Impact of Grace #1 - Complete Devotion
Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund unpacks Romans 12:1-2 to show why God's mercy makes complete devotion to Jesus the only reasonable response, not a trade for blessing but true worship. He challenges listeners to stop letting culture shape them and start letting God renew their minds, one everyday choice at a time.
Summary and Application
Complete Devotion: Why Grace Makes All-In Faith the Only Thing That Makes Sense
Most of us can name something we're completely devoted to. Maybe it's a sports team, a workout routine, or — according to a survey Kurt referenced — our toothpaste. That survey found roughly 40% of people are completely devoted to their brand of toothpaste, and only about 30% say the same about their church. It's a funny stat, but it points to something serious: devotion is often aimed at the wrong things.
In this message from Romans 12:1-2, part of Orchard Hill's Impact of Grace series, Kurt makes the case that complete devotion to Jesus isn't supposed to be unusual for a Christian — it's supposed to be normal. He walks through three questions: why should I be completely devoted, what does that devotion actually look like, and how do I foster it?
Why Should I Be Completely Devoted?
Paul writes, "Therefore, in view of God's mercies, offer yourselves to God as a living sacrifice" (Romans 12:1). Kurt pointed out that "therefore" looks backward — to Romans 1-3, where humanity's failure is laid bare, and to Romans 4-5, where God freely credits us with Christ's righteousness. That's the gift of grace: not earned, just given.
It would be easy to hear "offer yourselves" as a kind of trade — God did something for me, so now I owe Him something. Kurt named this the "debtor's ethic." But he offered a better picture: imagine being stranded in another state with no way home, and a friend drives hours to rescue you. When they later ask for a small favor, you don't keep score — the rescue was so far out of proportion to the ask that of course you say yes. That's the shape of grace-fueled devotion.
Kurt also pointed to a line from Rebecca Pippert's book Out of the Saltshaker: "Whatever controls us is our lord... We do not control ourselves — we are controlled by the lord of our lives." Whoever or whatever has that kind of control over us, he said, will eventually let us down — unless it's God.
What Does Complete Devotion Look Like?
The phrase "living sacrifice" would have called to mind the Old Testament sacrificial system, where people were meant to bring their best animals to the temple. Kurt read from Malachi 1:6-10, where God confronts Israel for offering "blind" or "lame" animals — the leftovers — while keeping the healthy ones for themselves.
His illustration: think about what you take to a thrift store. You don't donate your favorite outfit; you donate what's worn out or doesn't fit anymore. "God is saying, 'I don't want you to thrift your life to Me. I want you to bring your best self,'" Kurt said. Complete devotion means the opposite of leftovers — it means "anything, anytime, anywhere," a phrase Kurt borrowed from a friend's old job description.
How Can I Foster Complete Devotion?
Kurt found three commands packed into Romans 12:2. First, "do not conform to the pattern of this world" — a passive verb, meaning we're naturally being shaped by culture unless we resist it. He connected this to 1 John 2:15-17, which names the "lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life" as the world's core agenda: indulge yourself, increase your possessions, impress people.
Second, "be transformed by the renewing of your mind" — also passive. Transformation happens as we let Scripture, worship, and community shape us, not through sheer willpower. Kurt was honest that he doesn't always keep this rhythm consistently himself.
Third, we "test and approve" God's will as we go — meaning conviction often follows obedience rather than preceding it. Kurt compared this to a trust fall: there's a real gap between letting go and being caught. Hebrews 11 reminds us that some people of faith never saw the payoff in this life, yet their trust still mattered. Kurt referenced a recent song by Noah Kahan that touches on someone walking away from faith after a hard season. His point wasn't to critique the song, but to say that we don't need to fear God the way that song suggests — because, as Romans 3:23 says, our standing with God was never about our performance in the first place.
Living It Out
Where in your life right now do you sense you've been offering God something less than your best — and are you willing to look at that honestly, without explaining it away?
What's one small, concrete way you could let your mind be renewed this week — a habit, a conversation, a boundary — that would move your devotion from an idea into something lived?
This post was developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence based on the sermon "Complete Devotion" by Dr. Kurt Bjorklund (Romans 12:1–2, July 12, 2026). While every effort has been made to faithfully represent the content and intent of the original message, readers are encouraged to engage the full sermon audio or transcript for the complete teaching.
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Rebecca Pippert (author of Out of the Saltshaker, 1979)
"Whatever controls us is our lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by acceptance. We do not control ourselves — we are controlled by the lord of our lives."
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Good morning. It is good to be together here in our different locations around Pittsburgh and online. I want to say thank you to all of you who entrusted your kids this week to Kids Fest here. Almost 700 kids were here this week.
And to those of you who served 150 high school students, 50 middle school students, and the many adult volunteers — thank you for making this part of the week such a good experience. There are a couple more weeks to go. Let's pray together.
God, thank you for all of us who are gathered here in this moment. I ask that You would speak to each of us. God, I ask that my words would reflect Your Word in content, in tone, and in emphasis. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
I came across a survey a while back that asked the question, "What are you completely devoted to?" Here were the responses. They asked, "Are you completely devoted to the football team you cheer for?" About 30% of people said, "Yes, I'm completely devoted." According to that, 70% of people would change their allegiance to the football team they have now. I find that hard to believe living in Pittsburgh, but evidently there are a lot of people who aren't fans at all — they're like, whatever.
Then they asked, "Are you completely devoted to your family?" Do you know what the answer was? 90%. That sounds really high, but think about it — one in every ten people are like, "Kind of, not sure." Then they asked, "Are you completely devoted to your church?" Some 30% said yes, which I found high, because I'm not even sure 30% of people actually go to church, let alone are completely devoted to it. But that was their answer.
But here's where it got interesting. Then they asked, "Are you completely devoted to your toothpaste?" 40% of people were completely devoted to their toothpaste, and some 33% to their deodorant. Here's what that means: people are more committed to their toothpaste and their deodorant than they are to church. Now, don't get me wrong — if you're more into your deodorant, I'm happy for you.
My point is this: as we jump into Romans chapter 12, the passage says, "Therefore, in view of God's mercies, present yourselves — offer yourselves to God as a living sacrifice." This is a statement that God is asking people to be completely devoted to Him. This is not in the small print of the New Testament. It shows up over and over. I could take time to walk you through some of the different passages that talk about it, but it is throughout the New Testament: take up your cross daily and follow Jesus Christ. Be a living sacrifice.
Sometimes when people hear this kind of language, they assume that our devotion to God is where our commitment to God gets us the benefits of Christianity. In other words, it's a door: I commit myself to God, I walk through the door, and then I get the benefits of grace, of salvation.
We've been working our way through Romans this year, and this is our third series. We started with the Gift of Grace, explaining Romans 1 through 5 — how God gives grace, and it isn't because of what we do. Then we talked about the Experience of Grace. Today we're beginning to talk about the Impact of Grace.
Romans 12:1 says, "Therefore" — meaning, look back at everything that's come before — "in view of God's mercies, present yourselves, offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God." He's saying: this is what happens. As you experience the grace of God, it will become natural to you. It is normal to practice full devotion.
Now, sometimes, instead of seeing it as a door, people see faith as an event where they trust and then God asks nothing of them — almost like a trust fund. Not that I have a lot of experience with this, but a trust fund is the kind of thing where somebody sets up a fund if they have a lot of resources. They say, "If you meet certain requirements — a certain age, you go to school, you do these things — then the trust fund is unleashed." And once it's unleashed, you have access to it, and it requires nothing of you moving forward.
But here the statement is: in view of God's mercies, offer yourselves, present yourselves. I want to take a few moments today to talk about what complete devotion looks like. We're going to do this by asking and answering three questions: Why should I be completely devoted to Jesus Christ? What does it mean to be completely devoted to Jesus Christ? And how can I foster complete devotion to Jesus Christ?
Why Should I Be Completely Devoted to Jesus Christ?
For some of us, this is a sticking point in Christianity, in the journey of faith. Some of us sit on the outside of faith saying — maybe not out loud to others, but in our hearts — one of the reasons we don't commit ourselves to Jesus Christ isn't because we have some intellectual barrier to faith, but because intuitively we know that it demands something of us. And we say, "I don't want anybody else telling me how to live my life, including God."
Sometimes even longtime people of faith will say, "Well, if I really trust God, can I trust God? Will He come through with my life?" Maybe God feels to you like He's let you down, and you say, "I tried that once, and God didn't give me the life I thought I deserved. Therefore, I'm not sure about this whole thing." But in this text, we see at least two reasons for offering ourselves to God as a living sacrifice.
First, he says, in view of God's mercy, offer yourself. This points back to the whole of the book. The book begins by saying that God's wrath is revealed (Romans 1:18) from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of our world. Unrighteousness means our relationship to God; ungodliness means the way we treat other people. He says that because of the lack of reverence for God, and the way in which we treat other people, God's wrath is revealed. He spends the rest of chapters 1 through 3 talking about how all of our attempts come short.
But as he gets into chapters 4 and 5, he starts to say that God reckons His righteousness to us. God makes us righteous because of what Jesus Christ has done, not what we do. That is the gift of grace. And he says, because of this, offer yourself to God as a living sacrifice.
Now, here's my guess: some of us hear that and think, "Well, God did something for me, so I have to do something for Him." That sounds like a trade — a debtor's ethic, as some people have called it. I think it sounds that way to us because we hear it and think what we're offering to God is somehow comparable — like when somebody offers you a ride to the shop where you had to get your car repaired, so you offer them a ride, and you traded rides to the shop.
But that's a wrong view of God's mercy. It's more like this: imagine yourself trapped in Alabama — because how else would you be in Alabama? Imagine yourself trapped in Alabama with no money and no way to get home. You call a friend and say, "Would you come get me?" Your friend drives to Alabama, gets you, brings you back to Pittsburgh, and a week later they say, "Hey, would you mind running me to the shop?" What are you going to do? You're not going to say, "Well, no — I took you to the shop twice." You're going to say, "Of course," because what you were given was so great in proportion to what you're being asked, of course you would do this.
That is the idea. The reason some of us don't see it as disproportional is because we think we have earned our way with God, or that we're good, or that we're the kind of people God likes — rather than saying, "I deserve God's wrath, and it is only the grace of Jesus Christ and the mercy of God that has given me standing with God. Therefore, why would I give Him anything less?"
Then he says this is your — in the NIV — "true and proper worship." Some other translations say "spiritual service," "spiritual worship," or "rational service," "rational worship." Whenever translations have several different ways of rendering a word, it means the word isn't easy to translate. The Greek word here — for rational spiritual service, true and proper worship — is logikon. You can hear "logical" in it, which is where we get that idea. It's certainly proper to translate it as "true and proper" or "spiritual," but the idea is: what else makes sense? Nothing else does. If God is the God of the universe, why wouldn't you offer yourself to Him fully? Why wouldn't you do things the way He instructs? That's what he's talking about when he says, "this is your true and proper worship." There's nothing else that makes sense.
I remember when I was in high school, right on the verge of thinking about faith. I was the kid who went to a church youth thing, the kind where the Christian parents were saying, "Are we sure we want that kid going with our Christian kids to the retreat?" You know the kid I'm talking about. This is one of the reasons I believe so firmly in student and kids ministry — God uses it to change the trajectory of people's lives all the time.
I went to this camp, and I was the kid who had a little contraband in his bag and no real good ideas for the weekend. As I remember it, the speaker's message that weekend was basically this: "If Jesus Christ really is God, then give Him your life. And if He isn't, turn and walk away and never come back, because this is not worth your time."
That struck me as a high school student, because up until that point, the way I had experienced church was, "Come on, kids — you can be a Christian and still be kind of cool." That wasn't compelling. But when the question became, "Is it true?" — and if it's true, it demands your life — it started to make sense.
That's exactly what's happening here in Romans 12. This is your reasonable worship, your reasonable service to the God of the universe. Becky Pippert wrote about this years ago in her book Out of the Saltshaker. She said, "Whatever controls us is our lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by acceptance. We do not control ourselves — we are controlled by the lord of our lives."
She goes on to argue persuasively that the lord of our lives matters, because if we're controlled by power, acceptance, money, or appearance — whatever it is — that god will be a terrible god at some point, because it will never be able to give back to you what you want. But if it's the God of the universe, then what you offer to Him makes sense.
The challenge for a lot of us isn't the idea of why we should devote ourselves to Jesus Christ completely — it's sustaining this devotion. Because what happens is we get distracted — distracted with the stuff of life — and discouraged with the way things are going. And we say, "I'm not sure I want to continue." We need to keep coming back and saying, because of the mercies of God, and because it's reasonable, "Yes, I will offer myself to Jesus Christ."
What Does Complete Devotion to Jesus Christ Look Like?
That leads to the second question: what does complete devotion to Jesus Christ look like? The text says you are to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. Offering yourself to God is something that makes sense to all of us, but in the context the original readers would have understood, this points to the Old Testament sacrifice system. Maybe you've heard about this — people would bring their lambs and goats and present them at the temple as a way of offering a sacrifice to God.
They were called to bring their best — a spotless lamb. That's where that phrase comes from. They were called to bring their best offering to God as an act of worship. When Paul refers to this, he's probably thinking back to a passage like this one, from Malachi 1:6 and following:
"A son honors his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me? says the Lord Almighty. It is you priests who show contempt for my name. But you ask, 'How have we shown contempt for your name?' By offering defiled food on my altar. But you ask, 'How have we defiled you?' By saying that the Lord's table is contemptible. When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor — would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you? says the Lord Almighty. Now plead with God to be gracious to us. With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you? says the Lord Almighty."
Here's what was going on: when the people would make sacrifices, they would make an economic decision. They would look at their herds and say, "I've got this goat, this sheep, that's in really good shape — I can take this to market and sell it for a good price. But I also have this lame or blind one" — the text itself uses that word — "and I can bring that one, offer it to God. No one will know. I'll still get credit for doing the sacrifice, and I'll keep the more valuable one for myself."
They were making an economic decision for themselves, essentially saying, "I'm going to cheat God just a little." Paul picks this up and says, "You're to offer yourself as a living sacrifice." This means that if we bring something other than our best to God, we are not actually offering a living sacrifice.
Maybe a way to think about this is thrifting. Have you ever taken clothes to the thrift store to drop off? When you do, what do you take? Here's what you don't do: you don't go into your closet and say, "What's my favorite thing? What's my best item of clothing?" What you do is go in and say, "What's out of style? What doesn't fit? What's worn out or somehow compromised?" And then somebody else gets it.
To be fair, that's what you're supposed to do with thrifting. But God is saying, "I don't want you to thrift your life to Me. I want you to bring your best self." Anything else is not total devotion, complete devotion to Him — it's not offering yourself as a living sacrifice.
By the way, this language, especially regarding the body, is part of where the old idea of wearing your "Sunday best" to church came from — present yourself as an offering to God. The idea was that you'd wear a suit or a dress to church because you wanted to present yourself to God. Now, obviously, we don't encourage or practice that today, because it's a matter of the heart rather than a matter of how one dresses. But sometimes there's a correlation, and if we don't think about it at all, we might miss some of what's being said here.
I have a friend from college who took a job right after graduation working as an assistant to a man who ran a global network of some kind. When he took the job, he was given a three-word job description — I still remember it: "Anything, anytime, anywhere." I'm not sure that would fly in the HR world today, but it was "anything, anytime, anywhere." That is somewhat the idea here. When you offer yourself to God, you say, "God, anything, anytime, anywhere — I am in." That is your holy — meaning set apart — and pleasing worship: to offer yourself to Him.
How Can I Foster Complete Devotion?
So why do we offer ourselves? Because of the mercy of God, and because it's reasonable. How do we do it — presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice? That's the last question: how can I foster complete devotion? I think we see this in verse two, in three elements.
The first is: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world." Some translations say something like, "Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold" — I believe that's the old Phillips translation. The verb here in the original language is passive, which means that you are naturally being conformed into the mold of the culture around us. If you don't take active steps to disengage from that molding, you will be naturally conformed to the image in which we live. In other words, it's inevitable that you become shaped by our cultural values if you don't do something to resist it.
Have you ever seen middle-school-age kids who decide they're going to be different from everybody in their culture? Then you see them with their friends, and you notice that all their friends look exactly like they do. They're different from other people, but just like each other — molded by a different culture. And this isn't just a middle school phenomenon; adults do it all the time, with the things we buy, the things we make important, the things in our lives we say we need.
Sometimes the idea of "the world" and "the culture" feels foreign to us. In 1 John chapter 2, there's a definition of this. Verse 15: "Do not love the world" — notice the similarity to "do not be conformed to this world." "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever."
Phrases like "lust of the flesh," "lust of the eyes," and "pride of life" sometimes just wash over us. But it's possible that the lust of the flesh is indulging more of ourselves, the lust of the eyes is the desire to increase possessions, and the pride of life is the desire to impress people. In other words, the agenda of our culture is: indulge self, increase possessions, and impress people. We're all being shaped by that constantly if we're not careful about what we allow to shape us.
I tried something last year to be intentional about not being shaped by culture. On January 1st, I decided this would be a "buy nothing" year for me. Now, I didn't mean buy literally nothing — of course I was going to replace things I needed, buy food, and so on. What I meant was that I wasn't going to scour for certain items: clothes, books, tools, gadgets. I don't need new clothes, new tools, new books, new gadgets.
I did not make it to July 1st, but it was my attempt to say, "I know myself, and I've gotten a little too caught up in thinking that if I could just have one more thing, maybe it would somehow enhance my life." It was my attempt, in a simple way, to push back and say, "I don't want to be molded by the culture this year." I'm not suggesting that's everybody's thing, but my point is, without some intention, what happens is I just go through life asking, "How can I indulge myself more? How can I increase my possessions? How can I impress people?" I need to take steps to say that's not going to be how I live.
There's a second element here: not just "do not be conformed," but "be transformed by the renewing of your mind." This is also a passive verb, and here's why that matters — just as you're being conformed to the world without any effort, your transformation happens not through direct effort, but through the renewing of your mind.
Here's why that's important: your mind is renewed by what you let operate on it. So the thing you need — and a way you're doing it here today — is you need worship, to be reminded of the greatness of God. You need instruction from the Bible, to be reminded of what it says. You need group life, where you're with people who can challenge your assumptions. And you also need times where you're taking the Word into your own life, letting it shape you.
One of the ways I try to do this is by getting up most mornings and either running or lifting weights, and then spending a little time in the Bible before I go about the rest of my day. It's a simple habit — trying to get the Word to work in my mind before I jump into everything else in my day.
Sometimes I get away from that habit. In fact, this last month, I got interested in the United States men's soccer team and the World Cup — what's the deal with extra time, anyway? That's a foreign concept to me. I started getting up and checking the stories: "Is the red card being repealed? What's going on?" And that became dominant rather than time in the Word.
Now, is that the biggest deal in the world? No. The point of the Word isn't that you make your discipline matter, or that you hit it at a certain time — it's that you have time that connects you with the God of the universe, and you let Him shape your mind. But my point is, again, without some intention about putting myself in a place where the Word is working in my mind, I will not have my mind renewed, and I will naturally be conformed to the mold of this world. And so will you. If you're not purposeful about it, in time, you will simply absorb all of our cultural values, and that is what will drive you rather than anything eternal.
That's the point in 1 John 2, when it says the things of this world are passing away, but the person who lives for God endures forever. What he's saying is: this doesn't make sense — you're living for something less than what you could live for.
Then the last item, at the end of verse two: it goes back to the idea of this being reasonable. He says, "Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — His good, pleasing, and perfect will." As you do these things, God's ways will become clearer to you. You will become more and more convinced that His ways are indeed good and right. But sometimes what you need to do is take the step.
Do you remember playing the trust fall game as a kid — where you stand and fall backwards, and somebody catches you? Maybe you did this at a corporate retreat. I was going to have somebody come up here and demonstrate it, but I didn't trust anyone. When you do a trust fall, you fall backwards and have this moment where you actually have to let yourself go. You wonder, "Will they catch me?" There are a couple of seconds between when you let go and when they either catch you or they don't. In a corporate retreat, they always catch you, because they don't want a lawsuit. Not so as a kid — sometimes you had kids who would say, "Ha, ha, I got you," and let you fall.
Here's the issue: in that instance, you find out within a couple of seconds. But when you say, "God, I'm going to offer myself to You as a living sacrifice," you do not get immediate feedback. Sometimes it isn't seconds — it's weeks, months, years, or decades before you get to say, "I see that it was worth it to trust my life to Jesus Christ." And in the middle of that, sometimes you just want to say, "This isn't worth it," and go back.
But sometimes people don't even see it in this lifetime. In Hebrews chapter 11, we're told about people who had great faith and how God met them. Toward the end of the chapter, verse 35 says that others never received what was promised. Does that mean they had trusted God inappropriately? No — it means they trusted God throughout this life, and in this life they didn't get what they thought they needed, but they stayed faithful anyway, and it was still worthwhile. They're still counted in this chapter that explains a life of faith.
In other words, we need to be able to say, "God, in the time that I'm giving myself to You — offering myself as a sacrifice before I feel the catch — I can still be convinced that Your way is right."
There's a song that came out earlier this year by a man named Noah Kahan, called "The Great Divide." In it, he writes about a friend — maybe a girlfriend — he used to have, and now they're not together. He reflects on how he wasn't present for part of her journey, including some of the hardships she had faced. It appears that part of her hardship was related to faith, because at one point in the song she says something about throwing a brick through a stained-glass window, referring to God. He reflects on his misunderstanding of her life and how hard it must have been for her to keep it all inside — a recognition that she had a hard season.
Then, in what is essentially the chorus, he expresses a hope that her life would be full of ordinary fears rather than a fear connected to her soul and what God might do with it. It appears he's saying he hopes her life is full of ordinary things to worry about, but that she wouldn't have to fear what God might do with her soul — his answer being, essentially, to walk away from faith altogether.
I don't know everything that went into the song, but what I want to say to you is this: you don't need to fear that — not because of anything you do. This isn't about "keep your commitment, and then you don't have to fear God." In fact, if you're honest with yourself, you'll know that you fail at the completely devoted, living-sacrifice lifestyle more than you keep it. But what you will also come to see is the message of Romans: therefore, because of the mercies of God — Romans 3:23, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" — it is God who has justified us and redeemed us because of Christ's love.
Because of that, you can say, "I don't need to fear what someone will do with my soul, because Jesus is for me. I've trusted Jesus." And because of that, why would I do anything other than say, "God, I'm going to throw my life — trust-fall my life — into Your arms, because it's the thing that makes the most sense."
When you do, Romans 12:2 says you'll be able to say, "God, Your way really is the best way — the good way, the perfect way." But there's a moment, a gap, between when you commit and when you experience it. If you do, I think what you'll be able to say is: because of God's grace, there's no way I would choose to do anything other than entrust myself to the God of the universe.
Let's pray together. God, as we're here, I can only imagine that there are a lot of scenarios represented — those of us who, figuratively speaking, are in the midst of a trust fall that feels like it's gone on too long, that feels too hard, and we wonder if You will catch us. God, I ask today that You would help us to see Your mercy, to see the reasonableness of it, and to continue on the path. For some of us, maybe we've always thought that it was our effort that somehow garnered Your approval. God, help us to see that it's what Jesus has done, not what we do, that gives us standing with You. And God, help all of us to be people who can say, "I'm not going to be molded by the world, but I'm going to be transformed by Your Word and Your ways." We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Have a great week.
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This transcript was generated and cleaned up with the assistance of AI. While efforts were made to preserve the speaker's original words and meaning as closely as possible, minor errors, omissions, or inaccuracies may be present. Please refer to the original audio/video recording for the authoritative version of this message.
