Becoming a Romans 12 Christian Part II
- Very few passages in the Bible so encapsulate the Christian life in one chapter as well as Romans 12.
- Very few believers are living a Romans 12 life today.
- It really does take effort and a single-minded commitment to the renewal of your thinking, your mindset.
- You must make a choice to live a focused life—if you are not focused on giving yourself to Christ, you will not—if you don’t make time for prayer, Bible Study, loving God, fellowship, you will never reach your destiny.
- Ex. Any successful businessman, successful athlete will tell you that you have to have a single focus, a constant unwillingness to give in to discouragement and set back…
- If you don’t have passion and focus, you will live lives of mediocrity and never discover your destiny in Christ.
Romans 12:1-2
- We are talking about having a focused life! A vision for your life!
Proverbs 29:18
Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint;
But happy is he who keeps the law.
- The New American Standard says, “Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained.”
- You have to have a vision for your life!
- You need clarity of who you are in Him and His purpose—how He wants you to spend your life resources.
- Life Resources - Your time, your talents, your resources.
- God has a vision for your life, but it takes time to get this plan.
- There is a progressive nature to revelation.
- God doesn’t just drop it all into your lap.
- You don’t discover God’s will, you become God’s will.
- Vision is the big picture, the overall theme of your life, then you need life goals (concrete). Goals serve your vision, then you need a daily strategy of reaching the goals.
- Money is power, but time is life! It is life itself.
- If you squander your time, you squander your destiny. Lazy people get nowhere! You must manage your time.
- The key to discovering your destiny is to learn to manage your time and manage your resources.
- It is very common for people to never figure this out and totally miss their destiny.
- You squander your time, you squander your destiny!
- Ex. I have aggressively managed my time—I have a passion to fulfill my destiny. Time management and destiny are the same thing! They must have the same energy.
- Ex. I read Roman 12:1-2 as an 18 year old when I first got saved and I passionately went after God and His Word.
- I set my classes at school for early, 7am, then went back to my dorm and opened the Word and went chapter by chapter through the entire New Testament.
- I used a simple but profound method called: Observation, Interpretation and Application.
- I did this every day for probably two years without hardly missing a day.
- Now I was focused—if figured that if I was working out as a gymnast for 3 hours a day, I should give God an hour.
- I knew my schedule every day—I was relentless in time management.
Vs 2
Proverbs 29:18
Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint;
- If you have no life vision, you will have no restraint:
- You will not have a focused life.
- You will not have a focused schedule.
- You will not have a focused family.
- You will not know God’s Word any better today than last year.
- You will not know the Lord in a deeper way this time next year.
- And before long, you will have gone 3 years, 5 years and be in the same rut you’ve always been in.
- Develop this reality into your life plan or you are living in lala land.
- What do you want to be? What is your life vision? The judgment day will be the great equalizer. The equity of the kingdom will be how you invested your time, energy and money before the judgment seat of God.
- If you don’t have a vision, you perish…you are wasting your life, squandering your inheritance.
- If you don’t have a vision for your life, you will not have a vision for your schedule.
- You will squander your destiny.
- You will conform to this world.
- Ex. ThePursuit School of Ministry is to develop disciples that are becoming “worshippers and warriors” that will go out and change the world.
- Ex. Too many of God’s people are just couch potatoes! You must manage your time, developing your secret life with God for what God has for you to do.
- Too many people think that because they’ve gotten saved that everything’s just going to start happening for them—doesn’t work that way…
- But, the opposite of lack of restraint is to be restrained. A man with a vision will have restraint (opposite way to say it). Be aggressive!
- Ex. In training kids, they need to have a vision, doesn’t matter what the vision is…baseball, be a fireman, be a builder, whatever, the result will be restraint.
- Gymnastics constrained and restrained me in high school and college…
- I got a life vision for the Great Commission as a freshman in college.
Matthew 28:18-20
And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen.
- Ex. This had nothing to do with vocation…I thought I was headed to Forestry or Law at the time, but I knew, whatever I did, I was going to share my faith and disciple people…
One Thing is the Main Thing!
- There are two great men in the Bible that reveal to us what a focused life looks like—they tell us what they lived for, what really mattered in their lives.
- We can see the heart of David and Paul—arguably the greatest leaders of the Old and New Testaments (outside of Christ);
Psalms 27:4
One thing I have desired of the LORD,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the LORD
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the LORD,
And to inquire in His temple.
- Not to have the biggest political kingdom.
- Not to be the richest man.
- Not to be the coolest/hippest leader.
- This is the heart of David—“one thing” to know and passionately go after the Lord!
- David wanted to know God!! Deeply!!
- Look what David found as he sought God’s heart…
Psalms 27:5-6
For in the time of trouble
He shall hide me in His pavilion;
In the secret place of His tabernacle
He shall hide me;
He shall set me high upon a rock.
6 And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me;
Therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in His tabernacle;
I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the LORD.
- God wants our heart to hunger and thirst for Him.
- This is the adventure of a one-thing life! It is an adventure!
- Thomas Dubay, in his book, The Evidential Power of Beauty, writes,
“You and I, each and every one of us without exception, can be defined as an aching need for the infinite. Some people realize this; some do not. But even the latter illustrate this inner ache when, not having God deeply, they incessantly spill themselves out into excitements and experiences licit and illicit. They are trying to fill their inner emptiness, but they never succeed, which is why the search is incessant. Though worldly pleasure seeking never fulfills and satisfies in a continuing way, it may tend momentarily to distract and to dull the profound pain of the inner void. If these people allow themselves a moment of reflective silence (which they seldom do), they notice a still, small voice whispering. Is this all there is? They begin to sense a thirst to love with abandon, without limit, without end, without lingering aftertastes of bitterness. In other words, their inner spirit is clamoring, even if confusedly, for unending beauty. How they and we respond to this inner outreach rooted in our deep spiritual soul is the most basic set of decisions we can make; they have eternal consequences.”
- King David desired one thing! He wanted his heart to beat to the rhythm of God’s heart.
- Paul was another such man who wanted his heart to beat to the rhythm of God’s heart.
Philippians 3:12-15
Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. 13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you.
- This year, fall in love with Jesus! Fall in love with the Lover of your soul.
- Find the simplicity of making the One Thing the Main Thing in your life! This is a great adventure.
- He is the Bridegroom and we are His bride:
- He delights in you.
- He likes you.
- He longs for your affection.
- He is after your heart.
- Have you felt that there might be something more? Well, there is and it is a passionate desire for Jesus.
- Lose that affection and you will begin to coast.
- You will coast and eventually die.
- Ex. Like a race car on a race track, you can cut the engines and the car will continue for a while based on the momentum and inertia of the past, but gradually it will slow down and stop.
- Ex. I have had so many friends that are no longer walking with the Lord today—they lost their focus, lost their walk with God, lost passion for the Word, began to coast, little compromises crept in, coasted into mediocrity.
- There are so many believers like that today. They have lost the fire, they have no vision anymore because they neglected the heart of God.
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us…For this reason the gravest question before the church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like…Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, ‘What comes into your mind when you think about God?’ we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man. Were we able to know exactly what our most influential religious leaders think of God today, we might be able with some precision to foretell where the church will stand tomorrow.”
- David’s fascination and passionate pursuit of God was the sustaining factor of his life.
- It had nothing to do with circumstances.
- David was hunted, ridiculed, persecuted, defamed.
- He commited atrocious sins.
- But his fascination and pursuit of God remained the anchor of his heart.
How Do we Keep the One Thing the Main Thing?
- God loves worship and we see in Revelation 4 that He has made heaven, his living room, a place of worship.
- When we worship, we are lining ourselves up with heaven—that is God’s will.
- Worship unlocks the heart (this is why music is so powerful)—worship flows from your heart to the heart of God, and God opens His heart to worship and you connect with God.
Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
- The Word is living and powerful and penetrates deeply into our heart—unlocking our thoughts and desires.
- Worship with the Word everyday! Dialogue with the Lord.
- You must absolutely set aside time for this or you will squander your destiny!!
- On the back of your bulletin I have given you a simple plan that I have used for years to get focused…
Romans 12:1-2
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 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 Focused Life: Making the One Thing the Main Thing
Most everything in the western world is aimed at getting your attention through stirring your desires. Whether it is - a make-up line, a new car, or eating out, the advertisers and marketers of our day know that if they can capture your desires, they will create a gotta-have-it in your heart. All of us hunger for meaning in our lives. This relentless desire, that we try to quench with worldly success, buying more stuff, or looking a certain way, can only be quenched on the deepest level by knowing and experiencing God’s love. Your heart’s true desire is to know and love God and to personally experience His love and desire for you. Yes, God has a deep desire for you and He longs to know you.
The only way I have found to truly experience the love of God, the rhythm of God’s desire and heart, is to spend time with Him. Like any friendship, we must spend time in order to know the other person’s heart. So, it is with the Lord Jesus. Some have termed this a devotional life or quiet time, but in essence, it is a time set aside every day in which you dialogue with the Lord and come to know and love Him in a deep way.
Below is a simple but profound way to have a daily time with the Lord. May it be a boost to your spiritual life. I call it, “The 2-3-2 Plan” (2 songs-3 chapters-2 applications)
1. Get out of bed…make coffee! This is very important.
2. Put on your iPod (or stereo) and worship the Lord with a couple of songs.
3. Read 3 chapters from the Bible.
4. Within those 3 chapters, ask God to show you one or two paragraphs that God is speaking to you to study. This is the method I use for studying a passage:
a. Observation: what is the author saying?
b. Interpretation: what is the author’s really heart meaning?
c. Application: what does this passage say to me personally?
5. Write down in a journal the above.
6. Pray over two things that God is speaking to you that need to be applied to your life.
7. Pray over these and other issues and take off for work!
This sermon was produced at Mountain Springs Church in Colorado Springs, with Pastor Steve Holt. www.mountainsprings.org
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