It’s hard to believe that we’re at the
beginning of 2020 already. In many ways 2019 seemed to fly by and yet others
have said that it seemed to go so slowly, often because they were facing some
difficult times. When things are hard, time seems to slow down, while when
things are going well, time feels as if it speeds up, yet the important thing
to remember is that whether time is flying by or dragging its feet, God is with
us through it all, guiding, encouraging, comforting us and giving us wisdom
when we remember to ask Him for it. It’s good to reflect back to see God’s hand
working through the different events in our lives this past year. It gives us
hope and strength as we begin 2020.
We have no idea what lies ahead of us, either as
individuals or as a church, but we do know that God is with us, which is what
we have just celebrated in Christmas. New Year’s Day is a good time to renew
our walk with God and to make those resolutions everyone else makes, but to make
ours within our relationship with God. This is what Romans 12 helps us do, to
look at who we are and then seeing who God has created us to be and then say to
God today, “This is who I want to be, and with the work
of the Holy Spirit in me, this is who I will work to become this year 2020.”
Paul begins this section by calling us to make
our day to day lives an act of worship, giving each day and each moment over to
God for Him to shape and use. “Offer your bodies as a
living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—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.” Worship is so much more than what we do here in this
sanctuary, deep worship is taking what happens here and taking it out into the
rest of the world as a witness to who we are as God’s children and pointing
people to God through our lives of worship focused on developing the mind of
God within us.
The starting place in transforming our minds is by
filling our minds with God’s Word and connecting with God regularly in prayer.
Bill Hybels wrote a book, “Too Busy Not to Pray,” saying that the busier
our lives become, the more important it is to take the time with God so that in
our busyness we make wise choices and decisions, building the ability to “test and approve what God’s will is.” Peter uses the
imagery of eating to explain this, “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all
deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like
newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow
up in your salvation, now that you have
tasted that the Lord is good.”
We taste God through his Word and in prayer; it begins by coming together to
pray and then we’re shaped even more in our personal time with God. Peter tells
us in 1 Peter 1 that the angels
long to look into these things.
The word Peter uses is translated in other places as lust, the angels lust to look into the things of God in his
Word. They have an intense desire, even after thousands and millions of years
to know God more. The more we fill our minds with God’s Word, the more we too
will long to know God more because this is how God has created us, with a God
sized hole in our souls that can only be filled by Him.
Paul moves on to humility, stressing the
importance of having a servant heart and approach to life, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought... so in
Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the
others.” We live in a culture of self esteem; we focus a great deal on
making sure that we believe we’re all OK and no one is less than anyone else.
Jesus and Paul tell us that we need to first think of ourselves as servants, as
less than others. This is where the transforming of our
mind needs to start; we need to stop thinking that everything is about
us and sincerely believe that everything is about Jesus. We cannot transform
our minds without his help through his Spirit. Jesus taught and lived in a
spirit of humility, coming to serve instead of being served. Imagine a world
where people looked to serve others instead of always trying to get things
their way; it would be a kinder world filled with much more peace.
This moves us straight into Paul’s next
point; to
use the gifts God has given us to serve. Paul
goes through a whole list of gifts, these are not all the gifts, but a sampling
of the types of gifts God gives us to develop and use to build up the church
and her people. Some of the gifts are to help us know God better such as
prophesying and teaching, some to help such as serving and giving, some to
bless such as encouragement and mercy and some to take on extra responsibility
such as leading the people. Each gift is shaped by the individual it’s given to
so that it may look quite different from one person to the next, but they’re
there and meant to be used to bless others. Some encourage through the ability
to see discouragement in others and reach out with a hug and words of hope and
unity, others are able to find words to build up and encouragement by recognising
and speaking the blessing the other person is. Some of you have the call to
fight for justice, to get involved in making our communities better places,
some are called to use their artistic gifts to bring joy and beauty and often
help bring awareness to different needs. Whatever your gifts; God wants to use
them to make this world a better place.
These gifts are given to us by God and to use them,
we need to allow his Spirit to grow them in us. This is not something passive,
we engage in developing our gifts by allowing the Spirit to guide us into wise
ways of using what we have and who we are to bless others. The more you use
your gifts, the stronger they grow. This is why Jesus gave us his Spirit; so
seek out the Spirit’s wisdom and guidance this year as you commit to using the
gifts you’ve been given. If you’re not sure what your gifts are, we can help
you discover them and encourage you to develop them with the help of the Holy
Spirit.
Finally, we move into the attitude we’re called to
develop in our walk with God and each other, the call to
love. Jesus shows us his love by going to the cross where he takes our
sins and washes us clean, what a great way to begin a new year, knowing that we
are washed clean from our sin! When we love as God loves us, we look out for
each other, wanting everyone else to experience God’s blessings through us.
There’s a whole lot of ways Paul lists here to live out love to each other,
ways to live with each other well. We often read over these lists really
quickly because we always figure they’re for other people and not for us. After-all,
we’re basically nice people, but as we read through these slowly, we all have
places where we need to grow in how we think, talk, and live with each other. In
2020 make it your resolution to love more, to forgive more quickly, and to become
people of grace.
We cannot change who we are on our own; we need Jesus’
help through the gift of his Spirit in us. We tend to embrace whatever makes us
the centre of our world and puts everyone else slightly, or not so slightly,
under us. We look to make our own world better instead of working to make the
world around us better. God works in us to change this, changing us into people
who love others first and God above all. God invites us to come close and gives
us his Spirit to make it happen. This year open your hearts to God’s Spirit and
his call to come to him and be changed. You’ll be changed in ways you never
expected and you’ll never regret committing yourself to becoming a deeper
follower of Jesus and child of God by becoming more like Jesus through the work
of the Holy Spirit.
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