How To Live Life To The Fullest (When You're Tired of Trying)
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It's been like a necessary pain. Sometimes you need to sit in front of that mirror and look at yourself and just look at the things that you need to change or the things that need to be different. And it helped me realize that I always look back at how I can fix things, how I can do things differently, like what I can take in control and how I can fix myself, and it's kind of shined lights in those rooms in my house.
Even the rooms that have the doors closed it's shining lights to those areas that are still, locked up and I'm still in control of. It's highlighted the habits that I have even as a follower of Jesus, and I've been following Jesus for about 16 years since I was a, a young one. And there's still plenty of things from my old nature that keep coming through, those old habits, almost like they'd never left.
And, you might be someone like me that struggles with control. I'm always like, "How do I fix this? How do I control this situation?" If something comes up, it's like, "Okay, what do I need to do? How can I do this? What are the next steps?" Instead of turning to the one that can actually fix the problem.
And I think Kev had that great example of the dead body on our backs. When we come to Jesus, that dead body is gone, but we keep it there without even realizing, and it, the, the stuff comes through. But we are new creations in Christ. Our old life, our old self is dead. It should no longer be there, but it's like this muscle memory.
When things come up, these old patterns come up, all these old things, and you're like, "Where did that come from? I haven't seen that for years," or, "I thought I'd dealt with that." But it just continues to outwork. Because the behavior patterns that unless we renew our minds, our flesh nature will come through, which is what causes us to default to our old habits.
And you might notice in your own life, you might have a relational habit that seems to come up, or maybe a quick temper, Kev, or a familiar temptation. And maybe your first instinct is to double down on your effort and build a better system, or try something new or a new strategy, or to white-knuckle your way through the week just to make it happen, and then for it to pop up at another point a month or so down the track.
We turn to our strengths and our abilities. It's, "I have to sacrifice this. I have to do this. I have to do this." I And if you've sat in that place long enough wondering why nothing is working, that I isn't working, it's because it was never meant to be that way. I was never meant to be part of the solution.
And before I get into more of the message, I wanted to watch just a short snippet of a video that I saw a little while back, and it's just stuck with me for so long. And you guys might have seen it. It's from a guy called Alastair Begg, and it's this really good perspective on our salvation. And I want us to quickly watch it and then I'll pick up out of it, and we'll go into deeper with it.
Speaker 2: If you were to die tonight and you were to get again entry into heaven, what would you say?
If you answer that and if I answer it in the first person, we've immediately gone wrong because I believed, because I have faith, because I am this, because I am continuing. Loved ones, the only proper answer's in the third person. Because He. Think about the thief on the cross. And what an immense I ca- I can't wait to find that fellow one day to ask him, "How did that shake out for you?
Because you were c- you were cussing the guy out with your friend. You've never been in a Bible study. You never got baptized. You ne- you didn't know a thing about church membership and yet you made it." "You made it. How did you make it?" That's what the angel must have said, "What are you doing here?"
I don't know." "What do you mean you don't know?" I, 'cause I don't know." W- did you-
Excuse me, let me get my supervisor. They go get their supervisor ranger. S- so we have just a few questions for you. First of all are you are you clear on the doctrine of justification by faith? The guy said, "I never heard of it in my life." And what about let- let's just go to the doctrine of scripture immediately.
This guy's just staring. And eventually, in frustration, he says, "On, on what basis are you here?" And he said, "The man on the middle cross said I can come." Now, that's the- That is the only answer. That is the only answer
Speaker: I'm like Jenny, that gets... I don't know why I get so teary when he says that, because the man on the middle cross said I could come.
And I know he's talking about salvation, but I wanted it to just start with a readdressing how we think. Because if we think about I have my salvation, then it's wrong. We've got to go all the way back. It's because he said I could come. It's because of him I get to spend eternity in heaven with him.
There's absolutely nothing I did. There's absolutely nothing I could do to change that. There is nothing I could do to deserve that, because there's no I in our part of salvation. There is no I in any part of fixing myself. But yet here we are, still reaching, still trying to control, still turning to the law to fix things that were never ours to fix.
And I think the last four weeks have been absolutely critical for us to understand then how do we do this? How do we get rid of these old habits that they can die and stay dead and not keep coming through? And I think it's really important, if you haven't watched the previous weeks, to go back and watch them.
I can't summarize them well enough in a very short time to k- bring you up to speed. But I think if you don't you miss part of that process. And I think it's really important to understand the full process of what we've been sharing over these last five weeks. We had Pastor Kev start the series off on how to identify our old habits and identify the areas that we might be bringing up.
So we identify the habit. Then we had Pauline share an amazing message about how our old nature cannot be improved or patched up through our willpower. It's not a reno, it's a rebuild. And then Pastor Len walked us through that there's no condemnation because Jesus absorbs that for us. And then last week we had Megs share around the idea of how to break those old habits is to starve them by feeding new habits and implementing our daily routines to anchor our minds to the Spirit.
So now you're up to speed. Again, you go back and watch them. That, that's not gonna do any of those messages justice at one bit. But the message that I wanna share about this morning is, okay, what does it look like? What does life potentially look like on the other side when we choose to diligently feed our habits and remain disciplined in our spiritual life, the freedom that we can step into?
And we've been in the Book of Romans, which is in the New Covenant, so this the end part of the Bible, and Paul's been writing this, this long book to the Romans, and I'm just gonna quickly summarize to give a bit of a basis of the scripture that I'm talking out of. So for the previous 11 chapters, Paul has laid out the full weight of what God has done, the diagnosis, the rescue, the new reality, no condemnation, the Spirit as our new operating system, nothing that can separate us from the love of God.
And again, it's a very brief overview of what's happened. I encourage you to go and read it for yourself. But then he goes on to write, and this is where I pick up, and he starts it with therefore. Therefore, so in view of all of that, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy," this is our response.
So in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. This is where our freedom comes in Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. In other words, give your bodies as a sacrifice to God because of all He has done for you.
It's not because of His mercy I must or that you must. It's because of His mercy that I will offer my body as a living sacrifice. It's not because of His mercy I must. It's because of His mercy I will This, and we continue on, this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will. In view of God's mercy, we offer ours- our bodies as a living sacrifice. It's about that reverence. It's not out of duty that we offer our bodies. In the old covenant, the sacrifice would die. It would be something you would leave at the altar, and that would be the sacrifice, and then you would move on, and that was it.
Not this sacrifice. It's a living sacrifice. It's a continual process. It's a thing that continues to live. It continues to keep offering itself daily by choosing to live by God, live for God instead of s- our selfish desires. It's not we lay it at the feet of the altar and it's done and we walk away. It's something we have to continually choose to do.
It's to continue to sit at the feet of Jesus on a daily basis. And by sitting there, it allows you to be transformed by the renewing of your mind
In other words, human thinking is transformed when the Holy Spirit replaces the old patterns, the old habits with God's truth. Not by our reformed behavior, not by a better rule system or a structure. The mind renewed by the Spirit produces transformation, and transformation produces the ability to discern...
Sorry. I was a little bit sick earlier this week, and it's lingering
Tom? Yeah. You gotta- Yeah. Can we get a napkin down here? Yeah. It'll get you out of work for a few days. It's all right So it's pr- the renewing of your mind produces the transformation. The tra- transformation produces the ability to discern and live God's good, pleasing, and perfect will. That's the destination.
Not just freedom from our old habits, but freedom to live the life we were actually made for. It just requires you to stop and be present and allow God to do His work. Just the sitting at Jesus' feet. And this will look different for everybody. It may look like an intentional, quiet rest that you have, or stillness or prayer, opening scripture and listening for His nudge, sitting in gratitude, choosing to trust Him and reject the fears, or intentionally adding time or margin in your life to do those things.
Or it could be all of those things But it's for you to stop and bring Jesus into those moments on a regular basis, and that's what this series is all about. It's about a person so renewed in their mind, so living from freedom of condemnation, so consistently orientated towards the Spirit that offering themselves becomes the most natural thing in this world.
It's not a performance, but from overflow, and overflow comes from within. And I, as you guys all are aware, I'm a simple person, and I like analogies. It makes things break down. So whenever I write a message, I'm like, "How would I like to hear this, and how would I like this to make sense to me?"
And when I was thinking about overflow, I naturally just thought of a cup being filled up. So imagine placing that cup in the sink under the tap, and then you turn the tap on, and slowly that cup starts to fill until it reaches the edge and falls over. It starts to overflow. What did the cup do? Nothing.
It just offered itself. It didn't turn the tap on. It didn't try and force water in or out. It came in its created form and just allowed itself to be filled. Nothing more. It couldn't change the speed of the water. It didn't earn the water. This is what overflow is. This is where Jesus is calling us. This is where we should live in view of God's mercy for us.
Now imagine there's another-- there's a dirty cup that goes under the sink this time, and we turn the tap on. What happens to the dirty cup? As it slowly fills, it starts to push the dirt and the grime out, and it fills and it overflows. It cleans itself as it flows, but it doesn't need to be cleaned up before it goes under the tap.
You can try and wash it, and you can try and clean it and do all the stuff yourself and try and do everything before it gets filled. But if you had both cups there, they would both be filled We don't need to clean that cup before we receive our overflow. We don't need to do anything to be filled. He has already done that.
All we need to do is just sit at the tap, at the feet of Jesus each and every day, and be filled, and allow the transformation to renew your mind We come as we are to receive His mercy that has been freely given, and we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice, then allow ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.
Because a transformed mind is the only habit worth forming. Sitting at the feet of Jesus is the only habit worth forming. And I think I can speak from all of the teachers in the series, it's, it, we're not speaking of a place of being there and completing it and having it done. It's a place that it's a journey, and that we're all on this journey.
Because it's tough. It's tough to allow ourselves to just sit at the feet of Jesus. But you know what? You can't go wrong sitting at the feet of Jesus every single day. That's not gonna cause you any damage. But it's a discipline worth sacrificing for. I often imagine what my life would look like, what my relationship or where that might be with God, if I was able to sacrifice each and every day to sit at the foot of Jesus ever since I decided to follow Jesus, which is a really terrible thing to think, but man, it really challenged me to go, "Man what things could I have worked through that I wouldn't have to deal with anymore?
What things am I delaying? What things am I missing out on in my relationship with God because I choose myself over my relationship with Jesus?" This is what Mary understood and Martha missed, that sitting at His feet was never the passive option. It was always the most important thing in the room So I want to leave you with something.
Not another thing to add to your to-do list, not another thing to just tick off, but just one question to sit with. Where in your life right now are you still reaching for the I? Still white-knuckling, still trying to fix it, still trying to change the system yourself, still trying to renovate what was meant to come down because we don't clean it up first.
We don't fix it first. You just bring it as it is and put it under the tap, under the foot of Jesus. I'm just gonna invite the band up. So maybe this week, maybe in the morning before everything else, that one thing that you can think of as we go into this next time, to just sit at the foot of Jesus and just leave it with Him
Not to fix it, but just to be there. Get yourself out of the way. Do-- Be the cup to just sit there and allow it to you be overflowed and let Him do what only He can do. A transformed mind is an, the only habit worth forming
I'm just gonna quickly pray for this morning. Lord, we just thank you. We just thank you for the amazing sacrifice of Jesus. The fact that we do nothing and did nothing to deserve it, that we get to spend eternity in heaven with you because He said and you say we could come. I pray that you challenge our thoughts, Lord, that when we start to get in the way, when we start to take control and try to fix things and change our systems and change our behaviors, Lord, I pray that you just drop those little thoughts into our mind about bringing it back to you, bringing it to the foot of your Son, Jesus, and allowing him to do what needs to be done.
Lord, I pray you, you give us the discipline to sit at your feet every single day where we can be transformed by the renewing of our mind, Father We just pray that the distractions we have in life no longer have their control over us
That our only desire is to be at your feet, to be in Mary's position
And we just thank you this morning. Amen I think as the, the band sings this morning, think about the, the series that we've just been through. Don't just let it be one that you just leave and just walk out and then go, "Yeah, cool. That was awesome. The guy was wearing Birks. Cool. Done." We don't do these things just to entertain you for half an hour.
It's to bring life change. There's things that are in these messages that can help your life be transformed. And it's not about us. It's not about the speakers. These are not our words. There's no way I could come up with this stuff. At the end of it, I'm like, "Man, how did... what is that?
I could never have created that." It's all God. I... So it's not about me. It's about your relationship with Jesus, and if you just walk out and leave this place the same as you walked in, it's about life change. It's about going, how can I have a deeper relationship with you? How can I rely on you? How can I not be distracted by the things of this world?
So I challenge you to think, what are the old habits that keep coming through that I am trying to fix? Or maybe that maybe you need to sit and find time to get highlighted in those areas. Maybe you don't know. Maybe you don't... unaware of some of those habits. Maybe you need to sit at Jesus' feet so He can reveal that to you.
To go, "Lord, search those rooms. Bring it to the surface, the things that I need to leave with you."