The last time I spoke with you if you remember I used Romans 12:1-2 as my text and since then I have been really struggling with exactly what this text means to me.
Let me read it to you again and I want you to pay attention to what it says.
And so dear Christian friends,
I plead with you to give your bodies to God.
Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will accept.
When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask?
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 know what God wants you to do,
And you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.
Paul pleads with his friends, based on God’s mercy,
To lovingly surrender themselves to the Lord.
He urges them to respond in four ways:
1. Presentation: we are to present our bodies to God as living sacrifices.(v.1)
2. Separation: We are to avoid conforming to the way of the world (v.2).
3. Transformation: We are to renew our minds and thus change our lives (v.2)
4. Demonstration: We are to prove we belong to god by doing his will (v.2).
God wants us to love him so much that we turn form the life or lifestyle that we are currently living and follow him.
He want us to love him so much that if Jesus were to walk into this room at this very moment and said come and follow me—we would be willing to get up and go with him without any hesitation or remorse.
Think about it for a moment. If we cannot do that or we are unwilling to do that—then we need to reevaluate our priorities.
Presenting ourselves before God as living sacrifices is more than a decision it is a commitment!
It is a conscious and loving choice we make to walk by faith and not by sight—when we accept Christ as our savior.
One of the reasons Jesus was such a great leader was because he was driven by his own values- his own beliefs and his own convictions.
Having been raised in a Christian home and taught Christian values, Jesus’ relationship with God was built on a solid foundation and nothing humankind did or could do was able to shake him or deter him from his number one priority in life—which was to serve God in Heaven.
He separated himself from the world by not conforming to the ways of the world.
He walked and lived among sinners but he did not allow their wickedness to rub off on him.
Jesus’ faith was solid because it was built on the rock of salvation and the promises of God found in the Holy Scripture.
Jesus said in Matthew 7:24: “anyone who listens to my teachings and obeys me is wise, like a person who builds his house on a solid rock. 25) though the rain comes in torrents and the flood waters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse, because it is built on a solid rock.”
Let me ask you. What is your faith built on?
Do you bend back and forth depending which way the crowd goes or do you stand firm in the face of adversity and rely on God to see you through?
When we say “yes” to Jesus and “no” to the ways of the world, we are one step closer to being able to present our bodies to God as living sacrifices.
Transformation is the complete changing of our hearts and minds. When we read God’s word and meditate on what it means to us….
When we honestly and sincerely open our hearts and minds and willingly invite Christ to change us, “he does.”
Transformation begins on the inside not the outside.
This is where some people blow it.
They try to do the thing that they think god wants without any inward change.
They begin volunteering and serving the church but their hearts and minds are still living in the world.
It’s like Jesus said in Matthew 6:24: No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
We cannot be obedient to two opposing lifestyles.
We cannot present our bodies to God while we are still holding on to those things in the world that tend to still our loyalty and devotion away from God.
We have to make a choice to follow one or the other.
When we choose to follow Jesus others will know if we are sincere based on how we live our lives.
Jesus sais in John 13:34-35. “ Love each other. Just as I have loved you you are to love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you ar my disciples.
When we love our neighbor as we would ourselves and go out of our way to share what we have with those who are less fortunate or simply down in their luck people will take notice and see that there is something different about us.
When the pastors were meeting last Thursday someone mentioned that one of the reasons churches are not having more of an impact on the world is because church leaders are not standing out.
Pastors, teachers, and the leaders in the church should stand out in a crowd.
There should lets people know be something about us that lets people know that we are Christians and disciples of Christ.
But that is not the way it is, some of us blend in so well until someone on the outside looking for one of us would never find us.
Our lives do not demonstrate that we are nonconforming.
Our lives do not demonstrate that we have been transformed fro then inside out.
Our lives do not demonstrate that we are followers of Jesus.
For the most of us , myself included, our lives demonstrate that we are trying to serve two masters.
We want the blessing of Jesus without the cross of Jesus.
We want the benefits of being a disciple without the obedience of one.
We want a relationship with Jesus without putting in the time it takes to build one.
We want to walk the path without being transformed and we are having problems with do so because our hearts and minds are in conflict with what “thus sayeth the Lord.”
I use to work for a woman whose salary was somewhere between three and four hundred thousand dollars a year.
She taught me a lot about the insurance business and my income potential was greatly improved.
She was a Christian and she knew scripture and was very active in her church. The day I went to her and told her I was resigning from my position with the company, she did everything in her power to try and keep me on board because she could not understand my walking away from a job that allowed me to name my own salary to accept a position in the Cass Corridor, as a part time pastor making $10, 840 a year.
When God begins his transforming process, money loses it hold on us and we see that there are more important things in life than money.
My supervisor was trying to live for God and the world.
She could not see herself doing what I did because her heart was not in the right place.
Two years ago I tried to reach her and after some investigating I found out that she had walked away from her job which was paying her close to half a million dollars by then. She had given it all up to serve as an unpaid missionary in Africa, where she is today.
And so, dear Christian friends, I urge you, I plead with you, I beg you, to give your bodies to God.
Let them be a living and holy Sacrifice—the kind he will accept.
When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask?
Don’t copy the behaviors and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.
Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is. Amen
Conclusion
Will you make a commitment today. If you have not committed yourself to the Lord, then you need to begin there. Once you have committed yourself to the Lord will you commit yourself to personal growth, establish some practical steps to do so beginning today.
Will you commit yourself to this local church.
Be in your place.
Don’t allow yourself to be distracted from being a part of the church.
Be Involved.
Find a Sunday school class.
Commit yourself to begin building some new relationships with in the church.
Be loyal.
You will never get your neighbor to visit a church that you are constantly finding fault with.
Will you make a commitment that you are going to look for opportunities to put your talents and abilities to work. The greatest ability is availability. Don’t wait for someone to ask you, volunteer to help.
If we all make those commitments today, the church would be a different place. The church would be what the Lord intended it to be!!!!
