ReThink It | Cheat Code Part 3

It's so great to have you here today. If today's your first time with us, welcome home. My name's Ryan. I have the honor of serving here as the lead pastor and just want to give a quick shout out to those that might be watching online and also our Liberty Correctional Campus. Would you give it up for them? Our Liberty Correctional Campus for checking in today. Hey, we're so excited that you're here. We're in part three of a series that we've entitled Cheat Code. The idea behind this series is that God has put some biblical truths in His Word that when we begin to apply those to our life, they end up helping us to break some of the old patterns that we keep constantly finding ourselves recycling over and over again. They also help us unlock some new levels, some new experiences in our life. I don't know about you, but I could use some new levels in 2026. Any of you can use some levels? Yeah, three of you. All right, yes. Three of us want life to be better in 2026. No, I'm just teasing you. But yeah, so we've kind of been looking at this question to frame our talks in this series. How do we make sure that next time doesn't look like last time? How do we make sure that we don't continually keep making the same mistakes and decisions that are detrimental to our life? If you're anything like me, it could be easy to step into a new year. You come into the new year and you've got all of this hope. You're hoping that things will be better, will be different. But how many know hope is not really a good strategy for change, right? We can hope for a lot of things, but if we don't have a framework, if we don't have a strategy that's in place, then we're never going to experience the change that we desire to experience.

And so that's really what this series has been about. And so in week one, we took a look at some dangerous assumptions that all of us tend to have in life. These are the decisions that we make that they seem like they make sense and, you know, seems reasonable in the moment, but behind the scenes they're subtly creating or sabotaging change in our life. And so we talked about some of those in the first part of the series. And then in the second part of the series, we talked about the importance of owning it. We talked about blame and how our tendency is when we're stepping into a new season that we want to be different, that we have all this baggage of blaming other people or other circumstances or situations in what we keep experiencing in our life. And so, you know, we said last week that there's no way that we can blame ourself into a better future. Like we can blame ourself into the future, but we're not going to blame ourselves into a better future. And so we talked last week about the importance of really owning it, of taking full responsibility of whatever part we played in what happened last time. Maybe that's a big part, maybe it's a small part, but it's important for us to own whatever part that we play. And today what I want to do is I want to talk about the next non-negotiable, that owning it is one of the three non-negotiables. Today I want to talk to you from this title, rethink it. And here's what I mean by that, is that when you think about the decisions that you made, the patterns in your life that keep kind of happening over and over again that you want to change, chances are that when you experience that pattern, at some point you look back over what you did and you have the same question that I have when that happens. And the question is, what was I thinking, right? Have you ever asked that? Like what was I thinking getting back into another relationship like that? What was I thinking, you know, doing that with my finances again?

What was I thinking? Like here I am again and I'm stressed and I'm frustrated and I'm either having these outbursts of anger to the people that I love or I'm going to a bottle or a drug and it's like what, what was... Was I thinking? And the reason why it's important for us to ask that question, but not just ask the question, but to then ponder on the answer is because if we don't stop long enough to try to come up with the answer to that question, then we find ourselves continually repeating the same patterns. You see, here's why it's important for us to camp out on that question. Because if we think the way we used to think, then we'll do the things that we used to do. It's as simple as that. What oftentimes happens in our life is we stop, we ask the question, what was I thinking? But we never stop long enough to figure out the answer. So today what I want to do is I want to go back to a passage of Scripture that we lightly just brushed over in part one. I want to go back to Romans chapter 12 because there's something in Romans 12 that the Apostle Paul says that it explains why we keep doing the things that we don't want to do anymore. And Romans chapter 12 gives us kind of a cheat code to be able to break the cycle in our lives. So if you've got your Bibles, turn to Romans 12. If you've got your smart phones, you can tap the dot on the seat back in front of you. You can follow along with my notes today. And as you're doing that, let's invite the Lord's presence into our time together. Father, we thank you for your Word. Thank you for the opportunity to be able to come and to gather today. So Lord, I pray that you would just speak to us in this moment. Lord, open our hearts, open our minds, open our eyes to be able to see what you have for us and give us the courage to be able to step towards it. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Romans chapter 12. Book of Romans is an interesting book. It's actually a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Rome. And Rome in those days was not exactly friendly to believers. It was a culture that was constantly pressing people, especially believers, to conform to their culture. So following Jesus during this time would put people at odds with the culture. It would put people in a position where they were being pressed to conform to the political positions of the day and the systems, the religious systems of the day. It was just a constant press towards conformity. And so for believers in Rome, following Jesus, being a believer, wasn't just something that was casual that they did. It wasn't just because they had an awareness of who Jesus was or who God was in their life. It was a costly relationship that they had. And so it's into that environment that the Apostle Paul pens this letter, and he's writing this letter to help the believers in Rome understand how they need to rethink their life and the way that they live within the culture that they're experiencing. Now you may remember from part one, the Apostle Paul wasn't always the guy that people wanted to follow, right? He was a religious person in a negative way, like not the kind that you would want to follow, the kind that you try to get away from as quick as possible. And he had a track record of imprisoning Christians, murdering Christians, so you know, this is a guy that as he went about that lifestyle, he justified every decision that he made. Like in his mind, he was justified to do those things. And then in Acts chapter 9, he has an encounter with God. And we talked about how an encounter is necessary in order to change our direction, but just an encounter in and of itself doesn't really just change our life. And so Paul ends up withdrawing for a period of time and really putting himself in a position to really walk this process out that he's about to talk about in this letter.

And so I want you to think about for a second, here's a guy that has carried a lot of guilt, a lot of shame. shame, a lot of regret from the way that he was treating people and Christians in particular before this moment, but yet something about him God saw that God would move in his life in such a way that he would end up writing almost a third of the New Testament and God would advance, he would use him to steward the movement of God for generations to the point that we even experience that today. So when you think about that, when you think about a guy that had such baggage in his life but yet God uses him in such a supernatural way, it kind of makes me think that if anybody understood how to experience life change, how to break some of the old patterns and create some new ones, then it was Paul. And so what Paul does is he begins to pin this to the believers there. He says this in chapter 12 verse 1. He says, listen, I urge you, remember this is a guy with baggage and he's experienced the grace and the mercy of God. And this kind of life change that God is using to spread the gospel all over the region and around the world and he's telling these believers like listen, listen, I urge you. And it's not a command that he's giving, like Paul is pleading here. He's pleading because he's experienced this process in his own life and he's seen the benefits of it. And he's like listen, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, this is what you've got to do. You've got to offer your bodies. This word bodies in the original language was not just the physical thing that you see on the outside but it was everything about the person. It was the public life but it was also the private life. It was their physical body but it was also the way in which they lived their life. And Paul is like listen, I'm pleading you. You've got to offer your whole life. And he says this, he says in view of God's mercy, essentially what he's kind of laying out here is why wouldn't you? Like if you've experienced God's mercy, which what is mercy, it is you and I not receiving the punishment that we deserve. Like all it takes for us is one sin to experience eternal damnation. That's all it takes. And I don't know about you but I did that pretty quickly out of the womb. Like it does not take but one. It's not just the big sins that we look at but it's the lying. It's the deception. It's even the little ones that oftentimes we look over. And Paul is trying to help them understand like listen, this offering of your whole life, you have to have this perspective in view of God's

mercy for your life. And I just wonder sometimes if the reason why we struggle to offer our life to God is because we lose sight of His mercy in our life. We get so churched that we begin to dismiss the things that we do day to day. We begin to lose touch at the significance of where our sin would ultimately lead us and what the death of Jesus on the cross does for us. And Paul's like, listen, in view of that, in view of all that God has forgiven you of, like I urge you, I plead, offer your whole life to Him. And Paul says this, he says, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. This would have been, they would have heard that in such a different way than you and I hear it today. Because we don't understand the idea of animal sacrifice, atonement for sin, like we don't, that's not part of our culture, but it was part of theirs. And they're hearing this from Paul and they're like, oh my gosh, a living sacrifice that I've got to offer my body, and it's that that's holy and pleasing to God. And then he says that this, right, that this, this living sacrifice and offering your bodies, it's this right here that is our true and our proper worship. Like Paul's saying, listen the songs are great, right, the journaling is great, the reading the Bible is great, but at the end of the day, like the real true and proper worship isn't what we sing or read off a screen, but it's the way in which we live our lives. You see, Paul right here is showing us what winning looks like in the Christian life. But then in the next verse what he does is, is he gives us the cheat code. He helps us to understand like, like if you're going to win in life when it comes to your faith in Jesus, like it doesn't just happen. Like you've got to, you've got to begin to make some shifts and where does that shift need to start? It needs to start up here in, in what you think and so Paul says this, he says, he says here's how you do it, do not conform. Do not conform to the pattern of this world. And we struggle with this, don't we? Like when you think of, of the pattern, like if you want to dig a little bit deeper, you know, go to, go to 1 John and I think it's 2, 15 through 16, it's, it's that idea of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and, and the pride of life and, and our

lives can be so consumed by, by all of that stuff, it's, it's the pattern of, of this world and what Paul's trying to help them understand is that, listen, the cheat code is to not conform to this world. Here's what Paul is essentially trying to communicate to them, is don't be this guy. Don't be this guy. Don't be the guy that is like, you're just like everybody else, like your relationship is just like their relationship, just like their, your pursuit of finances and financial success or whatever is just like everybody else, right? The relationships, the attitudes, all of that stuff, he's like, don't be this guy. You see, when we're making cookies and we're using this pattern to, to conform all the cookies and it's the same thing over and over. We may be able to change, right? We may be able to change the way the eyes look. We may be able to change the way the smile looks, but everything else looks the same. And Paul's trying to help them see, listen, you can't win in this Christian life if that's the way that you live your life. He says instead, be transformed. What's, what's the difference between conformity and, and transform? It's this, like when we're conforming to the pattern of, of the world, the things that happen to us end up happening by default. But if we're going to live the transform life, like we're making intentional decisions about what we're going to do with our life. If we're living the conformed life, right? If we're living the conformed life, right? It requires no real intention where, where that does. Conforming to the pattern of the world, there's not really much cost on the front end, but to be transformed, it takes effort. It takes discipline. It takes telling the flesh no sometimes. If we're going to follow the pattern of, of this world, ultimately what happens is it

leads us somewhere that, that we didn't choose. That's why for some of you, when years ago, when, when you picked up the bottle years ago, when you picked up the recreational drugs or the sex addiction or, or the pornography or whatever it was, like, like all of that started oftentimes with just like, I'm just going to hang out, just going to have a little bit of fun, whatever, like you never in a million years saw yourself where you are. are today. It started off as just something casual, but over time it ended up leading you somewhere that you didn't choose. But when we choose the transformed life, it leads us to a place that God has designed for us. It's kind of like this. Paul is challenging them in this moment, like, don't be like the pattern of the world. Don't be like just a different version, maybe just a different size, or maybe the makeup looks a little bit different, but everything that you pursue in life, what you experience in life isn't a whole lot different than somebody that's not a believer in Jesus. And living this way kind of, it keeps you in this cycle where next time always looks like last time. What Paul's trying to help them see and wants us to see is don't live that way, live this way. Be a transformer, right? Don't conform to the pattern of the world, but be transformed. But be more than meets the eye, right? Paul's like this is the way in which to live your life, and so how do we do it? Well, he gives us that by renewing your mind. It's not trying harder, right? It's not even discipline as much. It is changing the way that you think. You know what's interesting about this word right here, renewing, is that when you look at it in the original language, it means to restore.

It's this idea of a renovation. I don't know how many of you enjoyed restoring old furniture and kind of giving it a fresh look. I had never done that before in my life, and then about a year or so ago, I decided this hallway mirror that we have in our house, that I wanted to give it a different look. And so I took it off the wall, and I put it out in the garage, and I cleaned it up a little bit, got a little bit of sandpaper. I watched a couple of YouTube videos, you know, and thinking that I knew how to do it. So I kind of sanded it just a little bit, and then I put three different coats of paint on it. Now, that takes a long time. Like you put a coat, and you got to wait for it to dry hours, if not half a day, and then you got to do it again, and then the wife comes home, and she wants her garage back. So then you got to move everything out of the way and come back the next day and to try to do it. So I spend all of this time trying to restore the mirror, to give it a different kind of look, and then guess what happens? I go after the third coat to peel away the painter's tape off the mirror, and all of the paint starts pulling right off the mirror. It just starts pulling right off the mirror. You know why that happens? It happens because we end up putting something new over something old before we remove what was already there. And it kind of dawned on me in that moment, the renewal without removal, that it never lasts. And friend, this is why you have all of these great intentions to change your life and to change the patterns, but nothing ever really changes. It's the reason why you kind of, you told yourself like you're never going to overlook the red flags in that relationship again like you did last time, but then you, next time you overlooked the red flags and there you are all over again in the same situation.

It's the reason why, you know, finances, you're like, man, when I get a raise, I'm going to start giving to the church, and then you get a raise, and then what do we do? We just start spending our money on more stuff, and we get to the other side, and we're like, we have no margin in our finances again. I keep getting these raises, but the margin never changes. And it's because next time we're doing the same thing that we were doing last time. It's because we keep putting new paint over an old surface. It's not because we didn't mean, when we did the promise, it's not because we didn't mean that. It's because we didn't go through the restoration process so the new would stick. And that's what Paul's trying to help us see in this passage. And so how do we renew our mind? Again, we gotta go back to this question. What was I thinking? We gotta camp out long enough on this question to find an answer. You see, what most of us do, including myself, is we ask this question and then we either shrug it off or we laugh it off and we tell ourselves, you know, I'm gonna do better next time. I'm gonna do different next time. And then we just, we move right on. The problem is, is that if we don't slow down long enough to understand what we were thinking last time so that we could change that thinking for next time, then we eventually repeat the behavior. Because the real reason is rarely an obvious one. It's usually something that's layered in our life and when we rush past the layers, that's how next time ends up being the same as last time. You see, when it comes to renewal, when it comes to renewing our mind, it requires us to pause and to think and to consider, but it also follows a process. That process is kind of similar to refinishing furniture. See the first thing that we do when you're gonna refinish furnishers, you gotta clean

the surface, right? And that's what happens spiritually, that we have to lean into a season where we are preparing our heart. We are, we are allowing God to begin to remove the residue that has built up over the years on our heart from the hurts and the pains and the disappointments and the repeating, you know, cycles and patterns that, that are in our life. And rarely, I've noticed for me, rarely it's some, like one big massive one. Usually it's, it's a lot of, lot of little ones or mediocre ones that accumulate over, over time. And if we don't remove those things, if we don't allow God to remove the build-up in our life, then our decision-making becomes foggy and our sensitivity to God begins to fade. And so what, what does this look like? Well practically, it looks like this, seek week. In one week, we're gonna step into seven days of prayer and fasting. And I can't think of a better practical next step for you if you're wanting to break that cycle than to step into a week where you create enough margin and space in, in your natural life rhythms for God to begin to, to clean some of that residue that's on your heart. You know, when we step into a season of prayer and fasting like this, it's not because we're trying to earn something from God, it's because we're trying to create space for Him to clean some of the, the impurities in, in our life. It almost becomes like a, a spiritual detox for our life. And so you can tap the dot, you can see information down in TC News at the bottom with a link to a webpage that'll give you some, some tools and some resources of how you can participate. It'll show you a few upcoming events that are a part of seek week, but this would be a great first step for you to do that. But the second thing, so we gotta, we gotta clean the surface a little bit of our heart. And then the second thing that happens in the, the restoration process is you gotta repair the damage.

Like typically in that, that phase, right? You're beginning to sand down some of the rough edges, you're finding some of the cracks and you're beginning to fill some of, of the cracks before you put a coat of paint on it. And at the end of the day, that's what, what our life looks like. The just life and the things that we experience over time, it begins to create some cracks and some rough edges. That's why we respond. in the way that we respond to some people, not because they deserve it, but because we have 20 years of baggage that every time somebody steps into that territory in our life, it creates a response, right? And here's the thing is that you and I are not good at repairing ourselves. I wish we were, but we're not. We tend to normalize what's broken in our life. We tend to excuse what's unhealthy. We miss the very things that are right in front of us. That's why we can go into the closet, guys, and we can't find our shoes, and we come out to the wife, and she comes in, and it's like right there staring, like it would have smacked us in the face, right? It's because we do that with life. Like we get so ingrained in the behaviors and the patterns that we're experiencing that we can't see it. And so we need somebody on the outside to be able to speak into those moments. And that's why spiritually speaking,

like in order for us to experience a renewal of the mind, we've gotta have some people in our inner circle. We have to have some people that will speak into the blind spots in our life. We gotta have some people that'll sand some of the rough edges to help repair the cracks that have built up through life. Now we often avoid this, right? We avoid it because of whether it's embarrassment, or pain, or betrayal, or whatever it is in our past, but here's what happens when we do that. Like when we avoid it, that isolation, it doesn't repair the stuff in our life, it suppresses it. And that's why when you look at scripture that it's constantly talking about the community of believers, that there is this idea of doing life together and another super practical step for you, if that's the season in which you're in, is small groups. You know, small group starts February 9th, we're gonna have group expo the next several Sundays where you can kick the tires and learn more about the different kinds of groups and all that kind of stuff, but at the end of the day, we can't repair ourselves. And so my challenge is, is I understand how awkward stepping into a new space with new people can be, but my challenge is, is wouldn't it be worth it to experience one day of awkwardness so that next time could be different? It would be.

So what's those two things? Like once we're working that process, then the last process in the restoration process for furniture and for our spiritual lives is we gotta protect the progress. That as we begin to walk this progress and our mindset and our thinking is beginning to change, that we've gotta protect that progress. Now when it comes to restoring furniture, how does that happen? It happens with paint and sealant. See, the paint comes in, the paint is what you see and the sealant helps protect what you don't see. And without the both of those, the surface of what you're trying to restore, it remains vulnerable and essentially over time, it doesn't last. When I think about that from a spiritual perspective, you know, I think the paint represents God's word, that it's God's word that introduces a new way of thinking in our life. But it's not until we begin to apply that, that that new way of thinking begins to do any good. But then when it comes to the sealant, I see the sealant as what the Bible would say, the Ecclesia, it is the community of believers, it is the church. That there's something that God does through his church that helps protect and advance the work that he does in our heart, in our mind.

So maybe for you today, that next step, practical next step, is to just make a commitment to start attending church. more consistently. I read a stat recently that said that for people that identify as Christians that 1.8 times a month is the average amount of times that they go to church. And that's what in the church world we would consider a regular attender, which has greatly declined through the decades. Isn't it interesting that the worse our culture and society has gotten, the less important the gathering of believers has gotten. And I began to think about that, that 1.8 times a month, so two hours out of the 744 hours that are in a month is what the average believer spends in community. And I couldn't help to think, how can we protect what God has tried to do in our life in this new kind of way of thinking. If 742 hours of our month is constantly bombarded from the pattern of this world, and the only exposure to transformation, not the church, but the experience, is two hours a month. See, there's something that happens in our life that's beautiful when our hearts are cleaned and prepared, and when the damage of our past begins to be repaired, and when the progress that we're making in life and the new way of thinking and the changes that we're trying to implement, like in a new year, there's something beautiful when that stuff starts to stick. And the Apostle Paul tells us what that is. He says this, he says, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, that when you do that, then, it's then and only then, that are you going to be able to test and approve what God's will is. That's the question that we're always asking. What is God's will? What's God's will for next time? What's God's will for my next relationship, for my finances, for my future? Like, that is the question that you and I wrestle with the most in life, and what Paul is trying to help them see, and I think what he's trying to help us see, is that when we will offer our bodies, when we will go all in with God, offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, and refuse to be conformed to the pattern of this world, but lean in to the transformation process in our life, that it is, it's then that God's will begins to become clearer in our life. Fred, do you want the answer to that? Then lean in to what Paul urges and pleads to do in the verse before. Would you bow your head with me today? I want you to ask in this moment, just between you and God, God, what are you speaking to me today? What are you speaking to me? Maybe in this moment, God is putting a finger on your

heart, and He's helping you see that you keep asking the question, what was I thinking, but you never pause long enough to process it. Maybe today, you keep rushing past the layers of the 20 years of pain and disappointment that is there, but it's under the surface. and God is like, you got to lead into that. Maybe this morning God is just prompting in your heart, helping you see, I don't know how many times you come to church, I don't know how many times that you are a part of the community and the body of Christ, but maybe he's helping you see the other 742 hours plus of your life and the things that you're allowing to influence your life and the pattern of those thinkings, and maybe in this moment, he's inviting you to begin to shift some of the priorities. Friend, I don't know what it is, but I know this, that anytime God prompts us in moments like these, there are always invitations to a life we've always hoped for. What stands between you and that is the courage to respond and to say yes. Thank you so much for tuning in with us. If you enjoyed today's message, go ahead and subscribe because there's content like this every single week. And if it spoke to you in any way, make sure you share it with a friend because you never know whose life you can change with just one simple share. Listen, we hope to see your face in the place this Sunday. Go ahead and check out our website for our service times

at transformtlh.com, and we hope to see you soon.