Hear this:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

In this passage, Paul is encouraging believers to not conform to the ways of this world, but to offer their bodies as a living sacrifice. At first sight, this bit seems impossible, let alone being “transformed by the renewing of your mind”. Don’t worry, I’m going to go over that in a bit.

We live in a society of indulgence, or in other words we are self pleasing. Almost everything that most of us do, and everything that society encourages us to do is for self pleasure, or acceptance. Most adverts will encourage you that if you have their product you will be happy, or accepted whether that be a new smartphone that makes you happy because it has like ten extra cameras for extra selfies and snapchat, the hair product that will make you so much more confident with your appearance, or the superdry t-shirt that makes sure you are accepted — they are all advertising these particular things.

Galaxy chocolate is a brilliant example — you know, they advertise that amazing taste of the chocolate when you first put it in your mouth (which is beautiful by the way, not denying it). It is so easy in our culture to then take another bite, and another, and another, in the search for that amazing sensation that you had at the beginning — and sadly there are so many other examples of things like this in our culture, where we go in search of happiness or acceptance, and end up broken, fat, with galaxy smeared around our mouths at the side of the road.

The things we do that are of the world can make us happy, but at the end of the day are unsatisfactory and will be incomparable to the feelings of joy and peace that one would get from being transformed by the renewing of their minds. The problem is, there are way to many things that get in the way of God and people for me to talk about in this sermon. For you, it might trying to get accepted in society or seeking the pleasure that comes from getting drunk at parties, smoking weed or having sex outside of marriage. It doesn't have to be anything obvious — far too many times do people in the church miss out on God’s glory by searching for the “spiritual thrill” you get from large worship conferences or speaking in tounges in front of other people.

What is important is that we (and I say we, I need to do it as well), we need to give up our lives as a living sacrifice to God. Not just being a living sacrifice on sundays, CU meetings and the occasional debate in RE, here Paul is talking about our whole lives.

I want to leave you tonight with this question: what are you dependent on in this world, and how is that holding you back from your potential in Jesus Christ?