May 18, 2025 Rooted Wk. 4 - Living Sacrifices: Aligning Our Minds with God's Truth

Music.

We began, a few weeks back, a series on Rooted.

And last week, we stumbled into an area of strongholds.

So one of the things that we want to remember as we grow on our walk with Christ

is that you and I equip ourselves.

Equip ourselves now with truth that we can fight like Jesus later.

Because when the evil one attacked Christ, he did so with lies and false belief

and Christ combated him with scripture.

And so that's what we want to do is to equip ourselves now.

So we looked at Jeremiah, excuse me, Deuteronomy chapter six,

verses four through nine.

Where God reminds us to love the Lord your God through Moses here,

love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul,

with all your strength, right?

And remind yourself of that. Put the truth everywhere around you.

Wake up thinking about God. Go to bed thinking about God.

Make it a part of your everyday rhythm, your everyday that's going on.

And then last week, we began to look at strongholds. When Paul was talking to

the church at Corinth, he began the first letter.

He dealt with a lot of issues that were going on in the church at Corinth.

The second letter, then he writes to the church and encourages them.

But then toward the end, he brings up this idea of strongholds and how strongholds

can take place in our lives. And we need to deal with those.

So in 1 Corinthians 10, for although we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh.

Since the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but of our powerful through

God, for the demolition of strongholds.

He goes on to say how we demolish these false arguments.

And Paul is here saying now to the church at Corinth, were having issues here.

They were looking at Paul and they were underwhelmed.

When he came, he had wrote these

great letters, but then he comes and his presentation wasn't the best.

His outward appearance wasn't the best. And he wasn't as good of a speaker as others.

And Paul gets back to a core issue, a core thing that's going on.

And he talks about strongholds and how these strongholds are,

if you look at the word here and the understanding, they would know what a stronghold

is or these fortifications because that's what surrounded them.

They had a fortification right there in Corinth.

And so they understood what these things would be. And it's this area where the evil one has a false.

System where lies are generated

this false system of thinking this core false

system this belief system of thinking that these these lies are are created

and then you believe them and so we want to look at those and just the idea

of dealing with our strongholds as i was going through this past week,

I have like three or four pages.

I'm like, okay, let's step back even further here and not just address our stronghold,

but let's understand exactly what God wants to see in us as believers before

we get and narrow in on the strongholds.

So God brought my mind and heart to Romans chapter 12.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

And this may be a familiar passage to you, but let's read this,

two different translations here, and then we'll pray and see what God has for us.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God,

I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice,

a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.

This is true worship.

Do not conform to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,

so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.

Another translation you would read, And so, dear brothers and sisters,

I plead with you to give your bodies to God, because of all he has done for you.

Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind he will find acceptable.

This is truly the way to worship.

Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world. let God transform you into

a new person by changing the way you think.

Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Jesus, I pray today that we would understand more so about how we think.

Understand how our corrupted way of thinking, our corrupted way of processing

things, all of that is corrupted by the fall.

And Jesus, your desire for us is to come into alignment with you.

That we would know what you think is important.

That we would know what you lift up as important.

And we also would know what you would lift up as areas that bring you sadness,

and those things that are against you.

So Jesus, I pray that you would help our minds come alive by your Holy Spirit.

Jesus, we pray this in your name. We plead the blood over our fallen minds,

God, that we would understand more your truth.

As you use Paul to write, God, I pray that it would be like we are there hearing him teach us.

So Jesus, I pray that you would work now in Christ, and we pray. Amen.

So Paul gets into this whole idea of understanding how God's mind works. We'll go back.

Okay, my eyes were not adjusting, so I'm just going to use this one up here.

So, so Paul is saying here, therefore, brothers, whether I want you to understand

this thing, that in this view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your

bodies a living sacrifice,

holy, pleasing to God, as this is true worship.

And then in verse two, he sees telling us here, don't be conformed to this age.

Don't be conformed to the age.

Paul saw already in the church there at Rome that they were falling in alignment

with the fallen world, right?

And who do we know that is a temporary ruler of this fallen world, right?

Satan, right? He is the indirect opposition to God's plan.

And so Satan desires for us to do things his way.

And that's how he rules this world. And you can see how much he loves you by

all the crap that's going on in our world, right?

It's obvious to see that the world is spiraling out of control into chaos.

And you watch the news and it's this play-by-play of the chaos.

It's this play-by-play of how the evil one rules this place.

And God is saying here, no, no, no, no.

Don't fall into lockstep. Don't fall into alignment with this world and how

the evil one is trying to run things.

But instead, stop.

And be transformed. When Paul talked about how we need to demolish,

like blow up these strongholds,

he's literally starting to blow up and removing the strongholds,

this wrong way of thinking and how our thoughts are actually created.

And we need to get back to what does God think?

So that's my challenge for us today as we look at this passage here is that

we get back, we step back and understand we are a fallen people.

Our minds are corrupted. Our ways of thinking are corrupted.

The way we grew up, we grew up with corrupted parents.

We grew up with jacked up parents. You are jacked up parents.

I'm a jacked up parent. Ask my kids.

Right? We all are corrupt. and so

we have this battle now where where this this

corrupt this corrupted mind god wants to renew and not just renew but he actually

wants to replace it actually put something that the word here for a transformed

but be transformed literally means there to put something to take something

for one thing and change it into something that's way far superior,

God is way far superior, and that's what he desires for us.

The evil one desires for us to think we're in control.

The evil one desires all this stuff, and his end goal is to have us discouraged if we're believers.

If we're not a believer, if you're not a follower of Christ,

if you haven't made Christ Lord, then his desire for you is to spend eternity

with him in hell forever. That's his end goal.

That's the evil one's end goal. We're God's desire.

I want you to think the way I think I want you to you don't understand what

life was like before the fall and that's how I want you to think,

and how do you get to understand that how do we get to do that how does that take place,

it takes place because one we're not conformed to this world in the way the

world thinks but instead we are,

replacing it with something that is much much better

if you go on your bible i don't

have this on the screen we're going to talk about

now the this this transformation that takes place but now how does the transformation

takes place it takes by by renewing so colossians chapter 3 verse 10 if you

Colossians 3:10

can go there sorry i forgot to give you a reference colossians 3 10 colossians 3 10 paul says.

And put on this new self, and that you are being renewed in the knowledge according

to the image of your creator.

God wants us to be renewed in our minds.

He wants us to get back into the right way of thinking, align ourselves with

God's way, God's way of thinking.

If you rely on yourself and your own personal wisdom, and you rely on your own

way of thinking without verifying that it's in alignment with God,

you're in trouble. I'm in trouble.

And that's where conflicts take place.

Because God wants us to be in full alignment with him.

At the cross, we come into full allegiance with Christ. Christ becomes our king.

He becomes the ruler of our life. It's not, it's not, well, we get to pick and

choose and we get to have this on-demand Christianity, right?

That we can just, oh, we can just pick and choose what we want.

Just select, I'll put this in my, I'll put this in my cart. I'll take this,

but this part right here.

No, I don't want that. That's too inconvenient. No, God doesn't say that.

We have to be in full allegiance with Christ.

Full allegiance where we are putting him first. and part of that full allegiance

then takes this next step as a believer and we become in full alignment with what God says.

Well, how in the world do you do that?

We do that by seeking out God's truth and taking the lies, getting rid of those

and come back to, okay, what does God say?

Another passage Ephesians chapter 4 verse 23.

Ephesians 4:23

Ephesians 4 23 we'll jump back just a little bit,

let's write verse 20 but that is not how you came to know Christ assuming you

heard about him and were taught by him as the truth is in Jesus and what it

is verse 22 to take off your former way of life,

the old self that is, there we have the word here, corrupted by deceitful desires.

Then verse 23, be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new

self, the one created according to God's likeness and righteousness, purity, and truth.

God calls for us.

To get in alignment with who he is and the way he thinks. And how do we do that?

By the renewing of our minds. We renew our minds.

We have strongholds that are misaligned. They come in. And our old self,

our old way of thinking is corrupted and flawed.

The ultimate goal is understanding and aligning ourselves with God's mind.

The foundational step before addressing strongholds is to understand the mind

of God, the way God thinks.

Again, we're called into this full allegiance.

This other area of growth is to desire what God desires and thinks as God thinks.

How do we do that? The primary mechanism is by renewing your mind.

And this is what God has revealed to us, right?

We have the best, you as a person, me as a person living in this day and age.

There's a lot of evil out there. There's a lot of evil tools out there that Satan uses.

But one thing that we have right now is the abundant access to the mind of God.

Abundant. It's everywhere. You can look up all different kinds of messages.

You can look up all different kinds of translations.

You can actually get into the original manuscripts if you want to.

There are so many videos out there. You can find it. You can research everything.

Ron's passionate about apologetics, as you see. and he's delving into that and digging into that.

We live in an age where we can know the mind of God.

Now, what's important to realize and remember is that it's not the mind of man

talking about the mind of God, but it's the mind of God coming out.

And we always wanna go back, just like the church at Bria, right?

That we go back and make sure that what is being said is actually what God has told us.

We need to renew our minds. We need to renew, and that's at the,

crux of today. And then we'll, we'll close.

At the crux of today is that we realize that God desires for us to be transformed.

He wants us to be transformed into something way much better than we can possibly imagine.

And he's not there waiting to smack us down.

He's not waiting there to make you feel like a fool. No, he just wants you to

slowly, gradually, as time goes on, get into full alignment with him.

And that process is lifelong. It doesn't stop.

If you're 95, you're still having to align yourself with God.

Because what happens when you get older? You get impatient, right?

You get impatient with all the youngsters.

You get impatient with how they look at you. that you get impatient how slow

they move or maybe how fast they move or how they cut you off in the store or whatever.

And you get impatient and God has to remind you, oh, hey, guess what, buddy?

Look at your life, how patient I have been with you because you're still breathing, right?

Or the younger generation looking at the older generation say,

oh, they're just a bunch of old has-beens or whatever, they don't really know.

They're just a bunch of crotchety old grumps and they don't really know anything,

da, da, da. No, no, then God says, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Your pride. You're thinking more highly of yourself than you ought.

You see how God's mind is there throughout scripture.

And as we go through these strongholds, what we're going to do is we're going

to look at a bunch of different strongholds.

And we're going to begin to see the stronghold, but not just leave it there.

We say, what does God say? How do we bring ourselves into alignment with what God says.

And one of the tools that we're going to use is a new podcast that we're going to be starting.

And this week I'm going to be meeting with Ben, and we're going to record the

first and hopefully many series of different with different men and women,

as we talk about different strongholds and what God says about our strongholds.

Because the reality is here, as Paul tells the church at Rome.

God desires for you to be a living sacrifice and to understand what true worship is.

That's not what Dusty was talking about earlier. Like when he was talking about,

oh, you don't give out of being forced to.

Paul talked, and Dusty's gonna, I'm sure gonna jump on there.

He talked to the church at Corinth when he talked about giving and he didn't

talk about, oh, don't give out of compulsion or because you feel forced to.

You give out of grace. you give

out you you give us as a response to what god has

shown you we dig into god's truth

and the way we understand the more we understand god's

truth he begins to transform us and he takes this corrupted mind that you and

i have and it's corrupted that's the first step is to actually admit that we

have a corrupted mind if you don't think you have a corrupted mind again go

back to pride, work on that.

And then you realize, okay, we have a corrupted mind, right?

We have a corrupted mind and therefore my corrupted mind needs to come into full alignment.

No matter how long I've been a believer, no matter how many times I come to church,

no matter how much money I give, no matter how often I serve,

no matter any of this stuff, no, our minds have to come into complete alignment with what God says.

Jesus, I pray today that your Holy Spirit would encourage us and not discourage us.

Strongholds can be heavy if we look at it the wrong way.

But as you talked through Paul, he said, I went to God many times,

over three times talking to him, asking, please remove this thorn of my flesh.

Please remove this thing that the evil one is trying to use.

And God's response to him was, no, my way will be made perfect through all this.

You will actually grow to know me more through your struggle.

So Jesus, your goal for us in our dealing with our strongholds is not that we

feel worthless, because that's a lie from the evil one, Jesus, but that we are loved.

You love us enough to not allow us to continue misaligned.

So Jesus, I pray this week as we spend time with you,

that it wouldn't just be a routine that we do, but we would actually look for

your mind, for your mind, excuse me, that we would look for you and that we

would look for the mind of God and that we would understand more about you,

and that your Holy Spirit would work in us.

I pray that you would continue to do a work as you tell us in Philippians 1.6,

that we can be confident that the work that you started in us,

it wasn't us starting anything, you started the work, you will continue it until

the day we die so Jesus we thank you for that we thank you for your love and Jesus then we pray.

Music.