Monday Teaching Recap

Had a blast yesterday wrapping up SUMMER AT THE MOVIES. We riffed on this summer's Transformers movie to talk about spiritual transformation, looking at Romans 12:2.

Transformation is what we need in those key areas of our life where we have habits, hangups, and shortcomings that are out of alignment with God's purposes.

The key to spiritual transformation is cooperating with the Holy Spirit as he changes our thinking and brings it into alignment with God's will.

We talked about God's will and how the Bible describes three aspects of that:

1. God's SOVEREIGN will, which will always happen.
2. God's REVEALED will, how he wants us to live as described in the Bible, which will not always happen.
3. God's ACTIVE will, which happens when we apply his revealed will to our day to day lives.

According to Romans 12:2 and Titus 3:5, spiritual transformation begins with our thinking, which then determines our behavior.

So, how do we cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the process of spiritual transformation?

We PURSUE transformation by getting to know the Bible (which shapes our thinking) better and by examining our thinking to see where we are conforming to the behavior and customs of the world rather than being transformed by God's will.

We PRAY asking the Holy Spirit to transform us in general and in the toughest areas of our life where we need change the most.

Finally we saw Jesus' own transformation in two ways. In Matthew 17:2 we saw him literally transformed into bright light, which revealed what he is really like. And in the prophecy of Isaiah 53 we saw how he was transformed into a thing of ugliness when he died for us on the Cross.

Jesus was transformed from something beautiful to something broken so we could be transformed from something broken to something beautiful.