Renewal (2)
A New Beginning • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Did you make any new years resolutions?
How is it going?
Every year people make resolutions and around 80% of them give up by February.
I think we all want to make changes in our life and especially in our spiritual life.
We all want a renewal of life yet maybe we find ourselves at some point giving into our old ways of life.
God’s wants a renewal in our life too.
So visualize what it would look like 6 months from now if you kept your goal to renew you life.
9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices
10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.
11 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
This is the word of God…
Renewal is something God does in us because together He and I take off the old self and immediately with no lapse of time, we put on the new self.
These actions must be done for the renewal to take place.
If we are not sensing any change in our life then God has not been able to renew us because we have not taken off the old self.
How can we move forward then and take off the old and put on the new?
First surrender the old, stop the treadmill of try hard, do good, fail — Develop
Consistency over intensity
Consistency over intensity
Consider Proverbs 23:7
7 for he is the kind of person who is always thinking about the cost. “Eat and drink,” he says to you, but his heart is not with you.
We become who we think we are
That thinking impacts our behavior!
Changing our thinking is the blue print of taking off the old and putting on the new. — Develop
Our identity impacts our thoughts, our thoughts impact our actions, our actions create our habits, our habits create our destiny and our future!
The Science behind habits
The Science behind habits
Habits are the fruit of who we think we are — World says or Christ says
When something is repeated often enough it move from conscious effort to automatic behavior.
Bad habits — Romans 7:19-20
19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
Bad habits are hard to break because they are hardwired in our brains
That is why it take 66 days to form a new habit
Our brains need a rewrite — Romans 12:2
2 Do not conform 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.
Our motivation
Our motivation
My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit
We want to honor God with our body
19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
A goal with out a deep reason behind it has no power
Our wanting to change has to come from then deep reason of 1 Corinthians 6:19.
The things we say about ourselves will eventually be our reality — Proverbs 18:21
21 The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
Research done at US Davis found that gratitude reduces cortisol levels by 23% and increases dopamine sensitivity.
Gratitude is good for us!
Just by simply being grateful, telling God everyday, “I’m grateful.”
change does not happen out our will power
It happens out of identity — Romans 7:25
25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
All of this is a fancy way of saying, “You can’t remove the habit, you replace the routine.” — Develop
Conclusion
Life change happens in community, If we want to change who we are, change our habits, then get in a small group who holds each other accountable!
Your habits can change, God wants them changed!
You can be a different person than you are today, God wants to help you!
It happens with the surrender of the old and the putting on of the new, baam renewal!
Community — The real you, meeting real needs, for the right reason, in the right way
Remember life at New Beginnings — B.I.O.
Mission — To shar the love of Jesus with our world and to make disciples who make disciples.
