Be The Church: Be a Transformed Church

Over the years I’ve been in ministry there have been at least three major shifts in what Churches have emphasized in order to be an effective Church.  When I started out in in the mid 80’s the emphasis was on Church Growth and all the programs a Churches could offer to attract people to their Church.  So we were taught that to be an effective church you needed to have all kinds of programs that would cater to the needs of people. So if you’re church had stuff going on everyday and every night, you were considered an effective church.  Then in the 90’s the emphasis shifted to becoming an Attractional Church.  The goal was to attract non-believers to your worship service and show them how relevant Jesus was to their lives.  So to be an effective church you needed to be seeker sensitive or seeker targeted. Now in the last 10 to 15 years there’s been a shift to what are called Missional Churches.  What makes a missional church effective is being an authentic presence in their community through the love and service of their people.  Now, each of these kinds of churches had a common goal.  They measured their effectiveness on how well people are being attracted to the Church.  So that begs the question: what makes for an attractive church?  Or let me say it another way: What is God looking for in His Church that will truly attract unbelievers to faith in Jesus?

Now before we answer that question, I want to remind you of the quest we are on in this series: BE THE CHURCH.  If you were here last week, we began unpacking Romans 12 to see what God is looking for in His Church.  So we asked the question: if we are going to be the Church God wants us to be, what’s that going to take? And we discovered from Romans 12:1, that the first characteristic God is looking for in His Church is for us to be a worshiping church.  And we discovered that true worshipers give their all to God because God has given His all to us.  That’s the starting point for being the Church. As we surrender ourselves to God day after day, moment by moment in every conversation and every encounter, God is worshiped and people will be blessed.

But surrender is just the beginning.  For it’s not just our surrendered lives that God uses to attract others to Jesus. No, it’s our changed lives that will turn heads and draw hearts to Jesus.  In other words, God uses changed lives to change lives. Therefore, the second characteristic God is looking for in His Church is that we might be a Transformed Church!  So that’s what we’re going to look at in God’s Word today from Romans 12:2.  So if you have your Bible why don’t you find this verse.  For from this verse God Word will show us how He calls us to become a transformed church. Let’s read this Scripture together: 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. Romans 12:2

So just how does God want us to change and become attractive to the world?  Well, this verse gives us two commands to obey that if we put into practice as His surrendered people, will change everything about us.  And the first command is this:

Stop letting the world shape our thinking Paul writes it this way: Do not conform to the pattern of this world.  In other words, if you really want to tap into God’s good, pleasing and perfect will – and live the new life He has for you, then you can’t continue to allow the prevailing culture to shape your values, your thoughts, your attitudes or your way of living and relating with others.

And that begins by understanding how this age works: How the world shapes our thinking!   The world is continually trying to get you to buy into its way of thinking. You see, this word “conform” is present tense and passive, which simply means that your mind is continually being programed by the spirit of the age so you will embrace the spirit of the age.  There’s no neutral ground here.  Everyone here was born with an original operating system: a value system that needs to be programed.

Now when you were young, your value system: your way of relating with others, your understanding of right and wrong, good and evil, was programmed by your parents.  If you had godly parents they gave you godly values. Then you went off to school, so for the next 12 to 16 years your internal value system was molded by educators who were now indoctrinating you in a value system.  If you went to a Christian school, you received Christian values.  If not, you were indoctrinated with secular humanism and moral relativism. Because those ways of thinking: secular humanism – man is the end of all things, reason is god and science is authority, really gives no place for God.  In fact, secular humanism tells you, that God is an old fashioned idea, and man has moved beyond that.  And moral relativism is what came from that:  What’s true for you is true for you, but not for me.  So we have this shifting value system in our world, where the only authority is the majority.  The majority gets to dictate what is right or wrong.  And because of that, we live in a day where wrong is said to be right, and if you stand for what is right, you’re told you are wrong.  And it is this value system that infiltrates not only our educational system, but also most media and movies we digest.  That is why we live in a world that is continually moving away from God and continually trying to get you to buy into its way of thinking, living and relating to others.  Which leads me to this question: Who’s behind the world’s value system?

Who is trying to shape your value system apart from God?  Well, none other than Lucifer, the angel of light, the deceiver, the evil one, the Devil himself who is also called: the god of this age who blinds the eyes of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ 2 Corinthians 4:4. As the angel of light, Lucifer puts forth his beautifully disguised lies to entice us to adopt his value system, so we will pursue a lifestyle that revolves around our wants and rejects what God wants.  But Satan’s value system is false. His values don’t deliver satisfaction, joy or life.  They don’t honor God.  They exalt self.

So what are the values the deceiver wants us to pursue?  What is the world’s value system? They are spelled out for us in 1 John 2:15-16 where John writes: Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. 1 John 2:15-17  (New Living Translation)  So what does the world value?  What are the deceiver’s counterfeit priorities for your life?

The World Values Pleasure  John calls it “the physical lust for pleasure.”  We live in a culture that lives for pleasure.  We have pleasure parks, pleasure cruises, pleasure palaces.  Do you know that the number one industry in the U.S. is entertainment?  The U.S. spends billions of dollars every year just trying to entertain you.

The World Values Possessions  John calls it “the craving for everything we see.”  Another translation calls this, “the ambition to buy everything that appeals to you.” Not surprising, because we are a culture obsessed with buying whatever we want, whenever we want, just because we can.  We’ve been influenced by the god of this age that tells us that life revolves around you, so you deserve this!  Buy it.

The World Values Prestige  John calls it the “pride in our achievements and possessions.” Or as another version translates this: “the pride that comes from wealth and importance.”  So people buy into thinking that their identity comes from what they do or what they have done.  And so from the cradle to the grave we seek to achieve, perform and acquire the trappings of success that tell everyone else how great we are.

And if all we have is this age, then these things become all important.  But in the scope of eternity, the world’s pleasures, possessions and prestige amount to nothing.  They are all temporal and false.  They don’t bring joy, contentment or life.  In fact, if anything the pursuit of these values block out the life God wants for you.  As Jesus said, when you are caught up in the values of this world, life’s worries, riches and pleasures choke out God’s life from being formed in you:  The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful.  Matthew 13:22  That’s the scheme of the evil one, to get you so caught up in what the world says is important, that you wind up being no different from anyone else in the world.

So how do we stop? How do we put an end to the influence of the world on our lives?  Pretty simple.  The second half of Romans 12:2 tells us how:  We are to  Start letting God transform our thinking  That’s why Paul pairs these commands together: Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. God loves us too much to leave us the way we are   Before you came to faith in Christ, your mind was been totally under the influence of the world.  Now God wants to change that.  He wants to transform you from the inside out.  The picture God wants you to see here is that of a caterpillar.  In creation, He transforms a homely caterpillar than can only crawl…  into a beautiful butterfly that soars!  God wants to take a pleasure seeking, possessive holding, power tripping rebel and change you into a peace filled, burden freed, humble servant who is being formed into the likeness of His Son.  Why?  So we will be free to live and love like Jesus.  So here’s the good news:

God changes us by renewing our minds  God doesn’t just give us a new brain – but a new way of thinking – a new value system.  His value system.  HIS WILL!  GOD renews our mind by replacing the values of the world with the values of Christ.  Because once we have the mind of Christ, we value what Jesus values we will not just think like Jesus, but begin to live like Jesus.  Then when the world tries to seduce us into buying into its ways of thinking or living, we can say like Christ, “not my will, but yours be done.”

You see, Jesus lived a gracious life, a truthful life, a gentle and joyful life. He lived the Father’s values and never bowed to the world’s values.  Jesus was tempted in every way just like we are everyday.  But Jesus never gave in.  Jesus never compromised.  And now God has made it possible for you to live the same way – to know His will in every situation.  God has made it possible to you to enjoy life without having to cave to sexual temptation.  God has made it possible for you to have contentment without having to have it all.  God has made it possible for you to know great significance without having always prove yourself.

But this way of life can’t take hold unless we let Him transform us from the inside out.  That’s what it means when God says be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  God wants to transform us by renewing us on the inside. So how does He do that?

God renews our minds by His Spirit through His Word    The New Living Translation says it like this: “Throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy. Ephesians 4:22-24  Here’s the thing! Because “conformed and transformed are passive verbs” you are always either being conformed or transformed.  The world is either conforming your thoughts by the corrupt values of the evil one, or God’s Spirit is transforming your thoughts by the renewing of your mind.

Which leads us to ask: How does the Spirit renew us? The Holy Spirit renews us through the truth of God’s Word. And as His Word works in us we begin to change.  We learn God is always in control.  Then, when bad things happen, we don’t loose heart, but find comfort in God.  As God’s Word renews our minds, we begin to believe God is truly for us, not against us.  Then when things don’t go our way, we grow in patience, knowing that God always has our best interests at heart.  And the more we allow God’s Word to renew our minds, the more we begin to see ourselves through God’s eyes.  No longer seeing ourselves as sinners alienated from God, but as God’s children, dearly loved by God.

And the more God’s Word works in us, the more He removes the blinders from our eyes, the hardness from our hearts, and the stubbornness from our wills.  And He transforms us into people who are channels of grace.  And the more God’s Word gets in us, the more the Spirit of God renews every part of our brokenness.  He purifies our corrupted values.  He straightens our crooked understandings.  He fills our empty longings.  And He delivers on His promises. And as His Spirit works in us and renews us He give us this new ability: the ability to test and approve God’s will.

And with that new ability we are now able to discern, appreciate and put God’s will into practice in our everyday lives. And as we do that, as we test and approve God’s will in our lives, will come to the place where we see that everything God wants for our lives is GOOD, PLEASING AND PERFECT. And this world with its corrupt values will loose its hold on us, for we will know where true joy, satisfaction and life is found.

This is what God is looking for in His Church!  People who are being transformed by His Word into a whole new kind of people.  A transformed people: A people who radiate the love, grace and beauty of Jesus; a people who exude joy, satisfaction and life to those around them.  And when that happens in us, we will be an attractive church and people will be drawn to Jesus through our lives.

So let me ask you today:  Are you being conformed by the world or transformed by the renewing of your mind? Remember, you are always either being conformed or transformed.  The world is either conforming your thoughts and attitudes by the corrupt values of the evil one, or God’s Spirit is transforming your mind and renewing your life!  There is no middle ground.

That’s why one of Satan’s schemes is to keep you from God’s Word.  If he can distract you through entertainment, or make you to believe you don’t need God’s Word, or convince you that God’s Word is irrelevant, he will do it.  He wants to keep corrupting your thoughts with lust and deception.  He doesn’t want you to learn God’s will, know God’s heart, embrace God’s ways. Because the evil one knows that if you are always in God’s Word you will be free of his influence.

So let’s examine ourselves today.  Ask yourself: What are some ways I’m allowing the world to influence my thinking?  What temptations of the world: pleasures, possessions or prestige, have too much of an influence on me?  And then ask God to help you say, “No more.” Then give your mind to God, and allow the Spirit of God to renew your mind.  Start reading the Bible regularly, memorize and meditate on God’s Word and let God transform your values so He can form Christ in you.