we are talking about a culture. As you look at culture and you see this situation with Miley, this is an opportunity to sit with your little girl or little boy and begin to have a talk with them. Say I know you watched this video. What did you think about it? What was going on in your head? What was going on in your heart? If the kid is honest with you and the kid grew up in a Christian home, the kid is going to say it made me feel a little bit uncomfortable. There is your opportunity to say do you know why it made you feel uncomfortable? Because you are a Christian. You have been raised in a Christian home with a Christian upbringing and you go to a Christian church and you are getting Christian teaching and you know that all this goes against everything that you have ever learned. That is why you are feeling uncomfortable. It is an opportunity to show why it is important to have a sense of morality. More important than that is another opportunity. We want to point the fingers and condemn someone like Miley Cyrus. She is just a kid. She is a 20-year-old confused person and doesn’t know who she is and trying to carve out some identity. If that was your child, what would you want the people to do? Pray for Miley. Sit with your child and say let’s say a prayer. What are we going to pray for? We are going to pray that her life would change but we are going to pray that you would put a man or a woman of Christian influence, someone who has experienced the transforming power of Jesus Christ in their own life, and put it in the life of Miley and I guarantee in her whole circle of relationships there is some Christian there that is feeling that prompting after watching that video to get involved in Miley Cyrus’ life and begin to share with her the transforming power of Jesus Christ. That is what you need to be praying for with your child. Not only that. Don’t stop there. We know that we will never have the connection with the celebrities. We will never have the accessibility to the celebrities or the politicians or whatever, but we have access to the people in our own world. We have access to the students. The people in our school. The people in our workplaces and the people in our church who may be living amoral or immoral lives. The bottom line is they are living lives that are inconsistent with God’s system of values and beliefs and rules. Pray for the opportunity to come into a person’s life because you have experienced the transformed life and you honestly believe that living the Christ-like life is the better option. Get into somebody’s life but don’t get in there to condemn that person. Bring into the situation God’s law of love. In other words, come in there and bring the love message. We love you so much that I am not going to let you stay like this. I love you too much to allow you to continue in this squalor that you are living in and begin to paint a picture of what the Christ-like life, the kingdom life looks like. When you begin to do that, you not only continue to transform your life, you begin to transform the lives of others and ultimately the life of the world. You become a transforming agent in the world. I close with the passage that I started with at the beginning of the summer. Romans 12:2 “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Let us pray.
