A Transformed Disciple III
By: Pastor Donny Granberry
The two Sundays, previous to Easter Sunday, we took a studied about becoming a transformed disciple, or a Christian.
Out second study took us to the question, “What does it mean to be a transformed disciple?”
We discovered that being a transformed disciple means:
• Submitting to God as the final authority in everything.
• That we make Christ the ultimate model for living.
• That we love and respect His Church.
Let’s return to out text.
Romans 12:1-2 NIV
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship. 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.
The Message (paraphrased version)
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. 2Don’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.
This week we will look into three more areas of what it means to be a transformed disciple.
I. To be a Transformed Disciple means to seek intimacy
with God through Prayer.
It would be a sad relationship if there were little or no desire to meet together or communicate on a regular basis.
The essence of Christianity is our relationship with God, not our knowledge of biblical theology.
The Lord symbolizes His relationship with His Church in terms of a husband and wife.
Perhaps the most untapped spiritual resource and underused divine privilege, both corporately and individually, in the Church today is prayer.
The twenty-first century Christian needs to be taught the value, importance, and benefit of prayer or there will be a generation that will not know God.
They may know about Him but will never truly know Him.
The prayer-less life is a God-less life.
I’m not talking about “Now I lay me down to sleep, or God is good, God is great, let us thank Him for our food.”
Prayer is more than a form; it is a Force, especially when praying in the Holy Spirit.
Prayer, in the Holy Spirit, will bring supernatural power.
Our Lord realized that people would face tremendous stress and pressures; therefore He devised a way for the Holy Spirit to pray through them.
1 Corinthians 14:2 NIV
For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit.
It would take much more than a point in a message to expound on the privilege of prayer.
• Prayer is the source of spiritual strength and renewal of the soul.
• It is divine consultation in the time of great need.
• It is communication with the creator unlimited by time, space, or language.
• It was an absolute necessity in the life of our Savior when He lived among us in the flesh.
• It was the daily exercise of the first disciples and the secret to their boldness and faith.
• It is the thing that Satan dreads and is what God delights in.
• It opens the door to Heaven and raises up a standard against Hell.
• “The angel fetched Peter out of prison, but it was prayer that fetched the angel!”
II. To be a Transformed Disciple means to be a student
of God’s Word.
What a marvelous gift believer’s possess, the word of God.
The Holy Bible is still the #1 selling book of all time, but I’m afraid that, although it may be the best selling, it may also be one of the most unread.
I know that there are many wonderful Christian books out there and I encourage you to read them.
I know that there are also many wonderful Christian magazines and other publications, they can be beneficial also.
They may be good aides in our walk, they may bring encouragement, and they may give you good ministry ideas.
Do you believe everything you read in the newspaper? No
Do you believe everything you read in the Bible? Yes
Then why do so many people spend more time reading what they do not believe than what they believe?
No book, magazine, or any other oracle should ever take the place of your daily reading of the word of God.
The Bible is the truth, the true word of God, and only the truth can set you free.
The Bible is:
• The moral compass in the midst of a lost, immoral world.
• It is the living word from the living God.
• It is the basis and foundation of a dynamic faith.
• It reveals God’s truth as opposed to man’s ideas.
• Its rulings are made by the Supreme Justice of Heaven and cannot be changed.
The Bible has been banned, burned, and scoffed by many throughout history.
Stalin, and Communist Russia, piled Bibles in large heaps and burned them claiming that the Red Book would take its place and the Bible would be forgotten forever.
Yet Christians, meeting underground in house churches kept the Word of God alive in Russia and today you can hardly find a Red Book, it has been replaced by the living Word of God.
Mark 13:31
Jesus said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word will not pass away.”
Solomon, to whom God granted great wisdom, wrote this;
Proverbs 14:12
“There is a way that seems right unto man, but in the end it leads to death.”
The words and wisdom of man often sound right and seem right, but man does not possess the eternal compass for life’s journey.
If we hide the word of God in our hearts we will not be influenced by what sounds good and feels good but by the word of God.
We don’t need to be just hearers of the word; we must be doers of the word.
A transformed disciple means that we seek intimacy with God in prayer, that we become students of the word, and …
III. A Transformed Disciple means to be the
incarnation of Jesus in thought, word, and deed.
Incarnate – Invested with bodily nature and humanly form.
Simply stated this means don’t just talk the talk, but walk the walk.
Someone might ask, how can I, being a human, be like Christ who was both God and man?
Because of the ability of the Holy Spirit to teach, guide, direct, and empower every obedient disciple of Christ.
The DNA of the believer is “Divinity Now Actualized.”
It is God’s nature and life expressed in our character by the Fruit of the Spirit, and secondly through the Gifts of the Spirit.
ILLUSTRATION
I heard the story of a blind girl who sold costume jewelry in a busy airport. Someone running to catch a plane bumped into her stand and knocked everything over and scattered jewelry everywhere.
Overwhelmed at trying to gather everything back up she began to cry in frustration.
Seeing her plight, a man cam and put his arm around her and calmed her and proceeded to put her display back together.
When finished, he took out his wallet and gave her a sizeable bill for time lost and some jewelry that was broken.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every born-again believer in America lived and acted so that the spiritually blind would know that they had been in the presence of a Christ-indwelt person?
Simply put, a transformed disciple who lives as the incarnation of Christ is to be Jesus in skin.
Acts 4: They knew that they had been with Christ.
People around should know that we have been with Christ.
