Transformation Challenge Agent of Change

It was a “Take Your Child to Work Day” and the doctor had brought his six-year-old daughter to the hospital. He introduced her to everyone, gave her a tour of the building, and then showed her the corner office he worked out of.

He was sure she was impressed by how important her daddy was, and when she picked up his stethoscope he felt a surge of excitement. He had impressed her so much she undoubtedly wanted to be a doctor just like him.

The little girl put the stethoscope to her ears.

As tears of pride came to the doctor’s eyes, his daughter lifted the end of the stethoscope to her mouth and said, “Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order please?”

We are going to spend several weeks talking about Transformation. We all need to be transformed in some ways because we aren’t perfect. In fact we will never be perfect. In our lives we should be striving to be more and more like Christ.

Think about your life. Are there areas that aren’t perfect? Well, then this sermon series might help you! The Word of God points out many areas that we can be transformed. There are things we can do to make things better in our lives.

Why do we need transformation? Mainly because our sinful nature will lead us to bad places. Left on our own we would find ourselves in a place of destruction. In our own strength we fail time and time again. It’s actually impossible to find true fulfillment without living a life set apart for Christ. We need transformation to live a victorious life.

Romans 12 is going to be our main portion of scripture over the coming weeks. It deals will how we are supposed to be transformed children of God. Part of our Transformation challenge will be to memorize the entire chapter.

Would anyone be willing to recite the first two verses from last week?

This week we are going to focus on verses 3-5. But I first want to remind you of what we talked about last week.

Romans 12:1–2 (NKJV)

1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

That first phrase sets the stage for everything else Paul is going to teach us in this chapter. The mercy of God is our motivation to be transformed.

The mercy of God is basically the fact that instead of punishment God has chosen to love us and forgive our sinful nature. He has accepted the undeserved punishment of Christ as our payment. We have been redeemed by the blood of the lamb.

Galatians 3:27 NIV

27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

I like that verse because it gives the image that we have put Christ on like clothing.

Remember back in the old testament when Jacob stole the blessing of Esau? Esau was the first born of Isaac and fully expected the blessing of his father. He was robbed by his younger brother. Do you remember how it happened?

There’s a couple little elements of that story that resonate with me about how we have put on Christ and recieved His blessing instead of what we deserved.

Jacob put on his brothers clothes, he even covered his skin with the skin of young goats to make his skin more like his hairy brother Esau. When his father touched him he thought he WAS Esau. In the end Jacob recieved the blessing because the father thought he was Esau.

This is a picture of the mercy of God in our lives. We have recieved the blessing of the father because we have put on Christ. When God looks at us He sees the perfection of Jesus. Our punishment is gone when we place our trust in Christ.

We are transformed by the mercy of God. This is what motivates us to live a life as a living sacrifice. We lay down our selfish desires to live a life set apart form the world. We allow God to make us into new people by changing the way we think. We desire the will of God.

Now, we get to what we are going to talk about today. Being an agent of change. Let’s read our main text today:

Romans 12:3–5 NLT

3 Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. 4 Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, 5 so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.

There are three things that I believe you can do right now in your life that will transform your situation and make you become an agent of change.

Here’s the first thing:

Be Humble

Romans 12:3 (NLT)

3 Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.

Most of us know the children’s story about the three little pigs and the big bad wolf. The first little pig’s house was built with straw. After huffing and puffing, the big bad wolf blew it down. He then moved on to the second little pig’s house which was built out of wood. As before, the wolf huffed and puffed and blew this house down also.

By this time, the big bad wolf was feeling pretty confident. Filled with pride, he approached the next house—the one made of bricks. Once again, he huffed and he puffed but nothing happened. So he huffed and he puffed and he huffed and he puffed and … he failed to blow down this house.

He had been deceived by his previous experiences.

In the same way, we can act like the big, bad wolf. We deceive ourselves into thinking we can tear down the walls that keep us from approaching God.

But Scripture declares that man is worthy to approach God in their own strength.

“But doesn’t my life count for something?” you might ask. “I go to church; I’m a good person; I do good things for people. Isn’t that the basis for approaching God?” No! Man-made approaches are totally inadequate. The only way to approach God is through Jesus Christ.

The only way for us to be saved is to humble ourselves and admit that we are sinners in need of a Saviour. Now, most of us would say that’s true and even say that we’ve done that at some point in our life.

But the christian walk in humility isn’t a one time bow to receive Christ. No, if we are going to be committed to transformation the Word of God tells us that we cannot think that we are better than we really are. We must continue in humility all the days of our lives…why? Remember it’s the Mercy of God that has saved us. It’s why we can even stand in the presence of God.

We don’t get to decide how God works.

Don’t we get upset when things do go our way? We get upset when we feel passed over. We feel rejected. We feel used.

God why would you allow this person to have what I desire? Wouldn’t it be so easy for God to touch our situation and bring us to the top as we see it every time?

Well, I think back to Esau. If anyone was going to have a reason to be upset, he certainly did! His brother pretended to be him. He lied to get the blessing of the father.

It’s all good when we think about the parallels of how we put on Christ like Jacob put on his brothers clothing to receive a blessing that he didn’t deserve, but what about Esau who didn’t get the blessing that HE deserved!

Well, let’s see what the Bible says about Esau how he responded to the blessing being stolen.

Genesis 27:41 NLT

41 From that time on, Esau hated Jacob because their father had given Jacob the blessing. And Esau began to scheme: “I will soon be mourning my father’s death. Then I will kill my brother, Jacob.”

So, Esau wasn’t happy. Rightfully so, he was the first born and traditionally the blessing should have gone to him.

What’s interesting to me is that God honored the blessing of Jacob. He didn’t fix what was done wrong. He not only allowed it to happen, but His hand was on Jacob from that day on. His blessing was on this man who didn’t deserve the blessing.

In one way it’s a picture of God’s blessing for us that we don’t deserve, but it also shows his seemingly disregard for Esau who had been wronged.

Well, here’s the deal. Esau assumed that he was the chosen one because of his natural position. You could even say he took it for granted that he would receive the fathers blessing.

One thing we can learn is that God does not have to honor our plans or position. He is God and can do whatever best suits His will. Even if it goes against what we think is “right” or “just”.

We can’t see the whole picture of God working.

1 Corinthians 13:9 (NLT)

9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete...

We have to trust God no matter what difficult things might come our way. In other words we have to do what our scripture tells us to do in Romans 12:3 and humble ourselves.

When we start to think we are better than we are then we start to question God’s authority and plan. In fact, pride is the measurable influence of satan working in our lives.

Pride is opposite from a transformed life. We we are going to be an agent of change in this world we must humble ourselves.

The second thing we can do right now in your life that will transform your situation and make you become an agent of change:

Be Honest

Romans 12:3 (NLT)

3 Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.

Honesty is the best policy, right? Well, even when it comes to ourselves? This can be very hard to do because humans hate to be wrong. We certainly don’t want others to think poorly of us. It’s very hard to admit when we aren’t perfect. But that’s exactly what we must do if we are committed to living a transformed life.

Evaluating ourselves if much easier if we are humble. Pride will always stop effective evaluation of our own hearts and lives. God has given us all a place to stand in His kingdom. He has even given us gifts to accomplish certain things that will accomplish His purposes.

If we look farther in this scripture we can see the gifts that God has given to individuals that are part of His body.

Romans 12:6–8 NLT

6 In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you. 7 If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well. 8 If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly.

These are such great things! I love that God has given each of us gifts to work and use in His family. But Paul warns us that with these gifts come the potential for us to become prideful or even angry when we aren’t given some of these gifts.

Too often people want to do what others do and in doing so they neglect the gift God has given them! The scripture is reminding us to be honest in the evaluation of ourselves so that we can work most effectively for the Lord.

While we are evaluating our gifts we must keep our eyes on Jesus.

It’s very easy to lose sight of Jesus while we’re in pursuit of our spiritual gifts. Sometimes they can become idols to us, so don’t allow this to take your eye off the only one who matters.

Once we determine which gift or gifts we have, we can become a little pigeonholed within them. Just because you have the gift of teaching doesn’t mean you should be a pastor! There are multiple uses for each gift, and your mentors, friends, and church leaders can help you decide how best to use those amazing God-given skills of yours.

And you may find that your gifts change over time. For example, you might find that as you grow in your faith, you receive the gift of faith. This just happily means that you’re becoming a stronger person in Jesus and are increasingly able to talk about your faith in a confident way. But as we age, gain wisdom, have new experiences, and journey further with the Lord, we all inherently change, and therefore, so may your spiritual gifts.

You have value in the body of Christ! When you humble yourself and trust God you’ll find that He wants you to take an active part in His work.

There may be times in your life that you step outside of your gift. Or you desire a gift that God isn’t ready for you to use. That’s when we must trust others in Christ to help us. That’s where humility remains important. That’s why Paul tells us to evaluate ourselves and measure ourself by the faith God has given to us. In other words, we aren’t in this thing for ourselves. We are part of a team working to get to the finish line. Our goal is to do whatever is needed to help the entire team.

Struggles arise when we try to take control. When we don’t look at ourselves honestly.

There are thing we can do right now in your life that will transform your situation and make you become an agent of change: First we can humble ourselves, second we can be honest with ourselves, and third we must remember that:

Belong to Others

Romans 12:5 (NLT)

5 so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.

This is a major theme in the Bible. Over and over again God uses people to help each other. He uses people to serve others. In fact Jesus commands us to serve each other. It’s not a suggestion.

John 13:34–35 NLT

34 So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. 35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

I was listening to a sermon on Friday and the preacher reminded me of four important truths:

You are accepted

You are loved unconditionally

You are forgiven

You are valuable

Now, that’s how God sees us and how Jesus commands us to see others! This is such a massive thought. When you look into the eyes of someone who has just hurt your feelings by saying something that might not even be true do you accept them, love them unconditionally, forgive them, and value them?

If you don’t then go back up to steps one and two of living a transformed life because you might be prideful or you might now be honest about your own situation.

God REQUIRES us to love others the same way He has loved us!

You say, well, I don’t think I can do that in my life. This is why we look to the Bible for examples of God using someone who didn’t feel able or qualified.

Exodus 4:10–12 NLT

10 But Moses pleaded with the Lord, “O Lord, I’m not very good with words. I never have been, and I’m not now, even though you have spoken to me. I get tongue-tied, and my words get tangled.” 11 Then the Lord asked Moses, “Who makes a person’s mouth? Who decides whether people speak or do not speak, hear or do not hear, see or do not see? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now go! I will be with you as you speak, and I will instruct you in what to say.”

But God - I can’t - I won’t - I don’t know how...

Perfect!!!

You’re the right person because you are humble and honest. God say’s I can use a person who knows their limitations because they will need to trust in Me every step of the way.

God reminds us that HE and HE alone is God and can do whatever He wants to do, even using an imperfect man such and you and I.

Now here’s where we can mess up. We wait for God to perfect us before we act on His commands.

Moses didn’t get to wait for God to fix his ability to speak. What did God tell him?

He said, NOW GO! - I will be WITH you as you speak, and I will tell you what to say.

So what did it take for Moses to be transformed from a murder? How did he lead the children of Israel out of captivity?

Three things…

He has to humble himself

He had to be honest about his ability and trust God that He would given him what he needed.

He had to realize that his life was to be used up for others.

Friends, if we want to become an agent for change in this world we must be transformed.

We must lay down our pride, trust God to provide, and we must be willing to love as Christ loved.