4.23.2026 - Lisa Liou
Thursday, April 23, 2026
Romans 12:1-2
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.
Yesterday, we worshiped God in song and looked at the Apostle John’s vision of heavenly worship around the throne, complete with the beauty of a rainbow stone that shone like an emerald and a sea of glass, like crystal. Today, we are back to earth. What does it look like to worship and do God’s will on earth, as we work out that “on earth as it is in heaven” prayer.
Paul tells us in Romans that it looks like offering our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. This might seem complicated and a bit scary. In the Old Testament, sacrifice is a bloody endeavor that requires a living creature to die, with Christ as our once and for all sacrifice this is no longer needed. But in order to align ourselves with Christ in worship, we become living sacrifices. Sometimes we call this dying to ourselves and our fleshly desires.
This kind of sacrifice and worship can only be done by the Spirit of God as an act of freewill. If someone imposes upon us and our bodies in order to control how we act, that is not a living sacrifice. That is slavery. But, God has given us a Spirit of sonship (or being sons and daughters). We have freedom to love him and serve him. So Romans 12:1 is not about church rules that control how we use our bodies. It is about a desire that flows from within us by the Holy Spirit to offer up what we have to God’s service.
Religions try to control what people do with their bodies, what they have to cover up, what they can touch, who they can come into contact with. Life in Christ is not about control, it is about offering. As we offer ourselves, we are being renewed. As we are being renewed, we willingly offer ourselves to be set apart for God and God’s purposes.
A couple days ago we talked about redemption–God redeeming Joseph’s story for good. Today we are talking about another “re” word–renewal. Every time we see that suffix, “r-e” or “re-,” we know that the word has something to do with newness, not in the sense of coming out of nothing but again or going back. To redeem is to buy back. To renew is to be new again.
God makes our minds new again, before they were affected by sin, brokenness, hurt, and patterns of immorality. We get to be transformed away from worldly ways. This, Paul says, is how we are then able to discern and test God’s will.
These verses introduce some additional ideas about God’s will:
1) God’s will is for our minds to be renewed
2) We participate in God’s will and worship by offering our bodies as living sacrifices
3) Aligning to God with our bodies and minds improves our discernment about God’s will, what is godly in the world and what is not
Where in your life do you need your body or mind to be renewed toward purposes that are more aligned to God’s will? Perhaps you are spending lots of time doing something that isn’t all bad, but in excess does the opposite of sharpening your discernment. Or perhaps there is an area of deep sin that is clearly totally out of alignment with God’s plan to renew you.
Let me invite you to fast from any behaviors that are taking too much space. Perhaps you can start with something as small as 10 minutes a day of not scrolling through your phone or watching the same news channel and giving those 10 minutes to something more worshipful.
If the issue is sin, I invite you to confess it first to God and then to someone else who can help keep you accountable to a path of renewal. You can start by praying this prayer of David from Psalm 51:10 when he finally came to repentance, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.