Sermon Central
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A Life Of Transformation
Contributed by Anthony Zibolski on Sep 1, 2011 (message contributor)
Summary: God is the potter and we are the clay. We must not get that backwards if we are to see God do a transformation in our life.
A life of transformation
Introduction-
Last week we looked at having amazing faith.
Jesus marveled at faith.
He marveled at Israel’s lack of faith, continuing to walk away from God .
He marveled at the faith of the centurion.
Which one do you want Jesus to marvel in your life?
We saw that faith was taking God at His word, trusting in His promises and applying them to our lives.
Faith has to believe when it seems impossible, and faith has to believe when you cannot see it.
We will never see God do what He desires to do in our power and strength.
That is why I kicked off this message from Jeremiah… God took Jeremiah, a young person with a heart for God and wants to teach him something.
He wants to teach us something also.
He says to Jeremiah- (paraphrased this morning), go down to the potters house and I’ll show you how this works.
(3) “So I went down to the potters house (obedient) and I saw him working at the wheel, but the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to Him.”
Did you catch that?
God is the potter
We are the clay
If God doesn’t like the shape we are in, we give him permission to shape us as he seems best.
The question this morning is- Will you allow Him to be the potter or shaper of your life?
Or are you going to get off the wheel and do things your own way? (That is what most do)
Exactly, how do you surrender everything to Jesus?
How do we learn to give things to Him freely, without fear?
How can a person live in His presence daily?
Song:
All to Jesus I surrender
All to Him, I freely give.
I will ever love and trust Him,
In His presence daily live.
That is a great song, but there is a far cry from singing the song and living the life.
Growing up I struggled between the two.
Surrendering to God and whatever that meant, and freely trusting God to do what was needed in my life.
I knew there had to be more, but I was missing something somewhere.
We often think that becoming like Christ should happen easily and quickly.
When Jesus talked about people becoming disciples, nowhere did He talk about easy.
There is a tension that exists between who we are compared to who we want to be in Christ (repeat)
We cannot find the narrow road without looking for it.
We cannot get through the eye of a needle or pick up our cross by accident.
It requires a decision and it is intentional.
This is where the transformation comes in- we are giving God space to work in our lives.
One pastor said- “If we want to be God’s workmanship, we need to spend time in the workshop.”
Apostle Paul to the Romans said “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Nowhere in the Scriptures does it tell us to transform ourselves.
We are to allow ourselves to be transformed by God.
Spiritual formation is a Christian buz word about positioning ourselves to be transformed by God into the image of Christ.
Transformation by definition- is an act or process of being transformed. An operation that converts.
God takes us as we are, we cannot earn salvation, but desires to change us into the image of Christ.
Hymns of the lukewarm Christian. (listen closely)
Oh, how I like Jesus
Take my life and let me be.
When the saints go sneaking in.
Greek word for transformation is Metamorphoo- (Met- a- mor- phoo) meaning to change into another form.
When we submit to God’s power- we are changed !
Illustration-(Sermoncentral)
THREE DOLLARS WORTH OF GOD
Man says:
I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of Him to make me love people I don’t know. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please.
We are no longer plastic Christians, but become the real thing!
Unless God does it, it is superficial and probably won’t last long.
God has not saved us to abandon us.
There are 2 methods that God uses for transformation
Inside out
Outside in
We are really good at changing the outside, but God needs to do the work on the inside.
