026. Gods Game Plan for my Life

If you follow sport, you know that every coach has a game plan before he begins the game—a plan that has been worked out long before the game begins, which is their strategy for accomplishing the desired goal.  

In every sport…

pp    The job of a good coach is to make people do what they don't want to do in order to achieve what they've always wanted to be.

That's God's business with us, too. To make us sometimes do what we don't want to do in order to be what we've always wanted to be. ----  I don't think there's any passage of Scripture that describes that more fully and beautifully than in the book of Romans 12, verses 1&2.  Please turn to Romans 12 on page 1305.  Today, I believe these two verses in a most remarkable way summarize God's game plan for your life and mine.  

The book of Romans, page 1305, chapter 5, and verses 1&2.  “I beseech you, ( I implore you), therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.  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.”
 

A few years ago there was an advertisement on the back page of an in-flight magazine that said,

pp     “When you understand that you can change the world, your life will never be the same again.”  

What organization would make such a great claim like that?  Unbelievably it was an advertisement for Playboy magazine.  The implication was that if you subscribe to Playboy magazine and what it teaches, you’ll soon come to understand that you can change the world.  And when you come to understand that you can change the world, your life will never be the same again.  

I don't know how you react to that, but my reaction was one of anger. It made me angry that a magazine of that character—obscene, pornographic—would openly boast that it had the quality to change the world. But as I thought about that a bit, I began to see there was a lot of truth to it. 

I can remember back over forty years ago when the moral climate of this nation was considerably different from what it is today.  And in some sense, Playboy and other magazines and media of that type have successfully transformed our nation. Not for the good but for the bad.  ----  Then I thought, what a magnificent slogan this is for a Christian. That's really what God is saying to us: "When you understand that you can change the world, your life will never be the same again.”   That's what these verses in Romans, perhaps more than anything else, are saying to us.  

You notice it's addressed to us as a group of individuals. The apostle Paul says, "I appeal to you, brethren (brothers and sisters), by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice."   He’s asking that of us - one-by-one, as individuals.  The striking thing to me about this passage is that God's game plan for life hardly ever is addressed to the church as a whole. Almost always it's addressed to us, individuals, single people living right where we live. There's nothing said about an organization.   There’s nothing said about a denomination.  There's nothing said about raising funds to carry on a ministry, and yet that is what God wants us to help with to change Bribie and the world.   What Paul is asking here is this – 

pp     “Is your body available to God?”

Two things I want you to notice.  To see them, I'd like to start not at the beginning but at the end, the last part of verse 2,  "that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." ----  I've been living in Queensland for most of 70 years, and I think that in Queensland, and here on Bribie where we live, the moral climate is not that good.  We are constantly being exposed to the ways of the world. And God is proposing a way by which we can change the thinking of people all around us. When you think about this great state of ours and the millions of people living in it, and the thousands on Bribie, hardly any of them believe that the will of God is good and acceptable and perfect.  In fact if you could ask people about it, they would probably say that anybody who gets involved in finding the will of God is asking for a very, very dull life indeed. If you start getting religious, their attitude is, you're going to wreck your life. You're not going to have any fun. You're not going to enjoy it.  

God knows that is a lie. Doing His will is the most exciting and demanding and challenging and thrilling experience that anyone can ever discover.  And He offers to put on a demonstration. That's what this word ‘prove’ means:  that you may demonstrate that the will of God is good and acceptable and perfect. That's God's goal. He wants to show people as they look at you and me, that having found the will of God we have found the most exciting lifestyle there is. We have found the secrets of living. Of enjoyment.  Of fulfillment.  Of  peace.
Of answering the empty, lonely, restlessness of the age in which we live.  

Look at this statement.  

pp    “This is the age of the half-read page and the quick hash and the mad dash, the bright night with the nerves tight,  the plane hop with the brief stop,  the lamp tan in a short span,  the big shot in a good spot,  and the brain strain and the heart pain  and the cat naps until the spring snaps and the fun's done.”  

That penetrating little jingle rather pointedly describes life in much of Australia today, doesn't it?  You see, the problem is that people don't know how to live, and God's proposal is that in your life and mine, He will teach us how to live.  And then we will demonstrate it in such a way that people looking at us will notice that we have found the secret of life.  

Paul, speaking on behalf of God, asks for two simple things. The first is in verse one: a body made available to Him.  God says, "Bring your bodies.  I'll use them just the way they are."  I've discovered that most people don't like everything about their body. There's always something wrong. Almost everybody thinks that if they just had curlier hair or straighter hair or if they were shorter or taller or thinner or fatter or their knees didn't knock or they weren't bald or whatever it was -- something has to be changed they think, in order to be successful. This has spawned a whole industry offering to make our bodies look better. And you see how God wipes all that out. He says you don't have to change your body.  Just bring it.  Just think of yourself as an available instrument that I'm ready to use any time, any place.  

This is one of the most important ideas in the Word of God. God says He will transform the world by using us as individuals right where we are. The authentic impact of a church and a Christian is made not so much on Sunday morning or a Saturday night  when we gather in a place of worship like this, but when you are scattered out in your neighborhood and you discover that you have a ministry right there. God can use you as you are, and right where you are. 

Notice how the apostle puts it. Bring your bodies, he says, "as a living sacrifice." All the converted pagans and Jews who made up the Christian church in Rome all knew what a sacrifice was.

They'd offer animal sacrifices. But these were dead sacrifices. You only offered them once and then you could never offer that animal again because it was dead.  But Paul says God wants us to be a living sacrifice, and it's something you do every day. And every day you can start out with the idea,  

pp      “Lord, here I am, ready to be used in my community for You.  Whatever I do today in my normal business relationships or at home or with my children, with my neighbours, wherever I am, Lord, I give myself to You, just as I am. I'm ready. I'm available.  A living sacrifice.”

Many people think you have to make yourself holy. This is a very sad mistake. Nowhere does the Word of God teach us that we can make ourselves holy. What this verse declares is that God has already made us holy. Notice that?   For years I did not like this word ‘holy’.   To me it conjured up ideas of stern, long-faced individuals who looked like they'd been drinking embalming fluid.    Sad people. Grim people.  Horse-faced Christians – musn’t smile.  And I didn't like holy people.  But I've learned that the word basically means another word very similar to it in English that we spell somewhat differently, and that's why I don't think we recognize where it comes from.
It's the word ‘W-H-O-L-E’. That comes from the same root, and it's the same idea in the original language — whole people. 

God is a whole being. Every part of His being functions as it was intended. He's never anything less than perfectly balanced, absolutely capable of coping with any situation because He's a whole person.    And the longing of this world and this age is to be whole persons. You just listen to the television commercials and you'll see how true that is. They
constantly urge us to find this, buy that, smear on this, purchase that, go on this trip, in order to be a whole person.  And God says,  "I have taken care of that." When you come to Christ, when you learn to believe in Jesus, right at the core of your being God makes you a whole person.

Now the important thing is to let that ‘wholeness’ begin to work from the core out.  It’s a day-by-day process. 

pp       Bring your body, offering it as a living sacrifice, and day by day God will train you in holiness, in wholeness. 

Isn't that beautiful?  And it's acceptable to God. He's ready to use you on that basis.

Now that we’re ready to be used by God, we will ask Him to give us encounters with other people on our island.  

I want to encourage you to take one or two of our little church leaflets with you.  I fold them up like this so I can fit them into my notebook I always carry.  Tell them about the butterfly house.  Tell them about the free hydroponic veges.  Or tell them about the free butterfly attracting plants.  Write the address on the back of the church leaflet ----  17 Pheasant Ave, Banksia Beach.   Write down the times the volunteers are there – 9 to 12 – Mon to Fri.  Write your phone number down if you like.

A conversation in a coffee shop or while you’re out walking.  Just a momentary encounter with somebody at your office.  A conversation in the car as you're driving to work.  It can be anywhere. This is God's game plan. To use you right where you are. That's the way He changes the world.   As you make yourself available to God as a living sacrifice, He changes you, and through your changed life, others are changed.  ---  Transformation!  Metamorphosis.

So that's the first thing: an available body. Is your body available to God? That's the question you must ask --  each day --  when you get out of bed.  

You see, our Father is in heaven.  Jesus is in heaven.  But we are down here in this community.  And we can represent Jesus down here.  We can have the heart of Jesus to love people. We are His feet, His body, His hands to help others, His eyes to see the pain, His ears to be a listening ear to hurting people, and His mouth to speak a kind word.----

So that answers the first question from Paul that we put up.

pp      “Is your body available to God?”

Now the second question.   ----

pp    “Are you allowing your mind to be transformed?”

So the second thing God needs is in verse two ---- 

pp     "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." 

Now the important thing there is not "be not conformed to this world." That's what a lot of people think this verse is saying, but that's not the real point;  that's only the introduction to the real thing. The real thing is "be transformed by the renewing of your mind." In other words, let God change your thinking.  Let your way of looking at life be altered.  And when He does change your thinking, you'll discover it will be 180 degrees contrary to the way the world thinks. Your thinking will make a ‘U’ turn!  You will no longer be conformed to the thinking of this world.  -----

----  There's been a lot of confusion on this verse because many preachers have put so much emphasis on this first part, the negative thing. I grew up in churches where I heard this thundered at me. And there followed a list of taboos, sins I was to avoid. The implication was if I avoided these things successfully, I would not be ‘conformed to this world’.  

Through the years since, I've discovered thousands of people who don't do those sins yet they are very much conformed to this world.  I don't know why the idea has taken such firm roots in our minds that God is impressed by the number of things that we don't do.  He's not impressed, and neither is anybody else.  What God is after is the positive phrase, the second phrase:  "Be – transformed - by the renewing of your mind."  Let your thinking begin to be changed, and there are only two things that can do that: 

the Word of the living God (the Bible), and prayer.   

You’ve heard me say this before.  I often repeat it like a cracked record.  It’s so important!

pp    

“We grow like the company we keep.” 

(and)

“What we dwell upon, we become.”

----  It’s urgent that we let God talk to us as we read our Bibles - God’s Word speaking to us.  And as we pray, it’s us speaking back to God.  Two-way conversation.  It’s the only way to have a good relationship with those around us on this earth, and it’s the only way to have a good relationship with God.  –

Two-way conversation! 

When you begin to be deliberate about those two things, you begin to look at life quite differently from how other people look at it. 

Let me give you an illustration.  If you listen to television commercials, you will be impressed by the number of times you hear the word ‘deserve’. Have you noticed that?   Everything's sold on the basis of ‘you deserve this, you've got it coming to you. You're the kind of person who ought to have advantages. The best. You can have it all.’  And over and over, we're impressed with this philosophy that we deserve more than we've got.  ----   Do you know what happens to people who believe that?   If you believe that, the media has successfully removed from your heart and mind, every sense of gratitude. You see, what that does is to remove gratitude, thankfulness.  You're never thankful for receiving something you feel you deserve. Most people are angry because they didn't get as much as they thought they should have, or as much as the next person, or that they didn't get it sooner. 

We're gradually becoming an ungrateful nation, and a whole generation is rising that knows nothing about feeling and expressing gratitude. 

I see it often in children and adults.  We don’t say ‘please’, we don’t say ‘thank you’.  We just think we deserve it.  When I hear the strange words ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ come out of the mouths of children, I’m impressed.  And I often say to them, “Thank you for saying ‘thank you’.”  And you’d better believe it, I do my best to give them what they’ve asked for properly.  I always take notice when I hear the magic words ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.  I compliment the kids, and I compliment the parents who’ve taught them.

Yes, sadly, we’re gradually becoming an ungrateful nation, and a whole generation is rising up that knows nothing about genuinely feeling and expressing gratitude.

The truth is, we don't deserve anything! When your thinking begins to be transformed by God, you believe what He says: that we're a rebellious race, antagonistic to the programme and plan of God, and we have wrecked the planet on which we live and ruined the life of mankind, and we don't deserve anything from God's hand.  But what God gives us instead is undeserved favour - grace and mercy.    And when you begin to think like God wants you to think, you begin to be grateful for every little thing that comes into your life.  

Do you know that we would have no possibility of meeting in a place like this today if it weren't for the continual mercy and grace of God? Our daily lives would be nothing but a horrible experience of malice and evil and anger and murder if it were not for the restraining hand of God upon our world. Every day we need to learn to be grateful for the things God gives. Now that's allowing your mind to be transformed, and I'll tell you, nothing will do it but the Word of God. This is why we're continually encouraged and instructed to study and learn and understand the thoughts of God because that's the way the world can really live.  That's real reality.   

When you get back to including the Bible in your thinking, in your daily life, you're returning at last to real living. Anything else is phony and unreal.  

So here’s a very good question we need the answer to. ---

pp     “Why should we want to make our bodies available to God and allow our minds to be transformed?”

Now one more thing remains, and that's the motive, the reason for changing.  That's going to be difficult.   Simple as it sounds, it's still difficult, isn't it, because we don't like to change.   It's comfortable not to change. We don't like that, and so God has provided a special motive to move us to do it.

Did you see what it is?   Right in the very first line.   "I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God."   See, the mercies of God. When you begin to think about those mercies you'll find your heart strangely and powerfully moved to want to become an available body for God’s use.  And to allow your mind to be transformed by His Word.  

What are the mercies of God?   This whole letter of Romans is all about the mercies of God.

Did you know that in Romans, there is not a single request for us to do anything for God at all until you get to the middle of the sixth chapter.  For five and a half chapters, the apostle Paul has been telling us not about what we have to do for God—that's what we hear so much of today — but about what God has already done for us. Those are the mercies of God.  You read through the chapter and you can see for yourself.    There is, of course, first the forgiveness of our sins.  The lifting of the load of guilt.  The cancelling out of all that sense of filth, of dirtiness that we all have about ourselves. We know things about ourselves that make us ashamed, and this Book declares that in the grace and mercy of God, He has found a way to set it all aside.  All the shame.  All the wrong things  we’ve done in the past.   All the hurts that we've given to other people.   All the shameful thoughts that we have entertained.   All set aside. 

The forgiveness of our sins.   I don't think there's anything more wonderful than that.   The Bible tells us in Ephesians that God lavishes forgiveness upon us.   Lavish means to heap it up more and more, and every day we need the forgiveness of sins.   This isn't just for when you first become a Christian;  this is daily - ongoing. ---  Every morning, I thank God that He has forgiven my sins of yesterday.   And just as I have a shower or bath each day, as my physical body is being cleansed, my spiritual life is also cleansed afresh by the mercy of God.   Every day I start afresh.  (hold up blank page)  A whole new clean page in the book.   Isn't that wonderful?   If anything will give you a sense of peace, it's thinking about the forgiveness of God. 

And I think you know, that the more you think about the love of God for you, the more your heart will be stirred and moved to love Him back. And to love your neighbour as yourself.   That's the key to love. John says in John 4:19 ---

pp   “We love Him because He first loved us.”

God gave us the example by loving us first.  We didn’t love Him first.  He loved us first.  And when we pick up on the idea of how much He loves us, we start to love Him back.  And we get on a roll, and we start to love other people too.

We have a little sign over at the butterfly house that says –

pp      How it improves people when we begin to love them.

Try it on some of the people in your relationships  -  you might just be amazed!

In conclusion, I find myself growing older and my body weakening. I didn't expect it to happen, but it is!
I look in the mirror and I say to myself,  “What's a young man like you doing in an old body like that?” But friends, the good news is, that if you accept Jesus as your friend and saviour, you won’t mind growing old.

Like a caterpillar that is slowing down at the end of its life, we’re not coming to the end.  We’re headed for even more transformation – eternal life, glory, victory, everlasting joy, and more peace.

All along the way, as we continue to regularly come along to church, we’ll find that God is in the business of taking us spiritually hungry caterpillars and transforming us into beautiful butterflies, now and forever.   We’re changing our personal world, and the bigger world, in the process.

I’ll finish with these couple of verses from a little poem called ‘Born Again’ ---

pp            Born Again

Once I was a part-time Christian

Practicing my faith now and then.

Since I made my commitment to Jesus

I have been born again!

Just like the joyous butterfly

Who spread his wings and flew

So too have I left my past behind

And begun my life anew.

Stand and pray

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