Do you ever feel spiritually stuck, like you're not making any progress? What if the difference between spiritual stagnation and breakthrough isn't more Bible knowledge? but the courage to act on what you already know.
Well, today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindahl delivers a jarring wake-up call. Exposing how believers often mistake emotional inspiration for genuine transformation. In this study, Chuck strips away comfortable Christianity to reveal an uncomfortable truth. God doesn't want your feelings. He wants your body on the altar as a living sacrifice.
Teaching from Romans 12, Chuck titled today's message, A Compelling Commitment. To prepare us for service as God's people. We are given this compelling statement of commitment, and I want you to look at it. I would request that you look at it as if for the first time. The first verse is about consecration.
I'll define it in a moment. The second verse is about Transformation. The first verse is about our bodies. The second verse is about our mind. The first verse looks around, looks around and about us.
The second verse looks within us. And I will say to you that if this is a time in which you are willing to give yourself to these two verses. In a way like you've never done, your life will never be the same. If you're here and you're without Christ, don't try to present your body as a living sacrifice. You'll keep crawling off the altar.
If you're here without Christ, don't think that you can somehow do a mind renewal number on yourself. This is for believers. This is truth for the Christian. Is it ever? And it begins.
With consecration. Let me define that word. Consecration is a radical A radical separation. From a secular worldview, to a godly purpose. and mindset.
It's a radical separation from the secular worldview. to a godly purpose and mindset.
Now, in light of the mercies that God has shown to us and given to us, I plead with you in return, says the apostle. to present your bodies. of living and holy sacrifice. Present your bodies. Please observe it is the body that's being presented.
This is not some Some ethereal internal uh series of thoughts. This is literally The parts of the body that would be drawn to the secular lifestyle. The secular world appeals to the body. I appeal to you, says the Apostle. that you Based on the mercies of God, that you make a sacrifice of your body.
Let's start with our eyes and our ears. If we're going to crawl up on an altar and give God our lives as living sacrifices, let's take a look at what we look at. Let's examine what we listen to. Let's go to our tongues and our vocal cords. There's nothing evil about either.
Lips, tongue, and vocal cords are the reason many a life is blessed. But lips and tongue and vocal cords can become the avenue or the instruments of gossip and slander and exaggeration and lies and coarse words. How about our hands and feet? What we touch Paul is answering that, saying, the body is the eye gate, the ear gate. The voice.
It's the use of the hands and the and the muscles and the and the movement. of life. But it all begins in the mind, doesn't it? No decision is made by the hands. It begins in the mind.
So we turn from Consecration, this radical Break with the secular worldview. We now turn to transformation. Let me define that. Transformation is a deliberate. determination to think biblically and act accordingly.
Transformation is A deliberate Determination to think biblically and to act accordingly. You know what I love about the Stonebriar congregation? Let me just give you a little sidebar here. At our office, when we change the subject, we go ding.
So for a moment, ding, we're gonna sidebar right here. I love it that you think. I love it that you don't tolerate entertainment. That you're not here to be amused. You don't come to watch a show.
You come because you're serious about stuff like this. I love that about you. I commend you for it. Just as you're serious about how you want to raise your children, you're serious about your worship. Don't ever get silly with worship.
Don't ever get lighthearted. There's a great place for humor, and you know me well enough to know I love the laughter of the Christian life, but there's no place for silliness. There's no silliness in Romans 12, 1 and 2. Present your bodies. Get up on that altar.
Now in order to make that happen Something's got to stop. Verse 2. You got to stop being conformed to the value system of the world. Remember, this is a deliberate determination. to think biblically.
to think. biblically and act accordingly, starts in the mind. Our age, called here the age, Do not be conformed to this age. Ion is the Greek word translated here, unfortunately, world. We could call it the world system.
It is all the stuff that makes up our culture. All the stuff that has gone into the culture where we now find ourselves. The world's culture and the biblical truths are incompatible. Let me name a few subjects. The purpose of life.
Ask a secularist? Ask a devoted believer. You'll get two different answers. The goal and meaning of life. How to determine greatness.
How to respond to evil. or how to handle wrong. or wrongdoing. What about ambition and success? The secularist has one mentality.
Christ offers. The absolute opposite. How about honesty? Financial matters. Sexual matters, the whole realm of personal and private intimacy.
Religion, attitudes. The whole issue related to failure. which God often sees as a stepping stone to growth. The world. works hard to keep us away from any thought of failure.
I mean, that's for losers, no? I think I've learned the most in my life through failures. Not successes. I've grown the most when the bottom has dropped out. Not when I was near the mountain peak.
So have you. It's a difference in mentality. And so I'm to stop being conformed to this age. Stop aping the world system. Stop copying the mannerisms and the mentality and the speech and the responses and the habits of your culture.
Stop doing that. I challenge you to do that just this week coming up. Just try it for a day. Don't use this age as a pattern to shape your life. If you want a little help, I suggest you buy Oz Guinness's book.
titled The Call. The call. In his chapter, excellent chapter. An audience of one, he writes this. It's easy to buck a crowd, not too hard to march to a different drummer, but it's truly difficult.
perhaps impossible to march only to your own drummer. Most of us, whether we're aware of it or not, do things with an eye to the approval of some audience. or other. The question is not whether we have an audience, but Which audience? We have.
Christ-centered heroism does not need to be noticed or publicized. The greatest deeds are done before an audience of one, and that's enough. Those who are seen and sung by an audience of one can afford to be careless about lesser audiences. I love that statement. When you please the audience of one, you couldn't care less about the audience of many.
When asked why he was not stung by a vicious attack from a fellow member of parliament. Winston Churchill replied, If I respected him, I would care about his opinion. But I don't.
So I don't. Truth be told, many of you have wasted many an hour this past week worrying about what somebody else thinks or says. Waste. of time. That means your focus is off.
It means your mind hasn't been transformed. You're more concerned about impressing or pleasing. Or feel-good stuff. Guinness continues: the modern world is light years from the Puritan world. We have moved from the inner-directed I-N-N-E-R, from the inner directed world of the Puritans.
in which calling acted as an inner compass. to the other directed world. of modern society. In which our contemporaries are our real guides, and a roving radar. ranges to pick up their cues.
Not well worded. We see this in teenagers listening to their peers. Women following the beguiling images of womanhood in magazines and design or fashions. Politicians aping polls and slavishly following focus group findings. Get this.
And pastors anxiously following the latest. Profiles of seekers and generations. One large church pastor told me, I'm haunted when I look into the eyes of my congregation and realize they are always only two weeks away from leaving. for another church. God.
Help him. Can you imagine the misery of that man? Concerned about who's leaving. Why? Because he wants to please them.
I'll guarantee you some of them are leaving because they're starving. You're not fed the truth. to live by and when necessary to stand alone with. Ladies and gentlemen, The era in which we live and the ones to come will require that kind of standing alone. You'll get sucked into the vortex.
of our age if you do not perfect that discipline. Teach your children how to do it. how to think for themselves. How to act. correctly.
with courtesy and good manners. graciousness, just like the scriptures teach. And urged them not to be that concerned when the kids called them strange or weird. And I know it's tough. Nobody enjoys that.
When you get older, you kind of get energized by it, but when you're young, you. You don't like it. You know, so help them with it, seriously, help them with it. They don't want to be a freak.
So help them know how to be a young woman of God. before a watching world. It doesn't quite know what to do with you. When you're like that. Teach your girls how to keep boys' hands off of their bodies.
Teach them the value of dignity and privacy. and how not to watch the things that will weaken their moral fiber. Teach them the joys and the benefits of virginity. Teach them that. Model that by what you watch and what you say.
This is a transformed mind we're talking about. This is a different lifestyle. The world doesn't even know. It's missing it. Until it sees it.
And at that point, its mouth drops open in amazement. Just amazement. Our postmodern era has removed the lines between right and wrong and blurred it.
so that it's wrong only if you feel it's wrong. Hey, everything that pleases me, I feel is right. But much of it's wrong. It's not about pleasing me. I don't answer to a God who will ask me, well, how'd you feel about your life?
Did you like it? Did you? Did you feel good? No, as a matter of fact, Lord. And a lot of it was sacrificial.
A lot of it I did because I know you wanted me to do it, but I didn't feel like doing it. But I did it out of obedience. I did it with a good attitude, Lord. Not nearly as much as I should have, but Lord, I learned in my later years it's not about pleasing me. That's what he's about here.
And even if you don't know a soul that's doing this, you'd be the one. You'd be the one. You'd be the parent that does this. How do I do it? By the renewing of your mind.
It's one of those cooperative commands. We discern, listen how it's done. We discern what is happening. Get this, we filter it through what we learning from the scriptures. Which is the standard for life and practice.
We filter what we are witnessing. Through what we have learned from the scriptures, and we see it, we discern it, and then we choose, we make our decisions based on scriptural guidelines. And then we determine to obey whatever it is we're taught from the Word of God, and that results in what? One will. Not yours.
It results in proving the will of God is. good, acceptable, in fact bringing you to maturity. A well-formed Maturity.
Now it's time for an evaluation.
Okay, let me define that. I'm into definitions today, so let me define evaluation as if you didn't know. That's an unguarded appraisal. Of my own spiritual condition. A vulnerable appraisal.
of how I'm doing. And you can answer for yourself. I have no idea how you're doing. I'm so busy working with God on the stuff in my life, the logs in my eyes, that the specks in yours are between you and Him.
So you've got to do your own appraisal. How you doing? Let's go back. to the word of the called the body. My body.
Good question. Am I allowing the culture to dominate? or weaken any area. That's the question. Am I allowing the culture to dominate or weaken any area of my life?
Wherever you find the answer, yes, stop it. Stop doing it. Determine today, put the state down, put a date on it, write it in the margin of your Bible, stop it. Put it in your journal. Either that, or it'll be another feel-good sermon that you'll want somebody else to listen to.
But if you really take this to heart, you'll stop it. You'll stop doing it. You'll stop the gossip. You'll stop the slander. You'll stop the negative habits.
You'll stop the lust. You'll stop it. You'll quit it. You'll go online and find a way to be accountable to another brother or sister, and you won't go there anymore. You'll take steps to stop you from doing.
what you know is weakening and dominating a part of your life.
Now the mind, question. Have I permitted this age to dull or shape my thinking? If I have, here's the question to ask: What am I afraid of? Why have I gotten soft?
Well, I know better than that. Why have I let myself get sore? Why do I let that man put his hands on my body? And we're not married. Why do I permit This thing called living in.
When I know that's not right before God. Why do I do that? What am I afraid of by taking a stand on this? Take the stand. Why do I seek the applause?
Why do I always have to have people liking me? What am I afraid of? What do you care if they like you or not? You're not going to answer for them or they for you. You say, well man, I take this so far, I'll lose my job.
You may. You may. You got a boss that wants you to do wrong. What are you doing, doing wrong? Quit that job.
Confront the wrong. Get out of there. I talked about applause a moment ago.
Some of you will remember this name. Most of you won't have a clue. Screen goddess Marlina Dietrich. Five of us know who Marlena Dietrich was. She was sort of the sex symbol of the late 30s and the 40s and into the early 50s.
Marlena Dietrich even issued recordings of her cabaret ovations. Get this. Two sides have nothing but applause. Good for you. That's a good laugh.
Her biographer tells us that Marlena frequently gathered friends to listen and insisted on playing both sides. to Judy Garland and Noel Coward. That was Rio, she would say. And then solemnly, that was in Cologne. And this was Chicago.
Yeah, I want to go, where do you vomit? Can you imagine being at a home where a guy plays two sides of a CD where everybody's applauding? Get a life. I like it what Guinness says. The Puritans lived as if they swallowed gyroscopes.
We modern Christians live as if we swallowed gallop poles. And do you remember what Martin Luther King Junior said. And they killed him too. In his letter from a Birmingham jail, in those days the church was not merely a thermometer. That recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion, it was a thermostat.
that transformed the moors of society. You got an audience of one. And guess what? If you don't live for him while you're alive, you're still going to face him when you die. He's not going to ask for a recording of the applause.
You're not going to check out how popular were or how many bucks you made. or where you lived or what car you drove, he's going to check out your life. He's going to check out your life. has going to be one exacting moment. When I was in the Marine Corps, one of the enduring memories was what was called The junk on the bunk.
Test.
Now, some of you looking at me like, where in the world was that?
Well. In the core, you put all your stuff on your rack. On this. cot where you've been sleeping. And you lay everything out exactly in order.
And everything's got to be stamped a certain way. It's called a junk-on-the-bunk exam. by all the guys who are going through it. And uh I've thought since then there's going to be a glorious junk of the bunk exam.
Someday. And the stuff that's got our stamp on it, wow. Our Lord, who was able to see through action and look at motive.
Well, you could take it from there. Thank you for listening. This is serious stuff. I have a little fun with you, but I got to tell you, I couldn't be more serious about something. I care about how you raise your kids.
I didn't do it all right. I did a lot of it wrong. By the grace of God, they've made it.
Now they're raising their kids better than we ever raised them. They got their work cut out for them. God help every parent. Every grandparent. Get serious about your walk with Christ.
Come on. Stop playing games.
Well, Dawson Trodman used to say, shape up or ship out. If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, I want to warn you before you trust Him, He's going to do a radical transformation that's going to begin a change in your life like you can't imagine. But there will be rewards, and joys, and relief. In favor? and peace like you've never ever known before.
But you can't hang on to both sides.
So trust him now. Father, thank you for allowing me to live long enough to preach this message. Thank you for the pleasure of... declaring it before those who seem to be so interested, and I'm grateful for these listening ears, open hearts.
Now the bills come to you. As soon as we walk out of this place, as soon as we crank up our cars and make our way to our homes. Show up at work tomorrow. As soon as we rub shoulders with the world that's lost its way, The bills are to you. And we'll find out then if we really heard what was said.
Help us to make some changes that are long overdue. In the mind. With our bodies. First with ourselves and then with those we care very much about.
So we don't wind up being a clod. Make us your fuel. Flame of God. In the name of Jesus. Thereby said, Amen.
According to Romans chapter 12, true transformation begins when we stop conforming to this age's standards. and instead renew our minds through Scripture. It's not about becoming a better Christian, it's about finally becoming an authentic one. This is Insight for Living, Chuck Swindahl titled Today's Message A Compelling Commitment. Whether you're a new student of the Bible or you've been reading God's Word your entire life, Renewing your mind begins by immersing ourselves in the Scriptures.
For that reason, Insight for Living offers several helpful resources. Today I want to draw your attention to Chuck's compelling biography of Abraham, the patriarch of the Jewish faith. and one of the leaders that Paul refers to in his letter to the Romans. We've selected a powerful chapter from Pastor Chuck's book, Abraham One Nomad's Amazing Journey of Faith. It's the chapter that describes how Abraham earned the title Friend of God and cultivated an unshakable relationship with his Creator.
and it adds a richer understanding of our study. We'd be pleased to provide you with this deeply personal chapter about cultivating friendship with God. It'll come as a downloadable PDF so you can read it on your mobile device. And in the chapter titled, Can We Talk, Chuck wrote these words. God, like a good friend, remains interested and available.
ready to hear you express your most private thoughts and ready to offer help for today. Like Abraham, you can maintain your respect for the Almighty while turning to him as a friend. This exclusive offer is available to our current monthly companions and to anyone who signs up today. Monthly companions provide automated monthly donations at whatever amount works for their budget. This is one of the finest ways to support the Ministry of Insight for Living.
By giving every month, your partnership has a multiplying effect. In fact, your support as a monthly companion enables millions of people to access Chuck's teaching across radio, Facebook, YouTube, X, and Instagram. To become a monthly companion right now, go to insight.org/slash monthly companion. What does it mean to renew our minds? I'm Bill Meyer.
Join us when Chutzwindahl explains in our study of Romans chapter 12. Tomorrow on Insight for Living. The preceding message, A Compelling Commitment, was copyrighted in 2007, 2010, and 2025, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2025 by Charles R. Swindahl, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide.
Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.
