Theme: God calls you to partner with him in a mission that is bigger than you are (Principle 3 from Made to Count).
Introduction: Recent polls show a dramatic increase in “church hoppers” – those who flit from one church to the next like a water bug, never fully landing and immersing themselves into a local body of believers. Something is never quite right. The pastor preaches too long, the members are not very friendly, the music is not “my style.” There’s got to be another church that will better meet my needs. And so the water bug goes, from one church to the next, landing for a flicker here, a moment there, constantly in search of the perfect fit and missing a vital part of their calling. They need to understand an important truth about the church. The church does not exist to serve them. That mindset – consumer Christianity or “McChurch” as some call it – is simply not scriptural. We exist to build Christ’s kingdom by building Christ’s church. The church does not exist to build our ego, our business, or even our circle of friends.
Drop in on a typical conversation at a restaurant where church members are eating after a service. You will probably hear something like:
“How’d you like the service today?”
“Not bad. I loved the music, but Pastor Goforth’s got to get some new stuff.”
“Yeah, I mean, how many times is he going to tell that story about the port-a-john cleaner, anyway?”
It’s almost as if you had just dropped in on a few students discussing a movie they’d just seen.
“Did you like it?”
“Not bad. The acting was pretty good, but the story line was like so predictable.”
“Yeah. And I’m getting so tired of those Matrix-style special effects. I mean…hello! You think we haven’t seen that before?”
The church as theater – is that really what God intended? Maybe. But not the way we think of theater today. And certainly not with the role confusion that exists among some church members. Theater, of course, began in earnest with the Greeks. They popularized the idea of theater, drawing huge audiences and turning their plays into poignant commentaries on life. Classic Greek theater revolved around three different components. The prompters played a critical role in these live performances. They stayed down in front of the actors in an area that would later become the orchestra pit, coaching and directing the actors throughout the play. The actors, of course, developed the drama on the stage all for the benefit and pleasure of the attending audience, hoping that the audience would leave pleased with the performance.
For many in today’s church, those roles translate neatly in to the way they view worship:
· The actors are the pastors, choir, and praise team – those on stage.
· The prompter would, of course, be God Himself, orchestrating the leaders as the worship unfolds.
· The audience would be the congregation, watching and waiting to be blessed.
Scripture teaches differently. We are told that whatever we do, we are to do it with all our hearts, as for the Lord, and not for men. Certainly, this includes worship and every other activity we do associated with church. God, and only God, is the audience.
The members are the actors, with the pastor and other leaders serving as prompters. After all, the job of the leaders is not to perform, but to equip the members for the work of ministry. So Scripture would have us structure this analogy quite differently:
· The actors are the church members, each one a minister.
· The prompters are the pastors and other leaders.
· The audience is God alone.
This scriptural blueprint takes the members out of the role of critic and puts them into the role of participant. Worship is no longer viewed as a performance we judge but as an act we perform. Our question at the end of a church service should not be whether we thought the service was “good,” but whether we thought that God was well pleased. (Bob Reccord and Randy Singer, Made to Count, p. 91-93)
We take responsibility for the church, our church, with all its faults and blemishes. And we realize that the church will never be perfect, but it is still Christ’s bride.
But worship is not just about sitting in church on Sunday in corporate worship – it is about our lives being an act of worship every single day wherever God has placed us. That is the context of Romans 12:1-2 when it declares that daily offering our lives as a “living sacrifice” is one of the highest acts of spiritual worship we can do. And that means right where we are wherever we live out our life in partnership with God. What living out a partnership with God to accomplish a mission bigger than we are looks like…
I. The Basis of God’s Call to Partnership.
Paul makes it very clear that while many partnerships are based on the partners equally bringing strengths, equity, contribution and plans to the table. That is not the case in our partnership with God. To be involved in a mission bigger than we are goes way beyond our capacities. Therefore, God is the senior partner and initiates the whole partnership.
Here in the passage, Paul points backward to the basis of a successful partnership with God – it is everything that God has already done. And it can be found throughout Romans Chapters 1-11.
· WE WERE CREATED TO ENJOY A LIFE-CHANGING RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD.
Romans 5-8
· THE RELATIONSHIP WAS LOST BECAUSE OF
WHAT WE ARE
Romans 3:10 “No one is good – not even one.”
Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard.”
Romans 6:23 “The wages of sin is death (separation from God)…”
· THAT RELATIONSHIP CAN BE RESTORED ONLY BY WHAT CHRIST DID
Illustration: When renowned speaker and author, Ken Blanchard, was struggling with the whole concept of personal sin and the need for Jesus Christ, Bill Hybels and Bob Buford shared with him a life-changing illustration. Drawing a line on paper that they called a moral Scale and listing the gradation of the scale as 1-100 (with one being the absolute worst character and 100 being the absolute best), they asked Ken to rank a broad spectrum of people, including such notable names as Jack the Ripper, Mohammed, Mother Theresa, Hitler and Billy Graham. As could be imagined, the names were scattered from the very worst to the very best.
Then they asked Ken where he would put himself. He put him mark at about the number 60 on the scale of 1-100. Then the life-changing was posed – “Who’s going to make up the other 40% to get you acceptable to God?” And to that question, Ken had no answer. And it was that lack of answer that drove him to see his need for a Savior.
Romans 5:6, 8 “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.”
“But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”
Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, BUT THE FREE GIFT OF GOD IS ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD.”
· THE DECISION WE MAKE DETERMINES OUR RELATIONSHIP AND PARTNERSHIP WITH GOD
Romans 10:9, 10 “For of you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.”
Illustration: The hymn that is so often sung in churches says it well:
Love so amazing, love so divine
Demands my life…my soul…my all!
II. The Character of a Partnership With God.
Paul challenges the reader to “present” everything they are – their whole being to God. This word present is a critically important word. Its definition in the original language means “To yield, surrender and put at the disposal at another in a specific moment in time, with ongoing impact.”
Reflected here, therefore, are two vital characteristics of a s successful partnership with God.
A. Our commitment to the partnership must be total an unconditional.
Most likely the concept Paul had in mind here was the burnt offering of the Old Testament. It was the primary offering of the dedication of life and acceptance before God. It was also the primary offering in which the sacrificial animal was totally consumed. No portion of it was left uncommitted.
In the same way, God expects the one who’s entering into a partnership with him for a mission bigger than we are to commit every part of our life – our plans, our dreams, our abilities and talents, our priorities, etc. to Him. And He expects no area of our life to be out-of-bounds from Him.
Most importantly, He doesn’t expect us to segment life so that the “religious and spiritual part of our existence” is a segregated section from all the rest. It is too easy to develop a Time Magazine in which our lives are lived was if there were an entertainment section, a health section, a family section, a business section, and a religious section. God, instead, intends our partnership with Him to permeate and affect every other area of life we have. Life is to be an integrated whole, not a series of compartmentalized segments.
When God directs us in Deuteronomy 6:4 to love the Lord with our strength, this word refers to our “entirety.” In other words, He talks about our entire being expressing our love to the one who created us. That includes our actions, attitudes, thoughts – EVERYTHING. The partnership is a personal decision.
Paul makes it very clear that a decision to enter a partnership with God is a decision no one else can make for you – it is absolutely and unconditionally personal.
And, it is your ultimate act of spiritual worship (New International Version). The act of personally releasing our lives into the control and direction of the one who created us is the ultimate pinnacle of worship and the only thing that leads to a successful partnership.
III. The Demand Involved in the Partnership.
A. The Negative Demand: Don’t Be Conformed to the World
· The actual words in Scripture literally could be read “stop allowing yourself” as it is in a present passive imperative tense. It means there’s a decision that I have to make to not allow myself to be pressed into a mold.
· The word that is used for conformed is a word that means to be molded by outward pressure and expectation.
· The word age literally refers to the beliefs, views and patterns of a world without God as its center.
Most have traveled enough or lived in enough places to have witnessed firsthand the amazing chameleon lizard. They are remarkably adaptive to their environment and adjusting their color to fit in and blend with the environment so that they can hardly be noticed or seen, therefore, not standing out at all.
Kids have even been known to get them for pets and raise them in aquarium-type containers. Several years ago the fad was to get a piece of 12-inch yarn and tie one end around a safety pin and the other end very gently around the chameleon’s neck and wear it on your blouse or shirt to school or out with friends. When lizards were exchanged with someone with different color shirts, they obviously adapted their color by the shirt on which they put it. Kids had a great time watching enthusiastically the variations of color.
Unfortunately, the shirt industry did a tragic thing to the fad – they recycled the popularity of plaid shirts and blouses! Imagine a chameleon lizard trying to match that!
Lest we chuckle too quickly to ourselves, this is exactly how many people are when they are ruled more by their environment than they are by an internal compass. Those on partnership with God don’t allow the world to squeeze them into a mold. Rather than conformers, they become transformers!
B. The Positive Demand: Be Transformed
The words in scripture her could literally be interpreted “start allowing yourself to be transformed.” Again, it is a personal decision.
The word used for transformed is tremendously insightful here. It is the exact same word used when Jesus was transfigured on the Mount of Transfiguration. It literally means to have a change in nature. It is a supernatural change that comes from the inside out – and can never be executed from the outside in. It’s all about a change in heart, made possible by the one who created it.
One amazing application in our partnership with Christ of not being conformed to the world’s perspective but being transformed by God’s perspective is the issue of distinction between “secular” and “sacred.” Our world has developed a dualistic view that anything related to church and religious things is known as “sacred,” and anything related to the marketplace and daily living is often referred to as “secular.” But this is not what we find in scripture. Since God created all arenas of life and gave man dominion over it, the entirety of life is seen as sacred to God. So one’s work is just as sacred as one’s work attendance in God’s view if it is done according to biblical guidelines and parameters. That is why Colossians 3:23 tells us to do our work, whatever it is, “with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for men…” When we’re in partnership with God, not only does our worship at church become transforming but our worship through how we carry out our lives at home, at work, and at play!
IV. The Result of the Partnership.
When we actively decide to enter into a partnership with our creator and allow Him to use every part of our life, and especially our work life where we spend the majority of our waking hours, there is an inevitable result to what occurs. As God works in and through our life, we find it to be…
Good – it will prove to be a good relationship with outcomes for our good and the good of others.
Pleasing – when done in the proper attitude and perspective, it will prove to be fulfilling and enriching.
Perfect – it will not be able to be improved upon if God is in the center of it all.
Conclusion: Have you allowed Jesus Christ to become your Senior Partner in order to make your life, your work and your journey the very best it can possibly be?
