Romans 11. 33Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways! 36For from Him and Through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the Glory forever. Amen. Romans 12. 1Therefore I urge you brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
So why exactly does God want my body? He wants a onetime gift from me to him, not an every day gift but a onetime gift. We must live day to day as a result of the gift given to him. Our body is the source of fleshly desires and lusts. The body has bad habits, bad attitudes, bad emotion, and bad thoughts. Despite all of these flaws, God wants our body as it currently resides. He wants this gift because he has a purpose for it. He wants to make it a Living, Holy, and a well pleasing body.
The word Living means to function in a new way, a new style and function of living; something completely new. Holy literally means “whole.” God is going to do something with our body that will make it whole; where before we weren’t whole. Well pleasing, and this will be maneuvered in a way that will be pleasing to God. It will be different in such a way that we can’t change it. If we try to keep our bodies and an own it ourselves and control it ourselves, it will never be pleasing to God. The idea is that after you give your body to God, He will make it pleasing to Him.
How can this be?
By the mercies of God, something we can’t earn or acquire on our own, completely outside of our control, its Grace. However you can’t genuinely give God your body and only God can make it possible, and he sets it up for us to give to him in its current state. God will do all the cleansing of our bodies. We must believe by Faith that he has set this up to happen and means what He says. Secondly we must present our bodies as a sacrifice. We must allow God to do with our bodies what he pleases and deems necessary. Third, giving our body to God is the only logical thing to do. The text literally says that it is our spiritual service of worship. Giving our body becomes an unselfish worship. We must reject our natural self centeredness in order to give our bodies to God; and when we give our body to God, it becomes worship. This act is liberation and joyful.
Romans 12. 2And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
From this point on we must choose to do two things. One, we must stop the flow of worldly stuff into our minds. These are schemes and philosophies of the world which assault our mind. Where we live, there is a flow of earthly stuff into our minds through what we see such as TV and readings. We must choose not to think on the worldly stuff. To better define worldly stuff we must consider the following. It’s the passion of the flesh, in other words what we desire to feel; the desire of the eyes, what we desire to have; the desire of life, the passion to be rich and powerful. All of these are desires that have flowed into our mind, otherwise known as worldly stuff. Second we must consider the text and choose to ask God to stop our conforming, we can do this because he has our body. From here we must start the flow of spiritual stuff into our mind. But how exactly do we start spiritual flow?
I Corinthians 2 16For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
If we chose to access, we can look at life as Jesus did and begin to think like Jesus did. Set your mind not on the earthly stuff but what is above and offered to us by God. There are four steps to keeping the spiritual flow coming in. One, we must hear the scriptures being exposed, explained, illustrated, and applied. Two, read and ponder on the word yourself. Read and study the Bible Third, pray all the time-about everything. Nothing can keep us from talking to God. Lastly, Fellowship with other believers. Talk with other believers, share with them, laugh and play games with them.
What results can one expect from this transformation?
Our mind has been renewed. Our mind is being worked on by God due to us giving our body to him and we act like Jesus, which is a process that slowly gets better and better demonstrating God at work. From this we can feel peace joy and love and be fulfilled. Finally we can do the will of God and grow toward spiritual maturity. This is exactly what God wants.
Life will never be boring, self centered, or dull again.
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