Two years ago this month the church gave me a sabbatical gave me time to be away and rest and get counseling the pay for a counselor and And just time to kind of reset my life and ministry and the thing that I found out during that time was that I need to change I The way I am is broken You knew that but I didn't and And the specifically the way I needed to change was It was based in how I grew up when I grew up money in our house was a huge huge stress And it wasn't a stress because we didn't make any it was a stress because of My father's irresponsibility it was always going out much faster than it was coming in and when you're a kid as you know when you're a kid About one third of your conversations with your parents. You're asking for things Right whether it's um Hey, I want to join Cub Scouts any money for a new uniform or I want to play baseball any money for new cleats You know, just you're always kind of hey English is starting a new we're starting a new book in English and the new workbook You're always kind of asking for money. It feels like which is part of parenting and She's part of it. I enjoy that. It's kind of fun But in my house because money was such a stress Having to have that conversation all the time made me feel like a real burden It made me feel like a burden on my parents and I didn't know it but I had really Internalized that so much that I feel felt like a burden. I feel 40 years later like a burden on everybody I know And therefore I tend to deal with people I relate to people in one of two ways if I'm going to Be around you. I want to come on so strong that I'm winning your friendship every time I Got to not be a drag to you It's extremely important at a deep part of my soul that I'd be so Win some so overwhelming that you're just I just light up the room and if I can't do that I won't come in the room at all So I'm either a kind of 100% You're doing everything I can to make you happy that I'm here or I'm running away
And that's not a healthy way to deal with people. That's not relating to people at all. It's managing people it's broken And I had to learn over that sabbatical time to rest and I had to change That's a big change And it's hard And the question for us today is how do we go about that's kind of changes? How do we change who we are? Because we all need those kinds of changes. We all have something deep in us. That's just not right That's not healthy and if it's not addressed is going to lead us toward loneliness or brokenness or bitterness or anger Some of us have deep insecurities And we feel a desperate need for security so we want to control our environment and we do whatever we can do to control Everything we're around and maybe control looks like order and cleanliness. Maybe control looks like me being in the lead But I've got to be in control of it others of us have deep anger And we're frustrated and we have to Exert influence in our communities in our around us to settle that some of us have a deep need for comfort And so we're always looking for something to kind of self-medicate or self-medicate whether it be a drink A glimpse at pornography a purchase going and buying a new pair of shoes Whatever something that's going to make me feel better The packaging is different But we all have these these deep problems Because we are all addicts We're addicted to ourself The definition of an addict is somebody who gets up thinking about something they have to have An addict doesn't go through life a drug addict doesn't go through life in the normal way. He goes through life with constant background music of wondering when he can get drugs again When how can he get them how when can he take them when can he feel better? And that's the continual background music the continual background music of your life and of my life is
self-interest When you walk into a room what are people thinking about me right now? How do they think I look? How did people respond to that last comment of mine? What how are they feeling about me? That's why we spend you spend some of us 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes thinking about what you're going to wear somewhere You can't wear the same thing you wore last week because everybody's going to remember what you wore last week, right? Of course not nobody remembers what you wore last week You know why because nobody's looking at you. You know why because they're all worried about what they wore last week And and we're all we all have that that self-interest that we're addicted to that And we need to change and the question that we bring to the Bible after we've been saved after we have Have received everything that Paul has taught us for the first 11 chapters of Romans after we see how much we're loved and how much God has done for us to remove from us The penalty of sin to free us from the slavery of sin the question still remains how do we change? How do we change and Most of us just don't know we I sent out a video last week with Bob new heart And he's he's pretending to be a counselor and he's promising he can change fix any problem in five minutes or less No matter what your problem is he's got two words for you. Stop it Stop it And ultimately if that's not enough then stop it or I'll bury you alive in a box, you know That's as good as it gets for us And honestly most of us grow up our whole life thinking that's the way God looks at us
You have a problem with eating too much stop it Stop it or I'll bury you alive You have a problem with with Jealousy and anger and you want to you want to get back at people by by gossiping at them stop it Stop it or I'll send you to hell You have a problem with adultery and self-comfort and you want to you want to be you're sexually immoral stop it Right and know what God says to us No, he does not He's got much wiser advice than that. So let's turn to the word of God and see how God tells us to change From Romans chapter 12. I don't know about you. I'm so glad we're out of chapters 9-10-11 um Chapter 12, why don't we all stand and hear what the word the Lord would say to us this morning It's written in your bulletin. It'll be written on the screen behind me. I think Please hear the word of the Lord from Romans chapter 12 I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God To present your bodies as a living sacrifice Holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship You're not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind That by testing you may discern what is the will of God what is good and acceptable and perfect That's far the reading of God's word please be seated
How do we change How tells us this when the gospel changes your mind As the gospel changes your mind It changes everything as the gospel changes your mind it changes everything the first thing I want you to see is Paul gives us here a new motivation a new motivation for change and that motivation is what It's changed or God's gonna bear you alive in a box right it's fear Well not not so much look at the text what does it say the text says I appeal to you brothers by the anger of God By the fierceness of God by the seriousness of God What does the text say? I appeal to you by the mercy of God He's by by his grace by his kindness Since God is like this since he is so overwhelmingly merciful I appeal to you You can change It's not motivated by fear it's not motivated by self-interest It's not even motivated by I need to change so that I'll have a better life It's not motivated by I need to change or God so that God will like me more We're motivated by the mercies of God Because he is so gracious I had a great illustration of this last week. I I went to Denver with Bo Berman our pastor our church planner And he told me a story he Bo and I both suffer with ADD dramatically It comes out in different ways I think his words he thinks mine is worse. That's fine But He came home the other day and If you know anything about Bo his wife has is It's kind of perfect and she keeps everything kind of in order and she raises ducks in her garage And Bo is kind of a nightmare. I mean he just he he's just A whirlwind and when he comes in the room he scatters all of his stuff And then when he has to leave he's always late because he takes him 15 minutes to find his things and and his wife Always has these cute little projects right and so Bo came home and he found out about her new project to raise Ducks in the garage and he and he started crying. He said honey. I need you to make me your next project I am a mess. I can't find anything I can't tell you what it's like to go through your whole day angry because everything is lost Will you please make me your project Next morning he gets up to go to work And they're on the counter as keys And his books and his telephone and his wallet And his wife had made him her project and that made him love her so much more He just is looking for something to do for her I want you to think about that spiral The humility it takes to say I can't get through the day. I'm a 40-year-old man who cannot get through the day Can you help me? And the grace that says of course I will And you see how that then generates even more confidence Even more freedom to confess what's going on in your life even more humility and more love That's that's an example of being motivated by the mercies of God We're motivated by when when we confess our sin when we bring our brokenness when we bring our weakness God doesn't get angry with us and huff He doesn't go he's not exasperated with us He's merciful He's gracious And the more we receive that mercy and the more we receive that grace the more we love him And the more we want to be like him That's what it means to be motivated by the mercies of God the more we are overwhelmed by his grace the more we want to be like him And so we live not only with a new motivation, but with a new purpose I miss each you I'm going to have to keep going back to the old king James version This is a text was just driven into your mind if you spent any time with campus crusaded on Still up there. I appeal to you my brother Brothers by the mercies of God to do what to present your bodies as a living sacrifice Holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship Present yourself over and over again as a sacrifice to God a living sacrifice He's not waiting to kill you. Okay, it's not You know, it's not you're you're coming in and he's gonna slaughter you for sins He's already taking care of your sin, but But when you're overwhelmed with that when you receive his grace the only proper response is to live for him Which is how you were created to live in the first place? You see the problem with being addicted to self-interest is that's not how we were created to function We were created to function with our face toward God receiving his grace being in relationship with him not even thinking about ourselves at all And what sin does it turns us away so that we're consent what we're We are obsessed with ourselves and we're thinking about ourselves and we're wondering well How are you seeing me right now? How are you feeling about me right now? What am I going to get out of this? And it breaks that relationship and it's not how we're created to live and it leads to bitterness That's why we're always bitter. You're not getting what you deserve That's why some of you are terrified that you're gonna be noticed That's why you can't say no anytime someone asks you to do something because people might think bad thoughts about you if you say no Or you can't say yes because you can't have anybody come into your house
We're obsessed with ourselves and that's not how you're created to be And at least to this brokenness He says you have a new purpose And the new purpose is to simply live for someone else To be so overwhelmed by the grace of God that you live for him
And that's a freeing message. This is not a burden some text It is not a life of continual Killing yourself to do awful horrible things that you don't want to do It is a life of enjoying God's love by the mercies of the God And loving others out of the overflow of that a couple of examples They might help you understand that there's a great story about mother Teresa who had a tremendous ministry in the ghettos of Calcutta and One of the men who are there working for one of came up to one day. He was so angry He was just so overall because he had so much to do and people weren't Helping him fast enough and it's so many poor people to help and and she looked at him and she said brother Why are you here? What is your job He said well, it's clear mother my job is to help the poor of Calcutta and he she Said no, no, no, no Nobody could do that That job helping one poor person if Calcutta is too great of a job for any person to do you there's no way you could ever do that Your job is to receive the love of Christ today And to love others out of the overflow
Love the people God brings you out of the overflow That is so different than trying to serve God by serving others. I can't
This is what I won't take somebody I think I feel a little bad about it not too bad We were at dinner. We at this training. We went to we always went to dinner together. There was 12 of us And we went to pretty nice restaurants. I never got to pick the restaurant And since I never picked the restaurant. I never picked up the check But the first night we were there when we went out to eat We had our own kind of room, you know, and it was a extravagant meal by my standards And when the waitress came and asked about the check Oh this guy on the one end who's kind of our host he kind of picked out four people he was gonna buy it for He's like, I'm gonna I'll get it for these people and I thought uh And so I just kind of spoke up and said hey, why don't you just divide it into we'll worry about it later And then when she came back It's I'll just give you a hint really if you want to get somebody to pick up the check this how you do it You pick the person who's done the most talking about himself that night And you say hathic he'll take it And that guy who's been trying so hard to impress you with how Great he is the me monster how cool he is in this case how great his church is how cutting edge his church was he's not gonna say no Right and so he picked up this three hundred and eighty dollar check Why because he wants us to improve of him he wants to impress us He spent that money not to give us a gift but he spent that money on himself I feel a little bit bad about manipulating but he was so easy And I felt like he needed to learn the lesson Didn't really um The next night we all go out together I have actually even more people ended up having fourteen huge table great meal And the waitress never bought a check When we were expecting her to bring the check she brought six desserts And she laid them out in front of all of us And we said we didn't order these and she said well it's all right the check's been paid for and the person who picked up the check Has uh Wanted y'all to have dessert as well And it was amazing And I ate way too much
And the only reason we ever found out who picked up the check was because when the waitress saw her tips She went and gave this guy the biggest most in awkward hug I've ever seen But see he was doing something for us He didn't make a show out of picking up the check we didn't even see him do it We never we never noticed him doing it He did it away from the table he was doing something for us because he was so overwhelmed He he is a person who is so overwhelmed by how much God has loved him And how much God has given him both spiritually and materially that he can't help but want to share it
That is presenting your that's living your life as a sacrifice for God not trying to get approval Not trying to impress other people Not trying to make sure that you notice how much he sacrificed It's just an overflow of how much love he's received
That that's what Paul's calling us to by the mercies of God Live your life as a sacrifice to God Overwhelmed driven By the mercy by how much he's showing you how do we do that? Well He said tells us though in order to do that you're gonna have to renew your mind You're gonna have to continually be changing your mind you can only live that way as the gospel renews your mind and and changes how you think about the world It's such an important verse We could spend the whole day on verse two. He's been a week on it Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind There's so much in that Christian character is a thoughtful thing You have to think about it's not gonna just flow naturally. It's not just accept Jesus and then just do whatever you want because you're gonna Always want to want the right thing. It doesn't flow that way You still want bad things after you accepted Jesus. Sorry Uh to run that Martin Luther quote for you. You Don't just do as you please you still have bad things that you want You have to renew your mind and be asking yourself do I want this because it's from the world or do I want this because I'm been so immersed in God's grace You have to be thoughtful and you have to think on you have to meditate on you have to renew yourself In God's grace you have to renew yourself in the truth True So I go through life trying to dominate people to win their approval What if my mind were really renewed? What would that look like? This is a silly story. I hope it makes the point Uh There's a singer named aloe black He's saying that song I'm a man. It was on the uh played during the playoffs Um, you may remember we probably don't ever mind Anyway, he's a singer got a couple of real popular songs It is new song. It's called lifter spirits and there's a line where he says lifter spirits And uh and toasted cheers or something like that, but it sounds just like he says lifter spirits and toasted cheese And uh, that's just such a funny image in my mind that I I got on twitter the other day and I said is aloe black really singing lifter spirits and toasted cheese Please say yes, it just sounds so funny. Well, I got I got back on twitter last night and Real I noticed that aloe black had favorited my tweet
And I was like wow Somebody famous knows I exist It was I mean it was a big enough deal that I remembered it and told you the story Right, I mean, that's a big deal for somebody who's who's longs for approval as badly as I do He thought it was funny enough to favor it. Even though I misspelled his last name
What if What if I really believe That the Lord of the universe who created space time and dimension knew my name
What if I really believe that What if I really believed that he knew everything about me and was so interested in me that he uh that he would give his own son for me What if I really really believed if I took to heart this idea that Jesus on his the night before his death would be praying saying father I wanted them in heaven with me I want them to see me. I want them to be with me What if I really believe that for just a minute if aloe black favoriting a tweet could change me How much more would that change me?
If your deepest fear is is a lack of security how much would it really change you if you believe if you really just for a moment believe That the God who feeds the birds is going to take care of you
You really believe that he was going to provide for you if you honestly deeply believed that he gave his most precious possession for you he gave his own son for you how much more would you believe He's gonna provide for your career You're gonna provide for your family You're gonna provide for your comfort Would you be able to rest in that the problem is We have to renew our mind We have to renew we had to remind ourselves of it every day Continually that's why we come to church every week. That's why we come to this table every week to be renewed To be reminded Remember because when you're here the thoughts are clear But when you get out in the world the world has this pressure to conform you And it clouds you And it makes you think that nobody cares about you nobody notices you And you have to remember And you have to renew your mind What if we did that what if everybody did this Not only had a new mind we would have a new world What if just imagine for a moment if every Christian were to get up in the morning So overwhelmed by how much God loved them that they went to the schools They went to their classroom. They went to their job They went into their sons of bedroom to wake him up with a mentality of I want to show you how much Jesus has loved me and how much he loves you How would that change work tomorrow How would that change the world I'll have picked up the airport My guy in Denver who He was he's wacky and he loves being wacky. He's saying ain't misbehaving to the to the lady at the At the toll booth of the airport to try to get a free parking and she was having none of it and He just loved that. That's his personality and when we when we stopped to eat had lunch he put his hands out to hold our hands to pray and um I don't really do that Presbyterian's don't do that touchy stuff and that was just kind of I was like uh And both was funny. He's like and he just said no. I'm not holding your hand hilarious conversation and um And he said well, you know when I in my business We always hold hands to pray. I'm just thinking what kind of business do you have? The answer is an extremely large one An international business that was recently bought uh Right ton of money And as he began to tell me the stories about this business he began to talk about how the gospel had transformed him And so they put into place a wellness program so that every employee in his business would be cared for emotionally physically Relationally spiritually Everybody would be striving toward wellness And he told me how he was called in to to clean up one of the offices the New Jersey office because in New Jersey They had created these uh ghost employees who didn't work and they had been creating all these invoices for jobs that were never delivered and they were uh it was the That port that one office was Just syncing the entire company and the corruption and uh eating up profits and he went in and I said what did you do? And he said I just I just went in and you know, I just sit down with people and I pray with them and hold their hands And he said you know, I just talked with them and two of these guys I don't think that everybody might be nice to them in their whole life and they just started crying And they just confessed everything And I said well, you know, it'd be really nice if we had some records Did you pay everybody in cash and the guy said no, no, I wrote checks. I'll go get those cancel checks for you right now
And He was probably taking on organized crime By holding hands with people and praying for them and he was transforming his part of the world What if we did that? You think the gospel is too small to transform the school you teach him You think the gospel is too small are you too cynical to even worry about showing love to the people that you work with?
Is it just too small for that to matter? We knew your mind We knew your mind And then we're going to show the world the good acceptable and perfect will of God The will of God is not some mysterious thing that if you miss it, you're going to run your life The will of God is the redemption of the world It's the redemption of the entire world And it's coming And we get to be part of it As the gospel renews our mind Please pray with me Father in heaven. It's hard. It's hard for us to figure out what it would look like To be so overwhelmed by your love that we just loved everybody else in the overflow
But I pray Father that we would not be too cynical to try I pray that you would give us the grace to try And I pray that we would be washed in that and cleansed by it and Father, I pray that tomorrow the portions of the world that we live in work in Would know your love We pray in Jesus name Amen Now we come to the point