Transformed to Worship

Introduction

SO excited for this series through Romans 12 called “Living Sacrifice” for the next three weeks!

Romans 1-11 is talking about theological teaching, Romans 12 begins the practical and relational teaching.

How do we live in light of the saving power of the gospel?

God doesn’t just want an hour of your Sunday - He wants all of you. Following Jesus means letting Him reshape how you think, what you value, and how you live. The world is constantly trying to shape you, but God wants to transform you from the inside out so your life reflects Him.

Living a transformed life means that ALL of life becomes worship.

Worship includes your whole self.

I’m not just AVAILABLE, but I am EXPENDABLE for the Lord.

Present your WHOLE being

Romans 6:13 “Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God.

Sacrifice: anything consecrated and offered to God.

OT: God’s people MADE sacrifices.

NT: God’s people are to BE sacrifices.

The OT sacrifices were dead sacrifices, but we are now living sacrifices.

God desires worshipers who offer him Authentic, heartfelt, and radically lived out devotion to reflect Him in all the world.

Spiritual worship (reasonable service): no longer offerings and sacrifices. Our worship flows from the inner self. Heart, Mind, and Spirit.

Our reasonable service is both rational (because it grasps the truth of what Christ has done for us) then responds to that understanding with grateful, wholehearted devotion.

The world doesn’t shape you anymore

Conform: Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its mold.

found only one other place in the NT. 1 Peter 1:14 “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,”

What is the Worlds mold?

1 John 2:15–16 “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.”

Lusts of the flesh: physical desires that are ungodly.

Lusts of the eyes: materialism and envying or desiring what we see that we don’t have.

Pride of life: any ambition that puffs us up and minimizes God.

How do we do it?

Being transformed: Means something like a Metamorphosis (transformation) of your mind.

What we know in our minds to be true —>forms a conviction in our hearts of that truth. That conviction in our hearts —>translates to change in the way we live.

The only way to replace the error of the world’s way of thinking is to replace it with God’s truth. And the only infallible source of God’s truth is His revealed Word, the Bible.

The Holy Spirit of God working through the Word of God to transform the people of God into the image of the Son of God in order to do the work of God for the glory of the Father God.

The word of God, changing our hearts by the Holy Spirit, is the only power on earth that can transform us from worldliness to true spirituality.

The will of decree: God’s sovereign will

The will of command: the things that we can do or not do. this doesn’t have the same meaning as the first one. The first is done without fail and this one is disobeyed and not done.

God wants you to know His will. But which will? the will of command. He isn’t saying “Get your mind renewed so that you can discern what is going to happen tomorrow.” He is saying “Get your mind renewed so that you can discern what ought to happen tomorrow through your life.

God isn’t bent on bringing you into an increasing awareness of his secret will for tomorrow. He doesn’t want you to know what is going to happen tomorrow. Because that has nothing to do with how good you are, how beautiful you are, how new your mind is.

3 stages to discerning the will of God.

Immerse yourself in God’s Word.

The will of command is revealed in the Bible. If you want to discern what is the will of God, you start here. Start there and ask the Lord for a renewed mind that is a mind that when it reads the Bible can see what it means.

Seeking to apply the Scriptures and praying for a renewed mind.

Take the Bible and pray for renewed mind that knows how to discern how all the things that are revealed in it will produce a godly decision. Step number two penetrates through to the will of God’s command as it applies to the things where he didn’t make it specific so you have got to have a new mind shaped by Scripture so that when you come to those decisions there is a readiness to see and do the right thing.

Having your unconscious life transformed.

This is the one we don’t think about but affects 95% of your behavior. 95% of the things you do you don’t think about before you do them. Most of your thoughts just happen. Most of your feelings just happen. Most of your actions just happen. There is only a tiny handful of things that you think about before you do them. When you go home you’ll make dozens of decisions before you go to bed. (You don’t think…do I open the door with my left or right hand?)

The rest of your life you will make hundreds of decisions and actions every day that are just going to flow out of you. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” Most of my gestures, facial expressions, attitudes towards another person, words out of my mouth I am not even thinking about I am just doing it. What does this mean?

If you think that God doesn’t have any will for things that we do spontaneously, that he only has a will for what we do decisively then you are wrong! God says don’t be proud, don’t be angry, God says rejoice, God says don’t be anxious.

An occasion to be anxious.

You have got to be a new person. You can’t jsut make new decisions. Because 95 percent of what you do you are doing spontaneously, and if you aren’t a new person, then out of the mouth the heart speaks wrong stuff.

So how in the world do you become new? How that is a process for the rest of your life.

Be renewed in your spirit of your mind.

This happens through the renewal brought by the Holy Spirit

So we ask for the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts. (Luke 11:13)

We need the spirit for: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. All of those are the kind of things that make me act spontaneously better.

Pray for Newness. We need the Holy Spirit. I want to be more of all the fruits of the Spirit. That I would love the will of God so deeply that I spontaneously respond to people in a godly way when I am not even thinking about it. That’s how deeply we need to be renewed.

How does the Holy Spirit do it? 2 Corinthians 3:18 “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

Land the Plane

There are no shortcuts. There is no magical formula for renewing our minds. We must fill our minds with God’s Word.

What is the result? We will be “able to test and approve what God’s will is”

Not just to know what His will is, but to approve of it too!