Sermon Central
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"Changed" From The Inside Out
Contributed by Charlie Roberts on Apr 26, 2012 (message contributor)
Summary: Pretty soon your attitude will go from can’t do anything, to can do everything and it won’t be from your doing, but what God has done on the inside of you first. By the time that you become aware of it on the outside, He will have already wove
Changed, from the inside out!
Romans 12:1-2 MSG.
1-2. So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
3. I'm speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it's important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.
So many people go through life, thinking its all about what they can do or say themselves, to affect the outcome in the situations of their life.
And then, when things seem like there taking to long to happen, they become discouraged.
A lot of people today don’t realize that the reason they’re not happy, the reason they’re not enjoying life
is because they’ve trained to have their minds think in the wrong direction.
The Apostle Paul had it right when he said;
God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.
So often, we say don’t put God in a box!
In retrospect, most Christians are really the ones, who are in the box.
Gods not the one in the box, we are
Because we know in the box, it seems safe and we can, or at least we think we can, control what happens in our life, by what we think is safe.
When we do that, what we really do is limit what God can and wants to do in our circumstances,
We basically tie His hands and then we wonder why its taking so long in our lives, for things to happen
And when they don't happen on our timetable, we then somehow end up blaming Him, when they don't!
That’s really some crazy thinking, wouldn’t you agree?
Like that is going to get us where we should be in our relationship with God,
it's times like that, we should grateful for His Unmerited Grace, because when we deserve it the least, He still gives it to us!
Paul tells us in the word, but when you think about , its really what God is telling us to do,
And I say that, because all scripture is the inspired word of God to us and for us! Amen?
“TBS.(the bible says) Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.”
So many of us, go through life on auto-pilot.
Even when things don’t happen like we think they should, we still just keep thinking,
There has to be something else that I can do, and we say or think to ourselves,
If I just keep trying, I’ll come up with something.
And little by little, discouragement, doubt and defeat creeps in,
and those negatives become a standard way of living and cheat you out of every blessing that God has for you!
God doesn’t want you to have a negative mindset, He wants you to be positive about your life and your situation!
Living life shut up, on the inside the box, with the worlds influence all around, will beat you down Continually
We need to start living life outside the box, with maximum exposure to the benefits and blessings of God and what He wants to do for us!
Jerm. 29:11 HCSB.
11. For I know the plans I have for you”— this is the LORD’s declaration—“ plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
Praise God for the declaration, what I really should say is declarations,
because just like His mercies, I believe they are new for us, each and everyday!
Praise the Lord, Thank You Jesus, Great is Your Faithfulness!!!
TBS. When you fix your attention on God’s Grace and what He can do in your life,
Instead of what your capable of, you'll be changed from the inside out, which is something only God can do!
