Mark: And so I want to talk to you about something today that's near and dear to my heart. And it's been a strength over the years and a joy over the years to study the Word of God. And scripture tells us that not to be conformed to this world, but on the other hand to be transformed. I got a question for you. Am I being, are you being conform to this world or are you experiencing a transformation? Because there's one available. You could sit in church for the rest of your life and be conformed to the world. You know, it's kind of in vogue right now out in the marketplace for people to wear a cross and do their whole thing. But I wonder, is there a transformation behind the cross? Or has it come up a merging of world and religion? It's a scary thing. And I want to talk to us today about that. There's ways to be sure that we're on the right track. And it's an amazing thing when we study what power the Word of God has. It's living. It's powerful. It's sharper than a two-edged sword. able to get down between soul and spirit. It's a discerner of the thoughts and the intent of the heart. And when we expose ourselves to God's Word, God is getting right down into the middle of us. And the same passage in Hebrews tells us that he's compassionate to us, because sometimes we feel so undressed and so naked and so out of it with him. But God says, listen. I was tempted in every way like you are. Think of the ways you're tempted for not too long. But think of it. What are those areas that you struggle with and you beat yourself up over at times? Well, understand this. You can go to him because he understands exactly what you're going through. A faithful high priest who's able to understand where you are is not to judge you and condemn you. He's there to bring you up out of that. nothing else today, please lock into that. Because sometimes our guilt keeps us from doing what God would invite us to do that's going to set us free. But we feel unworthy. We feel like God would never pay any attention to me. He would never meet me where I am because I'm just not worthy of it. Well, get over that. You're not. But while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So when we come in here today and we have a plan, what we're gonna do and all of that, the Lord just breaks in on us to embrace us and invite us into His world. Let me just tell you, His world is better than the one we've created. And one day we'll all be, I'll go to Chuck Norris, know, he was as healthy as a guy can be and all of a sudden he's with Jesus. We're all going to go there one day. Question is, what's that going to be like for us? The Apostle Paul in his classic letter to the fledgling church at Rome, in other words, they'd had a revival and God was doing great things and there was a church in Rome, but they had no underpinnings for what they believed. They came out of paganism. They were living in a culture that was overloaded with vice and starved for virtue. These words penned so long ago. should be freshly taken to heart by every believer with increased urgency as our society drifts in a very similar direction. We should be on the alert, but not surprised because these are among the serious signs of societal decline that scripture foretells we would see before the day of the Lord, before His return. So we need to understand it's approaching. We don't know whether it will be today or whether it will be 100 years from now, but I don't think it will be 100 years from now. The signs are too strong and it's too frequent today. So with this point of concern for the young congregation, Paul, in view of that, wrote, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. which is your spiritual worship or rational service. Do not be conformed to this world. but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Conform to this world literally has the connotation of being squeezed into the mold of. In other words, outward pressure pushing you to be something that's pre-designed. Believe you me, the enemy has many designs that he would like to squash you and squeeze you into against even your will. We don't realize how much pushing and prodding and confining is going on today. Now think of the woke culture that we've dealt with over the last period of time. You couldn't even say certain things. You couldn't even express an opinion without being outed, without being destroyed in public. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. The word of God says to us what's right and what's wrong. We need to be the people that echo that everywhere we go. Because you never know when what kind of darkness you're gonna find yourself where a little bit of light would really be helpful. People dwelling in darkness, the scripture says, see a great light. And when you're in darkness, you wanna run to light. Light is so beautiful, so necessary, so welcoming, so critical. And God wants us to understand that what we carry as believers is eternal in nature. Heaven and earth is going to pass away, he said, but my word will not pass away. So sometimes, I don't know about you, but having been a Christian for a lot of years and my life has been centered around preaching, teaching, and trying to develop a lifestyle for a congregation and even my own personal life, of course. around the Word of God. But there's a danger sometimes when it's also our profession, but yet our calling as a person. Never trivialize, never get used to the wonder of this book that we carry. Never. It's powerful, sharp as a sword, able to get right down in between the layers of your being. And it does some things there that we don't really realize. I ran across an article and I could almost just read this article to you and that would be considered a message because it was written by a fellow by the name of Dr. John Ho and he looks like a Chinese man. And he did a paper on, and here's what he titled it, the neuropsychological power of scripture. how sacred text transforms the mind and brain. This is from a clinical point of view. He goes on to say in the first part of it, in ⁓ a maximum security prisons across America, a remarkable phenomenon occurs daily. Hardened criminals with many decades of violence and anti-social behavior undergo profound transformations that lead them to become pastors, counselors, and community leaders. Now know we all think of jailhouse religion when someone gets in there and they're getting religion to get out. But these men are stuck. And these transformations are taking place. And we're going to dive into this just for a couple of minutes before I move on because I want you to understand that what God is doing is supernatural. It isn't just a cultural thing that we're adopting. It's a supernatural aspect of God where he's bringing a heaven to earth. and the kingdom of God into a person. And this is what happens right here. He says, what triggers such dramatic change? He says, emerging research in neuroplasticity and religious psychology suggests that scripture engagement creates measurable alterations in both brain structure and psychological functioning. offering scientific insights into the age-old testimonies of radical personal transformation. You know, I'd like to read this whole thing to you. And I would recommend that you look it up because it talks about the fact that God is putting literally neural pathway changes into us, altering brain to the point that the same decision processes that have gotten us in trouble over the years start to be altered. These men that he's talking about here are the worst of the worst. had all those habits that they could never conquer, and so they're in prison for the rest of their lives. Yet, in prison, they encounter the Word of God and the Jesus that the Word of God talks about, and literally, because of reading the Bible, studying the Bible every day, and sharing in the Christian community, that was another aspect of it. These men are so out of it culturally. But yet God is putting them together supernaturally in community in a prison and they're ministering to one another in the body situation. And so all of these things are transforming because they center every day around the study of God's Word. And there's repetition there and it's building new pathways where all of the predilections from before, all their natural responses from before are being altered chemically, physically, emotionally, and most of all spiritually so that they begin to walk in the Spirit. It's an amazing thing. It's measurable. They have actually studied these men's brains and they find these things out. They're just incredible. So what I want to do today is I want to go back through the Scriptures with you and talk about Romans chapter 12. one and two primarily, where Paul contrasts here godly and ungodly lifestyles. He chooses the term describing the mindset believers should adopt as a lifestyle, suggesting that they should see themselves as living sacrifices. That probably came as a shock to people whose concept of sacrificial offerings to various gods of their time, necessitated the killing of sacrificial animals to earn pardon and secure favor. But Paul is declaring something quite beautiful and quite instructive. He's making the point that the Lord of heaven and earth is not looking for dead sacrifices or inanimate sacrifices, but living ones, ones that are dedicated to him and love and service. It also helps us to see a different perspective and a set of priorities for our lives. You know, in the Old Testament, was a sacrifice that was consumed against its will and was no more. In the New Testament, the sacrifice is lifting someone up so that they can live to the fullest, so that they can walk with God in fellowship, and that they can literally illustrate a new life to their culture. That's what we see in this prison experience. But God wants us to understand that he's not trying to do away with the personality that we have. He's not trying to do away with the life that we have. He's trying to enhance it and build it up so that it shows people what it's like to walk with God. It's a shame when Christian people are miserable. It's really a shame when they make other people miserable. Has anybody come to mind when you think of that? Hopefully it's not you. But the bottom line of this thing is God wants to fulfill the creature that He created. If you create something, you know it intimately, and you know how to make the most out of what's been created. You know the faults, the issues, the opportunities, all the above. And when we walk with God, He wants to lift us up. He wants us to create in us, in essence, something like Himself. You you reproduce what you are. And Jesus wants to reproduce in us. In fact, in a congregational sense, He wants to show the body of Christ. He wants to show the aspects of God's nature. Certain people are gonna have certain aspects of God's nature naturally. They're gonna function that way. They're just loving people and they love everybody in spite of who they are. That's the trait of Jesus. And there's other people that look into a situation and say, there's something wrong with this, let's change that. They have more of a management kind of mentality. And all of these things, from A to Z, should be represented in the body of Christ, but they still should have the same DNA. It's all for your good. So when we read the Word of God, for instance, we're gonna find some things in there that prick our conscience. And if anything in the Word of God pricks our conscience, it's so that we can deal with it. It's so much better to deal with it now than on judgment day. Well done is what we want to hear. The well done starts with doing something and doing the right thing over and over and over again. Let's just say, for instance, practically, that we're in process, okay? I don't think there's anybody here that's completed the process yet. So how do we make sure that we progress? The best way is every single day have a time with God's Word. And in God's Word, you will find things that encourage you that you're seeing in your life. And that's cause for prayer. That's a cause for worship and thankfulness that we've been transformed by what we've done and what He's done in us. And secondly, we're going to find things along the way that's puts the finger on us and we feel conviction. But that gives us an opportunity to repent. Especially so good to know that Jesus understands completely why we got there. And when he asked us to repent, he just says, just come on over here where I am. I'll give you the power, I'll give you the authority. You can say no to this thing and you can say yes to other things. But if you don't read the Word of God, here's what happens. You begin to rationalize and be conformed to the world. That normality. It's terrible when abnormality is sold as normality. And it happens every day. But with the Word of God, it's always going to point out the way of God and invite us to follow on. And so, it's just encouraging. I want to encourage you as much as I possibly can, make Bible reading a daily activity. A daily activity. Not every so often. In fact, there are statistics that show that if you read the Bible maybe once a week, your lifestyle won't change. If you read it twice a week, probably not gonna change. It's not till about four times a week that it really begins to touch the way you live, the way you act, the way you think. It's not meant, know, His mercies are renewed every morning and I don't know about you, but I need a dose every day. I need a dose every day. And you know, when you get a hold of a verse in your, let's say your morning reading, which would be the best time to do it, you can meditate on that all day long. And that thing begins to get into your heart then. And as you meditate on the law of the Lord day and night, the Bible tells us there's things that happen. There's things that happen in us and they become ingested into our spirit. Just like what we read about these particular prisoners, literally neural pathways that have been going a certain direction always. You know, a reaction to an action, whatever it might be. those things begin to be transformed and you have the ability to say no to some things and yes to other things. It's incredible. And I just want to encourage you when you begin to let the natural mind absorb the things of God, you'll be pleasing to God. The natural mind is always your enemy. It is. The Bible says very plainly that it is your enemy. And so you need to understand though that God can harness the natural mind because it's powerful. It's a powerful ⁓ mechanism that dictates life basically. What are the inputs it's getting? What are the inputs? you could back off today and go to 20,000 feet and look down at your life, what would you say your inputs are? What are the instructions that you're giving to your mind? What are the desires that you're letting drive your thoughts and drive your plans and drive your culture? What are those things? Are we getting those online? Literally, mean, you know, we're being bombarded constantly day and night with high-powered media, videos, you name it. Everybody wants to like, everybody wants to follow, and everybody wants to get you on board with their thing. What are our priorities? Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. But are we doing the first part? singing first the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is not the kingdom of this age. Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life. Jesus described it as works of the flesh. He described it as not the kingdom of God. And yet most of us measure our success by items that are listed within those three realms. If all those things were taken away, what would we be? Hopefully we'd be the same. Some of the trials that God allows us to go through basically help us be cleansed of false priorities. I don't know about you, but I find it hard sometimes to shake the false priorities. I read the Bible and makes me feel bad about where I'm at. Well, that's good. You know, if you're on the road somewhere and you're driving, were laughing at my daughter last night. She one time was trying to go somewhere on West Sunshine and she ended up in Republic. And she said, well, I wish I'd had MapQuest back then or whatever the mapping mechanism might have been. I said, you know, that would have been a good thing for you. Because she could never find her way around town. She'd get lost going places she'd been 20 times. I never could figure that out. But you know, if you've got something that tells you, ⁓ you just made a wrong turn, you don't go all the way to Republic. you turn around somewhere on the western side of town. And that's exactly what reading the Bible every day does for us. It's a gentle way of God instructing and turning. There are so many places in life you don't want to go if you keep on the direction you're on right now. And if I can get a blip of redirection every day, and maybe God giving me a long-term direction, and that's what happens. It's amazing. There's two words that translate word in the Bible, in the New Testament. One is logos, which is the written context of God's word, and the other is rama, which is a living word. A rama is what created the heavens and the earth. God said, let there be, and there was. Well, you'll get both if you begin to read the Word of God and be faithful in the little thing, you'll make ruler over more. It's one thing to know the logos that gives you fences around things and gives you understanding about general pathways, but the rama that comes to you now is empowered to bring you that directional change that you're looking for. or bring it to peace in the midst of chaos. A rama from God invest in life, kingdom, God's authority, God's blessing, God's wisdom, God's power, God's sustenance, all those things come through God's rama word. And we need to understand that I can be reading Logos that I've read a thousand times and suddenly God opens the eyes of my understanding and I begin to see what is the hope of my calling. I get to see where God's perspective on my mess is. Has anybody here got one of them? would you like to know how God sees it? You can ask and ask and ask and ask, get nowhere. But when you put your life in his hands daily by opening your heart and mind to him, wisdom comes. Grace comes to you. Perspective comes to you. Peace comes to you. understand, God knows. God understands me. Hey, God, I'm so thankful that you've left me a love letter here to show me how to walk this life out. You're carrying around dynamite. Absolute dynamite to transform. wants to open us to it. And folks, it's not just a drudgery to reap. There is that. There is that because you're telling your flesh you're going to do this. You know, I can think of a million things my flesh does not want to do. And a good many of them are good for me. And when you finally go for it, you begin to get the benefits from it. Now, it's the same way here. There's a lot of Christians that are frustrated because they're starving to death. starving to death. They wait to get to church so they can hear from God. Here's what's fun. If you're listening to God all week long, if you're studying to show yourself approved to God, Then when you get to church, you're likely to get a confirmation in the mouth of two or three witnesses, let every word be established. So it's a safe thing as well for whatever you feel like God's speaking to you about as you read, you're gonna come to church and some guy's gonna stand up or some lady's gonna stand up or maybe charity, well, whatever. If you're walking and leading in the spirit, you're gonna be confirming a lot of things that God's been saying to people. all week long and they're going to say amen finally. What a joy to realize you're on the same page. What a joy to realize this is a whole lot bigger than my mess, whole lot bigger than my situation. God's inviting me into something called the church, the community, the ecclesia. This is a big deal, guys. This is God's plan for redemption. And so as the people of God, we need to be reading our Bible. It's funny, we even have to talk about this. But you know when you've been reading it for a long time? So I know that already. I know that already. I know that already. Well, sometimes, does anyone here have children? Do you ever have to repeat your instructions? The kids always say, ⁓ thank you for letting me know. I know, I know. We got a lot of that going on in the church. But you know what's fun is when he works in us, Philippians tells us this, when he works in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. It's amazing when you do the things you know to do, God begins to give you a love for it. He begins to not only give you a love for it, to will to do it, There's grace that then comes to do it. He's just not asking for more sweat and more effort. He's asking for a change of heart. And that's exactly what this particular article I'm talking about says. It's literally magic. The way God gets in there and messes with those neural pathways, that plasticity is the ability to change what has always been there. That's what that means. I don't want a plastic brain, but I do want some with plasticity. It's an amazing thought. But God does this naturally for us when we learn His Word. Transformed. The word transformed literally means the same thing when Jesus was literally changed physically. on the mountain. Remember when he took the disciples, three of the disciples up to the mountain and he was transfigured? Same word, same word, transfigured. He became something else. His heavenly body began to show up in that moment. That's what the Bible says will happen to us. We will be transfigured by the Word of God. That's pretty big. I've heard people over the years, so many times, in counseling situations, or, you know, we're praying over a problem or something like that, and people just say, well, that's just the way I am. Let me just tell you, the way you am. doesn't have to be permanent. We're not trying to ask God to repeat the house that's falling down. He said, I want to be in you, a well of water springing up to life eternal. I want to transform what you are as probably a result to some degree of the fall of man. I mean, seriously, we're all fallen creatures. Nobody was born perfect. Only had one of them and they killed him. So here's the deal. You and I don't need to be fixed up. It starts with being reborn. And that new person that's been born in the Spirit can thrive in the Spirit. They can be elevated by the Spirit of God in their life. There can be giftings and power and blessing and personality change and the whole nine yards go with new born again personages. I want to be born again and stay how I was born. What a drag it would be to have a birth of a baby that never ever was able to grow up and remained in that state. And yet in church we often see people that were born again 25 years ago and they still act the same way they did the day they came in. It happens. I hope you ended up in heaven. But the bottom line of it is you may live through hell all the way. God wants to transform us by the renewing of our mind. And I worked on these notes that I'm not even using. What a drag. But do you catch my drift today? I'm telling you, for some of you... There is a mystery God wants to unveil to you. There are things that God wants to do that will literally captivate your imagination for the rest of your life. You think he can do that? I know he can do that. I look back over my life, I had like four major times, four major times when God literally plucked me out of a situation and put me in a whole new situation that made no sense. I've been looking back on it now, I wouldn't have traded death for anything. It's all because of spending time in here and trying to translate that into daily activity, daily life. Transformed by the renewing of the mind, it began to will different things. Not just will and want to and never be able to, but to will and to do. That's so exciting. I'm looking out on a beautiful congregation of people today. and I'm going to speak to you like I'd want to be spoken to. Don't settle for your best plan. You don't have enough perspective to make it. Cast your cares on the Lord. Spend time hearing his heart. And it will spark prayer that's meaningful. Nothing worse than having a list that you pray that you don't think about, care about, and it doesn't do anything for you. But when you get into the Scriptures, you're gonna find things you wanna pray about. You're going to see a God that can do exceedingly abundantly, above and beyond all you can ask or think. You can't even dream it. Don't limit yourself to your dreams. God's dreams began to dawn on you. He'll bring you out of the places you are. He'll teach you. He'll make new neural pathways so that things don't trip you up like they always have. He will do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond all you could ask, because you're asking at a low level. He's going to teach you to ask at a high level things that he wants for your life. There's so much, there's so much that God wants to do with us if we just give him half a chance. I read in Romans 7, 15, and 16, an interesting thing. We're talking about this living sacrifice mentality. And this writer writes, for I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. The apostle Paul himself is this disillusioned and frustrated soul depicted in this verse. He's afflicted by the same problem of conforming to the culture of sin, even though he's the one writing to tell us not to. Is he a hypocrite and a fraud? Not at all. He, like all of us, is feeling the conflict of the curse of sin, common to all members of Adam's race. Romans 3.23 says, for all of sin, then come short of the glory of God. This is not just because you're a bad person, it's because you were born into that whole world. You can't avoid it. We've all been trained to follow our own lower nature. And from birth to the moment that we receive Christ, we are helpless to escape its dominance. Be careful though, once you're born again, that you keep answering to the old dominance. We need to understand we've been set free. If we're honest, our own natural minds are corrupted and tend towards selfishness. Romans 8-7 gives the sad diagnosis of the mind we're born with. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. You know, and what we end up with when we're living in that particular context as a believer, we end up with this Lord, I need mentality. Our prayer life is always about, Lord, I just need you to this, I just need that, I just need the other thing. God wants to lift us out of that. He's not the sugar daddy in the sky. He's the author and he's the finisher of our faith. We need to know what that looks like. Won't you stand with me this morning as we close? 2 Timothy 2.15, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. Ask yourself a question today. I've been asking myself that question for many, many years. I don't always get the answer I want. Am I being conformed to this world? my being transformed into God's by the renewing of my mind. My job is to let my mind be renewed by the Word of God. don't know about you today, but it seems like Jesus may be coming back sooner than many people think. And I want to be found faithful. I don't want my robe to be spotted on that day. I don't want to get as close to the world as I possibly can and still make it to heaven. That's a really, really dangerous place to be. I want to be found faithful. I want to be... approved by God, rightly handling the Word of truth. Can I see your hands today if you say, Pastor, I want to go there. I'm convicted. need to work on that. Well, God sees your hand. More than that, He sees your heart. Today, let's ask Him together, shall we? Father, we pray today. that you who ordained this walk and invited us into your world. I pray today, O God, that you would enlighten the eyes of our understanding, that we might know the hope of your calling and make our election sure. Lord, I pray that the Spirit of God would literally wake us up in the middle of the night sometimes. I pray that you'd open our eyes to your Word so that we really get the richness of it and the power of it. and to transform our minds so that our heart can rule. God, I ask you in Jesus' name today to forgive us for taking your Word for granted, for not rightly handling it. And I pray even as people begin to pick up their Bible, maybe this afternoon even. that as they pray for understanding and open eyes and open heart, that you would literally rain your blessing down on them and let them see, wow, I have been missing something I don't want to miss anymore. So God, I bless them today. I thank you for them. Go before them and make their path straight, I pray. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen and amen. God bless you guys. Have an awesome week.