Romans | Week 6 | Hunter Perry | Echoes Church

makes you better? I'm gonna show you a picture of the two girls that in my life make me better. The one on the left is my wife, Carly.

We've been married going on four years and it's been the best time. She's my best friend as you see. We're at the beach which is our favorite place to go and eat our favorite food which is tacos. And then on the right side is our newborn daughter, Lainie Mae Perry, who is seven weeks old this week. Yes.

We love her. She's incredible and she came out a modest ten pounds twenty three inches. So if you see my wife today, give her a pat on the back and tell her good job because that is it's crazy. She's a unit. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that but it's okay. They make me better. There's

been really nothing in my life that has completely changed how I think and how I live like becoming a girl dad. I don't know if there's any girl dads in the room. We should celebrate and love our girl dads because they're the best. But

it's completely rewired everything in my brain. Like, I think for the most part, most of my life, could just live it almost like maybe this is because I do this for me, this is better for me, I'm kind of interested in this. Now I'm just like, how do I serve my girls?

How do I take care of them? I think about my money differently. I think about my physical health differently. I think about my career differently. I think about everything differently. I think it's because they have become so central to my heart and to my mind. Like almost all times, I'm thinking about them,

and I think what I've learned through this whole process of becoming a dad for the last seven weeks is that when something becomes so central to your mind, it actually starts to change how you live.

In Romans chapter 12 today, that's exactly what we're gonna see, and as much as becoming a dad is impactful on your life, what Paul's argument is is that the gospel

should actually be more impactful on your life and actually change how you live in an even more better way. His argument today is that the gospel should reorient everything in your life around

itself. So if you have your Bible, open up to Romans chapter 12, we're gonna read verses one and two. Paul is gonna unpack this in two different ways. The title of my message today, if you're taking notes, is There's a Better

Way. There's a better way to live and a better way to think. So we're gonna begin reading in verse one. And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because all he has done for you. Let them be a living and a holy sacrifice, the kind he will find acceptable.

This is truly the way to worship him. Don't copy the behaviors and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you'll learn to know God's will for you, which is good, pleasing,

and perfect. I know there's more verses in this chapter, but I believe if you get these two, the rest are gonna make a lot of sense. The author of Romans is the Apostle Paul, and he begins Romans 12 with two words, and so. In your translation, it might say therefore.

And whenever you see the word therefore, you need to ask yourself a question, well, what is it therefore?

Paul has been saying since chapter one all the way to the end of chapter 11, pretty much one thing in a lot of different ways. He's been saying, look at what God's done for you, here's where you were, and now look at what God has done.

And so what has God done for you? Let me remind you, he saved you, he's broken the power of sin over your life, he gave you his spirit, he's brought you into the family of God, and he made you a promise, he'll be faithful to you even when you're not faithful to him always, which is pretty good news if you're a Christian.

And Paul has been making building this undeniable argument that God has moved to you. Romans 12 is Paul's response, what are you gonna do about that? But before we even unpack it, there's a problem in these two verses.

There's an underlying tension that Paul begins to address that if we don't start there, we're gonna miss everything else. If we look back at verse one, we're gonna look at how it ends, it says, this is truly the way to worship. Then if you look at the beginning of verse two,

it says don't copy the behaviors and customs of this world. Paul is saying, hey here's all the evidence you need to live a godly life, here's what all God's done for you, here's who you were, now live this way. Then he said, but there's a problem. You live in the world, and a lot of the world still lives in you.

You can't have both. You can't have the best of both worlds. This is not Hannah Montana, okay? This is real life. You cannot serve the world and also serve under the lordship of Jesus Christ. You cannot have both. But as I was reading this, was like, do we even know what the behaviors and customs of this world even are?

Like I know it says that, but like if we're gonna live a new way, how do we even know what this way is? And I think to illustrate it well, I wanted to use this story, I heard it a long time ago. It's a story of two fish who are taking an evening swim, okay, just humor me.

One fish looks at the other fish and he's like, Man, the water's nice today, don't you think? The other fish is like, Bro, what's water? You didn't catch it.

Or maybe you did.

It's silly, but it can also be a little terrifying if we're not careful. The first fish fully understands the place that he's in. He's like, man, I love this water. This is my favorite water. I love living here. And then the other fish is like, bro, you're crazy. What are you even what is this water thing that you're talking about? And the reason I bring this up, church, is because I think if we're not careful, we're gonna act a lot like fish too,

where we are in the world, but we have no concept of what it's actually doing around us. We have no concept of what it shaped us into being and like if this is even a good place to even live in.

And what I want you to know is without your permission and without your consent, the world has been discipling you from the day you were born. Nowadays it's through your phone, through your feed, through your entertainment,

it's through the things you watch, it's through anything that you consume, it's feeding you to seek pleasure, get money and be whoever you wanna be. So the question today isn't if you're being discipled, the question is who or what's discipling you? Paul says don't let it be the world, He specifically uses a word copy.

He says don't copy the world. In Greek that word actually means an outward expression that does not reflect what's really inside, a masquerade or an act.

What's really inside? When you were born, God put innate worth and value on your life. I don't know if whoever needs to hear this, but you are valuable in the eyes of the Lord.

What the world wants to do is take that worth and value that you were born with and take it away from you and make you feel like you have to earn it. What is the world trying to get you to copy and become? Trying to get you to be a performer.

The world wrote Romans one through 12, this is how it would sound, Your value is earned, so perform. Your identity is achieved, so achieve more. Your acceptance is conditional, so prove yourself. The message of the world is pretty simple, become enough and maybe someday you'll finally be enough,

and that's why you're exhausted because you got the promotion, you got what you were wanting, but now you just can't stop thinking about what's next. You got the relationship that you prayed for, but now you just can't stop thinking about losing it.

And you finally hit your goal, but now you feel like the finish line has moved. And if we're not careful, we'll let this thinking not just seep into how we think about our life, but also how we think about God. We will start to think about God and just assume that God's just disappointed in us

and that everything we do is just to get on God's good side. Like I'll obey just so that he's not mad at me or I'll sing on Sundays not just because the worship team's good but because I just want to make sure that God knows that I love him or I need to get my act together or God won't bless me.

But my friends, that's not the gospel and that's not Romans, that's a faith that's motivated by guilt and performance. Friends, what I'm coming here to tell you today is there's a better way. Here's what Paul's trying to get you to tell you and I want to tell you this today and I want you to really get it,

before God ever asks anything of you, he gave everything to you.

Jesus already lived the perfect life, he already paid for your sin, so you don't have to do that, he made you a son and daughter so you don't need to wonder where you belong, and he's already given you your spirit, his spirit, so you don't need to wonder where am I supposed to go? All of those things, then Paul says, therefore

offer him your life. We don't have to live this life out of guilt, we get to live it out of grace. I think sometimes we misunderstand that, but my friends, God's grace is not the reward for surrender. God's grace is the reason for surrender. That's the gospel. Jesus' performance already accomplished everything,

and you can't even get close to that. It's God's grace that makes us respond in this way. So let's look back at our passage with that in mind. Verse one, and so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice,

the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don't copy the behaviors and customs of this world. Paul's first command to us is offer your bodies as a living sacrifice and what think I is funny is because I think it was written today, pastors would write, offer your heart

or offer your singing or offer your prayer. It's like why the heck does Paul say offer your body?

Because your body is a billboard of what you believe. Essentially, your body is where your worship becomes visible and what's in your head plays out into your life. You understand this because you drive past billboards every day,

and a billboard is a place where someone gets you to read what they want you to read and most of them in Arizona say call Raffy. I don't know why, but most of them say that. But what I want you to know is your life operates the same way.

Your life, your body from head to toe is a billboard to everyone else of who you are and what you believe because you take your body everywhere you go, this whole sucker follows you everywhere, you can't get rid of it.

He's, and Paul's not saying it's just like your actions, he's also talking about every single part of you, your mind, your words, your desires, your habits, everything because Jesus never said he wanted a portion of your life, He says he wanted all of it. The question is, for you today, when people look at your life,

do they just see another copy of this world or do they see a bodily reflection of Jesus?

For you, if you want to know, like, I want to be that bodily reflection of Jesus, and here's the litmus test. Here's something I wanted to make it very practical for you. That's what pastors do. We make things practical so that you can actually do them, you know? That was a joke. It didn't land. It's okay.

So here's five things, how to give your body to God. The first one is your affection because what usually gets your first gets your best. So in the morning when you wake up, what do you do first? For most of us, it's probably reach for our phones. So before you open Instagram, before you check your notifications,

what if every morning you just spent five minutes reminding yourself that you belong to God? Just five minutes. Your affection. Second, your attention. What are you looking at? What do you spend your most time thinking about?

Because here's the thing, you can't spend all week being formed by the world and then hope God undoes it on Sunday. The third is your words because I believe the way that you talk actually reveals more about who's Lord in your life than anything else. This is the way you talk to your spouse,

when the person that you don't like is in the room, when that person cuts you off in traffic. The words you say reveal who you really are. The fourth is your actions because the goal isn't to act like a Christian because some Christians be crazy.

The goal is to act like Christ, to become like Christ. So God gets your work ethic when your boss doesn't see your work and God gets your honesty when everyone else thinks you're telling the truth but you're actually lying.

And he gets your generosity when you could keep it for yourself but you wanted to give it to other people. The last is your direction. I don't think sometimes we always understand that every single decision we make is pointing us in a certain direction that we're going, even the hard parts in our life.

And so when life gets hard, where do you go? Is it alcohol, isolation, another person's approval? Because where you run is where you end up. And Paul is saying, I want you to run to God.

And what I would love about Christianity is as soon as you say yes to Jesus, all five of these things are just like lockstep. They're just buttoned up and you're like, you're good. But if you've been a Christian for five seconds, you know that's not true.

I believe following Jesus this is a little silly, but I believe following Jesus is a lot like putting on sunscreen. And I know what putting on sunscreen is like if you can tell because I'm basically translucent. I've been putting on sunscreen my entire life, but human read for a moment. If I put on sunscreen yesterday,

does that protect me from the sun today? No. No. Why? Because I didn't put it on today. In the same way as with your faith, yesterday's surrender is not enough for today's temptation. What you do yesterday, that's great for yesterday, but you woke up this morning and so did the devil.

Yesterday's temptation is not enough for today. This is something that we have to do every single day. So let me ask you, how can you leverage your life so that all of your daily decisions lead you closer to Jesus and not farther from him? Paul continues and he says two words

that genuinely make zero sense together. He says living sacrifice.

Living means alive and sacrifice means dead. They make no sense together so what is Paul trying to say? In the Old Testament sacrifices died one time. So for example, they would bring a spotless lamb and they would put it on the altar of fire and a priest would sacrifice it and the whole offering would be consumed by fire,

But Paul says because of Jesus' ultimate sacrifice, because he's our ultimate high priest and our ultimate offering, we don't have to do that anymore. No more sacrifices like that, but he says there's a better way. Now you're the sacrifice,

And I'm like, that's the better way? Like, there's not like another better way? Like, no, yeah, you're the sacrifice. You're the living sacrifice. Which means that you don't get sacrificed once. You don't crawl on the altar once. You have to wake up every morning and choose to crawl back on the altar every day.

So tomorrow morning, you're gonna have to climb back on the altar. Tuesday, you're gonna have to climb back on the altar. Wednesday, you're gonna have to climb back on the altar. Which doesn't sound very fun and that's just not how sacrifice is.

Sacrifice is not a comfortable word because the word sacrifice implies something has to die. But Paul says we're living sacrifice. But if something has to die, what dies in this equation? I think this is the part of the message that kinda comes right into your living room.

What has to die is the areas of your life that you're trying to control that only God can. It's gonna be things like you you need to have everything in order. You need to control the outcome. You need to always be right. You need to protect your image. What do you need? Because that's probably it.

But why do we even want to control our lives so much in the first place? Well, it's because you live in a world with behaviors and customs that have trained you since the moment you were born to spend your entire life doing the opposite. It says protect yourself.

Don't let anybody take anything from you. You've earned all this. Like, control everything. Don't let anybody into your circle. But here's the irony in that, friends. The thing that you so desperately are trying to control is actually the thing that's controlling you. Because if you stop and think about it for a moment,

you're always thinking about it, worrying about it, replaying it, practicing it, protecting it and trying to manipulate it. And so if you're doing all of that, who's really in control? Jesus says, just let it go.

You know maybe the thing that's causing you the most pain in your life isn't actually the situation that you're in. It's thinking that you can control the situation that you're in which you absolutely and definitely cannot.

Maybe it's just the battle for control, not even what you're actually going through. But that's why surrender in this way is so difficult because surrender, you have to admit that my life's better in God's hands than it is in mine.

It requires us to trust him with the very things that we've worked so hard on keeping to ourselves. That's why I believe it's actually really easy for us to climb onto the altar. It's just really hard for us to stay there

because we don't like when God starts to burn things in our life that we're like, I don't want you to take that. Like, yeah, you can have my worship, but you can't have my wallet. You can have my this, but you can't have my that. Here's the danger with that, friends. Whatever you keep from the altar will keep you from God.

What I'm not trying to convince you of is following Jesus is just a life of having to put things on the altar and there's nothing outside of that. What I'm trying to convince you of and what Paul just convinced you of for 11 chapters if you go back and read it, look at what all God's done for you. And not only that, when you put your life on the altar,

God has something for you. When you put your life on the altar, there is unreal amounts of possibilities for your life, unprecedented possibilities. There's freedom that you've never experienced,

there's peace that you've never experienced before, there's a love like you've never experienced it before, but it's all on the other side of saying, God, I want you to have it. It's on the other side of you letting go.

God's not asking you to surrender because he wants something from you, God owns everything guys. It's not that he needs more, God wants you to surrender because he knows what's stealing your life from you. So what is that one thing that you just can't put on the altar? Why

do you so badly wanna keep it so close to your chest? Whatever your answer is, I believe it's right there in that moment, the thing that's coming to your mind right now that's exactly where Jesus is inviting you in this moment because Jesus was never meant to be just like a casual addition to your life,

he's meant to be everything. And friends, I wish I could tell you that following Jesus would cost you nothing, one, because we'd have more people following Jesus, but two, I'd be a liar. I can't tell you that. The reason that following Jesus costs you something is because following Jesus is worth something.

King David said it like this in second Samuel 2four 24, he was a champion of Israel king, he said this, I will not present burnt offerings to the Lord, my God that have cost me nothing. Essentially I believe King David is saying this, if your worship costs you nothing, it's worth nothing.

In fact I'll go a step farther, if your worship costs you nothing, it's not worship. Because all throughout scripture worship required sacrifice and surrender.

Whenever they would bring something to the altar it was something of value, it was something they depended on and they had to say, God, this is my value, this is my dependence and now this is my trust, I need you to take it. Worship's always been about surrender, it's not about singing on Sundays.

Even though it's a genre of music, of worship music, that is not what worship is friends. I think the devil's best lie that he's tricked you into believing is that coming here on Sunday and worshiping is your worship. Worship is giving him your life,

worship isn't like Jesus let me find a place to add you to my calendar where it's convenient, Jesus is like I am the calendar.

If you follow Jesus something else has to stop leading, it's in the name, follow Jesus. You're following something else right now, you gotta let it go and follow him.

But here's the problem, you can hear everything that I just said and still leave here thinking like, okay, I guess I just gotta surrender this, gotta give God more, gotta stop controlling everything, and you'll miss the point because Paul doesn't end there, he keeps going in verse two. He says this, don't copy the behaviors and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think,

and only then will you know what God's will is for you. I love that Paul doesn't just say that God forgives you, he says that God transforms you Because if we're honest here today, I think a lot of us have accepted God's forgiveness, but we really struggle to believe in God's transformation.

I know there's people sitting here in this room today who believe that God can take away your guilt, but you're not convinced that he can change who you are? Because maybe you've blown up your finances or you've gambled away your trust

or you've cheated on someone or you've been cheated on or you've said things to your spouse or your kids that you just can't take back. And maybe you're sitting here thinking, Hunter, if if you knew my story, you would never say, God can make me a new person.

But I think the beauty of Romans 12 is Paul wasn't writing this letter to a group of people that arrived, he's writing this to a group of people who are completely dependent on the mercy of God.

This was written to people like you and me who think they have it all together, who act like they have it all together but completely don't and really need him. Which is why I need you to know you don't have to hide your past because God doesn't just forgive your past, he gives you a new future.

Paul doesn't say become a new person on your own, he says let God do it. Could you imagine your marriage if you let God change you? Or could you imagine the person that your kids would experience if you let God change you? Or the coworkers when you're at work, how would they receive you if you let God change you?

Well, how does he change you? By changing the way you think. Why does he start with your thinking? Because God knows that every decision you make begins with something you think. Think about it, every habit you had started as a thought,

like most guys in here are like, hey, maybe I should play golf, and then you get out there and like, maybe not. Every fear started as a belief, every addiction started as you just trying to find something that you needed, and every act of obedience started with you trusting God. Everything starts with your mind,

which tells me that your life is headed in the direction of your strongest thoughts. What's the strongest thought in your mind? And do you like that thought? Because that's where you're headed. But have you ever wondered where your thoughts come from?

Because I don't think anybody wakes up in the morning and he's like, You know what I want to do today? I want to tell myself that I'm not good enough. Like no one wakes up thinking that unless you're absolutely crazy.

No one thinks that. But somewhere along the way, someone spoke something over you or something happened to you and you believed a lie,

And over time that lie became the lens through which you look everything else through and maybe it came from your parents or maybe it came from your relationship or your own failure, but something happened where you started to believe the lie and the problem with lies is the longer you believe the lie, you start to think that it's the truth.

That's why it's dangerous. But to go any farther, a lie is not content to stay a thought. A lie has to move into your life and it'll start to shape what you think about God and believe about yourself.

And I'm sure you've felt it, but have you ever been thinking in your mind and you just feel like there's a battle going on in there? It's because there actually is, because we do have a real enemy that knows if this is the place of transformation, that's where I'm going, I don't want you to transform,

I don't want God to do his work, so if he can get in there and distort how you think, he'll distort how you live, But the good news is, is that God doesn't just tell you, hey, you need to think differently, he gives you all of the tools you need

to do it. In two Corinthians ten:three-five he says this, for though we live in the world, this is Paul, again, another letter, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish arguments

or strongholds. We demolish arguments in every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Do you hear the language in that whole passage? It's like war language. Like, hey, we're gonna do this thing. You have an enemy, I'm gonna give you the weapons, we're gonna take this thing captive and you're gonna make it obedient to Christ which tells me all of your thoughts

need to be run through a filter. Another way to say it is not every thought deserves a seat at your table. Just because you think it doesn't mean it's true and just because you feel it doesn't mean you have to believe it.

So what do you do? Before you believe a thought or you believe a feeling, just bring it to Jesus and say, hey, this is true. Is this what you say about me?

And what I'm not saying is that the goal is never to have negative thoughts because you're gonna have negative thoughts. The goal is to stop letting every thought become a controlling thought. How do you do this? Let's get really practical. How do I heal my mind and stop the lies? The first, find the lie.

What's not true about you that you've been speaking and believing over yourself? Find the lie. Second, speak the truth. What does God say about this? And speak that truth over yourself. And third, write it down. Because when you write it down, you actually give God's truth, a physical space in this world to live

and put it in a place where you can see it. And the reason I give you these three things is because this is these three things is actually what helped me in probably the deepest and darkest moment of ministry that I've ever had in my life.

A few years ago, I almost quit doing ministry altogether. I I was preaching on a stage like this to a young adult ministry that I was leading.

And as I was preaching, I just felt like every word I said, I just got less and less confident because I just hated everything that I was saying. I didn't felt like my points didn't land. I felt like my illustrations were bad. Felt I like my jokes weren't hitting, but that was kinda normal. But

every word I said, was just like, this is this is the worst thing I've ever done. And I ended my sermon, and I walked off stage. And I walked to the back of the room, and I did something I've never done before. I had I had a panic attack,

and I found myself falling onto the floor just weeping in a puddle of tears just thinking like, god, like, did you really call me to this? Like, do they really want me to be their pastor? That was horrible. And the place I got myself wasn't just about my sermon. It's literally about me.

I was like, god, you didn't call me for anything significant. Like, who who I? Like, you made a mistake that I'm not who you think I am. And I think that's the danger, friends, is the lies. What they'll do to you is they'll take a moment of disappointment, and they'll make it a declaration over your life.

And I sat there, and I days went by, and I just couldn't get it past my head that God made a mistake, and that wasn't enough. But then I don't remember exactly when it was. I just remember God met me in a moment, and he said, yeah. Until you're not enough, and that's the point. You need me.

And I just remember sitting there thinking like, but God, I I don't wanna need you. I want you to give me confidence in myself that I can do it, that in my power and in my gifts and in my personality that I can do it. But that's not how God works, friends.

That's what I wanted to keep for myself. And he's like, I need you to put that on the altar. I need you to sacrifice that because I've got something better for you. I've got freedom on the other side this. And friends, I'll tell you today, that's something I still battle with. I actually I tried to follow my own teaching.

Something I wrote down. I don't always use it. But in moments where I need it, I pull this out. This is a wallpaper I made. Yeah. That's why I wrote it down. It's four things as God chose God chose you. God gives you more grace than you give yourself. You'll never control what people think, so stop trying.

And if God called you, he'll sustain you. So today, I'm wondering what lie do you believe so deeply that if you just preached God's word over your life, it would change. For me, I thought I would be tapped out of ministry, but God came and he met me in that moment.

Maybe for you, you just feel like you're crippled with anxiety and there's no cure, or you've struggled with infidelity and there's no way out, or that you'll never change, or your too far gone, or you're never enough. But church, I I need you to know

that you don't have the authority to define the person that Jesus died to redeem. Only the creator gets to name his creation, and only the savior the only shepherd gets to call his sheep, and the savior gets to tell you who you are. So if Jesus says you're a new creation, then shame doesn't have the final word.

If Jesus says you're chosen, then your insecurity doesn't get to have the final word. If Jesus says there's no condemnation, then your past doesn't get the final word. If Jesus says my grace is sufficient for you, your weakness doesn't get the final word. Friends, only God gets the final word over your life.

The world has been trying to craft you and mold you into someone that you were never created to be, but Jesus comes and says, hey, I'm gonna offer you something completely different. I want you to lay your life down, and I want you to let me transform you. If you trust me with your life, you'll know that I'm enough.

So before you go today, I'm gonna ask you two questions. The first one is this. What is one thing you need to put on the altar? What's the thin thing that you've been trying to control that God's just asking you to let go? The second is this. What's one lie that you need to stop believing?

And I I want you to speak God's truth to it, and I want you to write it down. Because maybe, just maybe, the person that you have trying to be creating yourself into be is the exact person that God's trying to stop you to become.

Because Jesus doesn't want to make you a better version of yourself. He wants to make you new. There's a better way, friends. Will you let him make you new today? Would you pray with me?

God, thank you so much for this moment. I ask that you would invade the hearts and minds of the people in this room to know that, God, when we put our lives on the altar, you don't just waste it. God, you use all of it, and you use all of it for our good. So, God, I ask that you just invade and you that you would bring to mind the things that can be put on the altar and the lies that are running wild in our minds that we can speak the truth to.

God, be with us. Be with your people. God, love you. Amen.