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The Wake-Up Call
Consecration Is the Doorway to Transformation
00:19:19
Consecration is a way of showing up before God that says simply and humbly, “I’m here and I’m yours.”
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign nation. It is Friday, March 6th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt, and this is your wake up call. It's going to be a good day today. You know why? Because we're going to win it right? Right now, meeting with Jesus. He's eager to meet with us and he's here. So let's begin today with consecration. The word of God. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, today's entry is entitled why Consecration is the Doorway to Transformation. Our text today is Romans chapter 12, verse 1. And if you're still in the good habit of reading the whole chapter, I invite you to read the whole chapter of Romans 12. It's unbelievable. It is a manifesto. And that'd be good to do. Hear now the word of the Lord. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship, the word of the Lord. Now consider this. Albert Einstein was once famously asked this question. Dr. Einstein, if you were told the world were coming to an end and you had one hour to come up with a solution to save it, how would you spend that hour? He is said to have. Riley replied, I would spend 55 minutes trying to define the question and 5 minutes solving. Strikes me that religion and religious enterprising spend all their energy frenetically engineering solutions to problems that turn out not to be the real problems after all. We readily focus on managing the symptoms instead of curing the sickness. We pay the high interest rate, but do not focus on paying down the actual debt. We endlessly focus on reading the thermometer instead of trying to get our hands on the thermostat. We try harder and harder to do more and more and to be better and better, rather than doing the only necessary thing which would lead to being transformed. So, in the spirit of defining the problem, here's where we landed. Transformation is not a problem to be solved, but a person to be encountered and experienced. It is not something we do to ourselves, but someone who happens to us and in us and then through us. The question is not what do I need to do? It is how can I be transformed? Often the answer to one verse in the Bible can be found in the verse that comes just before or after it. The answer to the question of the text is found in the context. Remember, we have been dealing with the second verse of the twelfth chapter of Romans. The first verse of the twelfth chapter of Romans holds the key. Hear the word again. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Did you see it? Three words capture the secret to our watchword. Metamorpho, O which you remember, means be transformed. Those three words offer your bodies. It sounds too simple, doesn't it? Maybe that's why it's so easy to miss it. We busy ourselves with all manner of activity aimed at God, intended to try to make ourselves better or to increase our level of commitment. But what if Jesus isn't looking for our commitment? What if he's looking for something more simple and basic and humble? Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. There's a word for this invitation. Consecration. Consecration is a way of showing up before God that says simply and humbly, I'm here and I'm yours. We've already been praying it every single day here. I thought it was time we talked about it. Jesus, I belong to you. Let's pray. Our Father, thank you for your Son Jesus and Lord Jesus. We said it earlier today, but now we say it again. I belong to you. And then we said, we belong to you. And we hear you say back, I belong to you. And that means everything. So come, Holy Spirit, and lead us into deep consecration, the kind that leads to transformation. Praying in Jesus name. Amen. How about a couple of journal prompts? Maybe just one here. How do you view the difference between commitment and consecration? How. How about it? How do you view the difference between commitment? I mean, we. We kind of understand commitment. It just. It means just like, buck up, try harder, do more. That's commitment. This is how I understand it. At least I know what it is to be committed. It just means, you know, get up earlier, stay up later, work harder. Kind of wears you out. Consecration is something different. It's just simply surrendering, really. It's saying, here I am, Lord. That's what people cross the Bible. You see them say it. You know, Moses comes up to that burning bush. God starts calling his name out of the bush. Moses, Moses. And what does Moses say? Here I am means I'm. I'm yours. I'm here. Think about God speaking to the boy Samuel, in the temple, sleeping in the room with the Ark of the Covenant. Samuel, Samuel. He thought it was Eli calling him. And he runs in there. He's like, what do you want, Eli? You know, this happened two or three times. Eli finally figured out, oh, this is God calling out to Samuel. Remember what he said to say. He said, say, speak, Lord, your servant is listening. Here am I. Here I am. Here am I. Mary angel comes to the young teenage girl, Mary, the virgin. And what does Mary say here? Here am I. He said, the Holy Spirit's going to come on you and overshadow you and conceive a child in you. You're going to name him Jesus. What's Mary say back? Here am I. Here I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word. That's consecration is simple offering. And just remember, when God's calling us, he's not calling you because he needs you. He's calling you because he wants you. He wants you, and he wants you not to even do something for Him. He wants you to be with Him. He's going to do things with you and through you. But consecration is why I say it's the doorway. It opens the door to where Jesus comes in and brings transforming grace and power. He just. He gets us in a place where he's wanting the fullness of our attention, our presence. And then his presence meets up with our presence. And it's just like that's where the party gets started. He transforms us, and then he demonstrates what he does in the world through us. It's. It's. It's incredible. It's a journey. It's love becoming power.
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Well,
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took me a long time to understand this, but it's all. It's very simple. That's Romans 12. Offer your bodies. Here I am. That's why we. That's why we start every day with consecration. Okay, Are you ready? We're going to sing a good song today. I got dad with me. It's going to be good. Here we go. All right. It's another day. And it's going to be another hymn today. And you know, today's entry, we talked about consecration. We pray a prayer of consecration every day. And I rarely talk about it, but as I say in the entry today, consecration is like the doorway in to transformation. And you notice what we do in consecration because. Because, you know, we've been saying you can't transform yourself. You can get into a lot of self improvement at wear you out, may do some good, but it's not transformation. Transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit on the human heart and mind to bring us into the very likeness of Jesus Christ, where we can think the thoughts that he thinks and do the things that he does. And if it's not trying harder, what is it? Well, it's is learning to show up in his presence, fully available, present to him, like here. He says, here am I. We say, here I am. I belong to you. My eyes, my heart, my body, my mind. I'm trying to show up in belong to you. And he does the consecrating. So tell them what we're singing today.
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We're going to sing Take My Life and let it be Consecrated Lord, to the.
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Take my life and let it be. This is a. This is a great poem. It's in and of itself. Francis Havergal, 1874. It's a very short hymn, four verses. We're going to sing them all. I'm trying to get my friend Chris Tomlin. Dad. To write a song with me about consecration, a consecration song that we might start singing. And I think this hymn we're going to use as the basis of that song. Anyway, you'll love the tune. I've been whistling the tune. I was just saying to dad, you know, one of my dreams in life is to make a record of me whistling hymns. And I said, dad, I said, would you buy that? What'd you say?
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I. You give him. You give me one. He said you'd give me one.
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And then he said, and you're going to find out who your friends are when you release that record. So. All right, we're going to sing all the verses. Dad, let me pitch this.
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Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of my love at the impulse of Thy love Take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for thee Take my straws and let me sing Always Only for my King Always Only for my King Take my intellect and use every power as Thou shalt use Take my heart, it is thine own it shall be thy royal throne it shall be thy royal throne Take my love my God, I pour at thy feet in treasure store Take myself and I will be ever Only all to the Ever Only all for the.
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You like that hymn?
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I liked it. Yeah, I liked it.
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There's a verse. I notice it's missing here in the hymn. It says, take my silver and my gold Not a mite would I withhold. Yeah, that's. Get the offering going for that didn't make the silver and my gold.
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Yeah, well,
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it'd be good for us to. To sing a consecration prayer. Y' all start praying about that. Chris, he said, let's do it. So we're going to see what we can come up with and. And maybe we can write a good one for the church today. It's time to hit the fields. Okay. You don't stop singing now. This is a song that you can take on the road and sing as you go. You know you want to. I like how dad will be humming hymns all day long. You just start humming, and all of a sudden it's a hymn coming forth from you. And when you get the tune, all of a sudden, the words come back to you. That's why we keep singing these hymns. Because in time, the hymns start singing us, don't they?
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They're singing to us.
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They're singing to us, and they're shaping us. They're expressing our feelings, and at the same time, they're forming our faith. That's the beauty of music. All right, well, it's time to hit the fields. Get your seeds. I'll see you on the field. For The Awakening. I'm J.D. walt.
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And I'm David. Walt.
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Okay. Everywhere, all the time.