God's Living Sacrifices

We are going to continue worshiping. We've been worshiping in prayer, in song, in fellowship, and now we're going to continue to worship by submitting ourselves to God's Word. But we have to remember that everything we're supposed to be doing as Christians is supposed to be worship. Every part of life, every day of life, every minute of every day, and every part of a service gathered together is worship. So we're going to continue to worship by thinking about what is worship. And we're going to be taking a smaller section of Romans. We've been in Romans. We've been walking through it. We just concluded chapter 11. 1 through 11 was really the theology. This is the groundwork for then how you're supposed to then live as a church. And now we're taking this quick transition, chapter 12, 1 through 2, where Paul begins to tell us how to live according to that truth. Here, Romans 12, one through two. 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. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Now you can see in your handout, in the bulletin, I provided an outline on page 9. I'm concerned about two things or a few things with this particular passage. We can really miss a forest by the trees if we just focus on those particular details I've outlined. We'll miss the big picture of what Paul's saying because it all goes together. Two, it's really easy to spiritualize this passage to mean whatever we want it to mean. There's a context. And I'm going to try to make sure that whatever I say about this passage is determined by the context, which is he's coming out of this praise of God from him and through him and to him are all things. And then he's going to transition in verse three through eight what it means to be a church member. Notice reasonable service, if you're in a King James version, or spiritual worship, it's between those two things. Praise God for all he's done for us. Be a faithful church member. That's what we'll talk about next week. So a couple of observations from the text. There's three basic commands. present your body as a living sacrifice. The negative, do not be conformed by the world. The positive, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The result being is that then you will be able to discern the will of God. That's quite the outcome. That's quite the goal we have here before us, to discern what is good, acceptable, and perfect, according to what God says. to enter into God's mind, to recognize what He values, and to then value it ourselves. That's the end goal. And everything that plays out afterwards in 13 through 15, and in chapter 12 still, is telling us what is good, right, and perfect. So first, let's look. We're going to worship God with our bodies. Let me read this passage again. I'll read it in its entirety a few times because it's short and worthy of our memorization. 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. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, perfect. Now, I believe what Paul is saying here is the same thing we read in Deuteronomy. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength. With everything you are, worship. But we see here the two parts, body and mind. We're going to treat them a little bit separately, but they're so united. What you think about is what you're gonna do, and what you do affects what you think about. So we don't want to create this dichotomy, but we do want to think about them a little bit separately for a little while so that we can think about the whole life of worship. And I also want to make sure this is importantly seen that our physical stuff, our matter, it matters. This body that God formed out of the earth and breathed life into, what we do physically has an important role in worship. Where we go with this body. What we do with this body. What we look at with this body. What we listen to with this body. This body is formed by God for the purpose of serving, for the purpose of His glory. There's two main problems we usually run into when we think about the body is that we don't value it enough. We don't see that this physical element, this physical part of us is important. No, it's very important. It's what we use for worship. It's what God uses for worship. The other is that we overvalue it. We want to make sure we look pretty enough, we look young enough, and we look fit enough. We want to be careful not to overvalue. We want to be careful not to undervalue. We want to make sure we recognize that God has created every part of us for His worship. So, our first sub-point here in chapter 12, we worship because of the mercies of God. We worship because of the mercies of God. I appeal to you, therefore, by the mercies of God. Now, the audience Paul is talking to is the church, the brothers, those who have already believed in Jesus Christ. So let me just take a moment here. If you're not a believer in Jesus Christ, what Paul has said before this passage means a lot more to you than what he's gonna say in this passage. What he said before in this passage is that every single human being was created by God for worship. And we refused to worship God. We did not give Him thanks. We did not honor Him. Instead, we went our own way. We did what we wanted to do, and we spat in God's face. And that should bring the wrath of God, but God, in His mercy, sent His Son. To live that life, we refused to live. And when Jesus Christ died on the cross, he died as if a sinner. He was treated like a sinner so that the wrath of God that we deserve was poured out upon him so that everybody who believes the wrath of God is satisfied. They can be forgiven. If you're not a believer this morning, there's one clear thing you have to understand about yourself according to what God thinks, and that is you're guilty of sin. And that means there is a hell to pay forever, because his wrath is real. But if you believe in Jesus Christ, the wrath of God was satisfied in him. You're forgiven. You can be forgiven if you believe Jesus Christ died on the cross for you, a sinner. He's risen again to give you a new life, and now you can again worship. You can actually enjoy the life God designed you to enjoy. And that's actually what this passage is about. But first, you must believe Jesus Christ died for you, a sinner, to forgive you of your sins. Brothers, Paul is talking to us, and we have to first see he's appealing to us by the mercies of God. Now, that transition, therefore, is important. And Paul, this is his fourth big transition. The other four big transitions are, one is in chapter three, verse 20. After explaining to us how depraved we are, how wicked we are, he turns and says, but now the righteousness of God has been revealed. The wrath of God has been appeased and the death of Christ. Chapter 320 is the first transition. Chapter 5-1 is the next transition. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. I'm sorry, that is chapter 8, verse 1. Chapter 5-1 is this. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So we have that first transition is now the righteousness of God has been revealed. Now we have peace with God. Then chapter eight one, there is therefore now no condemnation. And then chapter 12, therefore, by the mercies of God, do this. Notice the first three things are things God says about us. The last one is the one thing God tells us to do. Therefore, do this. So now we get to be pragmatists. After all the things God has done for us, we get to practice religion. I appeal to you by the mercies of God. This word mercy is the same word we saw in chapter nine, verse seven. When God said, I will show mercy to whom I choose to show mercy. Chapter nine through 11 references mercy 10 times. Paul is building this call to worship from mercy. We have to first get mercy. We have to first understand we're sinners, undeserving to live this life, and then we'll begin to live it. Mercy's our motivation. Think about all Christ has done for you. Think about how wicked, we sang about this in All I Have is Christ. I was running my hellbound race. Think about the destructive habits we had when we were children of wrath and what it was doing to us. Think about the darkness and how it clouded your judgment. Think about the destruction we were running towards. And now we have mercy. Your motivation to run and worship is because God has, he's turned you around and changed your direction. from darkness to light, from destruction to glory. Your motivation for presenting your bodies for acceptable worship is because God's shown you mercy. Not only is that our motivation, it's your means. Paul's already established in Romans 7, in your flesh you can do nothing to please God. In our own energy, in our own efforts, we can do nothing, but if we submit to God, if we humbly say, God, give me the grace to be obedient, then we're able to worship. Worship at the most basic level is this, mercy-enabled action. Notice worship is action. Most of all, I want you to see here, we act because we're trusting God to give us the grace to do what is right and good. Consider all God has done for you, and seek to worship. So Paul says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, because of the great mercy of God, because of the mercies of God, present your bodies as living sacrifices. We're called to worship sacrificially. Now we need to remember that the audience here, they're Jews and Gentiles in Rome, and I believe most of these folks would have been familiar with worshiping with sacrifices. Worshiping with sacrifices usually brings the idea of death, blood, and mess. So most of the Jewish sacrifices required something to die, something to bleed, something to be burned. It's a filthy, stinky mess. Worship was kind of gross because something had to die, and you brought that into God hoping to appease, and then you live. What's weird is Paul is changing the idea of what worship is. It goes from something dying to us being living sacrifices. Our responsibility is to be a living responsibility, but let's be clear, death is still necessary for us to be living sacrifices. Christ died so that we can be living sacrifices. Death is still necessary for us to worship. As we've been hearing from Sam as he's been picking up in Romans, we know that we can worship because Christ has died once and for all for us. His death is what allows us to now live as a living sacrifice. How do we live as a living sacrifice? Again, I think death is actually still necessary. Paul's already alluded to this. Romans 8, 12. So then, brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. We have to put sin to death. In order to be a living sacrifice that is acceptable to God, We cleanse our lives, we put forth the effort by God's grace to purify ourselves from the sinful tendencies, and the sinful habits, and the sinful practices, and the sinful desires, so that we are a living sacrifice. And notice the word present. Paul's already mentioned this in Romans 6. Present your members to righteousness, not to sinfulness. There's an intentionality that goes on there. It's a regular need because we're forgetful and we're sinful. We're supposed to always be presenting ourselves with a purpose of worship. We live as sacrifices by putting to death sin, trusting the death of Christ. Now let's look at the next main point. Worship acceptably. To be a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, one that God has made holy and acceptable, We are to live lives in spiritual worship. Now, this phrase spiritual worship, if you have the ESV or the NIV, that's what it's translated as. If you have the New King James or the King James, it's reasonable service. And I believe that that tradition, that translation is actually better. Because the word behind spiritual for the ESV, it's actually the word we get logic from. And the word for worship is the word that you would apply for the priest in the temple. And so I'm going to interpret this as reasonable service because I think it's a better translation, but I also think the word spiritual is just, for the most part, unhelpful. In our culture, people like to talk about being spiritual, but that doesn't really usually have a lot of content to it. I'm not religious, I'm spiritual. I don't know what that means. So in order to avoid this unhelpful word, we're going to talk about living sacrifices that have a reasonable service. I don't think it makes sense because he just said, by the mercies of God, do what is logical. Worship. But by the mercies of God, do what is reasonable. Serve the God who has saved you. What is holy and acceptable? This is the reasonable service, to commit ourselves to that which is holy and acceptable. This is the beauty of what Christians get when we submit to His Word. We get to think God's thoughts after Him. We get to see what He values, what He desires. We get to commit ourselves in that direction. Now the problem is this, is we often like to decide what worship should look like because of what we like. Remember Israel and Mount Sinai? One of the most important events in all of Israel is Mount Sinai, Exodus 20. God calls Moses up, the people are afraid, and God begins to tell Moses, this is how you will worship me. And he gives very specific details. This is important. God is holy, God is perfect, and he's telling Israel, this is how I will accept you in worship. You think they want to listen. What's Israel doing while God is giving instruction for worship? They're building a golden calf and naming it God. This is a warning to us. We don't get to come up with creative ways to worship God. We get to be faithful to the ways He's prescribed. God wants us to worship. God wants us to be confident in worship. God wants us to know exactly what He expects, and God is a great communicator. He's spoken. He has told us what is acceptable worship. What we have to do is be humble enough to say, yes, what God has said is right. It's good. It comes down to this. Is this word sufficient for me to know God, what He's done for me, and what He expects me? That's it. Is it sufficient? Is it clear? Is it good? Remember, all of Romans is trying to build up this argument. God is trustworthy. What he says is right. Believe him. Worship is an act of submission. Okay, so what does this look like? These phrases can be so easily taken in the abstract. Present your body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. What does this look like? Well, the first thing we need to see is that because it's your body, where you are matters, right? Your body goes places. You are a physical being that goes from place to place. But I want to say more than where you are matters, it's with whom and what you do when you get there. So for instance, ways we could apply this. We go to work. Now sometimes when you go to work, some of us have jobs where you get sweaty, you get dirty, and that body gets worn out, but you can be worshiping God by the way you're serving with your physical labor as you work under the Lord. We go to work, we work hard, we treat people nice, we rejoice in the mundane because we can do it according to the Lord. All of life is worship. So whenever you go to work, you should think how can I worship God where I am? No matter how difficult it is The second way we could apply this instead of going to work or the application go to work stay home Stay home with your spouse Respect him and love her Be convinced that the spouse God has given you is designed specifically for you and he or she alone will satisfy you. I appreciate the one amen, I believe that deserves more. Believe that the spouse God has designed for you can alone satisfy you. Go to work, realize it's worship. Stay at home, play with the kids. It can be worship, the mundane, the monotonous. That's where God is actually most worshiped when we're faithful. But I want you to see the direct application Paul gives. It's not about work. It's not about family. Chapters 12, verses three through eight, it's about being with the church. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we though many members are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. if prophecy and apportion to our faith, if service and our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. What God wants is a church, members of mercy, committed to one another to show one another mercy and to be built up to be a light to the nations. Notice here, it's a call to reasonable service. The priests, they would be in the temple, that physical temple, smelly, bloody, gross, doing acts of worship. The church, we're supposed to be a kingdom of priests. We're supposed to be committed to this body, smelly, difficult, painful. It's a different kind of painful. It's working with sinners, it's seeking to love sinners, it's seeking to correct sinners, it's seeking to show grace. Because sinners have received mercy and deserve mercy. Paul's call to reasonable service is to serve Christ in his body. Let's look at our second verse. Worship God with your mind. Now this isn't just what you think about. This is what you dream about. This is what your mind is inclined to, what you fantasize about, what you think about regularly. What you desire. And there's two commands. There's a negative and a positive. Do not be conformed, but be transformed. So let's look at the do not be conformed. Do not be conformed to this world. Well, the world here is age. It really means more of the secular. And one of the things that I hear, because I praise God we're a multi-generational church, is there's a tendency to think that every age gets more and more sinful, but I don't think that's the case. Every age just has a different sin that they emphasize. There are certain sins that are in your face right now that we think are extremely sinful, but every age has been equally sinful. Every age has been totally depraved apart from the grace of God. So we need to be aware that there's certain sins we face now and there's been certain sins that every generation has faced. If you're in the world, it is seeking to conform you. If you live and your body moves around in this world, there's billboards, there's magazine covers, there's all kinds of things that it uses to seek to conform the way you think about yourself, the way you think about the other person's sex, and the way you think about God. Now, we think about what the world's doing. God has given us every good gift. The good things are from God, and what we do with those good things is we twist them and corrupt them, and that's the worldliness of them. We have to realize that the world, what it's trying to conform us to is to take something God has given us as good and twist it into something that's evil. And there's really nothing that our current culture does worse than twist the concept of what sex is. God gave sex to one man or one woman to experience a wonderful unity. Our culture treats it like something on a public playground. Everybody should just go out and just have a great public fest and let's all join in together. No, God created it for one man and one woman to share uniquely, to be united together. It's supposed to be something wonderful that's celebrated. But we're being conformed to think that it's something to be enjoyed outside of that design, by what we watch, what we see, what we hear. Now here's the real struggle, as I've talked to many college students, and they ask, how do I live in the world but not of the world? Well, there's two options. Well, there's three options. One, we can throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to say. We throw out that which is good with the perversion. So we just think, oh, sex must be evil, because look how bad it can make people. The other one is to adopt the perversions. What I wanna prescribe to you is do not believe that the sheltered life is the righteous life. Shelter your children, protect them, protect their innocence. But the sheltered life, it's not gonna protect sin. The best way to live this life, to not be conformed, to be a living sacrifice, to pursue spiritual worship is to know the truth from God's word so that you're able to identify the lie. If you want to be in this world and be a value to God and be a witness of God and worship Him as He has expected us and called us, we submit to this Word so that we know the truth and therefore identify the law. And we don't do that alone. We don't assume we're so wise as to identify every lie. We're not so foolish as to think that those sins that so easily entangle me, I can unravel it. No, we submit to God's word together and we pray together. Worship by submitting your thoughts. Do not be conformed to the world, that's the negative. Be transformed in the renewal of your mind. Notice that Paul already assumes that you need some new thoughts. He doesn't say, hold on tight to what you already got. He assumes it needs renewal, it needs rejuvenation, it needs to be changed. As we think about what this means, we can go to Philippians 4. Brothers, whatever is true, Whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. We have learned, received, you heard, and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. Or we can just go to chapter eight. Set your mind on the things of the spirit, not on the things of the flesh. What are these things? They're the things God says is good. We worship by saying, whatever God says is right and good, I'm going to meditate on these things. I'm going to let Him have the freedom to control what I think about. And that's going to renew my mind. Now we need this because we're forgetful. Christians, we always need renewing because we're forgetful. We always need renewing because we should always be growing. This is the one thing, and I have to say I've grown in this significantly, which means at one point I did not trust God's Word enough. The one thing I've learned by preaching for five years is just how rich and trustworthy and faithful God's Word is. Sorry for the first four years. I didn't trust God's word enough. But here we are. God's word, it always proves itself to be so full of things I would have never thought of, to repent of, to believe. This is where it comes into being a true disciple. A disciple listens and is teachable. So we must not be conformed to the world by avoiding the perversions. We must be transformed by the word. Knowing the truth helps us to identify the lies. And now we worship according to God's will. When our mind is not conformed, when we are transformed, notice the conjunction here, that, it's a result. The result of not being informed and the result of being transformed is that you will be able to, by testing, discern the will of God. Now, again, is that not the most incredible outcome? God's putting out before you, you can know my will. Now, what is he referring to when he says will? It could be who to marry, what job to take, When to leave a job, what car to buy, what to have for lunch, what tie to wear. Wait a second, why would I wear a tie? I don't think Paul is specifically thinking of those kinds of mundane things like, where am I going to have lunch today? I think what Paul wants us to see the will of God is, is what God values. It's good. what's acceptable, what's perfect. See, we're supposed to value things as God values them. He knows how to put the proper worth and value on everything because He created it. And this is our problem, is we overvalue and undervalue. We always overvalue and we undervalue. We're loving things more than God designed them to be loved, we're not loving Him enough. That's the plight of sin. But I think it does affect questions like, what job should I take and who to marry? For instance, if you're asking this question, if you're single and you are asking the question, who should I marry? You should be asking, what are the kinds of characteristics that God's word exalts? What kind of Christ-likeness am I looking for in a spouse? You shouldn't be asking the question, how much does he compare to Mr. Darcy? Right? If you're looking for somebody that has charm, more than you're looking for somebody who loves Jesus, you're not discerning the will of God. Because if you're looking for Mr. Darcy who loves Jesus, first, I'm no Jane Austen expert, but I don't think Mr. Darcy loved Jesus. And I don't want to be a Jane Austen expert, so thank you. If you're looking for Mr. Darcy loves Jesus, I got two real pieces of advice. Use your singleness right now to serve God's glory. It is a wonderful time of freedom to be able to have the freedom to do what you can do for the purpose of God. Secondly, wait upon that one perfect bridegroom, Jesus Christ. Wait for him, and I have to tell you, just to make sure you understand, Jesus Christ, when he comes at the perfect bridegroom, will be nothing like Mr. Darcy. Look for somebody who loves Jesus And don't add to that. For those who are thinking about a job, there's numerous people who are reconsidering work. You should ask, will it financially provide for my family? Those who I'm responsible for it, is there something about this job that's going to provide for my family? Secondly, is this job going to put me in a position to advance the cause of Christ and make the greatest contribution to society for His glory? A job is not supposed to be a hobby. It's not supposed to be self-fulfilling. It's not supposed to be satisfying in the way a hobby is. A job is a responsibility that you take on to care for other people. You see, when we're discerning the will of God, We're letting God's values change the way we make decisions. And I want to say this, and this is maybe a little controversial. I think this is true. Whenever a decision is placed before us, that decision is almost already made. Because we come to every decision with values already determined. And what we value is going to already decide what that decision outcome is. Does that make sense? what we value has already going to determine how we make a decision. So we need to worry about the values we have, not every little decision before us. If we have the values of Christ, according to His Word, we will be making good decisions. There's three final applications. First, when we can discern the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect, We are able to see the lie of sin. We're able to see how destructive it is. I believe this is a key part of being a living sacrifice is that you don't keep playing in the graveyard. When you're living as you're pursuing the life of a living sacrifice, you're having your mind transformed, you're discerning the will of God, you're able to see sin and you're able to say no rather than say yes and repent. Right, there's two kinds of Christians in the room. Those who are currently saying no to sin, and those who are saying, I need grace to repent of sin. Let me tell you both, God's grace is sufficient for you. God's grace is going to let you pursue him. The way to realize this, to be able to discern the will of God is you see sin as it is, you see the lie, you see the temptation, and you know that it's not going to fulfill you the way it tells you it's going to fulfill you. Second, when we discern the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect, we're about our discerning our place. Notice verse three, the first application of this. By the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. Let's just step back and think about Christ. He came not to be served, but to serve. He came considering others more important than Himself. He came considering others' interests more important than His own. He came with a ministry marked by denying Himself to benefit others. When we discern the will of God, we start to model, to reflect this will of God that Jesus Christ performed. Now, what's amazing about this is that the position, God gives us this new position of sons so they can call us into his service. He gives us this glorious position of children of mercy so that we can start acting and giving our energy over to his purposes. Third, when we can discern the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect, we are able to properly prioritize our lives. Wisdom is having our loves properly ordered. Wisdom is when we know how to give the right amount of attention and value to each different part of life, how we worship reflects our love. We commit our body, our energy, our time, and our resources to that which we love and worship. Now, think about this. How do you spend your real free time? When I say real free time, a lot of folks talk about how busy we are. I love doing college ministry, because I always get asked a question by a college student, I just don't know how to manage, I'm just so busy, and I pastorally, in my most sensitive way, I laugh at them. You're not busy. I'm sorry, you just don't know what busy is yet. We also believe this lie that we're so busy. I don't know if it's as much busy as it is not having life properly prioritized. We think about it. The early church met daily. They were more busy than we. They didn't have supermarkets. They didn't have prepackaged food. They worked hard. They met early because they were busy. They met early because they knew there was nothing better to do. than to be part of what Christ is doing in his church. So here, this passage is so glorious, it's so powerful, I really feel like I'm going to dissatisfy most because what I'm going to now give as the final application is really mundane and simple. The best way to be a living sacrifice is to present your bodies as a living sacrifice by being present. Isn't that not so profound? We'll talk about this more later as to what you do there, but as I've wrestled with what this means, it means your body has to be at the right place with the right people doing the right thing. And I want to challenge us, church, and I want to be careful not to be legalistic here. I am just trying to be logical. If we think about what Christ calls us to do with and for one another, We actually have to be present to do those things. So, I'm looking at you and I want to say, thank you. You're here. You're present. You've been encouraging one another. You've been worshiping one another. My favorite part of the Sunday isn't this part. It's actually being able to sit there as you are proclaiming the words of Christ to me in song. When we come together, everything we do has a meaning and a purpose because as we're lifting up Christ, we're lifting up one another. I want to encourage you to think about what we do in all five hours that we gather as a church throughout the week. It's trying to focus on word and prayer. I want us to see the main way to be spiritual sacrifices is by committing ourselves to word and prayer together. So this is a pretty unremarkable application. Be present so that God can use you, so that God can make you a servant encouraging others. This is the second one. So simply be present at the public gatherings. Two, meet with a member to read scripture and pray. This isn't an intense Bible study. This isn't an intense theology study. I'm asking you, find one member during the week that you can simply meet with, you open up the Bible, you read a passage, you pray. What's amazing about discipleship is God put it in the hands of a bunch of farmers and fishermen. It's not that complicated. It's taking God's word and simply saying, we're going to submit to this together. We're going to pray about this together. We're going to love one another towards the end of which this declares. Again, I want to commend many of you because I know you do this. Thursday morning, I showed up at the church at 6.30 a.m. to be surprised. There's four men in the kitchen. They got their Bibles out, and they're praying. Most encouraging surprise I've had all week, and I've had a lot of surprises. Praise God that I walked in and they're praying. They're reading Scripture together. Friends, that's how a church can be built up. Us being committed to simply doing those things together. 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. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. By testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect. Will you pray with me? Our Father, we thank you that you are the God of mercy. You've spoken, you've given us ears to hear, you've given us hearts to believe, you've given us renewed minds to think these thoughts after you. Give us the energy now to obey, to do this which you've set before us. Help us to embrace the mundane. Help us to not think there's something extra we need to do, but to simply be faithful. Protect us from wanting to be creative in worship, and help us, Lord, to just be faithful. We thank you, Lord, for the faithfulness you've given to this church. Thank you, Lord, for the faithfulness, how faithful you've been to her. Pray that you would continue, Lord, to build us up on your word. Empower us by prayer, and may we all seek to be obedient to this call to reasonable service. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.