Asking God what His will is can quietly become another way of living for yourself—always scanning the horizon for the next big thing He has for you, while the world shapes you into its own image in the meantime. Romans 12:1–2 pushes back on that, calling us to something that starts not with where we’re going, but with what we’re willing to offer right where we are.
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The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The speaker discusses how he initially approached God’s will with a selfish mindset (“What do You have for me next?”) before understanding that God’s primary will is for us to glorify Him wherever we are. How might this shift in perspective change the way you pray about decisions in your own life?
The speaker shares personal examples of sacrifice, including cutting music out of his life and walking away from certain friendships. What are some areas in your own life where you might need to “present yourself as a living sacrifice,” and what makes these decisions difficult?
According to the sermon, “non-conformity protects the heart.” The speaker uses the example of his wife’s ministry to Muslims who recognized her genuine faith by observing her behavior. How does your daily conduct serve as a testimony to your faith, and in what ways might the world’s values have subtly shaped your own behavior without you realizing it?
The sermon emphasizes that God’s will often involves faithfulness in our current circumstances rather than always calling us to something new. Can you think of a time when you realized God’s purpose for you was to remain faithful where you already were, and what fruit came from that faithfulness?
The sermon stresses the importance of sharing the gospel boldly despite fear of rejection. What barriers prevent you from sharing your faith more openly, and how does the reminder that “if they didn’t like Jesus, they won’t always like us” address those concerns?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Howdy again to all of you. For those of y’all I saw this morning, it’s definitely been a blessing and a half to be here. This has been great, truly, truly has, and I’m just so thankful for the opportunity to come up here and fellowship with y’all. As our brother mentioned, my amazing wife Suzanne is with me, and we have three awesome daughters who are also here. They are just the reason. We always laugh when everyone asks if you’ve seen them, because if you’ve already seen them this morning, you know you have. They are all over the map, they love saying hi to everybody, and they’ll run up, put their hands in your face, and say, “I’m five,” whether you’ve asked or not. It’s just kind of like an informal greeting for them. So it’s been a blessing to be here.
Before I dive in, I’d like to open with a word of prayer, and then we’ll get into the word. So if you would, bow your heads. Dearly Father, we thank you for this blessed day. We thank you for another opportunity to serve you. We thank you for your Son’s death on the cross and His resurrection, Lord. We thank you for your grace and your mercy. We thank you for the opportunity just to know you and serve you. Thank you for being with us each and every day. Thank you for continually showing us grace through every moment. Lord, I pray that as we dive into your word today, You open our hearts, You help us to see Your glory, and Father I pray that all that we say and do throughout every day glorifies You. In Christ’s name, amen.
As I kind of mentioned for those of you that were here, or maybe those of you that weren’t here this morning, a little bit about my testimony: there was definitely a phase of my life where I was really on this binge, if you will, of “God, what is Your will?” I lived, you know, that first batch of my life up into my mid-20s acting like a knucklehead—my time in the military and prior to that—in living with truly reckless abandon. From going from that to giving my life to Christ in 2010, and then trying to say, “Okay, I understand that the way I was living was wrong and it was truly in sin. I want to live for You. So, what is Your will now?”
Something I did get caught up in at that time in my life, as some of us do if you’re a new believer or maybe even with the Western mindset, was a lot of “What is Your will?” because surely there must be a next big thing, right? It wasn’t looking at it necessarily from “Lord, what is Your will because I want You, the Lord, to be glorified?” But there was definitely an aspect of it where I still had a selfish mentality of “Lord, what do You have for me next? What do I do next?” And that was more “I”-driven instead of looking to what the Lord’s will is so that He could be glorified.
There’s that part of, “Well, surely He must call me to a different job. Surely He must call me to a different place.” And even though that may be the case and He did, the reality is sometimes He doesn’t. Sometimes His will is frankly for us to be where we are, to glorify Him where we are. Because the reality is the will of the Lord is that we should worship and glorify Him and praise Him—that we bring all glory to Him. That’s the root of the will: to know Him, to serve Him, and to glorify Him. Everything else that we do should be an outpouring of that.
But again, we can get caught up in more of the “What is Your will?” in the sense of “Should I buy this truck or not?” I’m not saying that you shouldn’t pray for those things—absolutely pray for those things—but understand the root of all that should derive from bringing glory to the Lord.
So, we’re going to spend today talking about the will of the Lord, how do we discern the will of the Lord, and what does that look like when it plays itself out. If you would, turn to Romans 12, and we’re going to be in verses 1 through 2—that’s Romans 12:1-2. I’ll give you a couple minutes to turn there.
I really like how Paul writes. I really enjoy reading the way he explains things because as someone who came from a military background and a government background, I find that a lot of Paul’s writing is very matter-of-fact, very if-then statements. It’s very plain, and it’s very easy for me to digest. So whenever I read Paul I get very excited because Romans was probably the first book I really dove into when I became a follower of Christ, so it holds a special place.
Romans 12:1-2 says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
Again, as I mentioned, Paul’s giving a very definitive if-then statement here: here are the things that you should do; here’s the process for it; here’s the order of it; and then here is the reason for it. This is why we do these things so we can prove what is perfect and holy will. As we go through this, we’re going to look at three main parts: what does it mean to be a living sacrifice, what does it mean to not be conformed to this world, and what does it mean to renew our mind? Because it’s these three places that once we understand these, we can then move forward on to talking about proving the Lord’s will.
Point one: A living sacrifice—sacrifice prepares the heart. Sacrifice gets the heart ready. Paul urges us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. This means devoting everything that we do to the Lord. We talked about the old times when they used to have sacrifices—you had to prepare the sacrifice, you had to clean it. There’s a big to-do, so to speak, or big preparation for this.
If we’re to present our lives as a living sacrifice, we should look at our own lives, do an inventory, and say: Am I presenting John today to the Lord as a holy sacrifice, or am I holding on to bastions of sin in my life? Am I approaching the Lord with things of my own mind, for my own desire, my own want? Or am I presenting John Kurtz, my life, to the Lord for His will, His glory, and His dominion? How am I offering up my life to the Lord? What am I doing with my life?
Moreover, when we talk about the word sacrifice here, Paul says it’s our reasonable service, and that to me is really interesting. I kind of nerd out, if you will, about linguistics and sentences and just how people in Scripture—the Word of the Lord—is presented. But he talks about it’s our reasonable service. What Paul is saying here is that if we follow the Lord, if we trust in Him, if we believe in Him, if we truly serve Him, then it is our reasonable service to present ourselves as a living sacrifice. He means what he’s saying. It should come from us to say, “If I love the Lord, I will do X.” It’s our reasonable, or it’s our reasonable service. It should be something that comes naturally from within us. I shouldn’t say second nature because we have a sin nature, but it should be something that we think about—it’s like, “Hey, if I’m going to come praise the Lord, this is how I should carry things out.” It should be that outpouring from you, the want to glorify the Lord. If you follow Him, it should come from you, through the Holy Spirit. You should feel that drive that, “Hey, I want to serve the Lord. I want to glorify Him in what I do.”
So, our reasonable service should be to present ourselves as a living sacrifice. When I came to know the Lord, there was that part of me that did change. When I truly believed in the Lord, there was a huge part where I said, “You know what? I need to step away from all these things that I’m doing. I need to step away from this lifestyle.” I understood it: if I truly believe the Lord, then is my life matching what the Lord has told me I should do? Does my life match the Word of God? Am I doing the things that I’m told to do in the Word? Am I respecting the Lord? Am I bringing glory to Him with my speech and my behavior? And I realized I wasn’t.
For everyone, I understand everyone has different barriers. For me, just being realistic, when I first got out of the military and when I gave my life to the Lord, I cut music out of my life. Now, you need to understand for me, where some people can listen to music and it doesn’t impact them, for me I was in the infantry where we listened to a lot of angry music and hateful music. Because that, and then being in that environment, right—the United States Army infantry—we pride violence and swiftness of action. And what can come with that is a perverse mentality of visiting harm and hurt on everyone else. When you get in that environment, you listen to this music and then everything is hateful and wretched for me, and my language, the way I spoke to people.
I cut out music completely, and then when I did start to listen to music, it’d be stuff without lyrics, it would just be electronic music because I couldn’t be around that stuff. And even today, there are certain songs that if it comes on the radio or if I’m listening on my phone, I immediately know I can’t do that. I’ve got to change that, get rid of that, because I know where that goes. Because to me, that’s my reasonable service. You understand, it was reasonable for me to walk away from this.
I cut off friends, groups. There are people that were friends for years. I still stayed in touch as an acquaintance, but I stopped hanging out with them. I started—God stopped me going places with them because, again, we talked about that holy sacrifice or that living sacrifice should I be living this life. How can I take this sacrifice to the Lord tainted with everything that I’m living in? So again, a living sacrifice—sacrifice prepares the heart.
Point number two: Do not be conformed to the world—non-conformity protects the heart. This goes hand in hand with what I was just saying. We talked about we are not supposed to take on the likeness of the world that’s around us. Specifically right here, the words that are being used in the way Paul talks about this about not being conformed, it’s in reference to casting a metal object. You pour molten lava into a mold and then it forms to that mold.
As we pour ourselves out, or as we’re being poured out, are we pouring ourselves into a mold that fits the world or a mold that fits Christ? What are we doing with ourselves when we say, “Do not be conformed”? Are we guarding our hearts? Because again, not conforming protects the heart.
When we allow ourselves to be in certain environments, to take part in certain things, we open our hearts up to the attacks of the enemy. We open our hearts up to sin. Scripture says very clearly that all it takes is for a foothold to open a door to the way to sin. Do we stay away from that?
You see, back when I was in the military, alcohol was a massive thing. It’s just commonplace there. I remember my platoon sergeant, even though you’re not supposed to drink before you’re 21 years old, our platoon sergeant was very big on, “Well, if you can get to a firefight at 18, you can drink.” That sounds great as a headline, but do you know what alcohol does to an 18-year-old who’s living a life completely separate from the Lord, dealing with all the things that you deal with being in the infantry? It does even more damage, and it destroys.
I watched it destroy so many men. That same platoon sergeant who said that to me, after my first tour, committed suicide when we got back from that first tour. And that was an outpouring of an incident that happened because he got drunk, he got a DUI again, and he could not let go of alcohol. I’ve seen what happens there.
So for me, when my wife and I first got married, I remember there was a moment where a buddy of mine in the military worked for a government contractor. He gave me a bottle of liquor because we were the instructors of his course, and he gave it to me. I remember I took it home, and I remember sitting there looking at it and I was having a rough day. One day, something happened, I was stressed, and I remember looking at that bottle and for a moment the thought was there of, “It was a rough day, why don’t I have a drink?”
For me, immediately I realized the path that was about to go down. Turning—I should be turning to the Lord, not alcohol. And that situation, especially with my past, my grandfather struggled with alcoholism—that’s been in our family. I’ve seen what it’s done to my brothers in the military, and it’s just destroyed lives. I remember taking that and I poured that out. It was 2013—2017. Yeah, 2017 was when I had my last drop, and I walked away from it because for me to offer myself as a holy sacrifice and to not be conformed to this world, that meant that I needed to take steps to separate myself from this world.
Again, talking about the friend groups: I had a good friend group for the longest time that I hung out with, and over time you start to pay attention to the language, the things that are talked about, the way people conduct themselves. If you constantly put yourself in that environment, why would you be surprised if you start talking like that? If you start speaking like that?
Again, I’m not saying that you throw these people to the four winds, and you don’t do anything. I believe you can minister to them, but be mindful of how you do that. I stopped spending all that time with them. I still keep in touch with them, asking how they’re doing, ask them how their families are doing. I might go see one of them and we might go out for dinner, but I definitely don’t spend every other night hanging out with them and their friends because I know where that leads. I know the environment that it leads to.
Being not conformed is also important. We talk about that, because so many times ministering to Muslims, my wife has experienced this firsthand. She had an amazing ministry—this is being recorded, right? So she had an amazing ministry opportunity with some Muslims, who I can’t give too many details about because it could put them in danger. But through that process, they did start asking her questions and they talked to her about, “We know that you’re genuine about what you believe because we see how people who say they’re Christians act and we see how you act. We see how they behave. We see how you behave.”
So, what is your image? If you’re being poured into the mold of this world, then your life becomes a testimony of the world and not of Christ. And then, of course, not being conformed.
We talked about this, I’m sure many times you’ve heard it said, “Just follow your heart.” And if any of y’all have ever seen Paul Washer, Paul Washer has a pretty animated response to that, but he quotes Jeremiah 17:9, which is: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?”
Ladies and gentlemen, when we look at our lives to protect our heart, to protect ourselves, to glorify God, we have got to be people who don’t conform to this world. There should be something different about us.
Because if someone who’s a Muslim says, “You say you believe in Jesus, you say you’re different, but you look like everyone else that’s here in the United States,” what does that do to the testimony and the gospel of Jesus Christ? What motivation would there be if you tell a Muslim, “I follow—I’m like I mentioned before, I follow Isa al-Masih. I follow Jesus Christ the Messiah, the anointed one. I follow Him,” but then nothing of your life reflects it?
I can’t tell you how many times in ministry, especially ministering to people of other religions who are serious about their faith, they look at us and they say, “You don’t even fear your God, you don’t even respect your God. Why should I believe that your God is who He says it is? Why should I believe that Jesus is the Messiah, that was crucified, buried, and resurrected, if you don’t even act like you believe it?” It damages the gospel when we live a double-minded life because our life ends up giving testimony to the world’s, not testimony to Christ. So don’t be conformed to this world because being non-conformed protects the heart.
Then, renewing of the mind—renewal transforms the heart. Paul calls us to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Transforming means to become something new, something opposite of our sin nature. Renewal is not passive. It requires an intentional engagement with Scripture, prayer, obedience, and the work of the Holy Spirit.
Then it goes on to say that this is how we will be able to prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. There’s two parts to this last point, talking about the first part about renewing to take on that new life. When we read the Word of God, when we separate ourselves from the world, we understand that we are to live in the world, yes, but to be not of it.
When we do these things and we make it a point to worship the Lord, to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice, our mindset begins to change. You start to look at things differently. You understand, “Hey, you know what, it’s not wise for me to go partake in that. It’s not wise for me to do this. It’s not wise for me to do that.” The transformation starts.
You’re in this place then where we can start to see situations in a new light. Instead of responding in anger, we respond in love—and I know that’s very hard, I know that’s very hard.
There have been situations where my wife and I have talked, and we’ve been talking about something and I start to get a little flared up, and then I’m reminded of Scripture, you know, it says “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” Or the other parts where we’re supposed to be peacemakers, and as much as it relies on us to live peaceably with one another. You start to think about your mind is renewed because you start, instead of your propensity being towards, “Hey, I’m going to do all these wicked things,” you start to understand the glory of the Lord, and you start to respond differently in situations.
But it’s through that renewal of the mind that we approach that when we see people in the neighborhoods or the towns that we go into. Whereas in the past, we thought, “I would never talk to that person in a million years,” your mind starts to go to, “I wonder if that person’s heard about Jesus Christ, and what a shame if I pass them every single day, they pass, and they never heard the gospel, and I know the gospel but I didn’t share it.”
We share with the entire planet when we buy a new truck—I’m guilty of that. I’ll share with everybody on Facebook when I buy a new truck. But will I share that I know Christ is my Savior? Will I share that? That Christ has done in my life? So that renewal, it transforms the heart. We start to see things with a new lens. We start to see people as Christ sees people. We start to see people as needing the gospel. We start to see people as hurting, as I’ve seen them as our enemy. We start to see that that is someone who’s suffering, and that the only way they’re going to have that healing is through Christ.
Then, that second part of that passage where it says we can prove the will of God, the word—the Greek word that’s used here—is it refers to testing, testing or examining something to determine that it is genuine. It’s like testing metal by fire, you know, or we talked about testing gold with fire, testing different purities of metal with fire.
If we’ve gone through this process, and this is how it ties into the will, if we live offering ourselves as a living sacrifice, if we don’t conform to this world, if our mind is renewed, what ends up happening is when we’re in a situation, we say, “Lord, what is Your will?” We have built a foundation so we can analyze the world, we can analyze the Word with a godly heart and a godly set of eyes, and say, “You know what? Does this bring glory to the Lord or not?”
When I was struggling when I first gave my life to Christ, I mentioned I kept asking the Lord for His will. I was applying to all sorts of jobs under the Sun, and that one prayer I always prayed as I asked the Lord, “If this is of Your will, let it flourish. If not, slam the door in my face.” And I told the Lord, “I’m not intelligent enough to make any wise decisions. I’m truly at Your mercy. If left to my own devices, there’s no telling what havoc I would wreak in my life.”
I got to a point where, as I read the Scripture more and I studied more and I dedicated my life to Christ, I realized that in this time that He has given me, His will is that I glorify Him. So I told the Lord, “If it be Your will, I will stay at this job, in this position, for the rest of my life, and I’ll minister to every single person around me, and I will continue to be a light in their world.” Because that’s the difference: I went from thinking about what the Lord’s going to do in my life—all these big things and all these achievements—to “What can I do for the Lord where I am, where He has me?”
Then after a couple years in that position, that’s when my brother gave me that phone call. I ended up going to Liberty. We talked about this as well with making decisions in our own life about, you know, whether we’re going to renew the lease in the townhome we’re renting. We did, and this is the part of praying for the will: “Lord, what’s Your will? Is it Your will that we stay here? Is it Your will that we move?” And then you act in a way that glorifies the Lord, and you let the Lord take care of the rest.
Several times, my wife talked about it. There’s a job that she was at where she wanted to leave so bad, and she again applied everywhere. And I told her, “Well, maybe the Lord has you where you’re supposed to be. Maybe His will is that you’re not supposed to go anywhere.” And come to find out, before she left that job, the one boss she had that she really did not get along with, she ended up having an opportunity to talk to her about Jesus and talk to her about the church. And come to find out that that lady had a lot of hurt in her past from the church.
And I told her, “See, I was like, the Lord’s will was simply that you be where you are and you glorify Him.” Yes, sometimes He does call you to the other side of the world, but please understand that even if He doesn’t, He has called you to glorify Him where you are, and you never know what that could be.
We knew a missionary who served in the Middle East. She believed she was called to missions. The family that she was living with, because she was a female in that environment, she could not leave that house whatsoever. She had to stay in the house the whole time she was there. I forget how many she’s there for—maybe three years living in that house. And she thought, “I’m supposed to be going out, supposed to be evangelizing.”
So as time comes, she eventually leaves the field, and then she ends up hearing from one of the daughters that lived in that house, the young lady—she had given her life to Christ and, correct me if I’m wrong, the rest of the house converted, the rest of the house gave their life to Christ. Something of note is the one man that lived in that house—I think was the father-grandfather—he was actually, I think, working for the Taliban at the time.
But see, in that moment, the Lord’s will was that she’d be faithful where she was. And then, due to her faithfulness in that house, that whole house now knows Christ. And who knows who they’re going to share the gospel with after that.
In your own towns and your own houses, in your own workplaces, be faithful. But if I can encourage you to do anything, it’s share the gospel. We’re always called to stand ready to give an account for what we believe in. Share the gospel. You have no idea what that will do.
Again, how can we tell people that Christ is awesome, that Christ is the way, if we never mention His name because we’re afraid of what people, you know, not liking us? Well, we’re in good company. If they don’t like us, they didn’t like Jesus. And He was perfect. Jesus was the only perfect person, and they killed Him. Why do we think that the world is going to receive us any differently than that?
Right? We’re blessed to be persecuted for the sake of the Lord. Just share the gospel because at the end of the day, what a glorious thing if someone comes to know Christ and they can have eternity with the Lord because you were willing to be a little uncomfortable. How awesome would that be?
So, talking about the summary of the path of God’s will: Sacrifice prepares the heart—offer ourselves fully to God, and I really mean it. Just dedicate your life to the Lord and live it. Understand what Christ has done for us on the cross, and then just submit to it. There’s no better place to be than the Lord’s will.
Non-conformity protects the heart—refuse to be shaped by this world. Don’t let the world tell you what to do and who to be. Follow the Word of the Lord, follow Him, and you’ll protect your heart.
Renewal transforms the heart—allow God to renew your mind. Sometimes it can be hard because we don’t want to let go of old things or old habits because, “Hey, I really enjoy that.” But if the Lord’s convicting you about it, let it go. Don’t hold on to these things because you have no idea what the Lord may be protecting you from if you just let go of old things that He’s convicted you about.
And then together, these three things produce a believer who can recognize and walk in the will of God. And how awesome is that?
So, as I get ready to close, I’m going to read Psalm 119:97-105:
“Oh, how I love Thy law! It is my meditation all the day. Thou through Thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies; for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers; for Thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients because I keep Thy precepts. I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I might keep Thy word. I have not departed from Thy judgments, for Thou hast taught me. How sweet are Thy words unto my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through Thy precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”
If you want to know the will of the Lord, spend time with Him. Search His word. Submit yourself to Him. That’s the only way to truly know His word or know His will.
I’m going to go ahead and end with prayer, so if you would, bow your heads. Dearly Father, again, we thank You for this blessed day, Lord. If there be anybody here who doesn’t know Christ, I pray that You convict them, Lord. If there’s anybody here that knows of someone that they need to share the gospel with, I pray that You give them the strength to do so. Give them a confidence to boldly go out and share the Word of God. Father, I pray that You work on each one of our hearts, help us to understand Your will on all things, and that Your ultimate will is that we glorify You, we worship You. Help us to be more like You each and every day. In Christ’s holy name I pray, amen.
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