be transformed by the renewal of your mind

as Christians if we want our lives to be changed and transformed we first need our minds to be renewed our actions will literally never change unless our thoughts change first the Apostle Paul says in Romans 12:2 to not conform to the patterns of the world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind the way I view it is that our actions will always look the same if our thoughts always look the same if we're always thinking about worldly things we'll do worldly things if we're always thinking about sinful things we'll do sinful things if

we're thinking about pure things and godly things and things like that will do those things so welcome to the house of Jacob podcast we in this house we serve the Lord I'm your host braxon and in this week's video I wanted to discuss what it means to be transformed by the renewal of your mind and what that looks like and why you should be transformed by the renewal of your mind etc etc so let's get into this week's word I'm also sorry this this week's video is uploading pretty late I normally upload on Sundays by

the time you're watching this this would have been uploaded on Tuesday I'll explain at the end of the video why I missed an episode last week and why I haven't uploaded on time this week I'll explain that later but um the word of God comes first so let's go into the word of God um Romans 12:1 says I appeal to you therefore Brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a Living Sacrifice holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship see let me give you some context on the first verse

of Romans 12 Paul has literally really just spent the first 11 chapters of the book of Romans describing what he calls right here the mercies of God and if you want more context on the mercies of God just read the entirety of the book of Romans um but Paul is saying since God has been merciful to you offer yourself to him and Paul tells the Roman Church to offer their bodies as a Living Sacrifice to kind of like paint this paint this image to them because the people in this church would have been very familiar

with sacrifices especially the Jews that were in this church because they they were sacrificing animals for the Forgiveness of sins before Jesus ever came so they know what a sacrifice is so Paul is painting this picture here and what's interesting about a Living Sacrifice this is such like a like a interesting term because it's so like self-contradictory like a sacrifice but it's living like but a Living Sacrifice would it it remains alive at the altar it's it's an ongoing sacrifice and if we want to be living sacrifices this this is a one-time thing this isn't

a you know you raised your hand in church and said Jesus is Lord this isn't like a this this is like a daily thing like this is an ongoing sacrifice you are an ongoing Living Sacrifice um something you do today day to day I mean if you're are a Living Sacrifice you are living as a sacrifice um and keep in mind Paul Paul's not just saying honor God with your body I mean I want to make something very clear to you as a human you have a body a soul and a spirit spirit and as

of right now your soul and your spirit all they're all also contained within your body so Paul is not just saying just just offer your physical body to God he's he's saying offer your bodies to paint a picture because obviously when you go sacrifice an animal you're sacrificing their body but he's also saying like keep in mind this applies to your heart this applies to your mind this applies to like cuz I mean the soul the soul is composed of the Mind the will and the emotions or in other words your thoughts your feelings and

your desires that's what your soul is composed of and God wants all of it God wants you to offer everything to him not just your bodies God doesn't just want you to be physically free from lust he wants you to be mentally free from lust to be emotionally free from lust like that's just one example that's not even talking about anger or forgiveness like unforgiveness or all of these other things God wants all of you to be offered as a Living Sacrifice and it's interesting because Paul also shows us here what true worship is Paul

doesn't say here that worship is a song he doesn't say that worship is you know whatever it may be he doesn't say it's a song it's not something we sing Paul says this is your spiritual worship that you offer yourself as a Living Sacrifice that's worship that is spiritual worship you being a Living Sacrifice to God is spiritual worship what we often think about as worship like singing songs in church that's that's praise that is praising the Lord with your tongue but spiritual worship here Paul is saying is offering yourself as a Living Sacrifice that's

how we worship God and then Paul goes on here and he keeps on saying in Romans 12:2 and here's what we're going to spend most of this week's video on this shouldn't be a super long episode Paul says don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that by testing you may discern what is the will of God which is good and acceptable and perfect now conform literally means to be similar or like identical to something so Paul saying don't be made similar to the world don't don't look

like them don't live like that don't don't act like that don't talk like that don't think like that don't do not be anything similar or identical like like anything similar to or identical to the world don't not even close instead be transformed see the diction the dictionary definition of transform is make a thorough or dramatic change in the form appearance or character of that's transformed so Paul is saying don't be made like the world don't look like the world don't don't be similar to the world but be transformed be radically changed in your form and

your appearance and your character and your thoughts and your feelings your whatever it is be changed dramatically so Paul is giving two Polar Opposites here he's saying you're either being conformed to the world standards or you're being transformed to God's standards there there's no middle ground here we did an episode a couple weeks ago I really recommend watching it it's called um sin is not freedom and something we went over was I believe um Romans 6 as well as Galatians 5 where Paul also gives Polar Opposites there he says you're either pleased In the Flesh

or you're pleased in the spirit you're either you know being a slave to righteousness or a slave to sin and it's the same here you're either being conformed or transformed there's there's no middle ground here so I want to ask you real quick and you can drop a comment or you can just ask yourself this you don't have to drop a comment you don't have to make it public but my question to you is what are you doing right now and I would think as a Christian that most of you it's transformed that doesn't mean

you're being transformed in every single area of your life every everyone has struggles but what what are you doing right now are you being transformed are you being conformed are you are you looking like the world or are you looking like Jesus because you represent Jesus and that's why God says be holy for I am Holy he's not saying do this because I said so he's saying if you bear my name if you represent me well I'm holy so you need to be holy and holy literally means to be like separate from it literally means

to be set apart so as Christians we are called to be set apart from the world separate from the world we should look different we should talk different we should act different we should think different every everything about us should be different than the world that that is being holy and the reason we're holy is because we represent Christ and if we're going to represent him well we better be holy because that's what he is if we're representing him we can't misrepresent him so Paul also shows us here how to be transformed though if you're

someone who's struggling with being transformed in your life Paul shows us how to do it he says but be transformed by the renewal of your mind so how are we transformed how do our lives change the renewal of our mind our mind's being renewed so let's talk about what this means like even deeper and what Paul's kind of saying here something I think about when I hear this verse all the time this is the the biggest piece of advice I've always given someone struggling with sin um specifically lust to be honest lust is the probably

the most applicable example of this Every Act that you voluntarily do every action that you willfully do like if I went and I threw my phone at the camera right now I had to think about that first in order for me to throw my phone at the camera I had to think about doing it every every action was a thought before you did it so if we try to change our actions without first changing our thoughts it will not happen it it will never happen lust is a perfect example of this if you want to

stop committing physical sexual sin but you are still allowing yourself to have lustful thoughts thoughts your actions will not change they will not change if you are wanting to physically be free from lust but not mentally or emotionally not in your mind or your heart but only with your hands with your actions it's not going to happen in order for your actions to change your mind has to change first and anger is a good example of this too like if you want to stop being angry and acting angry and saying things angrily how can you

do this unless you stop allowing yourself to have anger thoughts In the Heat of moment how how can you stop being an angry person unless you stop thinking like an angry person you know what I mean it's the same with unforgiveness and and bitterness how can you stop being a bitter person if you if you don't stop thinking like a bitter person and holding unforgiveness in your heart I mean like pessimism is a perfect example of this how can you stop being a negative person if you keep allowing yourself to have negative thoughts all the

time that that that doesn't make sense so our thoughts must change so that our actions can change because everything comes down to the change of mind I mean I even think about repentance the Greek word for repentance in the original writings of the Bible was metanoia and metanoia literally means to have like a change of mind or a change of inner man so it's interesting that Paul or not Paul sorry John the Baptist says in Matthew 3:8 bear fruit in keeping with repentance so bear fruit in keeping with your change of mind and if I

remember correctly in context the change of mind that John the Baptist would have been talking about here was the change of mind from unbelief to belief in Jesus and he's saying bear fruit in keeping with that in that repentance and that change of mind to belief but it's the same thought like as Christians if we've repented of our sins if we've changed our mind about the way we view our sins if we've truly done that our actions will change let's go back to lust if you've changed your mind about lust being a normal thing because

I tell you what before I came to the faith sexual sin I didn't think it was wrong I genuinely had no clue like um part of me deep down felt like it was but I thought it was normal I thought I was doing a normal bodily thing a normal cultural thing but in order for me to get free from lust my mind had to change I had to view lust as a sin not not a habit not a not a good thing like I had to change my mind about it so if we're truly repenting

of our sins if we're truly changing our minds and our minds are truly constantly being renewed by the Holy Spirit our actions will show it so I think about this why why should we be formed by the renewal of our mind like why why why is Paul saying to do this he answers us at the end of this verse he says that by beating beating oh my gosh I typed my notes wrong beating that by testing you may discern what is the will of God what is good and acceptable and perfect so we should be

transformed by the renewal of our minds so that by testing we can discern the will of God we we do this so we can discern what God's will is and what's good and in order to be able to do this though we must be transformed by the renewal of our mind if we want to be able to discern God's will we got to be transformed by the renewal of our mind he's saying be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you can by testing discern the will of God isn't that so interesting and

I I'll personally admit to you guys that when my life isn't being transformed when you know I'm feeding my flesh too much I haven't been in my word I haven't been in prayer I tell you what it becomes a lot harder for me to discern God's will because sin distorts things so when you're walking in your flesh it becomes harder to tell what is good and acceptable and perfect if I'm walking you know if me and my girlfriend have an argument me and my parents have an argument and what is that noise if I have

an argument with someone and you know I I I am willingly saying things to them that are sinfully like angrily like wrong like I'm I'm literally like just saying things to them I shouldn't be saying out of a place of anger I'm feeding my flesh's desire for anger typically in the midst of that argument that sin starts to distort you you start to think well it's fine that I'm yelling at them like this it's fine that I'm talking to them like this it's it's normal it's just my feelings like I'll tell you I'll personally tell

you my relationship right now with my girlfriend that that's happened to me where I I'm so I get so in my flesh sometimes that I'm literally deceived by my flesh and my sinful desires that I don't I don't do what's good and acceptable and perfect I don't do what's God's will like because I'm it's it's been distorted to me by sin so we need to be transformed by the renewal of our minds so that we can discern God's will and I'm not I'm not at all saying that you need to clean up every area of

your life so you'll know what God's will is for you that's that's so far from the truth like God's word guides us to God's will like I'm not at all saying that I'm not giving you like a works-based mindset here what I'm saying is that Paul is telling us that if if we want to get good at testing like Discerning God's Will by testing we need to be transformed by the renewal of our mind first and that's that's just what what what I see in this and I go back to this this quote all the

time that I heard from a um a pastor that I really love um but he was quoting someone else but the quote was um um you are what you think about you are what you contemplate and this doesn't mean like you know if you think about Sin you're now your identity is now sin it means like what you think about tends to be your character because if I'm think about like I said anger anger like just angry things all the time my actions tend to be angry too I tend to be an angry person because

I think like an angry person so you are what you think about so if you want your character to change if you want your habits to change if you want your your actions to change your whatever it is your thoughts have to change first and how can we change our thoughts um except by one what Paul says in 2 Corinthians he says we take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ think about what that means every thought captive you're literally imprisoning your thoughts that's captivity so if you're someone who let's go back to

the two examples you're struggling with lust or anger the second you have a lustful or anger thought like Angry thought take it captive grab it by the neck like you know you get you have a temptation to go do something you got to take that thought captive and imprison it and sometimes the best way you know you can't really you can't really just stop thinking you can't turn your brain off so if I have a tempting thought to go do who knows what in order in order to not cave into that if in in order

to take my thought captive I can't just turn my brain off I can't just stop thinking so sometimes I've learned in my life that I try to take my thoughts captive and I end up just thinking more so what you got to do is sometimes the best way to you know take a thought captive or you know get rid of a thought is to replace it with a new one so think about it like this you're watching this video I want you to picture a yellow school bus okay you watching this would be picturing a

yellow school bus so clearly clearly you're able to control your thoughts so if you have a thought you don't want to have a thought you shouldn't have as a Christian replace it with something else and the best thing to replace it with what else what else other than God's word this is why it's so important to be in your word all the time or maybe have some verses memorized I'm not saying you have to do that but um you have to be able to think about the word the second you think about something else you

think think about anger and it's like you know you think about Ephesians 4:32 like forgive others as Christ has forgiven you like um things like that you you learn to replace a thought instead of trying to run from a thought that's not possible um so yeah I hope this video helped you guys I'm sorry that I uploaded this so late um to be honest I've been struggling with a lot of burnout in my life I'm so burnout I feel like I can't get rest like I have no desire to film videos Instagram Tik Tok podcast

nothing like I have no desire to go to work like you know I'm just I'm just exhausted like and I don't know why so um that's why I've been you know that's why I missed an episode last week and that's why this week's episode is running late um so yeah I don't really know what's going on so if you guys could definitely pray for me of course um I would really appreciate that but um you know I I had no desire to film this video but I know that some of you guys these videos really

help you um I'm sorry that it's so dark the camera might look really bad but and by the way it is so cold like I have no reason to be out here right now but um I know that some of the V some of the videos really help you guys and I really love sharing the word with you guys and talking about it and making these videos for you guys so I'm out here in the cold in complete burnout for no apparent reason other than that you know it's it's it's what I should be doing

as someone who's in the position I'm in you know I want to serve you guys I want to bless you guys with the word um and with what I've been taught by God um through his word and just through basic life experience so um I love you guys I pray this video helps because it was definitely a pain in the butt to get this this is like my second time filming this video um the first time I filmed that I filmed that at 1:30 a.m. and I had work at I had to be up at

6:30 a.m. the next day so if you guys don't think I love you guys bro like here we are but all jokes aside I love you guys um I hope this video helped um God bless you guys I'll see you next Sunday