Day 4: Transformed From The Inside Out

Prophets and poets, songwriters and sages have tried to describe it, tried to capture its essence with a melody or a metaphor. Shakespeare called it comfort, like the sunshine after rain. Dolly Parton said it was like a butterfly. And we say it every day. Love. How many times a day do you use the word love? We say we love our friends, our favorite sports teams, the restaurant on the corner, all in the same breath. In God's story, love is at the center. From the first act of fashioning humankind like a sculptor, to his constant presence and provision in our lives, to his sacrificial selfless death for our sake, every bit of the Bible shows how much God truly loves us. Welcome back. On this day of seven days start, we're going to explore just that. How much God loves us and how much we are called to love him in return. God loves you so incredibly. God's love is perfect, unchanging and unending. He is the ultimate model of love for us. And he does things every single day that show us how much he cares for us. Here's just a few of the amazing ways that God shows us his love. He sent his son. He made us alive. His love will be with us every single day. Nothing can separate us from his love. His love is forever. He loves us by being faithful to his promises. And while we were still stuck in our sin, Christ who was God in human form died for us. And what's more, his love changes us from the inside out. When we choose to follow Jesus, God sees us through the lens of his son. No longer are we broken, sinful people, but we are transformed into the image of Christ. That means that God sees us just like he does Jesus. We are adopted as his sons and his daughters. So what is our response to this? How could we possibly repay the amount of love that God has shown us? The short answer is that we can't, but God accepts our love for what it is. It may not be as big as his or as forgiving and understanding as his is, but our love is still our choice. And it's the best gift that we can give God in return for his unending love towards us. Now in the context of being a Jesus follower, the way we show our love to God is through our worship of him. If you aren't from a church background, you may not have much context for what that word even means. Maybe you think it's bowing down to something or someone, or maybe you think it's what we do for an hour or two on Sunday mornings. The concept of worship is much deeper and richer. It's not so much a thing that you do or a place that you go as it is a posture of your heart. It takes reorienting your life towards honoring God and using your words and actions to show the world how incredible he is. It really is a transformation

of our mindset, our attitude, our focus, our desire, and our priorities. It's designed to be a regular part of our everyday lives. So let's see how we can worship in three ways, personally, corporately, and with our whole selves completely. First, you can worship God in a personal setting. Worship at its core is a deeply personal practice. It's something you can engage in privately, in the quiet of your own space and time. This kind of worship is about connecting with God on a one-to-one basis, and there are several ways that you can do just that. One of the simplest ways you can worship privately is to devote regular time to God. I hope, if you haven't already, that you take a few moments after watching this video to spend some time with God. Your personal worship must be anchored in your relationship with God. Be sure and meet with him regularly. We talked about this on Day 3 of 7 Day Start. Be intentional about daily time with God. Center your time with him in prayer. You can pray about any and everything that you need, your fears, your hopes, and even daily challenges. He loves you and understands you completely. Also, plan daily time in the Bible and allow it to fill your heart. A life of worship is saturated in God's word. It is promised to be a light to our path and a way to keep us on God's right track for our lives. Singing and listening to worship songs can also be a form of worship. God created music for the purpose of worship. It's a language beyond words that helps us express our deepest feelings of awe and love. There are so many worship artists out there writing powerful songs today. Find songs that describe how incredible God is and speak truth over your life. There are even beautiful, worshipful instrumental pieces

that will enhance your time with God. You'll find a link to a couple of playlists at the bottom of this page. Regularly practice gratitude. Remembering your prayers and revelations from God is a great way to look back with thankfulness at all that he has done for you. This can be worship as well. Journaling will help you track this. Being aware of God's presence in everyday life can turn ordinary moments into acts of worship. Recognizing God's hand in the beauty of nature, the kindness of a friend, or an answered prayer, and taking a moment to express gratitude can all be deeply worshipful. It's also essential to take part in what's known as corporate worship. Now this means participating in a weekly gathering to worship God in community. This collective worship experience builds your faith and your sense of belonging with other believers. The earliest friends and followers of Jesus met together on Sundays to worship. It was a regular time for them to pray and sing songs, enjoy spiritually anchoring experiences like taking communion together and sharing revelations from God. It's important to make this kind of worship a part of your weekly rhythm. Even in those early days,

the followers of Jesus who wrote the book of Hebrews warned us not to give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing. That means that even those who saw Jesus and spent time with him struggled with consistency in this. When we isolate ourselves, discouragement and doubt are more likely to creep in. Regular worship in community is designed to encourage us. In a recent survey by Pew Research, those who participated in church regularly reported a deeper sense of peace and understanding in their spiritual lives. Another survey showed that these same people tend to have higher levels of happiness and satisfaction in life compared to those who do not. Worshiping corporately provides a space to build and maintain meaningful relationships. From a mental and emotional health perspective, attending church can be incredibly uplifting. Personal benefits aside, it is a space for all of the community of God to experience time with him together. So come expecting to experience God's presence. That means preparing your heart beforehand. Engage with the songs, not just singing them, but let the lyrics be an expression of what your heart says to God. Lift your hands, clap, sing along. All of these are found as expressions of worship in the Bible.

Come with the intent to hear from God and learn how to better honor him with your life. Treat it like the privilege that it is. We get to enter the presence of the King. Outside of just these individual moments of worship, there is a call to live a completely transformed life. One of Jesus's earliest followers was a man named Paul. Now Paul's story is this kind of true transformation, possibly the most incredible in the whole Bible. You can read it for yourself in Acts chapter nine. Paul hated the followers of Jesus with a passion. He took it upon himself to act as an anti-Christian vigilante, hunting down and arresting and attempting to murder anyone who followed Jesus. Everything changed though, after he encountered the risen Jesus on the road one day. Paul was overcome with the forgiving love of Jesus and the grace that he experienced. from the community of Jesus' followers. He devoted the rest of his life, instead of trying to stop Christianity, to helping spread it, becoming one of the most influential people ever to follow Jesus. He even wrote several books in the library that we call the Bible today. In one of his letters, Paul speaks of the kind of transformation that he experienced.

It's the kind of transformation that we all go through when we choose to follow Jesus. 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. That is your true and proper worship. Do not be conformed 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. In the oldest times recorded in the Bible, people would offer animals on an altar as a substitute for their sin. They would take the best animal of their herd and give it to God to show remorse and ask for forgiveness. The animal would be ritually killed and then burned whole. Of course, this didn't really save or forgive them, but it did help those ancient people understand the true cost of their sin. So when Paul talks about being a living sacrifice, he's calling back to those times and telling us that we need to devote our whole selves to God just like they did. We have to give God our very best. We are already forgiven through God's mercy and grace, so we can live as followers of God, but we sacrifice our own desires

so that we can follow his. We don't conform to what we want or what others say that we should do. Instead, we allow our minds to be made new. Another of Paul's letters says that we now have the mind of Jesus and let our renewed minds direct our actions to follow God's will. If you're chosen to follow Jesus, then the Holy Spirit will direct you towards his purposes. The fuel for this is your individual time with God. The more you know him and know his word, the more you will be able to follow in his leading. A life of worship is a life that's lived in submission to God's commands, God's plans, and to his will. To allow our mind, will, and actions to be completely submitted to God's purpose is the highest form of love and reverence that we can show to him. Ultimately, our most important calling is to glorify God and show his glory to others. In short, worship is a lifetime of moments that add up to a full life that honors God.