Offer up!

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Good morning! It's good to be here this Labor Day weekend and I'm just really loving this series. You can follow along with sermon notes on the Bible app there and kind of check that out. We also have an app app, okay, in the Google app or in the app store right now, so you can check that too. And we just really love the fact that Wyatt just put a lot of work into that and created something really cool. So before we begin, let's pray. Okay, Lord God this day we are just amazed again at your mercies being new. Mercy upon mercy, grace upon grace in our lives. And because of that, it's just the natural outflow that we come to you this day. We are gathered here this day. There are a lot of other places we could have been, but there's no better place than to be gathered with your people here this morning. We pray, Lord God, that for everyone here you would truly touch their lives today with your amazing mercy in such a way that we are transformed and changed. We thank you, Lord, for the many churches in our community that we are not alone by any means, Lord, that you have us with them in one holy church together. One Christian church that confesses your name, Lord Jesus. And we pray that your blessings would be upon them from summit to legacy to hope to Zion to Estero, United Methodist, Lord, to Grace Presbyterian. We thank you for them all and pray that your gospel word has its way with us, all of us today. In Jesus' name, amen. Hey, before we go any farther, I want to share one other thing that I think is really cool. Since we're having our student gatherings Thrive FGCU here, we are now having, we get free space for our RSO once a week. And so on Thursdays, now at 12 noon, we're going to start this Thursday what's called Thrive U. I will be teaching a class on the campus in Merwin Hall, room 203, okay? And it's going to be basically starting, it's, I'm calling it the mission of God. It's a class that starts with Genesis 1-1 and we will go all the way through the entire narrative of the Bible in like ten weeks, maybe a few more, okay? So it's going to be a quick turbocharged kind of class, but there'll be notes. I think I'm going to do it where you're going to be able to get on the Bible app too and kind of get the illustrations and notes, etc. But I think it's going to be really, most people get a snippet here and a snippet there and they get this story and that story and then it's like how does it all fit together and how does it make sense, okay? So I've taught, actually an old, I taught Old Testament one semester up when I was at UF, kind of as a satellite campus for a Christian college. And so it's kind of fun to do, okay? Watch out, you get me in my element and it's kind of scary. So it'll go from 12 until 1 and I think it can be any, now fine parking on campus is going to be fun, but so if you are not a college student to try to find a spot, you can get a visitor's pass for free, you know, but to try to find a spot it might take you a while. So if you're planning on coming, get there a little early, okay? Because it's not going to happen like, oh I'll just find a spot and walk to class. I have students coming to my leadership course late just because it's like the lots are full right now. Any students notice that? Yes, it's like hard to get anywhere on campus right now. We need some of you all to drop out. No, no, not at all. It's great to have such a busy campus. I know, when I started campus ministry at LSU, boy I shouldn't get off the subject too much, but it was interesting because by the second semester the freshman lots were basically half empty, so thankfully here that doesn't happen. Okay, let's get to our text now. We're going to be studying, we're in our third week of the Live It Up series because we see this from Acts chapter 2, 42 to 47, how the church really did live it up as they lived together, as they reached out together, as they served together, as they were filled up together, and this week we're going to be speaking about offer up, offer up yourselves to God, and this comes from Romans chapter 12 verses 1 through 3, so let's read this together. I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. So what do we have here? I think Paul, who wrote this letter to the Romans before he actually came and visited them, kind of as an introductory letter, he...