Transformed: The Mind of Christ - Week 5: May 10, 2026

Pastor Nate Rovenstine

Transcript

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Well, good morning. Happy Mother's Day and congratulations to all of our graduates. Um, I was doing some math this morning and thinking about now when we first moved here, there were no graduating seniors, but had there been graduating seniors in our church that year, those graduating seniors would have been 55 years old. And yeah, I had a moment when that hit me. And the moment was a little bit about my age, but even a greater moment was how much I love the church. And I want to say how grateful I am for parachurch organizations. You understand that? I mean church organizations that come alongside the church. I'm deeply grateful for campus ministries, which is a big thing here in our community. Powerful. I'm deeply grateful for ministries that reach certain groups of people in certain ways. I have very specific focus. You should support those when you get the chance as God leaves that in your heart. I I this is nothing to take away anything from that. But there's nothing like the church where from birth to death, anywhere in between, we're here. And I don't mean we connect church. I mean the church, the bride of Christ, right? This family of God. And it is an incredible privilege to just watch students grow up, babies be born, and go on to adulthood. There's I'll also be honest, there's plenty of heart, heartache that goes with this. You know, but we're here. And we're excited. And it'll be a couple weeks because we're doing a few other things, but this summer we're doing a series on the church. And just the metaphors of the church in scripture. I highly encourage you to join us. I think we start that the first week in June, something like that. Just keep coming every week. You'll you'll get to it. All right. As we wrap up today's series, this week's series we're in now, The Transformed Mind. We're going to do what we've been doing at the beginning of all of these, is just read Romans 12, 1 and 2. We've read it now from a variety of different versions. I'm going to read a couple of the versions today. Uh the Amplified Version says, Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies dedicating all of yourselves set apart as a living sacrifice, holy and well pleasing to God, which is your rational, logical, intelligent act of worship. And do not be conformed to this world any longer with its superficial values and customs, but be transformed and progressively changed as you mature spiritually, by the renewing of your mind, focusing on godly values and ethical attitudes, so that you may prove for yourselves what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect in his plan and purpose for you. And then from the New King James Version, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be 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. So I think it was Friday, I ask AI a question, and I figured something out about AI. When AI doesn't have an answer, they give an excuse. The excuse is check your internet connection. Now, everything else I was doing on my internet connection was fine. I think AI, they're not going to admit, I would love AI just to say, we have no idea. But AI always has an opinion. So I ask them a different question earlier in the week. And this is the question I ask: how far off target would a rocket launched from the Earth to the Moon be if the launch trajectory was off by one inch?

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Right?

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Like if they calculated how far to get to the moon and you just missed it by one inch. So here's the answer that AI come up with. If off by an inch refers to standard shooting MOA adjustments, you would miss by about 66 miles. However, if the air is exactly one inch of lateral displacement at a specific early point in the launch, like the first hundred feet, the mass distance could easily grow into hundreds of thousands of miles without trajectory correction maneuvers throughout the flight. I didn't understand most of that sentence. But what I wanted to get at, and this is really the point, like we understand this principle, right? We understand the principle of trajectory. That if you launch something a little bit wrong, it's gonna, the farther it goes, it's gonna get farther and farther off its intended target. And that's what I want us to think about this morning. I want us to think about the trajectory of our lives, and specifically about the decisions we make every day that set the trajectory of our lives. Now, most of the decisions, the vast majority of the decisions that you and I make on a daily basis, frankly, are inconsequential. I mean, they're really not going to change the direction of your life. It's really not going to be a problem for you if you happen to order the wrong latte at seven brew. You should get over that pretty quick, right? If you get in the wrong checkout line at the grocery store, and if you're here a couple weeks ago, that could be either line, right? The fast one or the slow one, but if you get the wrong line, you you understand that that trajectory of that decision is pretty short-lived and you move on with your life. If you forget to wear a raincoat on a day that downpours and you step into the office soaking wet, uh inconvenient, but you move on. But sometimes these moments when we have a decision or an opportunity or something happens, they have much longer impact and they involve other people. We lose our temper and we say something harmful. That has set a trajectory for that relationship. We look at porn again, that has set a trajectory for our lives. We allow ourselves to get caught up in a meaningless debate, and all of a sudden that becomes a part of the relationship with somebody. We choose to continue to live the lie that no one knows about, and it sets the trajectory of our lives. Now, here's what we know success in life, and particularly for the disciple of Jesus, depends so much on us having the courage to make trajectory corrective measures. We know this, right? We understand that when we mess up, we should take responsibility. We understand that when we hurt someone, we should ask forgiveness. We understand that when we are hurt by people, we should offer forgiveness. We understand that if there's something that's so got its claws in us that we should seek accountability. We understand on all these things. Like the point I want to make is that we all know at some level that just because we made a mistake at the beginning doesn't mean our lives are set forever in that direction. We can make these corrective trajectory measures. We can lean into deeper spiritual disciplines, we can seek accountability. But even though even though we understand the rational truth behind that, right, we know. We know we should do better. We know we should change, we know we should get help, we know whatever it is. And I'm just giving you a few examples. The examples of this are myriad, as many as there are in the room of us and more. Like we know we should take these measures, but there can be a story that develops in our mind. There can be a mindset, something we hang on to that causes us to not have the courage to make those changes. And we can get stuck on that one-inch trajectory mistake that we make at the very beginning that causes the situation to continue to go the way it was, and we can not make those measures, take those measures because we're stuck on that first decision. So I'm gonna give an example of that today in a pretty vulnerable way. And uh I I I'm gonna tell a story, and I'm gonna tell a story of my life. It's very recent, it's happening now, it's not something back, you know, a long time ago. And and and and so I'm gonna tell it in a way that protects other people. And so for that, I'm not gonna be able to get in as deep as I like, but I'm gonna be as vulnerable as I can, okay? And I'm not telling this story for you to have sympathy for me or anything like that. I want you to think of as I tell this story, I wonder if there's anybody that can relate to it as a part of your story. So I think most of you know that at least until the end of July, I have bigger responsibilities than just pastoring Connect Church. I'm the district superintendent of the Western churches in Kansas. And so my job is to oversee all the churches in the state at some level and in some ways. And I I I will simply say this that there is a there's a conflict, a significant conflict that between a couple of our churches and a couple of our pastors. And and this this conflict is rooted not in anything theological, not in anything moral, but in unmet expectations. Right? There's two people that started on a journey together. One of them assumed this is how it was gonna go, the other one assumed this is how it was gonna go, and so they're going in different directions. Maybe a better way to say is they are all launching towards the same target, but they are on different trajectories, about as far as you can get. And it's obvious that the farther this relationship goes, the farther that gap is between them. So, what you need to know about this situation is I'm not the lead actor. You know, I'm not Luke Skywalker. I'm like C3PO. Right? I have a role to play that's important. I mean, what would Star Wars be without me? You know, pick your own. I'm not Gilligan, I'm the professor and Marianne. You know how that got tagged at the end? That's kind of where I am in this. I'm a supporting actor. And that's critical to understand. As this situation unfolded, I realized that I made a critical mistake at the very beginning in my role as district superintendent. It wasn't an error of character, it was an it was a competition, like I just didn't do it right. Does that make sense? I own that, I know that. And so I have, in this whole year-long conversation, been trying to make corrective adjustments to that decision. So that's by the way, that's I think that's what leaders do is they process, they take responsibility, they try to understand their role, they try to help the organization, the family. And you're all leaders at a sub-level. We try to make things better around us, okay? I can live with all that, but here's the story in my mind. I want to, here's what I want you to hear about the power of stories. The story in my mind is if I had gotten that right, this situation would not have happened. Does that make sense? I mean, it doesn't make sense. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like, I know that's not true. I'm only C3PO. I'm not the main actor. I could not have solved, I could not have stopped this conflict or this really misunderstanding. But the story in my mind is you're the district superintendent. And by the way, there's other people that are helping to shape this story. There's some of these folks involved that are kind of saying the same thing. I'm only sharing that story to say the power of stories. The stories in my head were keeping me stuck at the trajectory error, not the corrective measures that I took along the way. Now, I'm gonna be fine. By the way, thank you for listening. You know, pastors sharing vulnerable stories like this, it almost feels like a therapy session you all have helped me with, so I appreciate that. I try not to do that too much, but thank you for listening. U what I want you to hear is not is not so much about that story, but the power of that story, and I want you to think about the stories in your life that are keeping you stuck. I think they're likely to be very different than that, than mine. But what stories are keeping you stuck in a dangerous, unhealthy trajectory in life. Because we as humans are storytelling species. We tell stories. It's one of the things that sets us apart from other created things. It's one of the things that makes us created in the image of God. Someone phrased it this way: we know that we know. We're aware, we're self-aware of our existence, and we are self-aware of other existence. And so, in that self-awareness, we have stories as we try to manage life. We tell stories. Again, most of those stories are beautiful and wonderful, and the stories that were going through the parents' minds of your students up here, right? They're just so many of our stories are powerful. This is the power of movie and theater and books. Stories can be beautiful and they can shape. And we have you ever been drawn? Have you ever found yourself crying at a movie and you don't know why? It's because the story. I've never cried at a movie, but some of you have. We're drawn into the power of these stories, but this is uniquely human. Coyotes are not sitting around a campfire, recalling that day back in 2019 when they almost got hit by that car, right? Or that animal with lights. Rabbit mummies aren't sitting around in the twilight of the garden swapping birth stories, though they have a lot of stories to swap. There's a bird flying somewhere around in this neighborhood that has a harrowing story of getting caught in this building, being released, and then coming back in later the next day, and being released again. I don't know if that bird's around still, but it's not telling that story to its bird friends. We as humans are uniquely wired as created in the image of God to tell stories. This is seen even in ancient history, right? This is seen in the very beginning cave paintings. What are cave paintings? They're stories. What is art? It's a story. What is music? It's storytelling. Stories are powerful. And they help us make sense out of the world. They help bring what's inside outside. To just tell somebody facts about your life requires deep connection by the other person, deep attention. But you tell them a good story, they're right there with you. Stories help us tell others what's going on in the inside. And we learned last week, Kevin reminded us that these stories, these early stories, are shaped by our early experiences with our parents. They're shaped by our culture. They're shaped by our community, they're shaped by our subcultures, they're shaped by our family, they're shaped by what we choose to read and how we choose to live. They're shaped in so many ways. And that's what makes them all unique and different. We're all shaped by our stories. They're unique stories that we all use to make sense with. Our brains want to tell us stories to help us create understanding, to make meaning and find purpose. So today, as we wrap up this series, it's been so wonderful. I want us to think about the power of stories in the process of transforming our mind. Every week we've been reading Romans 12, 1 and 2, really thinking about that phrase, renewing your mind. And I want to think about the stories that you're believing. And I want to pay attention to those stories that we tell ourselves, because they're powerful. They're powerful. Our stories are, as I mentioned, so much good in our stories, so many wonderful things. But what riddles many of our stories are three things. All of us at least have parts of our stories, I think, that have at least one of these things in them, and that is shame, blame or pride. The stories we tell ourselves, I mean, a lot of other things too, but I I think so many of the stories we tell ourselves are sort of riddled with shame. Blame or pride. A little bit of shame, like if I would have done better. Maybe a little bit of pride. If I would have launched the rocket straighter. The stories we tell ourselves have these elements, at least these elements, or some of them. And so knowing the trajectory of our lives, and knowing that the trajectory of our lives is going to cause us to miss the desired goal of wholeness and health when we deal with this stuff, when we're trying to make those corrective adjustments, we try to figure that out ourselves. We try to deal with shame ourselves. We try to figure out what to do with blame ourselves, we try to figure out what to do with pride ourselves. So we have coping mechanisms, many of them good and helpful. We remind ourselves, we we we remind ourselves of things as humans that we try to rewrite the stories, the shame, blame, and pride stories. And while that is not a bad strategy, in fact, that can be very, very helpful. What I want to do today is suggest that perhaps instead of trying to reframe our own stories, we need to find our story in God's story. We need a whole new story. We need to embrace the story that is ours through the gospel, the good news of Jesus'. We need to look at scriptures and see this grand narrative from cover to cover. There's so much about the Bible that is difficult to understand. Some of the Old Testament, I still have a hard time. Like, how did God and why did this? And there's questions I have, but when you read it as a whole, and we're big on this around here, when you read it as a whole from cover to cover, the long story short, as Jocelyn McDowell's book talks about, is this grand narrative of the good news of Jesus. And can we uh the the the hope is that we find our stories there? This is the path to renewing our minds. Because here's the good news the good news of Jesus is that though we are more broken than we want to admit, we are also more loved than we ever hoped. And God is transforming us in ways we never imagined possible. That's the good news, friends. That's a better story than any story you're believing that's not true, or any attempt to undo those those lies on your own. What if we began to believe the story of the gospel? What if we leaned deeply into his story instead of trying to rewrite the story of shame in my life by covering it up or managing it so no one knows about it? What if we believed instead of shame, what if we truly believe that we are loved by God and we read the scriptures with that lens, God show me your love? What if we what if we took Jesus' words, or what if we took John 3.16 to heart that God so loved the world that he gave his one only son? And instead of trying to rewrite stories of blame that shout, everyone else is my problem. What if we said, We're all the problem? We live in a sin broken world. That means we're gonna hurt each other, that means we're gonna be hurt by one another, that means when someone else does something that's hurtful to me, I don't justify it. I don't necessarily have to be friends with them anymore, but it's a part of sin instead of like everything that's going on in me is because of what you did. And what if instead of trying to rewrite stories of pride that say, if it's to be, it's up to me. And by the way, I I like the attitude of somebody, I like the perseverance, I like the grit. Honestly, I wish our culture had more grit. Where it's just like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do my part here. But that grit becomes pride real quick when we say, if it's to be, it's up to me. Everything is solved. You see, you see some of that in my story, right? Like if I would have changed things. Like, what if we replace that story of if it's to be, it's up to me with this idea of I want to trust Jesus to transform me in this situation. I want to lean into his transformation. I want to believe that his identification of my brokenness and his love. For me, means I can be different and I can be transformed. So I want to see how this played out in the lives of a couple of Jesus disciples, and each of them was driven by a story. These are some of the most famous of Jesus' disciples, the stories of Jesus' disciples' lives. I want to talk about Judas who betrayed Jesus and Peter who denied Jesus. Now let me just state up front. Betrayal and denial feel quite a bit different to me, right? Betrayal, I mean, Judas, Judas thought this out. Judas had a plan. Judas, for whatever reason, and we could speculate all day, I think he was trying to force Jesus' hand to establish the earthly kingdom right out of the gate. I don't know for sure what was going on in Judas' mind, but he went on his own. He got paid for this. Like he was profiting from this. Like he was all in on betraying Jesus. Peter was kind of in a moment. We're going to read about it in a second. He's kind of in a moment. He kind of got backed into a corner. He kind of panicked. So I understand right out of the gate that the level of sort of what happened here is different, but they each took a very different path when they realized what they had done. Let's read about it. Matthew 27. Very early in the morning, the leading priests and the elders of the people met again to lay plans for putting Jesus to death. And then they bound him, led him away, and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor. When Judas, who had betrayed him, realized that Jesus had been condemned to die, he was filled with remorse. This is what makes me think he didn't think Jesus was going to die. I think he thought Jesus would show his hand. So he took the 30 pieces of silver back to the leading priests and the elders. I have sinned, he declared, for I have betrayed an innocent man. What do we care? They retorted. Then Judas threw the silver coins down in the temple and went out and hanged himself. This is a story racked with shame. When Judas realized what he had done, he was filled with remorse. And the first thing he does is like he knows he can't solve it, but he thinks at least I'll take the money back. Right? That's a strategy. That's like, I'll try to make it right. He takes the money back, and they're like, I don't, we don't, we don't want that back. So his attempt at solving the problem didn't solve the problem. So he ended up in this horrible place of regret and shame and went out and hanged himself. This dark place of trying to rewrite his own story of shame. Now, listen, those of you that are theologians and Bible scholars know there's, you know, Judas is like, what role does God's sovereignty have in all of this? And what choice, like, I get all that. Let's just set all that aside. And I'm gonna speculate here a moment, and I understand that that's like who knows? But I just wonder. Can I wonder a little bit with you of what it would look like if Judas had said, I wonder if Jesus really meant those things he said about the sick needing a doctor. I wonder if Jesus could forgive me like he forgave the woman caught in adultery. What if Judas had maybe just leaned a little bit into instead of shame? Instead of trying to solve the shame? I wonder if Judas just leaned a little bit into this idea of God loves me. Forget about Judas, because that's just a mind game. What about you? What about me? What if in those moments of deepest failure, instead of trying to solve the problem, we fell on the mercy of Jesus and said, Help me, Lord. Heal me, Lord, see me, Lord. Here I am, Jesus. I just wonder if that story, instead of shame, becomes our story. And then there's Peter. Matthew 26. Meanwhile, Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, a servant girl came over and said to him, You were one of those with Jesus the Galilean, but Peter denied it in front of everyone. I don't know what you're talking about, he said. Later, out by the gate, another servant girl noticed him and said to those standing around, This man was with Jesus of Nazareth. Again, Peter denied it, this time with an oath, I don't even know the man. A little later, some of the other bystanders came over to Peter and said, You must be one of them. We can tell by your Galilean accent, but Peter swore, A curse on me if I'm lying. I don't know the man. And immediately the rooster crowed. Suddenly Jesus' words flashed through Peter's mind before the rooster crows, you will deny three times you even know me. And he went away and wept bitterly. Someone with no power in society. He and he he even he kind of said it loudly and then even called a curse down on himself. Like Peter really messed up. He really messed up. We know the rest of Peter's life. We know that he was restored. We know he's a person who spoke of the day of Pentecost, beautiful story. But in this moment, I wonder what would happen. Let's go the other direction. I wonder what would happen if Peter had, at the at the moment of his failure, had said, Well, that's it. That's it. What if instead of weeping bitterly, he had chosen the path of deep shame like Judas had? And again, you can get into theology and God's sovereign will and all of that, whatever. I'm just thinking out loud with you, what would that have looked like? That could have been a whole different story. Peter did something just very simple. It wasn't, it wasn't, it's just very simple. You know what Peter did? He just stayed with the disciples. And so he was around when the tomb was emptied. He just stayed. This path to a transformed mind lots of times is just staying close to Jesus, even at our greatest failure. And letting Jesus do his thing. This wasn't Peter saying, I'm going to resolve this. This wasn't Peter's pride standing up. He just stayed. He had hope in the midst of his failure. So I'll give two takeaways real quick, and then we're going to do an exercise as we'll be doing, we're going to do one more here to wrap up the series. The first takeaway I would give you today is give attention to the crit and critical examination of the stories that you're telling yourself. Just think about the stories that you're telling yourself. Think about maybe where these stories came from, not to cast blame, but to gain understanding. I mean, these stories can go like wherever. Just spend some time this week to just say, what stories are shaping my life? What stories are shaping my life? A great phrase that I like to use, and this is what I use to sort of unlock sort of my thought processes over the last two or three weeks as I deal with other situations, is like, what story am I telling myself? And I found myself one day talking to my wife, Janet, and I just said, Janet, the story I'm telling myself is, it was so good to just identify that story. And then the second part, you got to do this too, is ask the Holy Spirit to help you discern if the story you are telling yourself aligns with the grand narrative of the gospel. Is this true? Now, let me tell you something about what I'm saying today that I want to make very, very clear. If you trust the story of Jesus, if you lean deeply into the gospel, your life will probably not get easier. The Holy Spirit's gonna ask you to do hard things. If our minds didn't need to be transformed, this verse wouldn't be in scripture. But if our minds need to be transformed, that means there's gonna probably be changed. So this is not an easy believism. This is not saying, oh, just trust Jesus, he loves you, the world's messed up. Yeah, don't be let Jesus transform you. This will be hard work. But the point I want to make is just make sure the hard work you're doing is the hard work of implementing the gospel, not the hard and meaningless work of trying to solve all your own problems. So build some safe relationships, share with people, ask them to help you process that question. Is what I'm saying and believing true? Hebrews 5 7 says, While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings with a loud cry and tears to the one who could rescue him from death. And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God. Even though, listen to this, even though Jesus was God's son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. I loved how Kevin framed that last week. In this way, God qualified him as a perfect high priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him. So here's how we're gonna wrap up the service today. I'm gonna read some statements that are gonna be on the screen. Just take a few moments after each one of these. And each one of these statements are things that were true about Jesus. And the hope here is we as we do this is for you to understand that Jesus came all the way into the human experience. He didn't come most of the way and hover above us. He came all the way into the human experience. And the beauty of that is not only the just the worship that that should elicit in our souls for his love for us, but the beauty of that is to say, because he came all the way to our experience, he understands what I'm going through. This builds trust for us, him the trust for us to trust his story. Jesus knows. He's not God from afar saying, believe a different story. He's God from afar who came and said, I know the stories you're wrestling against because I experienced them too. So I don't know how these, some of these will apply maybe more to you than others, but as I read these, we're just gonna dim the lights and we're just gonna pose, uh ponder each one of these just for a moment and say, Lord, help me to find my story and your story. Here's some things about Jesus. Jesus knew poverty and he knew what it was like to be an immigrant, an outsider. That's part of his story. Jesus experienced rejection from the people he grew he grew up with. Anyone relate to rejection? Jesus had experiences of needing to wait. Jesus responded graciously to interruptions. Even when he knew he'd be betrayed. Jesus was blamed for something he didn't do and took the punishment. Thank you, Jesus, for knowing what we're dealing with, for understanding our human condition. For fully identifying without sin, yes, but fully identifying. And Lord, may that knowledge give us confidence to believe the gospel story, the truth that we are loved, the truth that we are broken, and the truth that the gospel can transform us. Instead of the stories we're writing ourselves to try to deal with the blame, shame, and pride that we see in our lives. So that we become more and more like you. No matter what that costs us in Jesus' name. Amen.