Living and Renewing
Notes
Transcript
4 WHEELER
Story about 4 wheeler and being so frustrated and even tearing it apart. Finding out it it was simply out of gas
2020 has been a year of frustration, fear and uncertainty. Covid, election, economy. All things we have no control over.
COMPUTER
You find out it was simply not plugged in. Amber and I often say. When all else fails plug it in!
Why do we always look for the complicated answer when the simple one is right.
Over the next few days many students and teachers go back to school. In many ways we are beginning a new year. We have an opportunity to start over. What is going to be different this year? How is school going to work? What is life going to be like? What is going to hit us next.
What if we just got back to what we can control. What if we focused on what is most important?The simple answer is do better at following Gods call in our lives.
We will seek to be better Christians. We will ask God what is your will for our lives. What is your plan? We seek often a voice from heaven or a sign when God has told us already the trick. It's so simple but often we make it so hard!
In Romans 12:1-2 God tells us what he wants. For us to worship him and not be like the world.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
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.
Therefore, Pauls urges us all in view of God’s mercy to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice holy and pleasing to God— this is true and proper worship.
Before we dive into this we should see what comes right before. We have this beautiful passage of praise of God. If we miss out on this, we miss out on why we should give our lives up for God. Listen to these beautiful words describing God.
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?”
For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.
This is the essence of God’s mercies. He does not need us, but he loves us. All things are his. All things are for him. Bottom line:
He is everything we are nothing. Therefore, our response has to be Romans 12:1. Offering our bodies as a living sacrifice.
What does that mean? A sacrifice is something given completely to someone or for someone. A sacrifice does not get to decided how or when it is used. It is no longer in control of itself. It has given up complete control.
So Paul is urging us to give up control. To give ourselves completely to God.
But here is the strange part. Sacrifices usually die. But here we are called to be living sacrifices. That means continually giving ourselves completely to God. It is constant and repeating. Isn’t that the essence of God’s relationships with people. They are constant. They are continual, and even when we fail, he gives us another chance. A living sacrifice. A repeating sacrifice.
God wants us to give him everything.
HOLY AND PLEASING to God- Set apart to him, because it pleases him. Really all we can do. Give God our lives because this is how we worship.
Worship him according to Romans 12:1 isn't about singing the right song or saying the right prayer. It's about presenting ourselves as living sacrifices to God. It's about giving our lives to God's desires not our own.
How about starting now, we keep it simple by just saying yes to God. If he tells us to do something to do it.
Don't talk yourself out of it by saying things like I do sometimes. Things like:
That isn't God it's just my mind.
I can't do that it's too hard
I don't have time to help that person, I'm too busy.
Are those the answers of a life being a living sacrifice? Of course not.
A sacrifice is complete surrender. It is giving your life up. It is laying down your life. It's serving. It is loving. It is trusting God not yourself. It is trusting your life and your self completely to God.
It is being different which is what Romans 12:2 is all about
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.
Romans 12:2 reminds us to be different than the world. To not fall into its pattern but rather be transformed into something else. We are transformed into what God wants us to be by renewing our mind. Simply put, by changing the way we think.
The PATTERN OF THE WORLD
Fear, selfishness, pride, SELF
We quit being self oriented which I think is the pattern of the world and become God oriented which quite simply put: is become a life sacrificed to what God wants not what we want.
RENEWING OF OUR MIND
Continual starting over. Being something completely NEW. RENEW.
NOT MY MIND or plan BUT YOUR MINd, YOUR PLAN
This is where true freedom and peace come. When we no longer think we are in control but give control up to God.
When we do this, we become plugged in to what God wants. What his will is for us today, tomorrow and forever.
Keep it simple, plug in Check the gas and then you will do what you are made to do.
We are about to enter a time of communion where we will remember the sacrifice Jesus made for us. He will speak to us and reveal himself to each of us in his own way.
I pray you take time during communion to listen and to worship and then take serious the words of Paul to be radically different from the world. To be transformed into a living sacrifice.