In high school I played softball. It
was a passion and a calling. I saw myself on that team as a girl
there to glorify God in every swing of the bat, every run to the base
and every catch and throw. I had Bible verses written on my softball
glove to remind me that God was faithful, that I could do everything
through His strength. I was all in. I gave it everything I had. In
February we would start our physical training with aerobics at the
youth center. I would kick as high as I could when she said get those
knees up ladies. I would jump and sweat and smile. When my coach made
us lay on our backs and raise our feet up 6 inches I would grit my
teeth and give it all I had. I was a ball player. When it came to
game time I was on a fabulous team. We all worked really hard and
most of us had talent. I played in left field and to be honest, was
really good at it. Not many balls would get by me out there. Every
pitch that went to that home plate I just anticipated would be a fly
ball to left field. I was always ready. We played our season for 6
months totaling over 100 games. You would have to love it to to keep
in on a season like that. Every year we were favored to win the
European Championships, and we never did. My junior year I thought
for sure we had it in in the bag. I had to play short stop for the
tournament because our regular short stop had to go back to the
states for college. The catcher, Melissa , was playing in the left
field. She was a fantastic athlete. None of us felt like she was out
of her league to be standing in my spot in left field. We were at a
point in the final game when all we needed to do was get one more out
and we would be the champs. I saw the long fly ball go out to left
field. I made a note that it was an easy catch and was ready to
collect my trophy. That long fly ball was going to exactly where
Melissa was standing. She didn't have to move a bit. The game was in
the bag. I was making acceptance speeches in my head. And then,
Melissa did a terrible move, she started running forward, oh no! I
watched my dreams of a championship fly right over Melissa's head. I
knew that if I would have been there I would have caught that ball. I
had caught that ball hundreds of times. It was an easy catch for a
left fielder, but for a catcher, it was a night mare. We ended up
losing the game because we didn't have the right person in left field
because our short stop had to leave too early.
When you are on a team, the team needs
you to do your best. They need you to come to practice, they need you
to play the position you are given to the very best of your ability.
In softball every player needs to be on their game. Each player is
essential to winning. If some one is not committed and continually
misses practice the whole team suffers. They need to learn to play
together, to play off of one anothers rythms and style. They need to
practice together. They need to practice at home just playing catch.
The more a team practices the better they will be. A good coach will
also see the strengths of each girl and put them on the field in the
place that will best suit them. The team itself is one unit. When
one person on the team is a slacker, the whole team suffers.
The church is like an athletic team.
Each person has a vital role to play. Let me say it again. You have a
vital role to play. Sweet sister, you are essential. You are here to
make a difference. You are here to be a blessing. You are here to
contribute. We need you to contribute. Last night we saw how God
was calling us to believe in Jesus and to love our friends so much
that we bring them to Jesus. We saw that Jesus is worthy and our
friends are worth it. Today we are going to see the calling of God to
minister not just to the individual but to minister in the context of
the Body of Christ. To give our all to the whole family.
33 Oh, how great are God’s riches and
wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his
decisions and his ways!
34 For who can know the Lord’s
thoughts?
Who knows enough to give him advice?[l]
35 And who has given him so much
that he needs to pay it back?[m]
Who knows enough to give him advice?[l]
35 And who has given him so much
that he needs to pay it back?[m]
36 For
everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for
his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen.
Romans 12
A Living Sacrifice to God
12 And
so, dear brothers and sisters,[a]
I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has
done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he
will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.[b]
2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let
God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.
Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and
pleasing and perfect.
Here we have the introduction of a discourse on the ways in which God needs to change our minds. He needs to rewire our thinking. We have thought for so long that life is about me and it is for me and I need to watch out for me that God has to get the me out of me and replace it with himself. We begin our reading with a reminder of who God is.
Romans 11 ends with: Oh, how great
are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for
us to understand his decisions and his ways!
34 For
who can know the Lord’s
thoughts?
Who knows enough to give him advice?[l]
35 And who has given him so much
that he needs to pay it back?[m]
Who knows enough to give him advice?[l]
35 And who has given him so much
that he needs to pay it back?[m]
36 For everything comes from him
and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to
him forever! Amen.
We need to remember that God is great. He is God and we are not. If I am to ever be any good to the church, if I am ever to contribute anything at all I need to have the proper perspective of who is God. I need to know that He doesn't owe me anything. He doesn't need my advice. His wisdom and knowledge are beyond my understanding. God is God and I am not. I need to know that my place is at the foot of God's throne and not on his throne. Friends, I need to know that that reason I got out of bed this morning is not because of my own ability or strength. I got out of bed because God woke me up. He gave me air to breath and he kept my heart beating. I need to know that the life I live is not for my glory or accomplishment. It is not for my own pleasure or to make my dreams come true. I need to know that I am not the hero of my story. It was never my story to begin with. We begin our conversation about what it means to be a body with the idea that I am just a small part of a whole, and God Himself is creator and sustainer. We exist by His power and are intended for his glory. Let Him have it all. Let him have all the power and glory and honor. It belongs to Him.
And so Paul commends us to give our bodies to God because of all God has done for us. Give your body to God because He is God. In the NKJV is says “to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” I love that phrase your “reasonable service”. It is reasonable to let your body be a living and holy sacrifice. God has given us everything and so it is right that we give everything we have back to him. In the NIV it says “this is your true and proper worship”. This is our worship. This is how we attribute worth and praise to God. So how do we really worship God? What is our reasonable response to God? We give Him all we have. It's that simple. We give Him everything because he is God. I like that He isn't just saying to give our spiritual being, the idea of God you can have my heart but I will keep control of my hands and feet. He is saying that He wants our hands and feet as well. He wants our entire lives, poured out before him.
Just a few weeks ago I was given an entirely new perspective on the idea of my life being an offering. We were reading Jenn Hatmaker's book Interrupted and she had an eye opening commentary on the Lord's Supper. She was saying that when Jesus said “Do this in remembrance of me” the verb tense was a present tense that required continual action.
Jenn says
Not only was Communion a symbolic
ritual, but it was a new prototype for discipleship. “continuously
make my sacrifice real, by doing this very thing” But what? What
was the very thing Jesus was doing? He was becoming broken and poured
out for hopeless people. He was becoming a living offering, denying
Himself for the salvation and restoration of humanity. Obedience to
Jesus' command is more than looking backward; it's a present and
continuous replication of His sacrifice. We don't simply remember
the meal; we become the meal too.
“Now you are the body of Christ” 1
Cor. 12:27
Doesn't this concept of being broken
for others ring true? It's a spiritual dynamic manifested physically.
Why is it so exhausting to uphold someone's heavy burden? Why are you
spent from shouldering someone's grief or being an armor bearer? Why
is it that lifting someone out of his or her rubble leaves you
breathless? Because you are part of the body of Christ, broken and
poured out, just like He was. Mercy has a cost: Someone must be
broken for someone else to be fed. The sermon that changed your life?
That messenger was poured out so you could hear it. The friends who
stood in the gap during your crisis? Each embraced some sacrifice of
brokenness for your healing. Anytime you say “that fed me, that
nourished me”, someone was broken bread for your fulfillment.
Jenn Hatmaker's words challenge and
convict me. To follow Jesus' command to do this in remembrance of me
we lay our lives out before God and say break me, pour me out, use me
to feed the hungry. Use me to minister to the hurting. We lay our
lives out before God and say, You are Lord. You Lead. Present your
bodies as living sacrifices because this is the way we worship God.
What is it to worship? It is to say to God you are enough. I trust
you. I give you all that I am and say you are High and Lifted Up. I
trust you with my body. Use me. We need God to change our minds, so
He can change our lives, so He can make the church more what she is
meant to be in a broken world. We need God to do what Romans 12:2
says to do:
Let God transform you into a new person
by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s
will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
Here is where the teaching in Romans
12 becomes more specific. What does it actually look like to walk
according to God's good, pleasing and perfect will? What does it
mean for me in a practical sense?
We Belong to Each Other
Romans 12:3 Because of the privilege and authority[c]
God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you
are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of
yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.[d]
4 Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special
function, 5 so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of
one body, and we all belong to each other.
I love that Paul is telling us to
have a sober opinion of ourselves. I started wondering why would he
start a discourse on the body of Christ with a statement like “don't
think you are better than you really are.” I kind of wonder if it
is because of what he is going to say next. Don't look at yourself
as independent from the body. Don't think you could make it at all
without the church. If you have a high and lofty opinion of yourself
you may fall into the trap of arrogance and independence. You may
think you can do this Christian life on your own and pull away from
fellowship. You may also pass judgment on your brothers and sisters
and not value what they have to offer because you think you are so
much better than they are. The bottom line is verse 5, We are many
parts, and we belong to each other. We need each other. I have a
responsibility to you and you to me. Let that sink in a bit. We
belong to each other. That means you just lost your autonomy. You
just lost your cultural identity “I'm and independent American and
I can do it on my own”. We so strongly value our strength and
freedom that we have a hard time swallowing the idea that we belong
to anyone, even to God and certainly to the church. We need God to
transform our minds. We do belong to each other. Just like when I
was on a ball team in high school, we were a team. We needed each
other. No matter how good the star player was she couldn't play all
the positions. Look at each other and say “I belong to you”.
Is that hard to say? Does saying
that I belong to you mean that I have to trust you on a deeper level.
Does it mean at some place I am giving authority to you or to the
body over me? If I yield to the body of Christ, what becomes of me?
This is difficult teaching. I struggle with it too. To say that I
belong to you also means that you have a role in caring for me. A
friend of mine helped me to see that when we something belongs to us,
we are responsible for it. We care for it. Zack is my son so I do
everything I can to care for him and to protect him. If I belong to
you then you have a role in protecting my heart, but I have to trust
you with my heart. Right now, just being in front of you pouring out
to you the vision and heart that God has given me, I stand
vulnerable. What will you do with this gift of grace I extend to you
through God's Holy Spirit? I have to share it because the message
that God has given to me, so long as it is from Him, belongs to you.
I can't hold it back, whatever God has given to me, doesn't belong to
me. It is yours, it is His.
In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing
certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy,
speak out with as much faith as God has given you. 7 If your
gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach
well. 8 If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If
it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership
ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift
for showing kindness to others, do it gladly.
Let's just stop and let this list of amazing supernatural gifts from Romans 12 sink into our minds and hearts. These are gifts of prophecy, service, giving, teacher, leadership, evangelism. Imagine if we could see all of these gifts represented in our body. Imagine if all the saints in our community were walking in the Holy Spirit with a transformed mind fixed on Jesus and just employing these gifts to serve the body. I want to see these gifts put to use. What is God stirring in you? What is he giving you a heart to step into and do in His name. That is right, we are called to be in Christ, but doing is a natural outpouring of our being in Christ. We don't just be, we do.
In John 14:12-18 Jesus makes this
amazing promise “
12 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the
works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these
he will do, because I go to My Father. 13 And whatever you ask
in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the
Son. 14 If you ask[c]
anything in My name, I will do it.
15 “If you love Me, keep[d]
My commandments. 16 And I will pray to the Father, and He will
give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— 17 the
Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither
sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and
will be in you. 18 I will not leave you orphans; I will come to
you.
You heard it right, Jesus said you
will do even greater things than these, because He sent the Holy
Spirit to live inside of believers. The Holy Spirit dwells in you.
Let Him out! Let Him do his work. Don't keep the Spirit of God
locked away in some little safe place. Get to know the Holy Spirit.
So many Christians are just ordinary and their spiritual gifts are in
infancy because they do not cultivate a relationship with Jesus. They
don't want the Holy Spirit to take control of their lives. Imagine,
if everyone in our community was spending time with Jesus, letting
the Holy Spirit have his way with them, what would we look like as a
body? Healthy. Each person would be playing the role they were
meant to play. There would not be one guy doing the job of 5 guys, or
one lady doing the job of 10. Each Sojourner would be supernaturally
walking in the Spirit of God and in the giftedness that God has given
to them. We wouldn't see burn out. We would see people more blessed
than ever because friend, when you walk in the giftedness that God
has given you it feels good. You may feel spent, but it will be a
good spent. You may feel challenged but it will be the kind of
challenge you know you are made for. How can I encourage you more?
You are gifted! Give that gift to the body. Let the Holy Spirit fill
you in such a way that you are bursting with desire to serve God's
people and the unbelieving world. Get to know that place of
giftedness. Try it out, practice, apply it. Cultivate it. Let God
take you out of your comfortable places and bring you into a place
that feels risky, a place where you feel out of your league. That is
the place you will experience the transforming work of the cross.
That is the place you will see miracles happen, in you and around
you.
And finally we close with the greatest
of all supernatural gifts. Love.
9 Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate
what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. 10 Love each other
with genuine affection,[e]
and take delight in honoring each other. 11 Never be lazy, but
work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically.[f]
12 Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and
keep on praying. 13 When God’s people are in need, be ready to
help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality.
14 Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that
God will bless them. 15 Be happy with those who are happy, and
weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with each other.
Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And
don’t think you know it all!
We belong to each other. We are meant to live our lives as a
body together. The bond between us is deeper than our ordinary
family. The Holy Spirit of God fills us with His presence and brings
us to true unity. Let God fill you with love for the body. Let Him
fill you with delight in honoring each other. Even now I pray that
God will fill each of us with a deep love for Himself and His church,
and out of that love flowing through us we would all serve the body
in the way we are called to serve. We would all love the body and
meet her with hospitality and openness. This is your family. Live
life with her. Serve God's Kingdom with her, broken and poured out,
serve.
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