Title: Joy of Offering / Romans 12:1-2
Contents
Title: Joy
Text: Romans 12:1-2
When you realize grace, your life will change. When you realize how your parents loved you, you change your mind and attitude toward them. The same is true of the religious life. When we know how God loves us, our lives are changed.
The text begins with the word "therefore". In other words, after witnessing how God loved us in Romans chapters 1-11, we are admonishing how we should live now who have received such love from God.
Because God loves us, He gave His only begotten Son, gave us faith by grace, clothed us with His righteousness, and saved us.
How will those who receive God's grace live?
I. By the grace of God, I give my body completely.
When God's mercy is manifested in our lives, we present our bodies as a living sacrifice (v. 1). Those who believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose again to save them by the grace of God believes that their body belongs to the Lord. So, they present their bodies to God as a living sacrifice pleasing to God.
When God offers his body as a living sacrifice to God, he is pleased with it. However, it is easy for us to focus on work and people rather than thinking and feeling the Lord in all our areas. The Lord wants everything in my realm.
Just as the Lord gave everything to us, love is what we give everything to the Lord. A holy living sacrifice that is pleasing to God means giving my life completely to God in all areas of my life. Offering our eyes is a living sacrifice. Then the Lord uses our eyes as His eyes. It is a living sacrifice to give our ears to the Lord. The Lord listens to you and opens the door to what the Lord will say.
I bless you that the field of giving your time and talents to the Lord with God's grace will gradually expand so that you can live a life that the Lord is pleased with.
II. The life given to God experiences a new world.
There is a world we see when we put our lives on God. Change begins when you give your body to the Lord. If you give your body, you will not be conformed to this generation and will be able to discern God's will.
The Lord puts our hearts first. The mind is easily subject to old habits. The mind cannot be changed by human power. The power to change hearts is given by the Holy Spirit. Only the power of the Holy Spirit can bring about personal change. In order for our hearts to be changed, we must decide not to follow the world. “Do not be conformed to this generation” (v. 2).
Now that we have a new inner man, we can not follow this world without thinking. When the Holy Spirit rules the realm of our heart, obey Amen and ask the Holy Spirit for help when things are not going our way, then we can be guided by the Holy Spirit without following this generation.
We live in this world, but now it belongs to the Holy Lord. We must be filled with new thoughts from the Holy Spirit. We must be filled with new emotions from the Holy Spirit. We must be filled with new will and plans from the Holy Spirit. We need to be filled with new relationships that the Holy Spirit gives us.
Rely on the Holy Spirit at work in us.
When we give ourselves to the Lord, the Lord begins to work with it. Then we will be able to discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God (verse 2). You cannot know the will of God without giving your heart to the Lord. First, if you offer your body to God as a living sacrifice, you can see a new world.
You have to give it a try to experience change. Although this process is difficult at first, once we start, God's grace will guide us. When we keep giving our whole life, our hearts focus more on giving.
Leave it all to the Lord. And expect my heart to be changed. Life in the world will be different.