Romans 12:1-2

Learning the Way - Romans 12:1-2

People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated. -D.A. Carson

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. -Romans 12:1

What does it look like in your life to be a living sacrifice? Are you more submitted to other things than you are to God? Are you doing everything as unto God? Are there people you don't carry the gospel to because you worry about how they will respond? Are there things that if God took them away, you'd be angry with Him? Are you taking all of your thoughts captive for Christ? Are you living in gospel-saturated community?

We learned in the message that the sacrificial system given to Israel required the sacrifice to be free of defect and blemish. Do your sacrifices look like this? What are you sacrificing, and what did you last sacrifice? This should be an encouragement to your group, not a time to be proud. 

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. -Romans 12:2

When you are shown truth in scripture that points out sin in your life, how do you respond? Are you being transformed by the renewal of your mind? Do you tolerate certain sin in your life?