Supernatural Transformation: Change Your Heart Into God’s Heart (35 page)

Being a living sacrifice involves dying to “self,” a process we discussed earlier. This process is painful to our fleshly nature and to our will. But it is tremendously beneficial for us, because God can thereafter make the best use of our life and bring forth maximum blessings of joy, health, and peace for us. We cannot offer our body in sacrifice to sin or to false and destructive mind-sets any longer. We must renounce the fleshly nature and surrender our humanity to God, so that He may transform us into the likeness of Jesus while enabling us to bring His message of redemption and kingdom power to others. God desires that we become His instruments for saving, healing, and delivering those who are oppressed by Satan. Offering ourselves as a living sacrifice, therefore, demands that we make a complete commitment to God, so that He may consecrate us and set us apart for His service. From this moment forward, we present ourselves continually as a
“living sacrifice”
to a holy God who adopts us as His children and makes us
“kings and priests”
in His kingdom. (See Revelation 1:6; 5:10.)

Those who are able to carry something real from God to others have begun with sacrifice—such as fasting, prayer, and seeking God.

The final phrase of Romans 12:1—
“which is your reasonable service”
—indicates that being a living sacrifice is not beyond our reach; it is not impossible. In fact, because we are God’s priests, it is one of our functions:
“You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”
(1 Peter 2:5).

Presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice means totally
surrendering to God.

2. Do Not Conform to the Mentality of This World

“And do not be conformed to this world…”
(Romans 12:2). When we have presented our body as a living sacrifice, we must no longer conform to the world. The Greek word translated
“conformed”
in this verse is
suschematizo
, which means “to fashion alike, i.e. conform to the same pattern.” The word indicates an external conformity. We should not allow ourselves to be shaped or formed by the mind-set of the world, as a shoe adapts to the shape of the foot after continued wear.

Again, the world has various values, principles, standards, attitudes, and ways of thinking that are opposed to those of God’s kingdom; many of them are based on enthroning “self” and conserving the sinful nature. The world’s values are destructive because they focus not on God but on the attainment of prestige, fame, fortune, and fleshly pleasures, and the pursuit of success at all costs. This is generally the mentality of the culture we live in, and Christian people are being pressured to conform to it. For instance, we are being pushed to assent to the idea that there are many paths to God; and, if we claim that Jesus is the only way to God, we are called narrow-minded. In another example, we are being pressured to accept the belief that homosexuality is a legitimate lifestyle and that any belief contrary to that is outdated. The world wants us to follow its pattern, but we must not. The apostle James wrote,
“Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God”
(James 4:4).

The Greek word for
“world”
in the above passage is
aion
,
which means
“an age”
and, by implication, “the world.”
God deeply loves the people of this world—so much so that He came to earth to die for them. Yet He doesn’t love the mind-set of the world, because it is controlled by the evil one. (See 1 John 5:19.) Any area of your life that is not transformed according to the nature of Christ has been conformed to the world and needs to be renewed by the Holy Spirit.

Do not allow yourself to conform to the fallen world’s mind-set, values, and behavior; rather, let it be the other way around. Help to bring the gospel to all the “subcultures” of the world—the arenas of education, politics, sports, science, business, economics, the media, the arts, and so forth. The message of the gospel of the kingdom is able to transform not only you but also other people in your sphere of influence, by the example of your lifestyle and by the power of God working in and through you.

Any area of your life that is not transformed according to the nature of Christ has been conformed to the world and needs to be renewed by the Holy Spirit.

3. Be Transformed

“…but
be transformed…”
(Romans 12:2). The Greek word translated
“transformed”
is
metamorphoo
, which means “to transform (literally or figuratively “metamorphose”),” or “to change into another form.” I believe this word indicates dying to one way of life in order to be reborn into another—a process similar to what happens to a caterpillar inside a cocoon when it is transformed into a butterfly—a new creature. The transformation of our mind is a supernatural process, because it is a work carried out by the Holy Spirit. It does not produce merely an external or temporal change. It effects a total change of character and behavior in the person who surrenders to God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength.

The transformation of the mind is supernaturally accomplished by the Holy Spirit.

4. Renew Your Mind

“…by the renewing of your mind”
(Romans 12:2). The Greek word translated
“renewing”
is
anakainosis
, meaning “renovation” or “renewal.” Note that one cannot “renovate” or “renew” something that never previously existed. When Paul wrote of
“the
renewing of your mind,”
he indicated that the mind had an original state from which it had moved away—the mind the first human beings had in Eden before they sinned. So, again, when we renew our mind, we come into alignment with humanity’s original mind-set. That is why renewal is such a powerful key to understanding and carrying out God’s will. The reason God tells us to renew our mind is so that we can return to His purpose for us. He wants our mind to reflect His mind, enabling us to think and even function as He does. This is why we must surrender our mind to the Holy Spirit for transformation.

Renewal has to do with thinking and living differently. The renewal of our mind enables us to return to the mind-set with which God originally created us.

Consequences of Failing to Renew Our Mind

Some people don’t imagine that the process of renewal applies to them, because they think they are doing fine just the way they are. It is usually easier for us to see where other people need to make improvements in their life than it is for us to identify the changes we need to make. The truth is that we
all
need to renew our mind—continually—because we always must be advancing spiritually. Otherwise, we may experience the following consequences:

• Our circumstances will be our primary—or only—reality.
  We will conform to our problems—whether sickness, pain, debt, depression, or any other trouble—even though they are temporal facts and not eternal realities.
  

• We will lack clear direction for our life.
  When our mind is not renewed, we cannot commit to believe in God and His Word wholeheartedly. We will be spiritually indecisive, unable to conclude who we were meant to be, what we should believe in, and what we should be doing. We must know where we are headed in life, just as an airplane pilot sets his course by a fixed destination. When we don’t understand our purpose as God intended—or if we can’t or won’t commit to it—we will lack clear direction for our life, and this uncertainty will cause us anxiety and leave us in a vacillating state of mind.
  

• We will be spiritually vulnerable
  . When we have difficulty committing to God’s Word and His purposes, as emphasized in the previous point, our vacillation causes us to be spiritually weak and vulnerable. If we truly believe in something, we will commit to it, and we will be decisive in matters related to it. We cannot exercise faith with a mind that is not made up about God and His promises. Do we believe in them or not? We must decide. The enemy is searching for minds that still have not determined what they believe about God or have not yet become established in their beliefs, because those minds are open to receive other options and therefore can be deceived and enticed to doubt God’s Word.
  

• Our mind/thoughts will conform to sin.
  We may begin to mentally assent to the idea that certain sins are acceptable, so that our mind is in agreement with practices that go against God’s nature. If “self” retakes its lost position of supremacy, it will be harder for us to see things from a spiritual point of view because we will be slipping into a fleshly state of mind. Consequently, we might start to call an obviously sinful practice a mere “weakness,” or we might claim that we have the right to participate in a particular sin because it makes us “happy.” We will gradually accept various sins as the norm, compromising the godly principles by which we used to live.
  

• Our behavior will conform to sin.
  If we mentally conform to sin, we will eventually “become” sin in the sense that it will shape and dominate our lifestyle. Adapting to sin causes a person’s conscience to be seared and his eyes to be blinded to the truth. For example, if a person conforms to the idea of adultery in his mind, he will probably become an adulterer by his behavior. Likewise, if someone conforms to the idea of addiction, he will likely act in such a way that he will become physically addicted. It is dangerous for someone to allow himself to become conformed to the false mentality of this world, because he will then begin to live according to a deception that ultimately leads to spiritual death. Frighteningly, at that point, he may not even be able to see his destruction coming, because sin will have taken over his heart and mind. On the other hand, if an individual allows the Holy Spirit to transform him, he will become a true child and imitator of his heavenly Father, with the right to inherit all His blessings and to see all His promises fulfilled in his life.
  

• We will experience spiritual dryness.
  When we stop renewing our mind, we may cease experiencing the daily “showers” of God’s presence that keep our spirit fresh and alive. This is because we start to gain an interest in earthly things that cannot provide life for our spirit, and we manifest a spiritual dryness that slowly parches the life of the Spirit within us. Under these circumstances, we need to return to God and receive a fresh infilling of His Holy Spirit.
  

One evidence of a spiritually dry condition is when people who once had a living faith turn “religious,” having only the letter of the Word rather than the Spirit of it. (See, for example, 2 Corinthians 3:6.) “Religious” people are often characterized by spiritual stagnancy and a resistance to change. Some of them employ every available argument they can think of against change, as well as any possible means to stop it from occurring. As a result, they do not receive God’s power, and are they unable to see or to demonstrate His miracles.

When people are in a spiritually dry state, their perspective and even their lifestyle may begin to change for the worse. For example, they may be more critical of others, attend church only occasionally, cease living in the revelation of the Spirit, and stop progressing to higher levels of faith. Such people no longer operate according to the beliefs they once had or the anointing they once received. If we are not careful, such dryness can be our spiritual undoing.

• We will return to false mind-sets and habits, and we will regress spiritually.
  If we begin the process of renewing our mind in the Holy Spirit but then halt our progress, we will likely retreat to our previous ways of thinking in line with the world’s mind-set. Again, this outlook reflects only a natural, temporal perspective. Consequently, we will return to our former sinful habits, thereby breaking our fellowship with God and with our brothers and sisters in Christ and regressing spiritually.
  

In addition, when we cease to renew our mind, we may start to see our circumstances in a different light from when we were living in faith. Before, we would have viewed negative traits in others and difficult situations in our life as opportunities for God to manifest His love, grace, and power, but now we will see them only as “flaws,” “faults,” inconveniences,” “problems,” “difficulties,” and “crises.” When our circumstances become our reality, we will speak more about our problems than we do about God, and we may construct a stronghold of doubt and defeatism in our mind that is difficult to tear down.

The mind of faith is not “ignorant,” as some people believe;
rather, it has a supernatural knowledge that goes beyond
human understanding.

• We will lose our kingdom relevance in the world.
  Let me illustrate this point with a simple analogy: Generally speaking, technology has advanced with each new century of human history; currently, it seems to advance every few years. Most people eventually incorporate new technology into their daily routine, so that their life keeps pace with the various scientific developments of society. Similarly, as we continue to be renewed in spiritual knowledge, and as we incorporate that knowledge into our character and lifestyle, we will better understand the ways in which God is manifesting His kingdom in our contemporary world, and we will remain spiritually relevant. But when we stop being transformed and go back to false ways of thinking and sinful practices, we will lose our spiritual relevance and cease to know, or to participate in, God’s fresh revelation.
  

• We will experience recurring issues and frustrations.
  People who are stuck in a fallen mind-set will repeat the same mistakes and failings and will continually deal with similar problems and obstacles, no matter where they are or with whom they associate. They—not others—are the cause of their own difficulties, but they can’t see that fact, because their mind is blind to it. We cannot walk in the Spirit and operate in the supernatural when we have a carnal mind that is totally opposed to the mind of God and always doubts and questions Him.