This Week’s Recovery Application Challenge
If you have not done so already, please complete TWIRL 014 prior to beginning TWRAC 014.
Transformative Recovery: Outside In/Inside Out
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer 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. Romans 12:1-2 (NIV)
“Be transformed by the renewing of your minds” (Romans 12:2). The word “be” is a passive verb, meaning that it is not something we do but rather something that is done to us when we act sacrificially with our bodies committed to God’s way of recovery. Then, what God does is completely transform our character and our thinking by rearranging the way our brain works, restoring it to what He created in the first place. The promise is of this transformation is that when we live according to our new God-given desires and objectives, both our behavior and what we think about and feel is healthy again. We are better having become well. We then prove in this new life that God’s plan for us is perfect and beautiful. This is how we can know and experience God’s will for us.
The transformation we experience is rooted in this When-Then relationship we have when we commit to surrendering our will and life into the care of the Sympathetic Savior, Jesus Christ. When you think about it, you realize that the key to freedom in most walks of life is submission from childhood on throughout adulthood. When you submit to the will and care of God in your life, then you will experience the transformation into new life. This is internal transformation from the inside out.
When we offer our bodies, meaning our physical strength to God as a living sacrifice, no longer committing our bodies to addictive patterns of behavior; then God completely transforms (metamorphoo) our hearts and our souls by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1-2). Then we can love God with our whole being, and our neighbor as ourselves.
When we commit to change externally from the outside in, changing what we do (Romans 12:1-2a), then God changes us internally from the inside out, changing who we are and what we think (Romans 12:2).
When we delight in the Lord in our action, then God gives us the desires of our heart by changing what we want according to his will and purpose.
Trust in the Lord and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires. Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him, and he will help you. Psalm 37:3-5 (NLT)
When we rejoice, celebrating our recovery in relationship with Christ, offering praise and presenting prayer requests with our mouths, as well as showing considerate acts of service with our physical ability; then God replaces our anxiety with peace to our souls, guarding (covering) our hearts and our minds by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, empowering us to do anything.
Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon. Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you… for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength. Philippians 4:4-9, 11-13 (NLT)
When we commit to doing the will of God, then God changes our intentions and motives, according to His will.
For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him. Philippians 2:13 (NLT)
When we take responsibility for our behavior, repenting of our guilt (godly sorrow), then God mercifully removes our shame (worldly sorrow) and pain (2 Corinthians 7:10).
For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death. 2 Corinthians 7:10 (NLT)
When we seek to know and see Jesus through prayer and a lifestyle committed to his will, then Jesus Christ will turn our sorrow into joy.
I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn over what is going to happen to me, but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will suddenly turn to wonderful joy. It will be like a woman suffering the pains of labor. When her child is born, her anguish gives way to joy because she has brought a new baby into the world. So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again; then you will rejoice, and no one can rob you of that joy. John 16:20-22 (NLT)
When we are committed to action according to the will of God, as his will takes over in us converting our intentions into doing what he intends we do, then we can ask him for anything and he promises to grant our requests.
“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. John 15:5, 7 (NKJV)
When we commit to behaving according to the will of God, imitating the model of recovery set for us by the life of His Son Jesus, then we have joy overflowing. When we follow Jesus Christ in relationship, then we are called Friends of God.
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.” John 15:9-16 (NKJV)
“That is why the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or, they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines in it.” —C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
These promises from the Bible reveal a when-then relationship. When we are committed to turning away from the things of our addictive flesh—outside-in change, then God is faithful to transforming us from the inside out. The original Greek translation for the word ‘transform’ is metamorphoo, meaning to metamorph from one thing into another; like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly. As God transforms our character into a new person by changing how we think, it is like starting a new life. We not only do what is healthy, mature, responsible, and godly, we want to willfully do that which pleases God. Whenever we do what pleases God it is always to our benefit, never to our detriment. That doesn’t mean we never have problems again. It means that we have his powerful support to manage and resolve problems and conflicts. When we commit our will to do the will of God, doing recovery God’s way, we do much better.
It is entirely possible with God’s help that when we pray with our mouths, and read the Bible, God’s written word, with our eyes, that our minds will be changed. We read in Romans 12:2 that the perfect will of God for you and for me is realized as we come to trust him completely and commit to our recovery his way. This is God’s way of challenging us to prove that his will for us is ideal. What an opportunity we have to experience all that God has and wants for us. Our lives make sense again as we commit to the sensible will of God and experience what God has for us in every facet of our livelihood.
- What have you learned about the meaning of Romans 12:1-2 as it pertains to living out recovery God’s way?
- What does it mean to you personally to be transformed by the renewing of your mind?
- What does it mean to you personally that your relationship with God, and the quality of this relationship, is conditional according to the Bible?
- How do you feel about your relationship with God (Jesus Christ) being conditional?
- Does a conditional relationship with God mean that He loves you any less?
- What are you able, willing, and ready to do concerning your role in this conditional relationship?
- What are you less able, willing, and ready to do in this conditional relationship?
- How would you say your life needs to be transformed into something new?
- What would you like your life look to like transformed from what it has been into something new?
- What can you conclude that you need to do for a transformed life?
- What can you conclude God will do to transform your life if let go and let Him do?
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