Turning Point

Guest (Male): How can you experience peace and hope when you're surrounded by a culture of moral and spiritual chaos? Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah returns to Romans 12 for some encouragement from the Apostle Paul, who lived in equally toxic times yet managed to find contentment. With the conclusion of his message, "When Changing Your Mind Could Save Your Life", here's David.

Dr. David Jeremiah: Thank you so much for joining us for the last broadcast in the month of March. This month has flown by as we have studied together "Where Do We Go From Here? Tomorrow's Prophecies, Today's Problems". We have talked about finances, culture, Jerusalem, political things going on, and what kind of people are going to be around here at the end of the time. We've talked about the final preaching of the gospel, a lot of things, all of which are in a book that I wrote called "Where Do We Go From Here?" It is a Thomas Nelson book, and it is one of the best-selling books we have ever produced. Many people have read this book because they want to know, "Where do we go from here? What's going to happen next?"

There's a book and a study guide available. The book is available from our website, and the study guide is available from that website as well. Go there and inquire about how to get it. I hope it will be a blessing to you even in the future as you review what we've learned together during the month of March. When we meet together tomorrow, we're going to begin our discussion of Easter with some special Easter messages. I hope you'll join us then.

During the month of March, we have made available as our special resource a book called "Understanding Biblical Prophecy". This 30-lesson book will take you through the month. You can read a biblical prophecy, learn about the passage's context, answer reflective questions, and apply it to your life. You see, prophecy is not just about the future. It's about living with purpose and hope in the present. This Bible study will show you how that works and get you involved in the process. It's a 30-day Bible study, and it's called "Understanding Biblical Prophecy". It's yours for the asking when you send a gift of any size to Turning Point today. This is the last day this is available. We'll have a new resource when we meet together tomorrow. So don't wait any longer. Make sure you get a copy of this book. It will help you as you grow in your faith. And now here is part two of "When Changing Your Mind Could Save Your Life".

One of the great tools, as you may well understand, is the television. The television is one of the enemy's great tools to desensitize us to what's happening in the world. I remember as a young man growing up, and this will date me, so don't take this too seriously, but I remember when television started. That's bad, isn't it? Probably shouldn't admit that. My father, who was a Baptist preacher, wasn't sure we should have one of those things in the house. I mean, there was all kinds of sermons being preached about how it was being operated by the prince of the power of the air, Satan was in television.

My father finally, after a long time when we were going to the neighbor's house to watch TV, figured he better get one at home. We got one of those with the little round screen, remember those? My father would sit there and we'd watch television together. Every time a commercial came on for anything he thought was wrong, if a cigarette commercial came on or a beer commercial, he'd jump up and turn it off. Then he'd turn it back on after it was over. We didn't even have remote controls then. I was the remote control some of the time. I had to get up and do it. He'd say, "David, turn that off." And I'd turn it off.

We laugh at that now because it seems rather crazy and extreme. But isn't it interesting, men and women, what we tolerate today that we would never have tolerated in another time in our lives? How does that happen? That happens because we allow the world around us to squeeze us into its mold. Kenneth Wuest, who is a wonderful teacher of the Greek language, puts that phrase this way: "Stop assuming an outward expression which is patterned after this world, an expression which does not come from who you are in your inner being." If we are not careful, in order that we might fit in and that we might not look odd to those around us, and so that we will be accepted by our peers, we allow ourselves a lot of latitude in what it really means to be a deeply committed Christian.

The Bible says in order for us to get through this situation that we're in, we have to determine in our minds that we are not going to let the world push us into their way of doing things. That's where this battle is fought. I just want to say to all of you parents who have young kids, if you are not monitoring what is happening in your family through the television and now through the internet, you are just setting the enemy free to pressure your children into doing the things that the world wants them to do.

So first of all, we have to make a radical decision, don't we? We have to determine that we're going to put our lives in the hands of God with no reservations. Then we have to make this determination, first of all, that we won't be conformed but that we will be transformed. Let me tell you the difference between conformed and transformed. Conformed is from the outside in, and transformed is from the inside out. If you want to keep from being conformed to the world, you have to take care of the inner space of your life. He tells us how to do that.

The rest of this verse says that the Christian is to be transformed, and the Greek word is metamorphosis. The Lord wants to do a metamorphosis in your life. The only way to prevent the outward shape of our life from being fashioned like the world is to take care that the inward spirit of our being is transformed regularly, routinely, and the Bible tells us it's by the renewing of our minds. Notice this is in the present tense, and the writer is saying, "Don't be being conformed, but be being transformed." Let this be the process you go through. The only way to do this, he tells us, is through this process of renewing our minds.

So here we are ready for this third thought. This all begins with a radical decision. This radical decision is I'm presenting my body to the Lord. It continues with a rational determination: I will not be conformed, I will be transformed. That's all good theology and it's good to know, but now we get down to where the rubber meets the road and how this affects you and me and what this means to us. We come thirdly to this rigorous discipline. How many of you know that discipline is a word that's falling out of our vocabulary? Nobody likes that word. But notice what it says: "By the renewing of your mind." You are transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Now if you look up the word renewal, either in the English dictionary or you follow it through to its meaning in the text of the language of the New Testament, you will discover that the word renewal means renovation. That's what it means. We may not understand renewal, but we do understand renovation. How many of you have ever renovated a house? When you renovate a house, what do you do? You take out all the old stuff and you replace it with some new stuff, right? Usually, you buy the new stuff before you get rid of the old stuff. You have the new stuff ready so that on this particular day when everything's done and the paint's on and the carpet's there, you take out all the old stuff and you get rid of it and you bring in the new stuff. You renovate your house.

And this is what happens when we have our minds renewed. We take all the stuff that previously occupied our minds and we replace it with that which is in line with God's plan for our lives. When we fill our minds with the Word of God, that contains the mind of God and it helps us discover His will for our lives. You may wonder why I've given my life to doing what I do. Somebody asked me the other day, "What do you do, Jeremiah?" I said, "Well, I study the Word, I preach the Word, I record the Word, I televise the Word, I write books about the Word, we make CDs about the Word, we put the Word on the internet, we've got a Word app. My whole life is about the Word of God." You know why? It is the only thing that God has given us that can help us get through the wilderness to the promised land.

I am bull-headed about the Word. I don't take much time to do anything else, I just teach the Word of God. There is no blessing in the words of David Jeremiah, but there is a blessing that is attached to the Word of God. God says He will not allow His Word to return unto Him void. So I concentrate on the Word of God, and it's amazing when you do that over a long period of time that you could look back over your shoulder and see what God has done in your own life and in the lives of people that have been touched by the Word of God.

Now here's what happens. Here's how the renewal process works. First of all, there are two agents involved. There's the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. The Holy Spirit, we are told, is a renewing agent. Titus 3:5 says, "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit." Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot become a Christian without the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. It's impossible. You may not have known that was happening, but everyone who's a Christian is a Christian because of two things: the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. You cannot be renewed in your mind without the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.

In fact, in the New Testament, you keep running into this theme. Ephesians 4:23 says, "Renewed in the spirit of our minds." The Word of God is taken in by listening to the Word of God, and when we do that, the Word of God gets into our system and it begins to renew us. When I was going through cancer, they were getting ready to give me a stem cell transplant. In order to do that, I had to go through a process called pheresis. I went to the hospital and they gave me a drug called Neupogen and it caused my white cells to multiply. They took the blood out and ran it through a machine and put it back in over here.

That's kind of like what the renewal of your mind is. When you start to pump the Word of God into your mind, it starts to push away the things that are already occupying that space. It comes into your mind, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, it moves through your system and some of the stuff that used to take up that space is pushed away by the power of the Word of God. All of a sudden you wake up one day and you begin to realize, "I'm thinking differently about things than I used to." That's the renewing of your mind. John White, who was a very famous psychiatrist, once said, "Bible study has torn my life apart and remade it." That is to say that God through His Word has done so.

If I could write poetry about it, he said, I would. If I could sing through paper, I would flood your soul with the glorious melodies that express what I have found. I cannot exaggerate for there are no expressions majestic enough to tell of the glory I have seen or of the wonder of finding that I, a neurotic, unstable, middle-aged man, have my feet planted firmly in eternity and I'm breathing the air of heaven, and this has come to me because of the careful study of God's Word. That's how it works. Two agents: the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. And two actions: there's an outside-in action and an inside-out action.

What's the outside-in action? Well, we've talked about that. That's the Word of God coming from the outside into your system. Now the Word of God is coming into your life, and that's the outside-in action. But what about the inside-out action? Well, that's important too. Let me say it this way: if you take the Word of God in and you're not prepared in your heart to receive it, if God has not done a work to plow up the hard soil of your soul so that it's willing to accept the Word of God, then nothing will happen. But I want to express to you that the Bible is going to do this, and if you allow God to give you a submissive attitude toward His Word, that outside action of His Word will come in and it will stir you up inside until you become a new person.

What is it the Bible says? "Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passing away, behold all things are becoming new." That's the rigorous discipline. Somebody said, "Well, Pastor, I was all right with you until we got to that part. That means I got to do something, doesn't it? I got to read the Bible." Somebody told me not long ago that one of the problems with Christianity is that it's so daily. Isn't that true? It's not weekly, it's not Sunday by Sunday, it's day by day. It's the day-by-day rigorous discipline that God uses to make us what we ought to be.

My sister, Mary Alice Jeremiah, retired from collegiate basketball. She was the women's coach for many years at Indiana University in Bloomington and then, when I moved to California, she moved to California and she became the women's basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton and ultimately was the assistant athletic director there. She worked for Bobby Knight. Everybody knows Bobby Knight. Wherever you go, everybody knows Bobby Knight. They were really good friends, and you know, there's a side of Bobby Knight that a lot of people like to vilify, but he was a different kind of person if you knew him personally, and he was very kind to Mary Alice.

One day she gave me something that he wrote, and it was the secret to his commitment to how he coached basketball. This is his definition of discipline: "Discipline is doing what needs to be done, doing it when it needs to be done, doing it the best it can be done, and doing it that way every time you do it." Now let me ask you a question, friends: what would happen if we applied that simple principle of discipline to our study of the Word of God? Discipline is reading the Bible when it needs to be read, reading it how it needs to be read, reading it the best it can be read, and reading it that way every time you read it.

If you would discipline yourself to do that, you say, "Well, I'm not much of a disciplined person." Well, start tomorrow with one verse and say, "God, let this verse flow through my system and weed out something that doesn't belong there." And God will start that renewal process in your heart. The Bible says we must do this to be transformed in our lives. Now, this verse ends with some wonderful and encouraging promises. If we allow this to happen, if we make this radical decision and this rational determination and adopt this rigorous discipline, there will be some routine demonstration in our lives.

Notice what it says: if we do this, we will prove what is the acceptable and good and perfect will of God. How do you prove what is the acceptable and perfect will of God? It's not done in a vacuum. You do that by the renewing of your mind, by the teaching of the Word of God and the processing of the Word of God in your heart. As you do that and it becomes a process, you begin to understand what is the will of God for your life. Did you know that if we want to know the will of God, that He will show us what that will is?

Whoever wants to know, you know why we don't know the will of God? Because we're afraid of what that will of God is going to be, then we might have to do it, right? I remember as a young man, I didn't want to give my life completely to the Lord because I was absolutely certain I'd end up in Africa as a missionary. You know, that's what I always thought, and I didn't want to go to Africa, that's a long way from home. But I want to tell you something: when you stay in the Word of God and you ask God to help you be faithful in doing that, you will come to the conclusion that you'll just know in your heart what the will of God is. You will learn the will of God.

But it gets better. After you learn the will of God, you'll start to live the will of God. It says that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. How do you prove it? You live it. You do it. How many of you know that when you take a step in God's direction, when He tells you what He wants you to do and you do it, inevitably He will demonstrate and affirm that in your life? That has certainly been true in my life.

When God called me to preach, I was a senior in college. I had already put my whole life on a piece of paper. I knew what I was going to do, get this: I was a disc jockey. I was going to be a radio personality. I was going to be on the radio, playing records and all that, and I was working at two different jobs, one at one station and one at the other. Then the Lord got a hold of my heart and called me to serve Him. I was excited about the fact that I knew God wanted me to be a preacher and I was very sad about the fact that I had this love in my heart for radio and I knew it was over.

I was on two little podunk stations when I was not serving the Lord with my whole heart. I gave my heart to the Lord, and the Bible says if you commit your way unto the Lord, He'll give you the desires of your heart. He took what I thought was going to be a subtraction, and He didn't just add, He multiplied. I want to tell you, when you put your trust in the Lord and you trust Him to show you His will and He gives you His will, not only will you learn the will of God, but you will live the will of God. And here's the final thought: ultimately you will love the will of God. Isn't that true?

What is good and acceptable and perfect. How's that to describe a good life? How's your life going? Well, let me tell you my life. My life is good and acceptable and perfect. What are you doing, Jeremiah? I'm just living the will of God. Here's what I've learned over these years: that God's will for your life is more exciting, more challenging, more thrilling, more fun than anything you could ever dream up in your best and most creative moment. Because God is your creator, He is your maker, He's got your DNA all programmed into His master computer and He knows when you get locked into that circuit, you are on your way to the most exciting and thrilling thing God could ever do in a person's life.

And I'm here to tell you that if we don't get back to that understanding of how the Christian life works, we are going to continue to be pressured from the outside into being the weakest example of the church of Jesus Christ this country has ever seen. I challenge you to think about where you are. Have you allowed the world to press you into its mold? Have you given up some of your commitments in order to be accepted by your peers? Have you moved down the road away from the things of the Lord instead of toward them? Here's something I've learned from a study of the book of Hebrews, listen to this: nobody drifts toward holiness. Nobody. We drift away from holiness. To be holy we have to be proactive in our own lives and determine: this is what God has said to me, and this I will do.

I came here to encourage you to take that kind of a radical position about your faith. If we did that, just in the areas that we represent, we would turn this whole community upside down. If we became Christians not just in name only but by the grace of God, everything God wants us to do. If next Sunday we went to our pastor and we said, "This week God spoke to my heart and I want to give God everything there is of me to give, show me how I can help," after he faints and gets up off the floor, he will put you to work and you will decide that this is something you should have done a long time ago.

I want you to pray with me that somehow this message of radical faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to His will will begin to spread through our churches and we can start to make a difference in the world to which God has called us. Sometimes my friends say to me, "Dr. Jeremiah, I wish I could have been born in the good old days when there were revivals every summer and church was so great, I wish I could have been born in the good old days." Well, first of all, I'm not sure there is any time like the good old days. But it really doesn't make any difference because if you wish you were born then, you weren't. Amen?

So here's what we need to understand, and I want you to help me with this: I believe that God put me down on this earth at the exact specific time He wanted me to be here. For whatever's going on in the world around me, I am here in God's plan. I could have been a Renaissance man, I could have been born in the Old Testament, I could have been born in between the Old and the New Testament. But almighty God in His omniscience before the world began said David Jeremiah will live in this period of time right now. My father challenged me at my ordination to serve the generation in which I had been called to serve by the will of God.

I want you to join with me. Let's quit complaining about all the problems we have. Let's be knowledgeable about them, but then let's say, "Lord God, thank You for trusting me, putting me down in this generation to serve You. By the grace of God, that's what I'm going to do." Amen? You know, I've been kind of talking to the choir and you wonder, "Well, I'm not even a Christian, Pastor, what do I do?" Well, the first thing you do is you become a Christian. First thing you do is you give up the things that have been so disappointing to you because I know this: until you know Jesus Christ, you don't know what joy in life is.

If you keep chasing all those things you're chasing to try to find happiness, you'll never find it because, you see, God created you with a God-shaped vacuum and until God is at home in that place, you will never be fulfilled. Stuff Section there, stuff drink in there, stuff adult in there, stuff whatever you want to in there, it will always leave you empty. But when you find Jesus Christ as your personal savior and He comes to live within your heart, then you are a fulfilled person. Amen.

No wonder Romans 12:1 and 2 is so popular because it is so positive and so filled with truth that helps us be victorious in our walk with the Lord. I hope you'll meditate on it, listen to the things we've said about it, and let it work in your life. Friends, this is the end of a month, and I always like to look back over my shoulder and give thanks to God for the many people who've listened. Many of you every single day, you haven't missed a day, and you've listened to us as we've taught the Word of God and entered into this discussion with us. Thank you for being such a wonderful part of this family of Bible students.

And don't forget Easter's around the corner. It's hard to believe we're already at Easter, isn't it? So we're going to enter into some teaching on Easter beginning with tomorrow's broadcast. I hope you'll let us do that and help prepare you for the special day of celebrating our Lord's resurrection coming this weekend. We're going to have a lot of fun together talking about that most important truth, that we serve a risen Savior who is alive today. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great day and we'll see you next time right here on Turning Point.

Guest (Male): Today's message from Dr. David Jeremiah came to you from a live rally in Tallahassee, Florida. How is this ministry drawing you closer to God? Let us know by writing to Turning Point, Post Office Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. Visiting our website at davidjeremiah.org/radio or calling 800-947-1993.

Ask for your copy of David's new book, "Understanding Biblical Prophecy: A 30-Day Bible Study". It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also view over 1,200 of Dr. Jeremiah's sermons on any screen, anytime you like on our Turning Point Plus streaming service for a monthly gift of any amount. Visit turningpointplus.org for details. That's turningpointplus.org. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow for a special Easter message from Dr. David Jeremiah here on Turning Point.