Be Transformed

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We are continuing in the series entitled “Return To Me” where we are learning that God wants to us to join Him in redeeming a lost world.

For that to happen, we must be in a right relationship with Him.

Many times, as Christians, we move away from God due to sin.

When that happens, we need to repent, confess, and return to Him and He will restore us into His fellowship and usefulness.

Andrew Murray wrote in his book Revival, “A revived church is the only hope of a dying world.”

In the New Testament we read how churches prevailed in that pagan culture and turned the world upside down.

They lived and worked in a culture much ours today, so we can learn from them.

God hasn’t changed or lost His power.

He is looking for a people who will meet His conditions.

In Malachi 3:7 He said, “Return to Me and I will return to you.”

Murray points out, “God’s faithfulness in the fulfillment of His conditions.”

When God has a people rightly related to Him and filled with His Spirit - a revived church - He can work through them to accomplish His redemptive plan.

The church then is God’s redemptive society acting as salt and light in a dark, decaying world.

So where do you start?

God's Design for Your Transformation

It begins with recognizing God’s design for your transformation.

Romans 8:29 says those God "foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Rom. 8:29).

Throughout our lives He is working to shape His children into Christlikeness.

He wants us to live lives of holiness and purity.

His plan is that we live so much like Christ that others will see Christ in we without any sinful human distortions.

God the Father has given His Holy Spirit to live in His children and fill them.

He is the One who causes us to want to do His will and then enables us to do it (Phil. 2:13).

His Holy Spirit will manifests Himself in every aspect of life.

This purity of life will be nowhere more evident in our culture than the way we live a holy life compared to all the sinful behavior around us.

By the time God's children complete their journey we will be like Him!

1 John 3:2-3 puts the God’s goal and our actions like this, “Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when he appears, we will be like him because we will see him as he is. And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure.”

The Transformation Begins With The Mind

Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,”

When we offer their entire self to God, a change will happen in their relation to the world.

We are called to a different life-style than what the world offers with its behavior and customs, which are usually selfish and often corrupting.

Christians are to live as citizens of a future world.

There will be pressure to conform, to continue living according to the script written by the world, but believers are forbidden to give in to that pressure.

Many Christians wisely decide that much worldly behavior is off limits for them.

After all, it is not our objective to find out just how much like the world we can become yet still maintain our distinctives.

But refusing to conform to this world’s values must go even deeper than the level of behavior and customs—it must be firmly planted in our minds—be transformed by the renewing of your minds.

The Greek word for “transformed” (metamorphousthe) is the root for the English word metamorphosis.

Believers are to experience a complete transformation from the inside out.

And the change must begin in the mind, where all thoughts and actions begin.

Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22–24 ).

One of the keys, then, to the Christian life is to be involved in activities that renew the mind.

Renewing (anakainosei) refers to a new way of thinking, a mind desiring to be conformed to God rather than to the world.

We will never be truly transformed without this renewing of our mind.

Much of the work is done by God’s Spirit in us, and the tool most frequently used is God’s Word.

We Get Help From The Holy Spirit!

First of all, let me just say that Jesus told us He would send us a comforter which is His spirit.

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. He will also declare to you what is to come.” John 16:13

And Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 3:16, “Don’t you yourselves know that you are God’s temple and that the Spirit of God lives in you?”

As a believer we have God’s Spirit guiding us, leading us, and transforming us a Christ like image.

Daily we have two choices - a path to follow our own desires or the flesh or to follow God’s ways.

To be right with God, we must choose the right path.

If you believe that becoming a Christian means that you cease to sin, then you have a rude awakening ahead, 1 John 1:8–10.

While we have literally passed from death unto life as the Bible says, a dead, ineffective and fruitless spiritual life will always be the result of walking the wrong pathway.

On the other hand, to walk in the right pathway is to live a life that is pleasing to the Lord. It is to be fruitful and effective in all that we do for His glory.

So we can be the light to the world.

When we Love God and Love Others, we must follow God’s path.

That’s where the Spirit helps us.

The Spirit Gives Us Victory Over Our Temptations

Let’s look at Galatians 5:16-26

To walk in the Spirit means to surrender to the Spirit, put Him in charge, follow His lead.

Is is abiding in the gospel, living it continuously,

When we abide in the gospel we are being filled with Spirit as Paul says in Gal. 3:1

Ephesians 5:18 tells us to be filled by the Spirit.

We will be led by either the Spirit or our flesh/desires.

Which one wins depends on which one we yield our lives to.

Verse 16 tells that when we walk by the Spirit will not carry out the desire of the flesh.

We still have a say in what we allow in our lives.

1 Corinthians 10:13 gives us that insight since we are told that God will gives an escape route away from the temptation.

It’s our choice.

Follow the Spirit or follow our flesh.

What Are The Signs Of Living By The Flesh?

Beginning in verse 19, we find the obvious signs of living by our own desires.

When Paul says, “the flesh,” he does not simply mean, ‘the body.’

Flesh means “the sinful nature.”

It’s our hearts when we are separated from the life of God.

We were created for God, and when we are not connected to God, our lives are filled with all kinds of dysfunctions and deviant cravings like the ones on that list: impurity, sensuality, sorcery, strife, fits of anger, envy, drunkenness, orgies … those are fruits that grow out of our separation from God.

They are fruits of an even greater sin, being separated from God and worshipping something besides God.

Without God your life can get messed up, you can get married, have a career, get married, have a family … but you end up doing a lot of damage to yourself because something that was absolutely foundational, essential to your life is missing and you end up doing the things on that list to try to compensate for God’s absence in your lives.

Some people worship money.

What are the fruits of that? anxiety; when your stocks crash or something doesn’t go your way; full of strife; fits of anger.

Those fruits come out of worshipping money rather than God.

Some people worship their spouse’s attention

Co-dependence … and that produces bitterness or strife in the home

And there are many other examples of not having God at the center of your life that creates results that are harmful to us.

These are all fruits of the flesh.

Paul sums it by saying the Lust of the Flesh

Lust doesn’t just mean sex, it means deep, soul craving in our soul.

It leads to that list: hatred, strife, drunkenness, orgies, the boredom that leads to pornography addiction, flirtation with someone not your spouse, sensuality, and other sinful captivities.

Those things might be the manifestation of sin, but they are not the root.

Separation from God is the root.

So, the law, Paul says, (or, being commanded to change: stop that) doesn’t help this problem—because our core problem is that we don’t love God.

So being commanded to do loving things for God doesn’t help for a couple of reasons.

For one, Paul says, while it may change our behavior; it doesn’t change our desires.

The other thing is we end up commandeering religion in service of our sinful hearts.

Religion doesn’t change the fact that our hearts worship power, it just gives our lust for power a new means to than end.

Marx was correct: religious sentiment and the quest for power often go hand-in-hand.

Here’s the irony: Christians a lot of times are blind to these kinds of sins.

We hear “sin” and think about things like “drunkenness;” “sexually immoral,” or “orgies.”

But do you see that Paul puts jealousy, strife, gossiping, self-centeredness and competitiveness in that same list?

These are every bit the fruits of the flesh that drunkenness and orgies are.

What Is The Fruit of the Spirit?

Paul then turns to the opposite of the flesh to the fruit of the Spirit.

It produces a completely different kind of fruit: this plant has its roots in the gospel.

It walks “by the Spirit,” Paul says.

The gospel is the story of how you and I deserved the wrath of God.

But instead of giving it to us, God, in His love, left what He deserved and came to earth to die on a cross in our place.

Looking at the cross crushes our pride because it shows us what we deserve; it ignites in our hearts passion for God because we see how good He is when we took what we deserved.

It’s impossible to look at the cross and remain proud and self-centered; and so when you abide in it, plant yourself in it … it produces a totally different set of things in you.

Look at Paul’s list

Love: (Gr. agape) you start to love other people, not because of what they can do for you, but just because they are people, like you: Agape means love for love’s sake.

Joy (chara): delight in God; a delight in God that goes above and beyond your circumstances.

Peace (Irene): (BTW, why you would name a hurricane “Irene” is beyond me.) Peace is this restful confidence you have in that your Heavenly Father is present in your life and fully in charge, working out His loving plan in your life

Patience (macrothumia)—love that word because you sound irritated when you say it: you deal with disappointment without lashing out in anger. Even when people hurt you and let you down you maintain this posture of goodness toward them. Why? That’s how Jesus was toward you.

Kindness (chrestotes): it means that there is a goodness that just flows out of you to others.

Goodness (agathosune): which really means integrity. Means you’re just good all the way down. When we peel back the layers of you and there’s not all these nuances and hidden agendas and secret hatreds in there. Just goodness all the way down.

Faithfulness (pistis): loyalty. Your commitment to God and others is not based on whether or not there’s something in it for you. You’re not an opportunist; you’re loyal and principle-driven.

Gentleness (prautas): means, humility. You just don’t walk around with a sense of entitlement, that it’s all about you.

Self-control (egkrateia): you have bodily desires; but they don’t rule you, so you can turn them off when there is a greater purpose. Whether it’s saying no to food, sex, anger, revenge, the need to be recognized—all that stuff you can turn off because God’s purposes is your greatest concern at any given moment.

Those 9 things are the essence of a good person, and if this is what is in your heart, you don’t need laws like those in the OT to constrain your behavior.

You have become the law of God (loving Him and others).

And so you’ll act righteous, without laws, because you are righteous.

This is the fruit the gospel produces. Growth in that list is growth in character

So What?

How can you seek to be transformed by renewing your mind?

Study the life and message of Jesus to learn about the character of Christ.

Treat others like Jesus did.

Demonstrate the character of Christ seen in the fruit of the Spirit.

Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal anything in your life that is unholy or sinful and then confess and repent of it.

As you live out your life seeking to be obedient, then your fruit will be seen by others leading them to want the gospel.

Let’s pray.