How to Get God's Best for Your Life, Part 1

Have you ever wondered why there are so many decisions and so few disciples? Here’s what I mean by that. What I know historically, right now, in the next twenty-four hours, tens of thousands of people all across the world will make decisions to follow Christ. They’ll get it.

Where you realize: I’ve sinned before a holy God, Christ died in my place, He rose from the dead. And you place your faith in Him, and He takes you from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light.

But I’m guessing that we all have either a short or a long list of friends, and for many of us – I’ve certainly been there myself – where that’s a reality. His Spirit came into your life, you began to make some progress, you started to grow, but then things kind of got not so good. And the great majority, at least statistically, of people that genuinely know and love God, who are followers of Christ, their life isn’t quite matching up.

I got an email from a lady that’s a picture of this, and it’s interesting. She said, “Thank you for your message this morning on Romans 12:1.” And then now, listen to her story and see how much you can identify with. “I came to Christ when I was thirteen, but I’ve gone through a lot of hard times throughout my college, and my relationship with God has been up and down ever since.

“Lately I’ve been feeling lethargic and distant from God. I woke up this morning, and I asked myself this question: If I died today, would people say that I was a Christian? That I was a messenger of God? Or would they even say or know that I follow God at all? Well, I happened to turn on your program, and as I, in my inner life have struggled both with alcoholism and immorality, I heard what it meant to go all in,” bold letters: “I decided to give all myself to God and completely surrender to Him. So thank you, and God bless.”

Now that email is, there are some really wonderful, neat parts, but isn’t it kind of sad that someone would come to a saving knowledge at thirteen and have the next plus or minus twenty years described by up and down? “Distant.” “Lethargic.” Looking for the satisfaction that only God can give, and for reasons maybe she didn’t understand finds herself relying on alcohol and then multiple sexual relationships, only to discover, Oh! God has a good plan. God wants to give me the best. And for many people, they didn’t know it does require a moment where you say to Him, I’m going to trust you.

And here’s what Romans 12:1 said: “Therefore I urge you, my brothers, in view of God’s mercy,” remember eleven chapters of His love for you, “offer your body a living and holy sacrifice, well pleasing to God. This is your spiritual service.”

In other words, that’s what God really wants. But here’s the question. It’s one thing to give God what He really wants. The second question is: How do you get the very best from God? And it’s interesting. That’s verse 2. He’s going to say, “And do not be conformed any longer to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that your life,” in other words, your lifestyle, what you actually experience, “would be the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.”

So I’m going to ask you to open your teaching handout, and what I want you to do is know that we are going to ask and answer the question that I think is one of the most important for any Christian: How do you get the very best from God? What you’re going to see – the structure of this passage – there’s a negative command.

Stop, literally, allowing the world to conform you to its mold. And then there’s a positive command: But be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And then there’s this purpose clause. There’s a reason why. So that you personally – not someone out there – so you could experience the good, well-pleasing, perfect will of God.

So you’ve got your study out, let me do a little Bible study. It’s a bit more technical than normal, but I think it’s worthwhile. The negative command is, “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world.”

And then in 1 John 2:15 through 17 – I put the text right in your notes – He will literally define and explain: what are the world’s values, and how does it work? Follow along as I read: “Do not love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

And now he’s going to define: So what’s the world? “For all that is in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life – is not from the Father, but it’s from the world.” And then notice this commentary: “The world is passing away, and its lusts,” or, “passions. But the one who does the will of God lives forever.”

And so, in summary, the world system seeks to seduce us from our love for Christ by pleasure, possessions, and position.

Here’s what I want you to get. There is a system that comes on almost every commercial, every billboard, in every magazine, where you work, that tells you that if you could possess that, if you get this position, if your kids get in this school, if you can have these things, that security, and significance, and meaning, and happiness, and purpose – it’s all for you.

In fact, every time you walk out of the check-out stand, it screams the world system. Because here you are and you’ve got your little groceries, and you’re at the local grocery store, and they’ve got all the magazines, and this magazine number one is either Cosmo or Men’s Health. And if you’re a guy, you look more at Cosmo then you do at Men’s Health. And all the girls – literally, they’re all the same from the neck down when you look at the cover of Cosmo. Some of you’ll get that a little bit later.

And it just says, Sex, man! If you have that! Or part of us look at Men’s Health and say, “Man, if I had abs – if I had abs like that, man, the women would love me.”

And so: Sex, power, position. And then we create worlds so that our kids can get money, power, sex, and position. So we work like crazy, don’t see one another, spend most of our time staring at screens, have relationships that don’t work, work hours that are insane, be in the gym for long hours to become and look like “someone” so someone will love us.

And all the while, the people who have the most money, with the sexiest bodies, with the largest houses, who’ve won the lotto, or are the celebrities – when we look carefully at their life, we see the highest percentage of depression, divorce, suicide, and emptiness. It’s like this crazy picture of everyone following the great rainbow for the pot of gold, with possessions, and power, and position. And those that have it would come out and say: “It’s empty.” It’s empty.

And I can tell you, whether it’s in South Africa, or Korea, or Hong Kong, or Indonesia, or the Silicon Valley, or Nebraska, the great majority of Christians are not experiencing God’s best. And they’re not experiencing God’s best because their heart has been seduced away from their Savior. And we have bought the lies that these things will fulfill, and they don’t.

And God brought you into this room on this day to say to you, “I want to give you the best.” So, negative: Stop allowing yourself to be molded by the world. So get aware. But that’s not enough. Turn the page. Second, he’s going to say, “Start allowing yourself to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Notice the positive command.

Don’t allow the world – the externals – to squeeze you in their values, into this false belief and system of lies that lead to death. But allow yourself, by the transformation of your mind to be changed from the inside out.

It’s the Spirit of God taking the Word of God, renewing your mind, in the context of community of real life relationships, where the very personality of Jesus and His character – where you’re loving, and kind, and peaceful, and gentle, and generous, and others-centered, and have self-discipline. And the fruit of the Spirit – which is really the life of Christ – progressively becomes more how you think, and how you act. It’s not trying hard to be like Jesus. It’s allowing the Jesus living in you, by the Holy Spirit, to transform you from the inside out.

And so the application is really – I put it in the form of a question: “Are you shaped more by the world or by the Word?”

The world is saying, “Get, get, get. Accumulate, accumulate. Impress, impress, impress.” The Word is saying, “Give, give, give. Be authentic, love, care.” The world is saying, “It’s how you look.” The Word is saying, “It’s who you are.”

The Word comes to you in the beauty of nature, primarily the Bible, the Word of God, and out of the relationships of other believers where Jesus lives inside of them. All those things wooing you and drawing you to allow Christ to be formed in you.

And the world comes at you in smart phones, computer, TV, Netflix, billboards, romance novels, relationships where people look at you and say, “Unless you have this, unless you look like that, unless you can do this, unless you conform there, you don’t really measure up.” And you’re in the battle of your life. External forces like this saying to you: Conform, conform, conform. And an internal, supernatural power saying: Be transformed, be transformed.

Is the input of God’s Word, and God’s people, and those things, influencing your time, your priorities, and your focus, or is it more the world?

Can you imagine, in heaven, how God must feel about that lady, and about us, as a thirteen-year-old girl that comes to know Jesus and is loved, and He’s got this amazing plan for her? But she hears that unless you sleep with your boyfriend, you don’t measure up, and so she does. Then she feels guilty because when the Spirit lives in you, there’s this battle. And she did it to be loved and – well, then she feels bad about it, and so to get to sleep at night she starts, you know, drinking a little bit. And she wants to be a part of things, so she hangs with the crowd.

And down deep inside of her soul, she has this lack of peace, and then finally she just realizes, I’ve spent twenty years with the Spirit of God living inside me, and I’ve never gotten God’s best. I wonder how many Christians sitting in this room today are living right there today? Because, boy, I’ll tell you, I’ve been there.

So, application. And the goal of application is: there’s movement. God is going to nudge you about taking some steps to – what? Saying “no” to the world and beginning maybe some baby steps to say “yes” to Him changing you.

Notice Jesus, when He was facing this. Go over to Jesus with Satan in Matthew chapter 4, and He’s being tempted. Three temptations. How’s He tempted? Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life. How did He win? They lost, He won. Why? “It is written.” “It is written.” “It is written.” Each time. From memory. He reached back into Deuteronomy.

And the lie came: Bam! He knocked it out with the truth. And so in Matthew 4:4, it says, “He answered Satan and said, ‘It is written: Man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’”

You cannot experience God’s best for your life without making this truth a part of your experience on a very regular basis. You don’t have the power. I don’t have the power.

You must take the raw material of God’s written Word, and get it into your mind, and share it with other people so the Spirit of God can take the written Word and make it the living Word, and change you, and change your desires in ways that you can’t understand. It’s supernatural. In fact, the apostle Paul would say it’s not only supernatural, but it’s a process. It’s not like you can just turn a switch, and now, “I’m like Jesus,” you know?

What does he say? In 2 Corinthians 3:18. I put the passage there: “But we all,” speaking of the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Between the law when it was given in Sinai and now with the Spirit living in us. “But we all, with unveiled faces, beholding, as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord,” – notice the tense of this verb – “are being transformed.” How? “From glory to glory. Just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”

He’s saying, Moses, when he was up on the mountain with God – see, you become like whoever you hang out with. And after forty days hanging out with God, he just glowed. He just radiated with the glory of God.

And so when he came down, people couldn’t take it, so he put a veil over his face so he could talk to them. And then, in his hypocrisy, when it started to fade he kept the veil on because he wanted people to think he still had it. None of us ever do that, of course. We don’t do any image management or any or those sort of things, but Moses did.

And Paul says, “We, with an unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror,” it’s not direct, but we get these reflections and snapshots and moments where Jesus reveals Himself. And a passage comes out of the Word, and you’re in a Bible study, and someone speaks a word or accepts you in a way that you’ve never been accepted. And you were vulnerable or you’re supported.

Or someone, in love, actually rebukes you and calls you on the carpet for something that in your heart you’ve known, and you realize that, “open rebuke is better than love concealed.” And you find a safe place, and God changes you. But it’s from glory to glory. That’s like four steps forward, two steps backward. We’re all in process. And notice, who brings about the change? From the Lord, the Spirit.

And so here’s the key. What I want you to get. Review: Stop allowing the world to conform you. Start being transformed. Here’s what I want to camp on: How? What’s your part? We said we can’t change ourselves. Allow yourself to be transformed. How? Here’s our part: The renewing of our mind.

Mind renewal, I think, has three key components. The first component of mind renewal, is renewing your mind as a continual refocus of the Romans 12:1 perspective. Colossians 3 says, “Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth.”

It’s a worldview. It’s a mindset that has eternity in mind, that has in Christ in mind, about what matters in mind. See, when you come to that moment where you say, God, I’m all in, I will do whatever, it’s authentic, it’s real, it’s sincere. You make great decisions in that moment. But then there’s Monday morning, right?

And that was two football games, and an argument with your roommate, or your wife, or with your husband, and a kid who treated you dirty, and a boss who wasn’t very nice, ago. And a different person shows up after that, right? And so you renew your mind to keep that focus, and all of us have different issues that we face that keep us conformed to the world.

Let me give you an example. As I grew up in my home, my family of origin – I have one, you have one – the enemy uses the world in some ways in my life different than yours. There are people that can walk into a bar, love friends, have no problem, never think about this, this, that.

My dad was an alcoholic. Alcohol shaped our home. There are some people that: You’re not performance-oriented at all. Man, you are just balanced, and laid back, and you go to work, you shut it off, no problem. You’re not a people pleaser. You’re just so healthy, relationally and emotionally. And I envy you.

And so I realized that I was a workaholic, that I was insecure, that I was always trying to please people and then, after I got married, that I was very insensitive to my wife. Other than that as a Christian, I was really doing well.

No, I’m dead serious. I didn’t have a porn addiction. I wasn’t putting cocaine up my nose, OK? But I’m saying those were real. And when I started reading the Bible some, and I wanted to follow Jesus, and I kept trying hard. I tried hard not to be a workaholic, I tried not to be insecure, I tried to be more sensitive to my wife.

On my best days – and I’m pretty disciplined, willpower – I could only keep that up for about two weeks because I didn’t understand. Transformation isn’t about just trying hard. It’s renewing your mind.

And so I wrote down on some cards the truth. And now I prayed, and I asked God. Does it mean there’s not self-effort – of course I had to make effort. But, for example, I thought, Am I going to be insecure my whole life, or am I going to get my mind renewed?

And so I wrote this down on a card. I read it in the morning, the night, put it in my pocket, read it multiple times a day: “I’d like to be more authentic in every aspect of my life.”

I was trying to please everyone, and, “I am what I am by the grace of God. And His grace didn’t prove vain toward me, but I labored more than all of them, yet not me but Christ in me.” When you keep reading over, “I’d like to be more authentic in every relationship,” you know what happens? That gets in your mind. You catch yourself when you’re posing. You catch yourself image managing, and God begins to birth, where you say, I think I’m just going to like who God made me. Got a long way to go. Transformation.

My people pleasing. Anybody here ever struggle with: Everyone asks you to do this, and you either feel guilty if you don’t, or you’re trying to do everything? You’re multitasking, and you’re up early, and you’re back late?

I wrote this on a card: “I want to stop caring what others think, and apply myself and my schedule to what will make me the best I can be to honor God the most. I want to grow free of the invisible expectations that I allow to hinder my joy, my freedom, my schedule from pursuing the best.” These invisible – like I had this gun to my head. I still struggle some, but if you live your life to please people, it’ll kill you. But it’s the world. So you refocus.

My next one was on my workaholism. I just thought working a lot, performing, getting stuff done, I got approval, and so that was how I did everything. I even did the ministry like that.

And so I wrote on this card, I read it over, “I want to learn,” – this is almost sick to have to learn this – “I want to learn to take time and schedule in enjoyable, fun, refreshing activities without feeling guilty about them or caring what other people think.”

What happened was I just found myself putting it in my schedule. Pretty soon I didn’t feel guilty about having fun. It was like, Wow, this must be a part of God’s plan.