Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer 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. Romans 12:1-2 (NIV)
“Be transformed by the renewing of your minds” (Romans 12:2). While the word “offer” is an action verb, the word “be” is a passive verb, meaning that it is not something we do but rather something that is done to us when we act sacrificially with our bodies committed to God’s way of recovery. Then what God does is completely transform our character and our thinking by rearranging the way our brain works, restoring it to what He created in the first place. The promise is of this transformation is that when we live according to our new God-given desires and objectives, both our behavior and what we think about and feel is healthy again. We are better having become well. We then prove in this new life that God’s plan for us is perfect and beautiful. This is how we can know and experience God’s will for us.
The transformation we experience is rooted in this When-Then relationship we have when we commit to surrendering our will and life into the care of the Sympathetic Savior, Jesus Christ. When you think about it, you realize that the key to freedom in most walks of life is submission from childhood on throughout adulthood. When you submit to the will and care of God in your life, then you will experience the transformation into new life. This is internal transformation from the inside out.
When we offer our bodies, meaning our physical strength to God as a living sacrifice, no longer committing our bodies to addictive patterns of behavior; then God completely transforms (metamorphoo) our hearts and our souls by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1-2). Then we can love God with our whole being, and our neighbor as ourselves.
When we commit to change externally from the outside in, changing what we do (Romans 12:1-2a), then God changes us internally from the inside out, changing who we are and what we think (Romans 12:2).
When we delight in the Lord in our action, then God gives us the desires of our heart by changing what we want according to his will and purpose.
Trust in the Lord and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires. Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him, and he will help you. Psalm 37:3-5 (NLT)
Where Outside-In Recovery focused on what NLX 101 participants are expected to do with their bodies, Inside-Out Recovery includes questions and exercises that reveal truth about what they can realistically expect from God as the conditional element He has required of Himself to fulfill this conditional transformative relationship. What they can expect is that when both conditions are met, having turned over the power in the relationship to God, wanting from a renewed mind what God wants, there is the reasonable expectation that they can receive and experience His power in recovery from all that dissatisfies.
Powerful stuff!