Living Our Vision: Transforming Hearts for Community Flourishing

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As we explore our text today and explore what God has to say to us through our sermon today, would you pray with me as we enter this time?Jesus, I thank you because your word to us is good. And you are a God that speaks to us in love, in care, and in truth. And when you speak, it is for our good. [00:03:24]

Flourishing is this Old Testament concept that we see throughout the prophets, throughout the Psalms, and it's this image of God's, like, goodness being fully manifested all over the world. It's connected to the idea of peace, shalom, that, like, people's relationships to one another are flourishing. People's work is flourishing. People's basic needs, it's not just survival, but actually flourishing. People have enough to eat. People are spiritually satisfied. It's this image of a full, embodied, well -lived life as God actually provides all that we need and love is made manifested here in the world. [00:04:40]

My hope is that the life we live speaks to the values and the vision that we have. [00:06:39]

If you're like a hard -nosed New Yorker that's like ambitious and straight to the point, you might be like, what is this two -mission nonsense? What is this lack of focus? What is this lack of specialization? Like, we should be a one -minded church doing one thing.One, first thing is, I want to invite us to maybe, maybe walk, let go of a little bit, have some opened hands to let go of some black and white thinking. [00:07:06]

My hope today is as we explore specifically this scripture, Romans 12, verses 1 -2, which is Paul's vision for the ethical life of faith, the response to God's love shown in the person of Jesus, is that these two things actually go hand in hand, that seeking the flourishing of our world, our world together, goes hand in hand with experiencing a transforming relationship with Jesus. [00:08:15]

Paul was this apostle that kind of helped found and establish the early church. He was writing letters about what the resurrection and life of Jesus, his death, his life, and his resurrection, the impact it had on the world as this community started to form. [00:09:10]

In view of God's mercy, one of the things that Paul wants to communicate about what life with God is all about, about what following Jesus is all about, that it starts as a response, both in light of God's mercy, we're acting as a kind of a response, an if -then statement of because God has been loving and merciful, and he's shown that in the person of Jesus, this is what we should do. [00:10:54]

With your body, offer your life.With the steps you take, with the words you speak, with the work you do with your hands. This is not a kind of spiritual, all -out -there worship, but actually an in -bodied life of faith that is practiced in the body, in our everyday work. [00:12:53]

What worship is is a whole, whole embodied life of offering our lives for the sake of others. It's the seeking, the flourishing of the world around us, both in our words of praise and in our words of encouragement to others, but in our activity, in the way we relate to our family, in the context of marriage, the way we love our spouse or love our families. It should be an act of worship as if it was for the sake of God. [00:13:49]

The only way we do this is not because we're good, great people that are studious and do our homework that God has given us.It's actually because it's in view of the mercy of God, of what Jesus has done. Jesus paved the way, gave both the example and the proof of God's willingness to do this on our behalf. [00:14:39]

Do not conform to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. [00:15:08]

Do not let the world squeeze you into its mold.You know, if you're like me, you've probably experienced moments like this where you felt like squeezed into a mold, squeezed into a way of operating that just like didn't jive with you. Like it just felt wrong. It felt like it violated your values or your conscience or your conviction. [00:15:34]

The invitation in view of God's mercy is that God offers us transformation by the power of his spirit, by the power of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.We are offered a way out of being squeezed into the mold of the world, squeezed into the mold of our families of origin. [00:17:45]

What Paul is inviting us to experience here is like utter change, is to be completely transformed from the ground up. Our attitudes, our personality, that we are invited to not just accept the way we are as the way we are, but actually allow the Holy Spirit, allow Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection, and the Spirit he gives us to change us. [00:19:52]

We are invited by the power of God to be transformed by his love, to become like an embodiment of his love here in this world. [00:20:25]

Actually the mercy and love of God invites us to see the world differently.And this becomes obvious, right? Because if we become to experience, if we begin to kind of contemplate and realize the lengths that God would go to save us, to communicate his love for us, if we realize how powerful that is, that should change the way that we see our neighbor. Because Jesus did the same thing for our neighbor. [00:22:22]

Once this transformation happens, this ground -up transformation, we will be able to test and approve of what God's will is, his good and pleasing and perfect will. [00:23:16]

What Paul wants us to know here is that they are mutually dependent.that actually what's seeking the flourishing of the world around us requires is for people to be transformed by the love of God. [00:25:11]

If we do not change from the ground up, we might be able to stop one injustice but in reality, we'll just end up perpetuating another one because those roots are still there those things that cause the injustice are still within us and the goal actually is to be transformed so that we can change the world around us. [00:26:45]

Where change starts, where true change starts that can last, it begins with you, with me, with people, with individuals that gather in communities to actually be the transformation that they want to see in the world. And that transformation doesn't happen because of our grit or our goodness, but it happens because of the love of God changing us and transforming us. [00:29:35]

When we think about Jesus in the scale of the world, he's one guy. he's just one dude in the stream of the billions of humans that have ever existed.And yet, Christians have this faith that one life, one person, Jesus, who gave his life for us could actually change the world. [00:30:11]

Our hope is that in faith, that the lives we live, the transformed lives that we live as we are transformed by the love and the gospel of Jesus, that that too can be of impact for the sake of our neighborhood, for the sake of our city, and for even maybe the sake of the world. [00:30:36]

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