If you follow football at all, as almost everyone does these days, you know that every coach has a game plan before he begins the game—a plan they have worked out long before the game begins which is their strategy for accomplishing the desired goal. I was with Tom Landry a few weeks ago in Dallas, Texas. Tom said, "The job of a football coach is to make men do what they don't want to do in order to achieve what they've always wanted to be."

That's God's business with us, too. To make us sometimes do what we don't want to do in order to be what we've always wanted to be. I don't think there's any passage of Scripture that describes that more fully and beautifully than Romans 12. I'm only going to take two verses of it this morning, but I believe these two verses in a most remarkable way summarize God's game plan for your life and mine.

I was flying out of Denver, Colorado, a few years ago on my way to Peoria, Illinois. Not a lot of people go to Peoria, but I wanted to go there the worst possible way, so I went by Ozark Airlines. In the plane, I picked up the magazine that every airline has to distract the passengers from what the pilot is doing. My attention was caught by large letters on the back page that said "When you understand that you can change the world, your life will never be the same again." Naturally I was curious as to what would make a dramatic change like that. I discovered this was an advertisement for Playboy magazine. The implication was that if you subscribe to Playboy, you'll soon come to understand that you can change the world. And when you come to understand that you can change the world, your life will never be the same again. I don't know how you react to that, but my reaction was one of anger. It made me angry that a magazine of that character—obscene, pornographic—would openly boast that it had the quality to change the world. But as I thought about that a bit, I began to see there was some truth to it.

I can remember back twenty years ago when the moral climate of this nation was considerably different than it is today. And in some sense, Playboy and other magazines of that type have successfully changed our nation. Not for the good but for the bad. Then I thought, what a magnificent slogan this is for a Christian. That's really what God is saying to us: "When you understand that you can change the world, your life will never be the same again." That's what this passage, perhaps more than anything else, is saying to us.

You notice it's addressed to us as individuals—not as a church, as a body of people, but as a collection of individuals. To them the apostle Paul says, "I appeal to you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice." You can only do that as individuals. You can't do that as a group. And the striking thing to me about this passage is that God's game plan for life hardly ever is addressed to the church as a whole. It's always addressed to us, single people living right where we live. There's nothing said about an organization. There's nothing said about money. That's remarkable isn't it? Nothing's said here about raising funds to carry on a ministry, and yet this is what God proposes to do to change the world.

Is your body available to God?

Two things I want you to notice, and to see them, I'd like to start not at the beginning but at the end: "that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." I've been living in California for almost 35 years, and I think northern California, the Bay area where I live, is very much like Southern California in many ways. You have a little heavier traffic down here and a little warmer weather, but the moral climate is very similar. I've noticed that living in California we are constantly exposed to the ways of the world. Perhaps more so than any other part of our nation. And God is proposing a way by which we can change the thinking of people all around us. When you think about this great state of ours and the millions of people that are living all around us here, hardly any of them believe that the will of God is good and acceptable and perfect. In fact if you could ask them about it, they would probably say that anybody that gets involved in finding the will of God is asking for a very, very dull life indeed. If you start getting religious, their attitude is, you're going to wreck your life. You're not going to have any fun. You're not going to enjoy it.

God knows that is a lie. Doing his will is the most exciting and demanding and challenging and thrilling experience that anyone can ever discover. And he offers to put on a demonstration. That's what this word prove means: that you may demonstrate that the will of God is good and acceptable and perfect. That's God's goal. He wants to show people as they look at you and me that having found the will of God we have found the most exciting lifestyle there is. We have found the secrets of living. Of enjoyment. Of fulfillment. Of answering the empty, lonely restlessness of the age in which we live.

Somebody handed me this a few weeks ago: This is the age of the page and the quick hash and the mad dash, the bright night with the nerves tight, the plane hop with the brief stop, the lamp tan in a short span, the big shot in a good spot, and the brain strain and the heart pain and the cat naps until the spring snaps and the fun's done. That penetrating little jingle rather pointedly describes life in America, doesn't it? You see, the problem is that people don't know how to live, and God's proposal is that in your life and mine he will teach us how to live. And demonstrate in such a way that people looking at us will discover that we have found the secrets of life.

He asks for two simple things. The first is in verse one: a body made available to him. God says, "Bring your bodies. I'll use them just the way they are." I've discovered that most people don't like everything about their body. There's always something wrong. Almost everybody thinks that if they just had curlier hair or straighter hair or if they were shorter or taller or thinner or fatter or their knees didn't knock or they weren't bald or whatever it has to be changed, they think, in order to be successful. This has spawned a whole industry offering to make our bodies look better. And you see how God wipes all that out. He says you don't have to change your body. Just bring it. Just think of yourself as an available instrument that I'm ready to use any time, any place. This is one of most important themes in the Word of God. God says he will change the world by using individuals right where they are. The authentic impact of a church is made not so much on Sunday morning when we gather in a great place of worship like this, but when you are scattered out in your neighborhoods and you discover that you have a ministry right there, that God is going to use you right where you are, and that he has equipped you and fitted you for this.

Notice how the apostle puts it. Bring your bodies, he says, "as a living sacrifice." All the converted pagans and Jews that made up this church in Rome all knew what a sacrifice was. They'd offer animal sacrifices. But these were dead sacrifices. You only offered them once and then you could never offer that animal again because it was dead. But Paul says this is a living sacrifice, and it's something you do every day. And every day you can start out with the idea Lord, here I am ready to be used. Whatever I do today in my normal business relationships or at home or with my children, with my neighbors, wherever I am, Lord, you are offering to use me. I'm ready. I'm available. A living sacrifice, holy.

Many people think you have to make yourself holy. This is a sad mistake. Nowhere does the Word of God teach us that we can make ourselves holy. What this declares is that God has already made us holy. Notice that? I confess that for years I did not like this word holy. To me it conjured up ideas of stern, individuals that looked like they'd been drinking embalming fluid. Sad people. Grim people. And I didn't like holy people. But I've learned that the word basically means another word very similar to it in English that we spell somewhat differently, and that's why I don't think we recognize from where it comes. It's the word whole. That comes from the same root, and it's the same idea in the original language—whole people.

God is a whole being. Every part of his being functions as it was intended. He's never anything less than perfectly balanced, absolutely capable of coping with any situation because he's a whole person. And the longing of this world and this age is to be whole persons. You just listen to the television commercials and you'll see how true that is. They constantly urge us to find this, buy that, smear on this, purchase that, go on this trip in order to be a whole person. And God says "I have taken care of that." When you came to Christ, when you believed in Jesus, at the core of your being God made you a whole person. Now the thing is to let that begin to work out. Bring your body, and day by day God will train you in holiness, in wholeness. Isn't that beautiful? And it's acceptable to God. He's ready to use you on that basis.

The amazing thing in this is how you change the world. I could give a lot of illustrations of this. Let me share with you one out of my own experience. In 1958 I took my first trip into South America in the company of Dr. Dick Hillis, the founder of Overseas Crusades and OC Ministries. We were traveling down through Argentina. By prearrangement, we had been invited to speak at two evening meetings. He spoke at one, and I spoke at the second. I don't remember what either of us said, but I remember when I finished speaking through a translator in Spanish at the close of the service I stood in front waiting for people to come and say hello, and nobody came up because they all spoke Spanish and I only spoke E one young man came. A handsome young man, and we began to talk, and I found out he was a clerk in a bank. I invited him to come to our Bible study in a missionary's home the next morning and he showed up and we got further acquainted. He had a tiny motorcycle and I talked him into taking me into town on the back of it to do a little shopping and to do a little translating for me. And so we got acquainted. After I left that town, we began to write to one another. And we corresponded for about a year.

I discovered he had a great hunger to be used of God, to be an evangelist, and eventually managed to bring him to the United States, where he lived with us for several months and then went to a Bible school. And there at the Bible school he met the girl who became his wife, and that led to further contacts. And all of that ended up with this young man becoming one of the famous evangelists of our day. His name was Luis Palau. He and I have often looked back at that first meeting and remembered how he told me that he was very uncertain as to whether he should come to that meeting or not. He'd never heard of me, and he wasn't particularly interested in hearing what I had to say. But he finally decided that he would go because I was advertised as "a California pastor." He thought that was unusual enough that he might see something interesting, so he came. Looking back now, we can see that brief encounter, totally unplanned by either of us but led of God, completely changed the direction of his life. He didn't know it. I didn't know it. But God knew it, and that's how the world begins to be changed—chance encounters that you may have with somebody on your block. A conversation over a coffee cup. Just a momentary touch with somebody at your office. A conversation in the back of the car as you're riding to work. It can be anywhere. This is God's game plan. To use you right where you are. That's the way he changes the world.

So that's the first thing: an available body. Is your body available to God? That's the question each day you must ask.

Are you allowing your mind to be transformed?

The second thing God needs is in verse two: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind." Now the important thing there is not "be not conformed to this world." That's what a lot of people think this verse is saying, but that's not the real point; that's only the introduction to the real thing. The real thing is "be transformed by the renewal of your mind." In other words, let God change your thinking. Let your way of looking at life be altered. And when he does you'll discover it will be 180 degrees contrary to the way the world thinks. You'll not be conformed to this world. There's been a lot of confusion on this verse because we preachers have emphasized so much this first part, the negative thing. I grew up in churches where I heard this thundered at me. And there followed a list of taboos I was to avoid. The implication was if I avoided these things successfully, I would not be conformed to this world.

Through the years since, I've discovered thousands of people who don't do those things but are very much conformed to this world. I don't know why the idea has taken such firm roots in our minds that God is impressed by the number of things that we don't do. He's not, and neither is anybody else. What God is after is the second phrase: "Be transformed by the renewal of your mind." Let your thinking begin to be changed, and there's only one instrument that does that: the Word the living God. Thinking God's thoughts after him. Where you begin to look at life quite differently than other people look at it.

Let me give you an illustration. I've been listening to television commercials, and I've been impressed by the number of times I've heard the word deserve. Have you noticed that? Everything's sold on the basis you deserve this, you've got it coming to you. You're the kind of person who ought to have advantages. The best. You can have it all. And over and over, we're impressed with this philosophy that we deserve more than we've got. Do you know what happens to people who believe that? If you believe that, you have successfully had removed from your heart every sense of gratitude. You see, what that does is to inculcate ingratitude. You're never thankful for receiving something you feel you deserve. Most people are angry because they didn't get as much as they thought they should have, or as much as the next fellow, or that they didn't get it sooner.

We're gradually becoming an ungrateful nation, and a whole generation is rising that knows nothing about feeling and expressing gratitude. The truth is, we don't deserve anything. When your thinking begins to be transformed by God, you believe what he says: that we're a rebellious race, antagonistic to the program and plan of God, and we have wrecked the planet on which we live and ruined the life of mankind, and we don't deserve anything from God's hand. But what we get instead is grace and mercy. And when you begin to think like God thinks, you begin to be grateful for every little thing that comes into your life. Do you know that we would have no possibility of meeting in a place like this this Sunday morning if it weren't for the continual mercy and grace of God? Our lives daily would be nothing but a horrible experience of malice and evil and anger and murder were it not for the restraining hand of God upon our world. Every day we learn to be grateful for the things God gives. Now that's allowing your mind to be transformed, and I'll tell you, nothing will do it but the Word of God. This is why we're continually exhorted to study and learn and understand the thoughts of God because that's the way the world really lives. That's reality. When you return to the Bible in your thinking, in your daily life, you're returning at last to realistic living. Anything else is phony and unrealistic.

Why should we want to make our bodies available to God and allow our minds to be transformed?

Now one more thing remains, and that's the motive. That's going to be difficult. Simple as it sounds, it's still difficult, isn't it, because we don't like to change. It's comfortable not to change. We don't like that, and so God has provided a special motive to move us to do it. Did you see what it is? Right in the very first line. "I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God." See, the mercies of God. When you begin to think about those mercies you'll find your heart strangely and powerfully moved to want to become an available body and to allow your mind to be transformed by his Word.

What are the mercies of God? This whole letter of Romans is all about the mercies of God. Did you know that in Romans, there is not a single exhortation to us as believers to do anything for God at all until you get to the middle of the sixth chapter. For five and a half chapters, the apostle Paul has been telling us not about what we have to do for God—that's what you get so much today—but about what God has already done for us. Those are the mercies of God. You read through the chapter and you can see for yourself. There's, of course, first the forgiveness of our sins. The lifting of the load of guilt. The canceling out of all that sense of filth, of dirtiness that we all have about ourselves. We know things about ourselves that make us ashamed, and this book declares that in the grace and mercy of God, he has found a way to set it all aside. All the shame. All the dirty moments of the past. All the hurts that we've given to other people. All the shameful thoughts that we have entertained. All set aside.

The forgiveness of sins. I don't think there's anything more wonderful than that. The Bible tells us in Ephesians that God lavishes forgiveness upon us. Lavish means to heap it up more and more, and every day we need the forgiveness of sins. This isn't just for when you become a Christian; this is daily. Every morning, I thank God while I'm taking a shower that God has forgiven the sins of yesterday. And as my body is being cleansed, so my soul and spirit is cleansed afresh by the mercy of God. Every day I start afresh. A whole new clean page in the book. Isn't that marvelous? If anything will give you a sense of peace, it's thinking about the forgiveness of God.

But not only his forgiveness but his love. That's incredible. This magnificent God loves us. I'm so glad before we began here today we sang that little chorus "Oh How He Loves You and Me." It's true, isn't it? This book declares that God loves you and me. In fact, the Book of Romans begins on that note. Paul says, "To the saints at Rome who are loved by God." Look it up in the first chapter yourself. Loved by God. That's incredible. I like the way somebody's put it: "Isn't it odd that a being like God who sees the facade still loves the clod he made out of sod. Now isn't that odd?" It is indeed. But that's what all our hymns are about. When we sing these hymns most of them are based on the wonder of God's forgiveness and God's love. My favorite hymn is Charles Wesley's great hymn, "And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood? Died he for me, who caused his pain—for me, who him to death pursued? Amazing love! How can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?"

And do you know the more you think about the love of God, the more your heart will be stirred and moved to love him back. And to love your neighbor as yourself. That's the key to love. "Herein is love," John says, "not that we first loved him but that he first loved us." And we just respond to the love that is daily given to us. Another mercy is the hope we have. The hope of the future. We Christians don't live in fear and despair about the days that come. Those without Christ do. They're without hope. Without God. Without hope in the world. But we aren't. What a hope we have.

I find myself growing older and my body weakening. I didn't expect it to happen, but it has. I look in the mirror and I say to myself, What's a young man like you doing in an old body like that? But you see, I'm not headed for darkness or death or despair or dissolution. I'm headed for life, glory, victory, and joy and peace, all the great things that are promised to us. And the older we grow the more our eyes should be a light and our faces light up with the glory of that coming joy, that coming hope, that coming fulfillment of all that life has been. Now that's the mercies of God. I'll tell you, friend, if you are giving yourself to understanding the mercies of God, you'll find yourself motivated to be an available instrument and to have a transformed mind. And when you do, you'll discover what this verse is saying. When you understand that by that simple process you can change the world, literally, in ways that you'll never know at the moment perhaps. When you understand that, your life will never be the same again. That's what it's saying. People looking at you will say, "I don't know what he or she's got, but he's found the secret of life. They know how to live. They've found what life is all about." That's what God is saying to us in these simple verses.

Ray Stedman was for 40 years the pastor of Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California. He authored many books, including God's Loving Word, God's Final Word, and Body Life.

Ray Stedman

Preaching Today Tape # 25

www.PreachingTodaySermons.com

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The late Ray Stedman was pastor of Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California, and author of several books including For Such a Time as This (Discovery House).