Worshiper | Romans 12:1-2 | Justin Leitch

Well, good evening, King's Church. Great to be here worshiping with you on Sunday again on this Mother's Day. And if it's your first time, my name's Justin. I'm one of the pastors here. And you joined us on a great Sunday because we're starting this new series where we're walking through really, what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

And in a lot of ways, this is significant for us because as a church, we just started about eight months ago, maybe coming up on nine months now. And our mission statement, as we were getting started as a church, you know, we went through the process of thinking through values, who we're gonna be and all of those. And what we wanted to do with the mission statement of the church, why we exist, was we wanted to just go straight to the Bible and see why God would have a church exist, a new church. So we just took a few verses from the New Testament, you know, kind of smashed them together. And our mission statement is to make disciples of Jesus in Wilmington, at UNCW and to the ends of the earth.

And that's why we exist. That's what we're doing. And if that's our purpose, if that's the purpose of that Jesus has given us, then we need to understand what a disciple is, right? What is a disciple of Jesus? What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus?

If we want to be disciples, if we want to make disciples, we need to understand what the scriptures teach about it. So we figured it'd be great just to take a few weeks to walk through the New Testament and take a look about to take a look at what is a disciple of Jesus. We kind of have five buckets. I'm sure you could break it up in some different ways, but a disciple is a worshiper, a family member, a steward, a servant, and a disciple maker. That's what we're gonna be talking about over these next five weeks, these five core callings of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

And this week, we are starting at the kind of, the most important fountainhead characteristic calling of every disciple. And that is worshiper. That's worshiper. We're gonna talk about worship first. Because if we don't start with worship as a disciple of Jesus, then every other aspect of our discipleship is not going to fall.

We have to get this orientation, this perspective, this relationship with God correct, or else even some of the other significant callings that we have as followers of Jesus are going to be out of whack. And I know many of you coming to church when you hear worship. What comes to mind for me many times is kind of, you know, the acoustic guitar on the stage singing songs and move forward and that's great. That is a significant expression of worship in our lives that the scriptures give us to declare how worthy Jesus is. But worship, worship is so much more than that.

Our worship. The idea of worship really came home to me a few years ago. I had a friend in Charlottesville, Virginia, and his name was John. John was a very successful person. He came from a great family.

And we actually became friends because we were bridge partners. The bridge, like they play in your grandma's old folks home, like that. We became bridge partners. We played bridge together. He taught me how to play bridge.

He actually made a documentary about bridge. We would spend some time together. He's not a follower of Jesus, but over time we got to build a relationship. I shared the gospel with him, invited him to church, and after a handful of conversations, he politely declined kind of any further talk about Christianity. But this is the reason that he gave.

He said, justin, the Christians, they ask everyone to worship God. And that really scares me because if you worship something, you can get people to do anything. And I think John, even though he wasn't a Christian, he really understood something about worship that many of us who have been in church our entire lives fail to grasp. What God is asking of us in response to his grace on our lives is something vast. It's something total, it's something powerful.

It's something that if we really understand it, it should make us a little bit unsettled, nervous, and it should feel a little bit scary. That's what John understood. What I want to show you in Romans 12:1 and 2, just these couple of verses today, is I want to show you what worship is, why it's so hard to sustain a life of worship even when we understand the Gospel and we're followers of Jesus and then how we can sustain it in the midst of the difficulty that we face. All right, so that's where we're going to go. We're going to read Romans 12:1 2 and just understand as a disciple of Jesus what it means to first be a worshiper.

But first, why worship? Why is this so significant? Well, Chris mentioned this briefly at the beginning. I'll remind you of it. He said, everyone worships something.

The question is not if you'll worship, but what you will worship. And that's just the reality, like everyone is going to worship. There is a prime place in Our hearts of what is ruling the throne. It could be us, it could be some other thing we're pursuing in life, or it could be God. The question is not if we are going to worship like as humans.

That is what we do. There is something on the throne of our heart that we are pursuing and giving our allegiance and affection and all of our devotion to. That's just a reality. The question is what we will worship. And this is one of the most significant questions, maybe the most significant question that you will answer for your life and your family's life.

Because whatever you worship determines the direction of your life. Whatever takes that spot on the throne of your heart, your life is going to flow toward it. If the Christians and when we read the Bible, followers of Jesus, we talk about this decision you have to follow, you know, we're all gonna worship something. It's a good God or something else. And the word that the Bible uses to define it if it's something else, is the word idol.

I D O L Idol and an idol. We often think of this like Old Testament sacrifices, tiki torches, little figurines, throwing money, like in front of our fireplace, lighting things on fire. Like that's what we think about with idol. But idols are so much more than that, all right? An idol is anything that occupies the place in your heart that only God should have.

An idol is anything that occupies the place in your heart that only God should have. And here's why it's significant that we talk about worship. Because worship's not just inevitable. Everybody's gonna worship. It's not just directional, it's gonna lead where you go.

But worship is also consequential. Whatever takes that place in your heart is going to bring cost into your life. For example, if pleasure is what you worship, like what you're willing to sacrifice everything else to get, it's pleasure, then you're gonna have a couple good days, a couple good nights, a couple good years during college or after, whatever. But you're gonna have a lifetime of pain because of the decisions you're making for that initial dopamine hit that aren't taking into account the people around you that you love most, right? It comes with a cost.

Or if you worship what your friends think of you, then you may sacrifice your values to try to fit in, right? Even if you really wanna follow Jesus, even if you really wanna honor him with your life, if it comes into contact with the thing that you're really worshiping, what your friends think of you, you're not gonna let it Go. Like middle school and high school students. I don't know if we have any in here this evening, but you're for the first time getting out of your parents home and starting to have relationships with the people around you and having to wrestle with, am I gonna stand up for what my family has believed in or am I gonna fit in with the people around me? But you've probably felt this if you've been at King's Church for the year of One More, where we have said God has come after us.

And so we're gonna reach people that are close to us but far from God because we want them to get the hope of the gospel. And then you build a relationship with a neighbor, you get an opportunity to share the gospel, and you realize that the approval of other people is more on the throne of your heart than you did before, where you won't be able to share Christ with others or stand up for the values of scripture if you are worshiping what people perceive of you. For me, one thing that I often worship is my reputation, right? I wanna manage what other people think of me. I want them to think highly of me.

I want them to think I am walking in faithfulness. I wanna be the best dad, a great husband, you know, an incredible pastor. I just want people to think really highly of me. And if I'm not careful, I'll put that on the place that only God has. And I'll start hiding stuff in my life, right?

I'll start presenting a picture to other people that's not true. I'll start walking in dishonesty, right? There is cost when we worship the wrong thing. So worship is directional. Worship is inevitable.

Worship's consequential. But the last one here, this is important for you to hear. Worship can be deceitful. Worship can be deceitful. Especially in the Bible Belt south, right, where you could go to church week in and week out for your entire life, and you can put some money in the offering bucket and you can avoid the big damaging sins.

But what I want to show you as we walk through Romans 12:1 2 is that you can do all of the good external things and still maybe avoid putting your life in a posture of worship before God. There would be nothing worse than living our entire lives in ignorance of the fact that we are not living a life pleasing to God when we thought that we were. Worship can be deceitful. All right? Everything that it means to be a disciple starts with worship.

We gotta get this relationship kind of orientation posture towards God, correct. If Those other four are going to fall into place. So let's jump into Romans 12:1 and 2. We'll walk through this together. This is Romans 12:1 says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God.

Let's stop there. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God. And if you take notes in your Bible, if you write in your Bible, just circle that therefore, all right? Every time that you are reading your Bible, just like Pastor Bible Reading Hack, when you are reading your Bible in your quiet time, you come across the word therefore, you need to stop and ask, what is the therefore? Therefore?

All right? All throughout the Bible, it is a significant word that tells us something in the explanation of the gospel that is going on. So In Romans, chapter 12, verse 1, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God. We need to ask, why is the therefore? And what the Apostle Paul, the author of this letter is doing is he's calling back to our minds everything that he has written in the first 11 chapters.

All right? What he is about to call Christians to do does not exist in a vacuum. But he is saying, hey, what we have talked about for these last couple thousand words, you're gonna take all of that information. It's gonna shape the next verse that I'm about to say. All right?

So he's gonna say, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. That that's what worship is. But here's what he does that's really important. And this is what makes Christianity distinct from every other world religion. All right?

He says that your acceptance in Christ because of the Gospel comes before your performance for him. That's the heart of the Gospel. That's what makes the gospel different from every other religion or worldview on the planet. And it's grace. All right?

Romans 1 through 11 says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But in the midst of your sin and rebellion, Jesus, in love for you while you were dead, while you were enemies, gave his life on the cross so that you could have life. When Romans 6 says, the wages of sin that you are walking in is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus Our Lord. Romans 8 We spent the last four weeks working through like we are, wrestling against sin.

But God's given us the gift of the Holy Spirit as a grace for us, and now we follow him. And so here's what the Apostle Paul is saying. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by those mercies of go. Then you present yourself as a living sacrifice. You worship in response to it.

You see all throughout the Bible. All throughout the Bible, the indicative comes before the imperative. Any English majors, English teachers in the house. But indicative comes before Rihanza. Great indicative before the imperative.

Indicatives are statements of truth, declarations of who God is, what he has done, who we are because of that. Right? Imperatives are commands that show us how to live as followers of Jesus. The indicatives of what God has done always come before the imperatives. The Bible teaches us, the Scriptures teach us.

Romans 1 through 11 teaches us that in our relationship with God, this is what we bring. This is what you are in your relationship with God before Jesus, all right? You're just a heap and pile of sin. That's Romans 1 through 11. That's like how it describes you, a heaping just pile of sin, all right?

But Jesus loved you so much. Jesus loved you so much that he went to the cross that you deserved the cross that had your name on it because of your rebellion. And he took that so you could escape its judgment. All right? That's Romans 1 through 11, all right?

And what Romans 12:1 shows us is that the only right response to those mercies of God is to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. It is to. Here's kind of the headline of what all this means. All right? Worship is what life looks like when it's been hit by the mercies of God, all right?

Worship is what life looks like when it's been hit by the mercies of God. Another way that you could say worship that's really helpful is worth ship, all right? Just think about spelling it out like the word worth. Ship, worthship. It is declaring of Jesus that he is worthy of our praise and all of our lives, every sacrifice that we could give because he, before we did anything for him, went to the cross for us, all right?

In our worship, in our sacrifice, we are not earning something from God, but we are responding to the grace of God, all right? Christians sing with joy because we are singing as if we have been saved from something, because we have, all right? The response of the Christian life is reactive to what God has done for us. It is not earning. Christianity is not a religion of escape, but it's a religion of rescue, all right?

Escape is what you do when you're trapped, you know, tied up, somebody kidnapped you, you gotta get out, you gotta kick out, you gotta run through the door, get out, you get outside, you're happy with yourself, right? But if you are kidnapped, the SWAT team comes in, you can't do anything to get out and they get you out, they have rescued you and you say thank you to them, right? You give them a big hug, you send em a Christmas card every year. You're grateful for what they have done because you didn't escape on your own, you were rescued, right? And we will never have a right relationship with God if we reverse the order, right?

If we think that our response even of worship is going to impress God and earn something from him, our relationship with him will always be twisted, right? It will always be bargaining, trying to get something from God that we don't have. God, I'll do this worship if you give me this or it will just be self aggrandizing. Look at how great of a Christian I am. I can do all this worship.

But when we understand that, we respond with worship, offering our bodies as a living sacrifice because of what Jesus has done. That's when worship in our lives can work in just the right way. Romans 12:1 I appeal to you therefore brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Let's talk about this next verse here in Romans or this next word in Romans 12:1. Let's talk about living sacrifice.

Living sacrifice. It's a pretty obvious oxymoron, right? Because sacrifices are typically dead. If you know anything about the Old Testament, you know that those sacrifices were killed and were placed on the altar and they did not have much choice in whether or not they were going to stay there or when they were going to be removed. There's two big differences between this sacrifice that the Apostle Paul is calling us to offer ourselves as and the Old Testament sacrifices that the Jewish people who were receiving this letter were used to at the but the first difference is that this sacrifice is from acceptance, not for acceptance.

Or it's from acceptance, not for acceptance, which is what we talked about, right? It's a response to the mercies of God. We have been accepted by the grace of Jesus, so we respond with worship. The second difference is that this sacrifice is alive, not dead. We talked about that a second ago too.

It's alive, not dead. It says put yourself on the altar in response to what Jesus has done for you. While you are living, live as if you were dead, giving yourself over to Jesus. All right? And notice here also it doesn't just say worship generally, but it defines what our worship is.

It says your worship is to present your bodies as A living sacrifice. It doesn't allow us to escape with some kind of like emotional catharsis once a week on Sundays and saying, I worship. But it says, present your bodies as your spiritual worship as the response to what Jesus has done for you. This means present every domain of your life, all of who you are, nothing off of the table in response to what Jesus has done. Right?

This is in your relationships and your career and in your health and in your hobbies, even in the private life that you have that no one else sees. Offer it all as worship to God. Put it on the altar. It is all his because of what he has done for you. This sacrifice tells us two things.

All right? Worship is when Jesus is first in your heart and your life is on his altar. That's what worship is. All right? Worship is when Jesus is first in your heart and also when your life is on his altar.

The Bible word for this theme is consecration. All right? Consecration. Consecration in the Bible means to give your. To set something aside for the purposes of God.

And what these verses are showing us is that the only right response to the mercies of God is to set aside our whole lives to his purposes and to give over every area of our lives to him. To put our bodies as living sacrifices on the altar. It's consecration. In the Old Testament, the priests would go through a ceremony of consecration. And in this ceremony of consecration they would slaughter an animal and then they would take the animal's blood and they would dab it on the priest's right big toe, right thumb and right earlobe.

All right? This consecration ceremony was displaying the reality that their whole life was set apart from God. Right? Their toe, they're going and they're walking. Their thumb, they're doing their activity.

Their ear, they're hearing. Their whole life was to be marked by being set aside for the purposes of God. Right? And how much more for those of us who have understood the gospel, right? It's not just our toe and our thumb and our ear, but it's our whole self has been washed by the blood of Jesus, right?

Our conscience has been sprinkled clean by the blood of Christ. We've been raised to newness of life. We were dead and buried with him in baptism. We were raised again to newness of life. And now with our whole lives, we respond in worship.

All right? Worship is when Jesus is first in your heart and your life is surrendered to his altar. And here's what this means. A part time Christian makes no sense. A part time Christian makes no sense.

I think all of us in one way or another have had seasons of life where we lived as part time Christians. Maybe currently some areas that we're living as a part time Christian, but a part time Christian makes no sense. The word actually there translated as spiritual worship in verse one, this is your spiritual worship. That's the Greek word logike. It's where logic comes from.

It's the worship that makes sense because of what Jesus has done. It makes no sense to respond with half hearted part time worship. When Jesus poured out his blood on the cross for us. See, so often we think about our lives like a pie chart. And if we're really good at the whole church thing and we're really good at the religion thing, we give God a big old piece of the pie, you know like 10%.

Yep. Every Sunday dialed in community group. Yes. But then the other piece of the pie, you know, I've got my career, I've got these other things that makes no sense in response to the gospel. The gospel doesn't flatten other aspects of your life.

It doesn't get rid of your marriage and your parenting and your kids and your relationships and your career and your hobbies. It doesn't get rid of those things. But what it does is it redefines them. In response to the gospel we say Jesus is not just a piece of the pie of our lives, but he gets everything right. We are a Christian husband.

I'm a Christian husband, I'm a Christian parent. I'm a follower of Jesus who has hob. Jesus shapes everything that we do, right? The only thing that doesn't make sense when we read the Bible is to give part of ourselves to Jesus and not all of it right. Follower of Jesus defines every category we've been consecrated for.

And I know that in the Bible Belt south many of us had a long period of life or even right now where we play church. We play church, we go on Sunday, we know the things to do and not to do to upset the apple cart. You even sing in church. But some of us have played church for a long time but never put our bodies on the altar, right? Some of us have played church for a long time, but never said Jesus.

Everything that I am, everything that I am today, my body, my hopes, my dreams, my aspirations, everything about me, all of it is yours. Because of your mercy that you showed me on the cross. When we baptize people who are new followers of Jesus, we ask them two questions. We ask them first, do you believe that Jesus has done everything necessary on your behalf for your salvation. Jesus is the Savior.

I'm a sinner. He brings grace, and I'm trusting him for. For forgiveness. Yes, but the second question is just as important. It's the other side of the coin.

The second question is, do you commit, in response to the Gospel to go wherever Jesus calls you to go and do whatever Jesus tells you to do? Right. That second question says, jesus, I receive your forgiveness, and I'm hopping on the altar. My life is not mine anymore. I've been washed by the blood of Jesus, and everything about me is consecrated.

And some of you have played church for a long time, and I'm here to warn you that it's not. That's not what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Right? Being a disciple starts with worship. Jesus is first in your heart, and your life is on his altar.

So that's what it means, worship. What worship is. But there's a very real challenge for us who are living as living sacrifices. One of the challenges of being a living sacrifice is that we can squirm off. And that's where the apostle Paul turns next.

So this is Romans 12:2. He says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. So first, we talked about what worship is. Second, let's talk about why it's hard. And this is why it's hard to sustain worship, all right?

It's because the world seeks to kill your worship. You have to know that the world seeks to kill your worship, all right? I watch espn. We watch Disney movies. I'm not some crazy activist against the things of the world.

But we do have to know that the world does seek to kill our worship and tries to take our hearts and minds in a different direction. Right? When we want to live lives that have been hit by the mercies of God, we want to live our life in response, faithfully offering it to Jesus. We realize that the gravitational pull of the world is a different direction. All right?

Worldliness, what the world is trying to draw us into is really just a perspective of life without God. And notice what the Apostle Paul says here. He says, do not be conformed to this world. The implication is that if you do not intentionally, intentionally counteract it, then the natural trajectory will be to take the mold of the world. The world has a mold, and the world puts incredible pressure on you to conform.

I'm sure you have felt it in a number of different ways, from friends and professors and bosses and all different kinds of things. Family members, maybe. But the world Puts pressure on us to conform. And the number one way the world conforms us, though, is through catechism. Catechism.

You've probably heard catechism in a religious context. It's where there's a way to train kids the teachings of the Bible. So there's a question and then they give an answer that comes from the scriptures. You train them to kind of like teach them memorizing truths about God and about the scriptures. But the world does the same thing all throughout.

For the history of God's people, the world has always been planting lies and using catechism to lead us into the mold of the world. For example, just look at Genesis 3, when the devil came to Adam and Eve to get them to eat the apple to sin against God. And he catechized, you remember, he said a few times, he said, did God really say, right, a catechism of doubt in God's goodness and provision for his people. Or we look at the Israelites when they were wandering after they left Egypt, Moses went up on the mountain. They were away, they faced some difficulty, and their response was to make a golden calf.

They melted all their gold down. They made a golden calf. What's interesting, they didn't just come up with that. They actually were copying the religious practices of the Egyptians they had just lived with for 400 years, right? They'd been conformed to the mold, and then they walked in sin.

They disobeyed God. This happens all throughout the Old Testament. And the world is really good at conforming us through catechism, through shadow, shaping us to the people around us. This primarily happens like we see in those couple of places, through just lies, through lies about the character of God that are not in accordance with the Scripture. And the unfortunate reality for us is that our enemy, Satan, is a very good liar.

He's been doing it for thousands of years. He knows you better than you know yourself. And he knows exactly what you need to hear to be most tempted to reject God and to follow after the way of the world. All right? And this is not just something that's happened for God's people all throughout history.

It might be happening more powerfully than ever today. I mean, I don't have to convince you about the power of the algorithms. I mean, you turn on like Instagram and all of a sudden it's an hour and a half later and you've just been, where did the time go? Like, our world is incredible at getting our attention and feeding us messages, right? Teaching us and training us.

There's so many different ways this happens. Maybe just a couple of them. And there's more of this. I mean, any ism is this. But think about consumerism.

Consumerism is the lie that to live the life you really want, you need the next thing to be content, you need more stuff. Consumerism, that ideology is funded by the largest corporations and the most gifted university graduates taking all of their effort and energy to put into our pockets and in front of screens telling us that we have to have the next thing right. They are conforming us to their image. They're sharing emotional stories during the super bowl, and they are convincing us with every ounce of their ability that we need to buy their thing. That is what we're up against.

That is the world convincing us every day. If I have more, then I'll be happy. Just think about this. Just think about the reality of this. If you were to meet with a group of people for dinner after church and you talked in a small group and you were saying, hey, I'm gonna set aside.

My wife and I, we've been thinking about this. We're really excited. You know, we're Gonna set aside 10% of our income each month for the next year so we can go on a dream vacation. Everybody would be like, that's so cool. You're using your young years, your flexibility to go there.

Like, what? Great intentionality. But if in that same group, it's not all Christians, probably that you said, hey, I'm Gonna set aside 10% of my salary to intentionally give to support the work of my local church, what would the response be? Be a little bit of discomfort. You're doing what?

Like, if you use that, do you realize what your standard of living could be if you didn't do that? Why would you do such a thing? Right? That's what the world is conforming us into. That is what the world is making normal to us.

The Bible gives us a different vision, though. The Bible would say, godliness with contentment is great gain. Godliness with contentment is great gain. There's consumerism. The second one that I'll share with you to look out for would be expressive individualism or expressive individualism.

If the mouthpiece of consumerism is businesses, then expressive individualism is like pop stars and actors and actresses and athletes. The lie of expressive individualism is if I can express what is inside of myself unencumbered, then I'll be happy. And I mean, this has like a dialed in catechism that you could repeat after me. I mean, these phrases, love is love. Follow your heart.

I just want them to be happy. You do you. All of those things are catechism statements saying that this lie is actually true. But the Bible, well at first this was me in college, right? Like my stated belief in college was I want to have a good time right now.

Maybe the end of high school, college, I want to have a good time right now. When I get old and boring, I'll like settle down and get right with God. But I just wanna do what I wanna do. So like everybody leave me alone. I'm not goin to church.

But that is me imbibing of this conformity and becoming like the world and making a lot of bad decisions that set my life off track in a lot of ways. But the Bible gives us a different vision, right? The Bible does not say that is what lives inside of you is what you should listen to. The Bible says, take up your cross, deny yourself and follow Jesus. Alright, some of you have a private theology that is this, I'm just gonna do what makes me happy, right?

I'm just gonna do what makes me happy. Because really I think God just wants me to be happy. And there's no lie or conformity that will ruin your relationships, that will ruin your marriage, that will ruin your relationship with your kids like that, right? If you serve a God, if you live according to the worldview that just says God wants me to be happy. So therefore I'll do whatever I want to do in the moment to try to pursue that.

You're always going to cut other people out and let them down. You cannot sustain a marriage, you cannot sustain parenting relationships, you cannot sustain a life built on God just wants me to be happy. The Bible gives us something richer, but it is just pressed on us from the world. We are conformed to it over time. All right, so here's the reality.

Worship is a right response where we've been hit by the mercies of God. But there is a world that is actively and intentionally throwing all of its resources to get you to conform to it the best you can. So what's our hope? Romans 12:2. He continues, don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

The reason that it's hard to worship is that the world's seeking to kill your worship. Here's the answer that the scriptures give us. Worship is sustained by renewing your mind, alright? It's sustained by renewing your mind. So the question I want to land with here is how do we renew our minds?

How do we renew our Minds. How do we avoid those coming to church or having, like, a crisis moment of inspiration where we raise hands and we worship, but then just like, kind of going on with everyday life? How do we become the kind of people, the kind of followers of Jesus that worship at church on Sunday, and then our lives reflect throughout the week in all the different kinds of areas? How do we become the kind of people that don't just give Jesus a part of the pie, but are really impacted by everything? And here it's by the renewal of our mind.

And this is so significant because for us to do, because if we're gonna just sustain in this, we've gotta have some path forward in the midst of the pressure that the world is putting on it. So how do we renew our mind? How do we renew our minds? Well, Christians historically have called these spiritual disciplines, spiritual disciplines, practices that the scripture gives us to show us how we can reinforce the truth of God and have our minds renewed as we sit under the truth of God. All right?

And this is incredibly important. Proverbs 4 tells us the importance. It tells us that the heart is where the life flows from. So you should guard it with everything that you've got. I know you've probably heard Proverbs 4:23 applied to dating, but it's much more than that.

Like this mind, this operating system that you have, you should guard it with everything that you have. Because that relationship with God, it's like a fire, all right? At times, we've got all the logs on the fire and it's roaring, it's burning, there's intimacy and passion and joy. At other times, it's dwindling down to embers because the world is putting pressure that we're buying into. And what the Bible does is it gives us these spiritual practices to breathe oxygen and life into that relationship with.

With God. Notice these practices. I'll just mention four briefly. Bible reading, scripture meditation, prayer, and going to church. Those are the four.

Real quick, we're going to talk about each of them. But here's what I want to say, just as a pastoral word, before we talk about them. Many of you have tried to live in these spiritual disciplines or practices for a long time and have started and have stopped. Have read the Bible and felt like there was nothing going on there. Have prayed and felt like your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling.

And so what I want to avoid and why I'm sharing this is I don't want you to think that opening up your Bible tomorrow is going to be some kind of Like Silver Bullet, that fixes all of your issues immediately. That's not reality of what the Bible would teach or what your experience should expect. But here's what the spiritual disciplines are. The spiritual disciplines are God saying, I've put a faucet over there and you put your head under it by faith and expectation and trust that in my grace, at some point I'll turn it on. All right?

Spiritual disciplines, when you're not feeling it, it's an expression of faith that today I'm gonna walk in the way Jesus called me to, even if I'm not feeling it, even if I'm not, you know, highlighting, underlining everything in my Bible because I trust that over time, the faucet of God's grace is gonna turn on. So one of the most faithful things that you can do is walk in these spiritual practices and disciplines to fight to renew your mind, even when you don't feel it, because God is there just waiting to turn on the faucet of his grace. I don't know why he waits sometimes. I don't know why he asks you to continue and not give the feelings and emotions of intimacy with Him. But my encouragement to you is, don't give up.

All right? Keep going back to the word. Keep going back to prayer. Keep coming to church. So those four.

All right, read the Scripture. In a world that is telling us lies, read the Bible. We need to fill our minds with truth. One of the realities is that our hearts cannot love what our minds don't first know. And as we read the Bible, we are storing up information about who God is and what he has done, so that when the world comes and brings lies and pressure to us, we have something to respond with.

All right, so reading the Bible is not a legalistic checkbox in order to impress God in the D group that we gotta go confess our sin to. All right, Reading the Bible is a weapon against the world that's trying to kill our worship to have some truth to hold onto about God's character. I mean, Jesus, look at when Jesus went into. When his ministry was publicly announced, he was baptized. The Spirit led him into the wilderness after 40 days of fasting.

And the devil came to him and fed him three lies, trying to get Jesus to bow down and worship him. And with each and every one, don't miss this. Jesus responded with the word of God. All right. Jesus responded with the Word of God.

When the devil brings lies and the world brings pressure, you need to have a mind that is filled with the Word of God and Thinks God's thoughts so you can be faithful in the midst of it. So we want to read the word not legalistic, but to know God more deeply and to. And to be ready for the pressures that we're gonna face. All right? Second one is meditation.

This might be a little surprising to you. If you've been in church for a while, you hear Bible and pray. But scriptural meditation is an important one. When I learned about meditation, how often it's brought up in the Bible in seminary, they used an illustration that has stuck with me for a decade at this point. And you'll get why.

So the word for meditation is the same word used to describe how cows eat grass. All right, here's how cows eat grass. They chew it multiple times. They chew it up, they swallow it, they regurgitate it. They chew it up again.

They swallow it, they regurgitate it. They chew it up, they chew the cud is what they call it. And that's the same word for meditation. All right? The way that you get the truth of the Bible down from your head, down to your heart is by meditating on it, by chewing on it, by rolling over it in your mind.

So here's why I say that you may miss out on a lot of blessing of your Bible reading if you don't chew the cud. One great way to meditate, practically, is to memorize a verse. Cause if you memorize that verse in the morning, then it's kind of bouncing around in your mind all day just getting to think about it, apply it to different scenarios. All right? So Bible reading, scripture meditation.

Third is prayer. Prayer is the way that as we read the Word, as we meditate on the Scripture, those kind of dead truths is too strong. But those truths move from informational knowledge into relational experience with the Holy Spirit, Right? Prayer is the way that we take those truths, we apply it into our lives. We share our concerns with God, and the Holy Spirit brings to mind verses, and it brings that relationship of God's Word to life.

So we're gonna have our minds renewed. That means prayer. And then the fourth is going to church. Mark, going to church. For thousands of years, it has been a core practice of every follower of Jesus to each and every week go to church to worship with God's people.

And as you go throughout your week, as we talked about, you're getting messages and truth or lies thrown at you from every different way and all different kinds of thoughts. What we get to do each and every week is we get to come here and we open up the Bible. We just read Romans chapter 4:12 1:2 and see what it says. We get to hear from God together. You get to see brothers and sisters worshiping the Lord, raising their hands in gratitude for what he has done.

You get to come up for prayer after the service and have someone pray for you as you confess your sin. And they remind you of grace. For thousands of years, this was the core way that the church remained distinct and faithful to the Scriptures, shaped by the truth of God's word, rather than giving themselves over to the conformity that the world was trying to press on them. Psalm 1:1 3 says this. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yield yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither in all that he does, he prospers. That's the vision for what your life can be by the grace of God and through renewing your mind as you walk in faith and put yourself under the word of God. That's why at King's Church, you'll hear us say again and again that our desire, our hope is that every person, every one of you, every person every day, will have time alone with God.

That's not a desire to put some burden on you that makes you feel guilty when you miss it. That's saying, when you do this, you're putting yourself and your mind in the place where God, by his grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, will renew it. Will renew it and will help you live a life that's been hit by the mercies of God and will resist conformity to the world, will have your mind renewed. And each and every morning you'll say, jesus, your first place in my heart. My life is back on your altar, right?

Every person, every day. If you don't know where to start, you've been discouraged before. Open up to Mark. Read a chapter a day. Take you seven minutes or something, five, seven minutes, and say a quick prayer and go from there.

Community groups. As you go and meet this week, I want you to talk about this. Talk about where your heart is, in what worship towards God. Talk about how it's been renewing your mind and some of these spiritual practices, how you can encourage one another, how you live it out practically, what works for you really well in these different areas. Let's help one another renew our minds in the midst of the world that's putting so much pressure on us to conform.

One of the realities of worship is that we will never worship in this holistic way that the Bible calls us to worship if we. We do not deeply down to the core of who we are, if we do not deeply trust Jesus. All right? The call of Romans chapter 12 is not to worship. By coming into church on a Sunday, you know, raising your hand, and we praise God that we do this.

An important expression of worship. But the call of Romans 12 is that all of you is put on the altar every day and you're consecrated to the purposes of God, right? Jesus is not interested in anything less in a relationship with you. Jesus is either Lord of all or he is not Lord at all. He's not gonna be fooled, right?

The invitation of Romans 12 is to come and put yourself. But again, to do that, you're gonna have to trust him. And here's why you can trust him. Here's. As you renew your mind, here's what to remember.

Jesus was put on the altar for you. You can trust Jesus with your life. Because when he did not deserve to die in love for you, he went to the cross. When he saw us in our sin and our brokenness from heaven, he said, father, we're not okay with that. I'll go.

I love those people. I want to go and live the life that they couldn't live. I want to take the cross that was reserved for them because I want them to come home, back into my family. I want them to be with me. I want to save them from their sin.

And this is the only way. But if Jesus is going to be first in your heart, if your life is going to be put on his altar, the only way that you are going to do that is by trusting Jesus more than you even trust yourself. And the good news is you can, because he gave his life for you. John, chapter 10. It reminds us that the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy.

But Jesus came to give us abundant life. Jesus is not here to chew you up, spit you out, use you for his own purposes. Jesus poured out his blood so that you could be saved, forgiven, and have new life. There's no better place to put your worship than in Jesus.

There's no better place to put your worship in Jesus. Every worship, every idol, every God will cost you something. But Jesus Christ poured out his blood so that you could have life. Some of you, like we mentioned before, you need to come to Christ for the very first time, you need to hop on the altar. You've been playing church, maybe been around church for a long time, but you've never gone all in and say, jesus, my life is.

It's not my own. Wash me with your blood. Forgive my sin. I want to follow you with everything I've got. Some of you need to do that for the very first time, and I would encourage you to do that today.

If the Holy Spirit is calling out to you, don't resist. There's two ways to walk out that door at the end of this service. One is, as a follower of Jesus, forgiven your sin, walking in newness of life. And the other is separated from God, still in your sin. And today you can do that.

No candles to light, no special incantations, invitations to pray. It's a posture of the heart. Posture of the heart that says, jesus, I'll go to the altar because you went to it for me. I trust I'm a sinner. I trust you forgive me because of the cross, and I'll follow you with my whole life.

It's a posture of the heart. If you're doing that today, we'd love to talk with you after and pray with you and share with you what it means to follow after Jesus. It would be the best decision you ever make to follow Jesus and put him on the throne of your heart. Better than any other God, better than any idol. But many of us have been walking for Jesus for a long time, and we go back to that problem that a living sacrifice can wriggle off the altar.

We were there. We're in for Jesus. But there's just pieces of our lives that aren't surrendered. Pieces of our lives we've kind of taken back for ourself. Pieces of our lives that we've, over time, closed our fists and say, no, God, you can have a lot.

But I'm gonna keep this because I like holding onto it better. I like doing it my way more than yours. Maybe it's a relationship with someone. Maybe it's an area of unforgiveness you're not willing to let go of. Maybe it's a hidden sin you're not willing to confess.

Maybe it's a financial decision you're not willing to surrender the Lord. I don't know what it is, but I know if that you're a human. If you're like me, you've got those areas. And this is the time for us as a church just to say again, Jesus, I'm back on the altar. You gave yourself for me, so I'll give it all for you.

That's what worship is. Worship is when Jesus is first in your heart and when your life, all of it, is on his altar. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful that you saved us. Father, we thank you for sending Christ to live the life that we couldn't.

We thank you that in mercy, you were patient and you drew us to yourself and God. Now we just respond with worship. We worship here like we've been saved from something, because we have been. And we worship with not just our lips on Sundays, but with all of our lives.

Jesus, you are worthy of all the praise that we could ever bring. You will take care of us as we entrust ourselves to you. So, Father, fill us with faith to consecrate ourselves to your purposes, to present our bodies as living sacrifices. That is our spiritual worship. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen. Amen. Well, I invite you to stand. We're going to respond by singing, worshiping, praising God for what he's done. We'll have our prayer team up front.

We'd love to pray with you. If there's anything we can pray for you about, or if you're looking to follow Jesus, we'd love to talk with you as well. So let's respond. Sing together.