Sermon Series = “Our Summer in Rome”
Romans 12:1-8
“God’s Perfect Will”
Several years ago, a barbers’ supply company held a large convention in a metropolitan city. To show the world how good their products were, they organized a publicity stunt. They went to the worst section of town and brought back the dirtiest and most helpless drunk they could find. They presented him on stage. Everyone saw how dirty and unkept his hair and beard were. Then they took him out and cleaned him up. They shaved him. They shampooed and styled his hair. They sprayed him with cologne. They washed him with a new kind of soap they were trying to sell. They bought him a new suit, a new shirt, new tie, and shoes. He looked great. He looked and felt like a new man. They brought him back to the stage to show him off, saying to all the world, “This is what our barber supplies can do for you.” The audience could hardly believe that this was the same man they had seen earlier that day. Looking at the man on stage no one would have ever guessed that he was living in the streets just a few hours before. He was completely changed.
The very next day the organizers of the convention went looking for this man again. Would you like to guess where they found him? That’s right, lying in a gutter, filthy and drunk! They changed him on the outside, but….
Our travel agent, the Apostle Paul, wasn’t concerned about how people looked on the outside. He wasn’t concerned with dressing people up. His concern was inner change. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
My Spiritual mentor and coach is famous for saying, “If you want to win the day you need to win the morning.” Call me whatever you want but I have a morning routine that I try to stick very closely to, unless I’m traveling. After my shower and my morning meds, I make my first cup of coffee and retreat to my prayer chair, my home sanctuary, where I start my day with worship. I start with ten minutes of quiet [from outside and internal noise] and I ask God to speak to me, because I want to hear Him. Ten minutes of silence may sound easy, but you try it. Another part of those ten minutes I like to recite the following formula: Consecration—Transformation = Demonstration. And I sing or recite the words to the hymn, Spirit of the Living God : melt me—mold me—fill me—use me.
After the silence and another short prayer, I listen/watch the morning “Wake-Up Call,” an email that I receive around 4 am and something some of you join me on. I’ve been getting this morning message for around twelve years now. It started out as the “Daily Text.” There’s also an invitation to join in your worship bulletin if you don’t already and I usually share every morning post on my Facebook page as well.
Part of that “Wake-Up Call” is our starting with the Prayer of Consecration: “Wake up sleeper and rise from the dead; and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to You—I lift up my heart to You—I set my mind on You—I fix my eyes on You—I offer my body to You as a living sacrifice—Jesus, we belong to You. Praying in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the matter of transformation, the mind is the real battleground. The heart will follow the mind. The focus of our eyes will follow the fixation of our hearts. And all of this is the pathway to the offering of our physical bodies. All of this is what it means to be spiritual, to worship God in spirit and truth. This is what we are made for. This is who we are becoming. And yes, this is the long game we are playing. I usually close out my morning worship praying with the Lectio 365 ap.
That phrase, living sacrifice is an oxymoron [e.g. jumbo shrimp, working vacation, smartphone]. A sacrifice, by nature, is dead. In baseball, when a batter hits a pop fly to the outfield and the base runners advance to the next base, it is deemed a sacrifice. The batter is out. When a soldier jumps on a hand grenade to save other’s lives, it is deemed a sacrifice. The soldier is dead. What on earth is a living sacrifice? How on earth does a sacrifice live?
Paul writes to this tiny band of Jewish converts in Rome, “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.”
This magical, miraculous phrase contains the rationale for all of Romans, if not the whole Bible. Without the active, living vision of God’s mercy, the best you can hope for is religious activism by human will power.
There are important differences between the old and new sacrifices. In the O.T. people brought their ox—their means of livelihood—and sacrificed it in order that the smoke of it might ascend to the nostrils of God and bear their
expression of gratitude. We don’t bring an ox or a tractor, or the tools of our occupation. We bring our bodies. And we don’t destroy them—make them a dead or impractical sacrifice. We give them in dedicated service. With the body, goes the mind, the heart, the will, the possessions, the abilities, and the ambitions of life. The incense rising from our sacrifice isn’t perfumed smoke. It’s the dedicated love and service of a life made holy and well-pleasing to God.
Last April I travelled to Franklin, TN for a New Room Leadership Gathering. Our featured speaker was Jon Thompson, a pastor for a muti-site church in the Greater Toronto Area. The theme for the conference was, “Waking Up to The Gifts of the Holy Spirit” and was based on his work and his book, Convergence.
There are twenty-two spiritual gifts, and Paul introduces seven of them in our lesson this morning. He also uses 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4 to introduce more.
Jon breaks these gifts up into three main categories. Love Gifts which consist of Administration [Guidance], Mercy [Compassion], Celibacy, Martyrdom, Helps [serving] and Giving. Word Gifts consisting of Teaching, Apostleship, Exhortation [Encouragement], Leadership, Pastoring [Shepherding], Evangelism and Prophecy [Word & Power Gift]. And finally, Power Gifts, including Faith, Healing, Words of Wisdom, Words of Knowledge, Intercession, Miracles [Workings of Power], Discernment [Distinguishing of Spirits], Tongues, and Interpretation of Tongues.
Paul touches on these in today’s lesson:
Mercy [Compassion} = The gift of mercy is the ability to step into another person’s pain with genuine compassion.
Helps [serving] = The gift of Helps is a Spirit-given capacity to see what needs to be done and take action to support others.
Giving = The gift of Giving is a Spirit-led capacity to release personal resources—money, time, or possessions—to meet needs and advance God’s work.
Teaching = The gift of Teaching is a Spirt-given, Bible-centered capacity to instruct, explain, and expose God’s written word so that believers not only understand Scripture but are empowered to obey it.
Exhortation [Encouragement] = The gift of exhortation is a Spirit-given capacity to urge people to action through the application of Biblical truth.
Leadership = The gift of Leadership is a Spirit-given capacity to discern God’s direction for a group and exercise influence over that group toward God’s vision and future for that group.
Prophecy [Word and Power Gift] = The gift of Prophecy is the Spirit-given ability to report in one’s own words what God has spontaneously brought to mind, delivering insight, direction, encouragement, or conviction to a group in a specific situ
“Follow the way of love, and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy” [1 Corinthians 14:1]. A piece of Scripture that I have rememberized for a couple of years.
In his book, Convergence, Thompson writes, “All Christians get at least one gift, and the gifts are given for one thing and one thing only: the common good. They are to build up, rebuke, encourage, challenge, and bring life to the community. They are not given for rivalry or jealousy; they are to be used and not hidden in fear or suppressed for any reason.”
We all get at least one of these gifts, some may get more but no one gets them all. And we don’t get to pick and choose which gifts are ours, they are Spirit-given thus the Spirit chooses which ones we get.
If you would like a deeper understanding of these and all the gifts you can borrow the book or I can share some other reference material in my possession.
With football season fixin to get in gear we will inevitably hear a coach make a statement like this: “Whoever controls the line of scrimmage will win the game.” Well, in the Christian life, the mind is the line of scrimmage. That is where the enemy seeks to control us because if he can influence your mind, he can control your behavior.
That’s why we must saturate our minds with the word of God, because it is the word of God that fills our mind with the wisdom of God, and it is the wisdom of God that gives us the ability to discern, define, and to do the will of God. But God doesn’t reveal His will to conformers, only to transformers.
An attention-grabbing headline that would make you stop and read the article went like this: “Plane with a Mind of its Own Crashes.” The story that followed was not only funny but illustrated a great truth. It goes like this:
Paul Sirks owned a vintage single-engine plane, a 1946 Aeronca Champ. He had landed the plane at Grimes Field Airport in Urbana, Ohio, because of mechanical problems. The plane’s engine had stalled on the runway and Sirks got out to restart it by hand-turning the propeller. That’s when the fun began.
Once the engine started, he could only watch helplessly as the plane, on its own, taxied away from him and took off by itself. The plane was also trimmed for landing, which means the nose was trimmed up, so it started climbing.
For two hours that plane flew itself. It climbed to about two thousand feet, circled the area for about five minutes, and then finally headed Northeast. Another pilot and the State Highway Patrol tracked the plane, which reached about twelve thousand feet near the end of its flight.
It finally crashed ninety miles away from where it took off and was totally destroyed. The obvious truth of that story is without a pilot a plane will inevitably crash.
But there is a greater truth for all of us. Our lives are like that plane, and without God piloting our life, and us flying according to His will, the plane of our life will also eventually crash.
The wisest thing you will ever do with your life is to find the will of God, and do it! You’ve probably asked, “How can I know the will of God for my life?” Well, let me give you a comforting thought—You don’t find God’s will, God’s will finds you.
God is more anxious for us to know His will than we are to find it. It’s not really your responsibility to find the will of God; but it is your responsibility to do the will of God! If God wants you to know His will, He will reveal it to you. It’s your responsibility to obey it.
“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.
Eastman First Methodist Church 