Transformation is not merely about changing our behaviors; it's about a profound shift in our hearts and minds, starting with walking in the spirit. In today's conversation, we dive into why mere religious devotion often falls short, leaving many feeling unchanged despite their commitment. By examining biblical insights, we challenge the notion that appearances can substitute for true substance, as we consider the transformative power of honesty and self-reflection. Join us as we unpack how embracing truth leads to authentic change, and why it’s essential to let go of superficial measures of faith in favor of a heart truly aligned with divine purpose. At the heart of this discussion is a compelling exploration of the transformative power of a mind-set that is described by what would dwells on. The episode engages listeners with the fundamental question: why is personal transformation crucial in our spiritual journey? The hosts argue that many people become entrenched in religious practices without experiencing the deep, internal change that a spiritual mind can provide. They highlight that while church involvement can provide a sense of community, it lacks the genuine heart change that requires a radical reorientation of the mind. Isaiah critiques empty worship and Paul’s teaching warns of the danger of a faith that lacks substance and the pitfalls of a superficial religious life. The discussion encourages listeners to reflect on their motivations for faith—are they driven by a desire for authenticity and connection with God, or are they simply maintaining appearances? The hosts use a poignant metaphor of a child imitating adulthood to illustrate how many practice a form of religion without grasping its essence. This analogy serves as a wake-up call for listeners to examine their spiritual lives closely. The episode ultimately encourages a shift from a focus on outward appearances to an inward transformation, urging individuals to bring every thought captive, reshape them before practicing any new behaviors in alignment with truth. By embracing this transformative journey, we can escape the traps of a carnal mindset and cultivate a life marked by spiritual richness and authenticity.

Takeaways:

1. Transformation is fundamentally about internal change rather than mere external appearances, emphasizing the importance of walking in the spirit.
2. Many people engage in religious activities without experiencing true transformation, leading to a disconnect between belief and behavior.
3. Pure and undefiled religion involves active service to others, reflecting a heart changed by God's spirit rather than mere ritualistic practices.
4. True transformation requires honesty in recognizing our own hearts and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths about ourselves.
5. The difference between a carnal mind and a spiritual mind is crucial, as the former is preoccupied with appearances while the latter seeks deeper truths.
6. Transformation occurs when our thoughts are anchored in spiritual realities rather than the transient nature of external appearances.

Well, good day to you and welcome to our study on transformation, the pathway.

Of course, we're emphasizing the real key, the first step that we're laying the foundation here for transformation, and that's walking in the spirit.

We're asking questions like why transformation?

Why not just being devoted and committed to some religion?

Why is it that transformation is that valuable?

Why is it that so many people can give their lives to some church activity, be very involved and dedicated to their church, and yet feel unchanged and really not go through any change?

There are many people that walk through a church building, go through the doors week after week, be very dedicated and know all the right things to say.

And in the Bible studies have all the right answers, at least as it's perceived by that denomination.

And yet their hearts remain unchanged.

Isaiah spoke of this long before us, and he said, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

Isaiah 29, verse 13.

Jesus would later echo this same thing, teaching that worship that is rooted in human rules is in vain.

Matthew 15, 8, 9.

So what we're talking about here is not the being religious.

It's not religion as we define it today, as just accepting some doctrinal viewpoint or some denominational or sect, joining that sect, and being involved in all the activities that are offered in that sect.

But we're really talking about pure and undefiled religion.

James commends this in James 1:27 and identifies it when he says pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

What is being described here is not giving into a church treasury who would then care for orphans and widows, but rather it involves the personal commitment and investment of ourselves and in the lives of others.

It requires the necessary time that would be just by nature involved in investing oneself in the care of other people.

This is service such as Jesus teaches by his example when he bows before each of his disciples to wash their feet.

Now, he could have expected that to be done by some servant.

Perhaps they might have thought the same thing.

That's why they didn't get up to wash anyone else's feet.

I'm not sure why they didn't.

It is a menial task and perhaps they were just waiting to see what is going to happen.

I guess he could have had anyone else do it.

We would today think in terms of hiring it done.

But in either case, whether it's something that we have provided as a service through a church or through someone else.

The fact of the matter is Jesus illustrates what service is.

He illustrates humble service, and that is being involved himself in performing and serving the needs of others.

And so he teaches us by this wonderful example that pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father, is to visit fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

That's the natural fruit of a spirit changed life.

The religion that I'm warning against today is a man made religion.

Religion that is built upon outward rituals and formalities and human traditions.

It is in fact the institutional systems that have a form of godliness, but have denied the power to transform their lives.

Paul adds his own warning in 2 Timothy 3:15 when he describes the people of his day as having a form of godliness but denying its power.

In other words, they've maintained the shell of religion, but they've missed its substance.

They go through the motions of perhaps a church service or singing the songs or saying the prayers or partaking of the Lord's Supper or something of that.

Some of those forms.

And yet all of that, in all of that, they still remain unchanged.

Why?

Because the Spirit's power is absent from their lives.

Please understand, when I talk about the Spirit's power, I'm not talking about some miraculous display of ritual in a church service.

I'm talking about the power of God that can transform our inner being, our person, and that is the role of the Spirit.

This is the common outcome of unspiritual persons whose lives have been shaped by carnally minded people.

And that includes their pastor.

It's interesting when people talk about someone being their pastor.

I don't.

Anyway, that gets me off the subject.

But my point simply is that the Spirit can shape our thinking only as we think spiritually, only as we formulate our minds after spiritual things, heavenly things, not carnal things, not the things that are on the horizontal plane of living day to day.

Let me illustrate it this way.

If I could just share with you a thought that might make it come to life.

Imagine a little girl who likes to play house.

A lot of little girls do this.

And she puts on her mother's shoes.

And when Mom's not looking, she goes into her room and opens her jewelry box and she puts on the best, the nicest jewelry around her neck and sees some lipstick and smears it all over her mouth, outside the boundaries of her lips, drapes herself and all the fine accessories, and then stands before the mirror as if she's greeting her Husband.

After work, she walks like her mother.

She mimics her voice, her tone, and all of her mannerisms.

And to anyone watching, she appears to be grown up.

In fact, some little girls who have, by the time they're 13, 14 years old, they can play, act that role quite well.

But of course, my point is, it's only play acting.

She has all the right forms.

I mean, she's got it down.

But the substance is missing.

And that's what man made religion does.

It dresses up the outside, but the inside reality is absent.

In contrast, transformation is not about forms.

It's about God's power at work within our hearts.

It's the spirit renewing the mind.

It's reshaping the heart, how we think and thus how we react to people's words and their actions.

And it produces a fruit that no system can manufacture.

What transformation really means, then, it's not about doing things differently on the outside.

And that's why I have problems with some of the approaches of psychologists, because they leave this very critical thing out.

Not that I'm not.

I don't approve of changing our actions and beginning to emulate different habits and bring about different habits in our life.

But I'm talking about.

It must begin, friends, with a change of heart.

It has to start on the inside.

And so it begins with the mind.

And what I Think on Romans 12:2 then calls us to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.

That's what we've introduced in the last couple weeks.

But notice it doesn't start with behavior, it starts with thought.

Our actions are always the fruit of how the mind processes that information, how the mind reacts to certain impressions or appearances.

So if our thinking is carnal, which is the opposite of the spiritual mind, then we will judge based on appearances.

This is why transformation stalls in so many lives, because the motivation to change is driven by appearances, not by real truth.

And Paul gives us an alternative to this in Philippians 4:8.

When he says, whatever is true, remember that wonderful passage, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think on these things.

Transformation, friends, happens when our thoughts are governed by truth, not by appearances.

And yet appearances often become the standard by which people live.

These are the appearances that humans create to form a false reality, a reality that they can then defend and define to others as being the truth, though it's not truth at all.

It's a lie dressed up in respectability.

I once knew a father who berated his daughter because a friend policeman in town told him that she had been seen after hours with a boy.

Well, that wasn't the first time that she had been seen.

Had he known it privately, he may have said something.

But because someone else saw her and passed a judgment, he reacted harshly toward her because of his embarrassment.

Because it's now known and people might think worse of her and therefore worse of him.

His response wasn't rooted in the truth, or else he would have responded consistently if her behavior had been ongoing.

But because someone brought it to his attention, his response was in fear of the appearances.

And what might be said about his family and his daughter isn't that much like the officials of our government today.

They appear confident and respectful, at least some of them do.

But they deceive the public with their lies.

It's interesting to me.

I've always found it interesting how that so many people look at a president and if he looks presidential, that is, if he's respectful and he's kind and he's courteous and he's polite and he's thankful and is a very gentlemanly in his demeanor, then they'll accept him no matter what he's doing behind the scenes, he's presidential.

And we can accept that man.

But find someone who is uncut and a little rough and perhaps even rude in speech.

Well, he's just.

He's not presidential.

We can't accept someone of that character, of that kind.

But this is appearance.

And it seems that many people judge the value of things on appearances rather than substance, rather than really making a change and something being valuable.

So again, it seems that some people are more motivated and moved by appearance rather than substance.

In the Old Testament scriptures, we have a very similar view.

This isn't anything new that I'm sharing with you.

You remember when Israel chose Saul as their king?

They chose him not because of his heart, not because of the kind of leader that he would be, but because he looked the part.

Notice in 1st Samuel 9.

2, the Bible says that from his shoulders upward, he was taller than any of the people.

So by human appearance, this man seemed like a king.

He looked like a king.

But God reminded Samuel in 1st Samuel 16:7.

And I want to really bear hard on this thought.

Man looks on outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

And that truth needs to resonate with all of us.

Now, I know I can't read men's hearts, nor should I attempt to do so.

That really gives us even serious, more serious problems.

But My point is we need to be more focused on our hearts and being approved by God rather than what might appear to be good and righteous and good behavior by others.

And let that then define who we are rather than the heart that God sees.

That's why James describes the person who looks into the mirror of God's word and then walks away, forgetting what kind of man that he was.

In other words, he sees truth clearly, at least for the moment, but because it's uncomfortable, because it's not an easy thing to accept, because it makes him feel bad, or whatever the case might be in describing the discomfort of truth, because it does, he dismisses it altogether and goes on unchanged.

The Word revealed truth, that is its reality.

It's the naked truth.

But he chose to replace it with a more flattering appearance in his own mind.

And so that's what individuals, human beings, often do.

They would rather replace the truth with their own narrative, with their own thinking.

It's much easier.

Jesus made it unmistakably clear when he prayed in John 17, sanctify them in thy truth.

Thy word is truth.

You see, the honest heart will see the difference between the two when comparing itself Satan side by side with the truth of God's word.

Honesty requires that we not pass it off as untrue, that we not pass off lies as truth, either simply because they're easier or less invasive.

But instead, honesty respects the truth by maintaining it, accepting it in its unchanged form, and then choosing to conform one's own heart to it, to accept it, to be willing to acknowledge the fact that my heart does not align with it, and then seek every effort or make every effort rather, to conform one's heart to it.

No one denies the difficulty involved in that.

In fact, with any metamorphosis of this kind, the painful reshaping of the heart and mind is true.

It's inevitable.

But this is the very process by which transformation takes place.

This is exactly what we see in the Jews who debated with Jesus.

In John 8.

They insisted that they were free because they were Abraham's descendants.

Very arrogant approach to their their history, their tradition.

Jesus exposed their slavery to sin and their intent on killing him, proving their claim was false.

And then in John 9, when the blind man was healed, they refused to accept the truth there, the reality before them.

Instead of accepting the fact that they were themselves blind, they constructed an alternative story to protect their own religious standing before men.

In Matthew 23, Jesus laid bare their hypocrisy and called them whitewashed.

Tombs, outwardly appearing righteous, he says, but inwardly or full of all kinds of corruption.

Their entire system was built on appearances.

But they took that system and their own religion and they defended it as truth and then judged the others based on that system.

They condemned Christ and his apostles for violating the Sabbath and for eating ears of grain, plucking them on the Sabbath day.

Yet they denied the reality of God's power in Christ.

They rejected him as having in any power to any deity.

Transformation, then requires this very, very important ingredient.

It requires honesty.

The honesty to reject those false narratives that we have accepted for a long time and those patented answers that our church has taught us way back when we were children.

It requires us to have the courage to own the bare truth, whatever we find that to be.

And as we love the truth and expose ourselves more to it, we're going to be seeing the need to change when it exposes what we would rather hide about ourself.

For example, you see, it demands that we stop excusing ourselves with appearances and stop defending our lies that we've come to believe.

It means refusing to live by what looks good outwardly and embrace the truth that God reveals about himself and about us.

So only when we're willing to face reality with honesty can the Spirit of God renew that mind and free us from all self deception.

We must start there.

We must be willing to honestly recognize truth and accept it as such.

But now there's another thought that I want to share with you as it pertains to the spiritual mind and transforming our hearts and our minds.

I do think that through this series of studies we must understand the distinction between the carnal mind and the spiritual mind.

Paul often described these two conditions as two kinds of people, the carnal and the spiritual.

In 1 Corinthians 3, when Paul rebukes the believers, these were people in Christ in Corinth.

Now, how long they would continue in that condition without some repentance, I question.

One cannot have life and peace, and one cannot be freed without, in fact we cannot please God.

Paul would say, if we remain in that condition.

And so he says, when I wrote you, I could not speak to you as spiritual, but as carnal as babes in Christ.

Now they were saved, but their thinking and their living were still governed by the flesh.

The evidence was everywhere.

There were divisions among them.

There was jealousies and envy, among them, pride.

There was immorality.

One man living with his father's wife and causing great turmoil in that community, lawsuits being brought against other brethren.

Chapter six of first Corinthians.

There were those apparently who were boasting in their gifts, despising the poor saints, First Corinthians 11, and violating the conscience of the weak, chapter 14.

All of these were the truth and the fruit of a carnal mind.

The Galatian letter apparently reveals the same struggle that was faced by them.

Paul reminded them in Galatians 5:17.

He says, the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.

You see, a carnal mind will always resist transformation.

Why?

Because.

Because he's preoccupied with comforts.

He's preoccupied with appearances and self preservation.

He makes excuses for sin and minimizes truth, justifies his selfish choices because that's easy.

He avoids the hard facts.

But Paul contrasts the this with the spiritual mind in Romans 8:6, when he says, to be carnal in mind it is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

You see, the carnal mind is trapped in death because it can't submit to God.

The spiritual mind brings life and peace because it yields to the Spirit it trust that God's truth is better than human appearances, even when it cuts deep.

Now, we see this difference every day in our lives.

The carnal mind is quick to anger when it's insulted.

The spiritual mind, on the other hand, looks for a way to bless, even when there is offense, even when there are efforts to hurt us.

The carnal mind clings to grudges, looking for an opportunity to retaliate and to return evil for evil.

But the spiritual mind longs for reconciliation, for peace, for forgiveness, because Christ has forgiven and has brought to us the ministry of reconciliation.

The carnal mind obsesses over being recognized.

The spiritual mind just finds simple joy in serving unseen.

Doesn't matter whether anybody recognizes it or takes notice of it.

Think of it this way.

The carnal mind builds its house on shifting sand, appearances and feelings and public opinion, self interests of all kinds.

It may look sturdy for a time, but when the storm comes, it collapses.

The spiritual mind builds on the rock of truth, though it's built on God's word, God's promises, and it may be tested, no doubt, but it's going to endure because its foundation is unshakable.

That's transformation from within.

It requires more than effort.

It requires a change of mind, a turning from carnal thinking to spiritual thinking.

Only the Spirit of God can do that.

Only God's Spirit can accomplish that.

But we have to be willing participants.

We must Let God his Spirit expose where our minds are still, that our minds are still carnal.

They were still thinking like the world, and then invite him to replace it with life and peace.

And so, in summary, let me just sort of summarize what we've already said with regard to the carnal mind and the spiritual mind.

Paul has described two kinds of people, and they are defined by how they think and technically, or more specifically, what they're thinking about.

We see in this the example of the Corinthians.

So we want to consider two views of life and test them.

By the Scriptures, transformation is fixed with the Spirit and the truth of God.

We've looked at that from Romans 8:6 or Romans 7 even.

We've also contrasted this transformation that's anchored to the Spirit and the raw truth of God.

In 2nd Corinthians 3:18, Paul would say that we behold the glory of the Lord.

We are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

So the Spirit and the truth working together to bring about real metamorphosis.

It's the deep change that human effort could never accomplish by itself.

And then walking after the Spirit means fixing our minds on the spiritual things, not carnal things.

And so Paul would say we look not at the things that are seen, 2nd Corinthians 4, but at the things that are not seen.

For the things that are seen are temporary.

The things that are unseen are eternal.

And so, my friends, the carnal mind clings to what can be seen, what can thus be controlled, oftentimes.

But the spiritual mind, he trusts in the unseen and the eternal.

And the fruit of that trust is always the same life and peace.

We want to come back to this then for next time, as we come back to the view and sort of illustrate it, we want to really establish the foundation of our study in the next couple of lessons.

I thank you again.

I trust you have a good day and a pleasant week.