I want to begin with a statement that I once read:  When You Fail To Plan, You Plan To Fail.  Planning is important.  If you are going to start a business, you must first have a plan.  It’s important to plan your career.  Some like to plan their families.  Some plan for their retirement.  If we build a home, we want a house plan; a blue print so that we can envision what that new home will look like.  We want to make the best use of space and especially money.  We want our homes to be both attractive and functional.  We would never build a home without first having a plan. 

But what about the development of our spiritual life?  If planning businesses, families, retirements, and homes are important, why do so many spend so little time planning the development of their spiritual life?  Remember:  When you fail to plan, you plan to fail.  So today I want us to look at developing a plan, a blue print of sorts for Building A Brand New You.  Every blue print has a beginning point, so I began thinking about where to start.  I kept thinking and thinking and thinking, but I just couldn’t figure out where to start this blue print.  I was thinking about a lot of different things—transformation of the heart, the importance of seeing God’s word, I was thinking about faith, but the more I thought about it, nothing seem to fit.  I did my usual walking and pacing as I was thinking.  Now, I don’t know how other preachers arrive at their messages, but me, I don’t know how to explain it, other than to say it just feels right.  All this thinking I was doing and nothing felt right.  I was really wondering why I couldn’t think of the right beginning.  Finally, I said, “OK, God, what are you thinking?”  And I thought I almost heard Him say, “Exactly!”  Excuse me?  What do you mean by “Exactly”?  Then it hit me, the Blue Print For A New You begins with A New Way Of Thinking!  And I was thinking that our passage for today should come from Romans 12:1-2 and I want to share it with you from the NLT:

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you.  Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind He will find acceptable.  This is truly the way to worship Him.  Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.  Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

How we think is more important than many may realize.  How we think influences our perceptions—how and what we see.  It influences our reactions—to both the positive and negative things that happen to us.  And our thinking greatly shapes our daily actions.  How many times after we embarrassed ourselves, or did something that defied common sense did we say, “What was I thinking?”  Anyone here other than me who has ever said that?  Usually our own answer to that question is:  “I wasn’t thinking!”  And maybe most of the time that is the correct answer.  But open your “minds” to another possible answer.  Maybe sometimes the answer is:  “I was thinking the wrong way.”

Case in point is that day when Jesus had been teaching most of the day.  We find the story in Mark 6.  We get restless if the preacher goes over 5 minutes, but this crowd had been there at least all afternoon long.  I don’t think the disciples had a table set up with snacks, coffee and water, so they had been there most of the day without eating.  The disciples know this, so in order to get their own time with Jesus, they tell Jesus, “The day is almost over.  These people need to eat.  Stop preaching and send them home.”  But their little ploy to keep Jesus to themselves unravels.

Jesus tells them, “OK, they need to eat.  YOU give them something to eat.”  That wasn’t their plan, but maybe Jesus doesn’t fully understand this situation.  Almost immediately they reached a rare consensus:  “It would take 8 months of our wages to buy that much bread.  You want us to do that?”  Here is a situation that needs a remedy.  Their thinking was first:  “Send them home”, and then “It would take 8 months of wages to buy that much bread.”   Now, the implication of that statement is:  “We don’t have enough money to feed them.  So, let’s go back to our first statement:  Send them away!”  But Jesus the Teacher is persistent, so He asks another question:  “Well, how many loaves do you have?”  There must have been a look of shock on their faces because Jesus added, “Well, go on and see!”  They must have had a stunned look on their face, like Jesus wasn’t listening to them.  “Didn’t you hear us?  Look around Jesus.  Do you see us carrying around that much bread?”

Well, they take a very quick inventory, maybe thinking that Jesus could finally understand the situation.  John’s Gospel says they found a young boy with a sack lunch.  They come back with their report:  “We have 5 loaves and 2 small fish.”  Obviously this is not enough, so they are probably thinking, “OK Jesus, send them away.”  But Jesus doesn’t see this situation the way they see it.  He tells them, “OK, everybody, I mean everybody have a seat.  We are going to have a picnic.”  Try to imagine the look on the faces of the disciples.  5 loaves of bread?  2 small fish?  A picnic?  Now, we would think that anyone with common sense would know this can’t feed all those people; 5000 men plus women and children.  I can just imagine Matthew, who knew how to work with numbers, thinking, “Well this won’t take long.”  But look at what happens.  Everyone eats until they are full, and then there are 12 baskets full of leftovers.  Their way of thinking said, “This isn’t enough.”  But Jesus’ way of thinking said, “Everyone sit down, the servers will bring your meal to you as quickly as they can.  And save all the leftovers!”

A New Way Of Thinking begins when we see people and situations the way Jesus sees them.  And this will never happen in us until we have our minds transformed by God’s grace, into the same mind of Jesus who told those disciples, “You give them something to eat.”  It comes about when we offer God our mind and allow Him to make something all together different out of us.  The Greek word for transform is where we get our word “metamorphosis.”  In case you have forgotten your classes on entomology, metamorphosis is that process that happens inside a cocoon when that ugly inside and unattractive outside gives way to that beautiful butterfly.  It all happens inside the cocoon.  And it happens inside us when God’s presence, His Holy Spirit, is more than with us, but He lives IN us.  It’s all an inside job.  We can’t make it happen, but we can choose to allow it to happen by surrender to God’s work of grace. 

This transformed mind is where we discover, accept and live in God’s will.  You do understand, don’t you, that God has a will, a plan, a purpose for your life.  God wants to accomplish through each of us something that will help bring about His purpose of bringing people into a relationship with Him.  The natural mind cannot see it no more that the natural minds of the disciples could see how to feed all those people.  But Jesus did feed them, and Jesus will use us when our minds have been transformed by the Jesus who wants to live in us.  Only with the transformed and renewed mind can we discover and live in God’s will.  It’s that transformed mind that understands why we need His will.  It’s the renewed mind that understands 3 key components and how they keep us Thinking In A New Way.

1.  The New Way Of Thinking Shows Us God’s Will Is Good

God’s will is good because it is honorable.  Thinking A New Way understands that our every day life can also be honorable.  We can show integrity and compassion in any situation.  It works from behind the desk of a CEO all the way to a simple ditch digger.  Wherever you are, Thinking A New Way means we look for ways to express the holiness and majesty of God, the grace and mercy, and His unlimited love to a world that desperately needs to see Him.  To say His will is good means that whatever it is He wants us to say or do, it’s the right thing.  His will is what adds value to life, purpose to life, and He adds the beauty to life.

2.  The New Way Of Thinking Shows Us God’s Will Is Pleasing

God’s will is pleasing because it shows us how to live life as it was meant to be.  So much of an ordinary day can get us out of balance, out of sync and out of control.  But living out God’s will shows us life as it is meant to be.  Thinking A New Way means we look for ways to bring our daily life back into agreement with God’s plans and purposes.  Thinking A New Way shows us how to live this life in such a way that we find a passion living God’s way.  It is pleasing to us, because it is the very life we have been created for—a life in deep intimate relationship with Him—that our very hearts become what Lloyd John Ogilvie called the post Resurrection home of the Risen Lord.  And it is pleasing to Him—who created us and who loves us enough to allow His Only Son to die on that Cross, just for us so that this horrible and destructive power of sin could be defeated ON that Cross and IN our life.

3.  The New Way Of Thinking Shows Us God’s Will Is Perfect

God’s will is perfect because ultimately, it will make us perfect.  No, we’re not perfect yet, but Thinking A New Way means we know that every choice, every carefully chosen word, and every deliberate act can take us further away from that total perfection—or if we make Him and His ways our priority, then it takes us a step closer to that ultimate and total perfection.  Thinking A New Way means we live our life with a clearly defined purpose—to allow all the life that is Jesus, to be seen in us and through us.  The design of God’s will is to finish the process of transformation that begins when we invite Jesus into our heart as Savior and as Lord. Thinking A New Way is an inside job.  The only way it can happen is when we offer Jesus the ONLY thing He has ever wanted from any of us:  Our Heart!  In giving Him our heart, we set out on the journey, the ONLY journey, that will Build Us Into A Brand New You.

Now, fast forward past the miracle of feeding all those people with 5 loaves and 2 fish.  In Acts 3, John and Peter are about to enter the Temple in Jerusalem.  A beggar stops them, asking for money.  They don’t have any money.  What will they do?  Do they start shouting, “Hey, this man needs money but we don’t have any.  Will someone please step up and help this poor man out?”  That, my friends, would have been their old way of thinking.  But now, thanks to the Holy Spirit, they have a new way of thinking.  Listen to verse 6:  “I don’t have any silver or gold for you.  But I’ll give you what I have.  In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!”  A new way of thinking is all about knowing that Jesus isn’t just with you, but that He wants to be and can be IN you.