Transformation: 1) Requires personal sacrifice. It’s not easy, natural or automatic. It calls for becoming a ‘living sacrifice’. The problem with ‘living’ sacrifices is their tendency to keep escaping the altar, having to be led back repeatedly to be sacrificed again and again. Salvation is an instant, once-for-all experience, but there can be no instant, once-for-all ‘living sacrifice’. It’s a day-by-day, moment-by-moment recommitment which means bringing our stubborn nature back to the altar, surrendering it to God as often as necessary. Don't wait for your old nature to improve or to agree to die before concluding your sacrifice is truly genuine. And don't let it discourage you in your battle for victory; your old nature and your regenerated spirit are mutual enemies, ‘constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions’ (Galatians 5:17 NLT). Your job isn't to obliterate the flesh, but to crucify it each time it wants to take over, refusing to let it curtail or weaken your commitment to spiritual growth. 2) Is a two-sided issue. ‘Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God’ (Romans 12:1 NIV). That involves a resolute decision of mind and will, because our bodies don't surrender themselves. Until you deliberately choose to ‘offer your [body]...to God,’ your flesh will act unrestrained. ‘In the past you offered the parts of your body to be slaves to sin and evil…In the same way now you must give yourselves to be slaves of goodness. Then you will live only for God’ (Romans 6:19 NCV). When you surrender to your lower impulses, you reap sin. When you surrender to God, you reap His blessing.

Chuck Swindoll said, ‘We like to imagine ourselves a race of rugged individuals – the Patrick Henrys, Davy Crocketts and Lone Rangers. The truth is, we hate to appear different lest we be ostracised, branded fanatics and rejected. So, we conform. You'll see it in the child eager to please; the adolescent aligning with peer pressure; the adult breaking their back to keep up with the Joneses.’ Just being different for its own sake is likely to be worthless, even counterproductive. What God wants from us is our willingness to be radically transformed. ‘Therefore, I urge you...to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind’ (vv. 1-2 NIV). Here are two important observations to help you reach that goal. 1) Transformation belongs to believers. The unbeliever can't break the world's control over them without Christ, but believers are promised: ‘the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world’ (1 John 4:4 NLT). God's indwelling Spirit enables you to resist the world's pressure to conform you to its ways. 2) God’s appeal is urgent. ‘I urge you.’ Words like beg, plead, beseech are used in some translations because the appeal isn't secondary or optional. It’s vital, a divine imperative! God is seeking for surrendered vessels that are ready to be transformed for His use. Are you willing to say, ‘Yes, Lord, use me’?

Paul writes: ‘I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand…how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete’ (vv. 16-19 NLT). In spite of our best intentions, we still sin. As a result, we feel bad about ourselves. And Satan uses our feelings of guilt and condemnation to make us doubt God’s love for us. But if God loved you enough to send His Son to die on your behalf while you were a full-blown sinner, you can be sure He won’t change His mind about you when you’re His redeemed but struggling child. Feeling bad about sin is actually proof that you truly are God’s child. When you were born again, you became a regenerate spirit living in an unregenerate body. So when you permit sin to enter your life, your regenerate spirit rises up and says, ‘Get that out of here, it’s incompatible with who I am.’ It’s not that God doesn’t love you when you sin, but that sin is an unwelcome guest that makes you feel bad about yourself and robs you of confidence towards God. So if you have sinned, repent, receive God’s forgiveness, and move forwards stronger and wiser. 

A ‘word’ from God can bring you the solution you need. God created the world with a word, so imagine what a word from Him could do for your situation. The Bible says, ‘Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left.’ Notice the words, ‘Your ears shall hear a word.’ But if your spiritual ears are not open, trained and attuned to God, you won’t hear what He is saying to you. Furthermore, if you filter what He’s saying to you through human intellect in order to harmonise it with your own opinions, you will get nowhere. God gives a ‘word’ to those who have an open ear – and heart. When you pray, what are you looking for? A spiritual high, or a time of intimacy with the Lord in which He speaks and you listen? When you read your Bible are you seeking confirmation of your own thoughts, or are you seeking God’s will? Imagine what one of God’s ideas could do for your life! ‘The people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits’ (Daniel 11:32 NKJV). If you dream of doing great things in life, get to know God. He will reveal Himself to you through His Word. You’ll hear a lot of different ideas each day; some will benefit you, others won’t. But when you get a ‘word’ from God it’s like a seed; it has the potential to produce a tree; or better yet, a whole orchard of fruit. 

Well-intentioned friends sometimes say, ‘I know how you feel.’ But deep down we think, ‘No, you really don’t.’ But Jesus does! He was ‘tempted in all things as we are,’ so He can interpret and present our feelings to God. And He does. When you pray in Jesus’ name, pouring out your heart to God, Jesus acts as your lawyer and says, ‘Father, I know what this person is feeling. I know what it’s like to be under pressure to sin. I stand with this child of Yours who needs Your help.’ You say, ‘But Jesus was without sin, so can He really feel my sin the way I feel it?’ Yes He can. In fact, because of His purity He actually feels the pain of sin even more. Perhaps an illustration will help. In our everyday world we live with germs all around us, and even on us. Because we aren’t in a sterile environment we don’t notice these germs and we learn to live with them. But it’s an entirely different story in a hospital operating room. There, any contamination from germs is a real threat that demands the attention of the entire staff. So they sterilise everything because bacteria can kill the patient. The purity of the room demands close attention to the presence of even the slightest impurity that could lead to a life-threatening infection. So Jesus’ separateness from, and sensitivity to sin, actually increases His ability to sympathise with us. Bottom line: Jesus understands what you’re struggling with! 

When we have been hurt, our first instinct is to retaliate. We know it’s wrong because the Bible says we must forgive in order to be forgiven (see Mark 11:25). We also know that bitterness can hurt us physically and emotionally. But sometimes we can’t bring ourselves to forgive, so we keep wrestling with it in our mind. Stop and think what happens in a wrestling match. You focus on your opponent, clinging to them and trying to control them. Your aim is to put them on the mat and bring them into submission, and it requires all your energy. Plus, you risk getting hurt in the process. The only real power you have over someone who hurts you is the power of forgiveness. So for your own sake, forgive them and move on! Even though you don’t feel like forgiving, pray, ‘Turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God.’ In other words, ‘Lord, make me willing to forgive.’ The old saying, ‘To err is human, to forgive is divine,’ is the truth. Now, small offences can be forgiven quickly, but big ones require divine assistance. And you can have it: ‘God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him’ (Philippians 2:13 NLT). Yes, you may want your offender to suffer, but when your greatest desire is to please the Lord, He will give you the grace to forgive. When you realise the blessings God has in store for you in the future, you will refuse to spend another moment stuck in the past.

When you knowingly sin, it puts your body under stress. There is actually no such thing as a ‘lie detector test’. The fact is, the test cannot determine if someone is lying. It simply measures how a person’s response to certain questions impacts their nervous system. God designed our system to glorify Him (see 1 Corinthians 6:19-20). So when you sin, it negatively impacts your body. Even if you have never taken a polygraph test, you can agree that when you have lied, you probably experienced an increase in your heart rate. So when God tells you not to sin, He is not trying to steal your joy but preserve it. Sin robs you of three things: 1) Comfort. ‘“There is no peace for the wicked,” says the Lord’ (Isaiah 48:22 NLT). When you knowingly violate your values, you become uneasy in your own skin. 2) Character. Your reputation is how others see you, but your character is what you see when you look at yourself in the mirror each day. Your thoughts determine your deeds, your deeds determine your habits, your habits determine your character, and your character determines your destiny. 3) Confidence. Nothing in life is more important than to be able to approach God with confidence. ‘If we don’t feel guilty, we can come to God with bold confidence. And we will receive from him whatever we ask because we obey him and do the things that please him’ (1 John 3:21-22 NLT). So the next time Satan tempts you to sin, stop and do the maths. By looking at the bottom-line result, you will be able to make the right choice every time.

When a multimillionaire was asked how much money it takes to be happy, he replied, ‘Just a little more.’ Now let’s assume you’re not like that, and you care about others. Why are you not more involved in meeting their needs? ‘Whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?…let us not love in word…but in deed’ (vv. 17-18 NKJV). That Scripture could be reduced to two words: Do something! In the parable of the Good Samaritan, two different ministers walked past a dying man on the Jericho road without stopping to help. Why? Wasn’t this a great opportunity to ‘practise what you preach’? How did they become so insensitive and uncaring? Did they think, ‘The problem is too big, there is nothing I can do about it?’ Were they so focused on their church’s agenda that they didn’t want to commit the time or the resources necessary to get this man back on his feet? Jesus said: ‘But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him’ (Luke 10:33-34 NKJV). Note the word ‘compassion’. The Good Samaritan was willing to get emotionally involved. You must too. Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision, once prayed, ‘Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.’ The word for today is – do something!

The Bible says, ‘Then Peter came to Him and said, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him…“up to seventy times seven”’ (vv. 21-22 NKJV). Seventy times seven equals 490 times. And it’s your ‘brother’, someone you have to live or work with, whom you’re called to forgive. In essence Jesus was saying, ‘Forgive, and keep on forgiving if you want to have a relationship with this person.’ Let’s face it, we all make mistakes because we’re flawed in different ways. Perfection only exists in God. Recall Jesus’ words: ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23:34 KJV). Truer words have never been spoken, and very few concepts are more significant to remember in a relationship. While it’s perfectly normal to feel anger, and a natural human reaction to feel mistreated, there is a big difference between healthy anger and the corrosive emotion of bitterness. Bitterness is relational cancer. As Dr Maya Angelou said, ‘[Bitterness] feeds upon the host. It does nothing to the object of the displeasure.’ In this case, the ‘host’ is your relationship, and forgiveness is the medication and the cure. Jesus said, ‘As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise’ (Luke 6:31 KJV). Offering the degree of forgiveness you wish to receive ensures that your relationship stays healthy and free from the disease of bitterness. Is it sometimes hard to do? Yes, but if you pray, God will give you the grace to do it!

Paul writes, ‘I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it’ (Galatians 1:13 NIV). Clearly, Paul had no thoughts of becoming a Christian. As a Jew, he was obsessed with the law. As an intellectual, he could debate the finest minds. Articulate and educated, he was committed to the tenets of his faith. Yet he hated Christians! He watched as Stephen, the first martyr, was stoned to death. And while he didn’t personally participate, he held the coats of those who did (see Acts 7:57-59). Paul never dreamed that one day he’d switch sides. But when God has a plan for your life, He will do whatever it takes to fulfil it. By the time He places the hook in your jaw, He’s already begun to work out His purpose for you. Even while Paul held the coats of Stephen’s executioners, God had plans to use him. Just as He had plans for you when you were out partying, doing your own thing, going from relationship to relationship, or thinking only of making money. None of that stopped God because, ‘Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.’ Had Paul known God planned to meet him that day on the Damascus Road, he might have taken a different route. But ‘He was suddenly dazed by a blinding flash of light. As he fell to the ground, he heard a voice’ (Acts 9:3-4 MSG). This proud Pharisee had an appointment with God that wasn’t in his diary, one that knocked him off his high horse. And to bring you into submission with His will, God will do whatever it takes. So be warned! God won’t permit your stubbornness to subvert His plans for your life!