Mark Batterson - The Not-So-Secret Secret to Transformation

TOPICS: Dream Factory, Transformation

Drawing from Ellen Langer’s Counterclockwise Study where elderly men improved physically and mentally by living as if it were 20 years earlier, Pastor Mark urges us to experience second-order transformation through renewing the mind, based on Romans 12:1-2. By offering ourselves as living sacrifices in response to God’s mercy, forgiving reality, and grounding in God’s Word, we can reject conformity to the world and live into our true identity in Christ.

The Counterclockwise Study
Almost half a century ago, Ellen Langer conducted a rather unorthodox experiment involving octogenarians. She called it the Counterclockwise Study. The year was 1979, but she created the world of 1959 by retrofitting an old monastery where those participants would live for a week. There was a vintage radio playing Perry Como, a black-and-white television with reruns of The Ed Sullivan Show, and they curated old magazines and newspapers to conjure 1959. They removed all the mirrors so that they couldn’t see how old they really were, and they asked them to help get into character by bringing 20-year-old pictures of themselves and writing their biographies as if it were 1959.

Now, when the participants walked into this monastery, it was like back to the future; it was like walking into 1959. There was one rule that those participants had to follow: they were not allowed to discuss anything that happened after 1959, and they couldn’t talk about 1959 in the past tense; they had to talk about it in present tense terms.

Ellen Langer wanted to find out what would happen if you could turn back time, merely to pull that out a little shirt to start the year. If you turn back the psychological clock, could you turn back the physical clock? Well, before that study started, they conducted a wide variety of physical and intellectual tests. After one week, these octogenarians showed quantifiable improvements in physical strength and manual dexterity. Their IQ went up, their hearing improved, as did their vision. This is crazy— their fingers lengthened because the effects of arthritis diminished.

This is the power of mind over matter; this is the power of priming. That’s what I want to talk about this week: the not-so-secret secret to transformation. Now, you may think that your ship has sailed, that it’s too little, too late— good news! It’s never too late to be who you might have been. If you’re still breathing, God is still working, and I’m excited to see what He’s going to do. You are one decision away from a totally different life. Ready or not, here we go!

Welcome to Dream Factory
Welcome to National Community Church. We kick off a new series, Dream Factory. You’ll find message notes in the app. If you’re in the house, welcome online—there and everywhere! It’s a joy; we love our extended family. You can meet me in Romans 12; we’ll get there in a minute.

Did you know that there is more information in a Sunday edition of The New York Times than the average person living in the 18th century would consume in their entire lifetime? So much information! We can Google anything anytime. I had to go to a building called a library to a contraption called a card catalog, and I had to search by title, author, or subject. It took about two hours to find the book, which was already checked out.

This is the world that I lived in. Not today! Man, it’s fast and furious up in here. The average person processes 74 gigabytes of information every day. It’s crazy how the information just gets lodged in the brain. There are very important things that for the life of me I can’t remember, but if we need carpet, I know where to find it. I even know the number 588-2300, Empire. This is ridiculous! I haven’t seen that commercial in 40 years. This is not the information that is going to change my life, and yet I know it. I know the zip code to Beverly Hills—90210. So much information, right? And by the way, I know which candy bars have nuts. Now I have to sing the song to remember, «Sometimes I feel like a nut; sometimes I don’t. Almond Joy has nuts; Mounds don’t.» There we go! Now I remember so much information. Aren’t you glad you came to church?

Here’s the deal: most of us are educated way beyond the level of our obedience already. We don’t need to know more; we need to do more with what we know. A lot of people who have been following Christ for 25 years—love you— but you don’t have 25 years of experience. You have one year of experience repeated 25 times. So what we don’t need is more information; we need transformation. We need the transforming work of the Holy Spirit to do what He does to change us from the inside out.

First-Order vs. Second-Order Change
According to the science of cybernetics— and then we’re going to jump into Romans 12 — there are two kinds of change. First-order change is incremental; second-order change is exponential. First-order change is behavioral; it’s essentially doing something more or less.

I went to the gym last week—wow, everybody was at the gym last week! There was one machine available; I was working a muscle I’ve never even worked out because it’s the only machine I could use. I don’t even know what to do here—exercising more, good! A lot of people start that New Year diet, right? Sometimes eating less of certain foods, like sugar—that’s good! I think you’ll be healthier because of it. But doing something more or less is dependent upon willpower and is usually short-lived. Second-order change is conceptual. If you want to really change your life, you have to change your story, your identity, and your words. Why? Because words create worlds.

And by the way, this is the word that will change your life. God is watching over His word to perform it (Jeremiah 1:12); His word doesn’t return void (Isaiah 55). Words create worlds! So I’ll just say this upfront: you do not need another sermon; you need a word from God. You need to get into God’s word and let God’s word get into you. Let it come to life; let it resurrect your true identity and your destiny. Let it help you define your circumstances, your reality—that’s how you begin to live inside out. So we’re going to aim for some second-order change over the next couple of weeks.

Romans 12: The Therefore
Romans 12:1 and 2 might make a good verse of the year if you don’t have one yet. Therefore, there’s an old axiom in hermeneutics, the science of interpreting scripture, that whenever you come across a «therefore, » you have to figure out what it’s there for.

I think what Paul is doing is he is reaching back to the first 11 chapters. The first 11 chapters are a preamble to what he’s about to say. What does it say in those first 11 chapters? Here’s what it says: the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in me. That’s a game-changer! If God is for us, who can be against us? God is working all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. In all these things, you are more than conquerors! Hallelujah! Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, on account of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual act of worship.

Mercy and Grace
Let me talk about mercy for a moment and delineate grace and mercy because they are two sides of the same coin but are two very different things. If you’re taking notes, you can jot this down: Mercy is not getting what we deserve; grace is getting what we do not deserve. We get to have our cake and eat it too. This mercy is an amazing gift from God. Religion is spelled «D-O»; it’s all about what you can do for God. Christianity is spelled «D-O-N-E»; it’s all about what Christ has done for us on the cross. When we kneel at that cross, when we surrender our life to the lordship of Christ, our sin is forgiven and forgotten; our sin is nailed on an old rugged tree. I owed a debt I could not pay; He paid a debt He did not owe. I am justified, just as if I had never sinned. If you need to reset going into a new year, listen: it happens at the foot of the cross. It happens when we experience the mercy that God offers. And guess what? Mercy shop is never closed; His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:23).

Now I want us to internalize that; I want us to personalize that because the longest distance in the world is the 12 inches from the head to the heart. So when we talk about transformation, you’ve got to get that information from here to here, from your head to your heart, and then you get it into your gut and you begin to live it out.

Personalizing God’s Mercy
So to personalize it, let’s have a little bit of fun. Pull out your phone—you undoubtedly have a little calculator app on your phone. Here’s what I want you to do: I want you to enter your age. You can shield it from the person next to you. Take your age and then multiply it by 365.25. Come on, leap years count! This is going to take a second; you might have to look at a calendar, but I want you to count the number of days from your last birthday to today and then add that to the total. That is the total number of different strains of mercy you have received from God. Why? Because the word in Hebrew here doesn’t just mean «again and again.» This is not just a mercy that’s offered every morning—no! It means different.

So here’s the amazing thing: the mercy that God has shown to me is totally different than the mercy He’s shown to you. Mercy is as unique as your fingerprint, and guess what? The mercy I need today is different from the mercy I needed yesterday and the mercy I’m going to need tomorrow. So every single day, God shows up, and what Paul is saying here is, «Come on, take an audit; do some accounting.» On account of God’s mercy, how can I not forgive in light of what God has forgiven me? On account of God’s mercy, God, I’m going to offer my body as a living sacrifice to you.

The Altar in 2025
Now, I may talk a little bit more about this at House of Prayer. By the way, open invite— get the year started right! Thursday night at 7:14 p.m.; we’re going to keep pressing in, praying through. Prayer is how we write history before it happens! Game on, House of Prayer! Thursday night—I might talk a little bit more about the altar because we’re going to aim at the altar in 2025. That’s the turning point, the tipping point—that’s where God begins to do transformation in our lives.

So I’ll maybe teach it out Thursday night, but let me just put this out there: whatever you don’t put on the altar turns into an idol. Put it on the altar! Everything! Come on; you got to put your time, talent, and treasure on the altar. You got to put your past, present, and future on the altar. You got to put your ego on the altar every single day. I mean, the problem with living sacrifices is they crawl off the altar, right? You got to put your failures and your successes, your strengths and weaknesses—God, my sickness and my health, my wife and my kids. God, this decision, this situation—I’m putting it on the altar. Everything is aimed at the altar.

And then we get to the heart of the verse: «Do not be conformed to the world around you, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.» Then and only then will you be able to test and approve what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. Man, I love that! Autobots, transform and roll out! That’s kind of what I hear in my head. Now change is hard, but it’s possible, and it’s possible through the working of the Holy Spirit.

Three Challenges for Transformation
The question is: how does transformation happen? Just three challenges this weekend. One, you have to forgive reality for what it is. Two, you have to ground yourself in God’s word. And three, you have to move beyond the world around you. I’ll explain what that means in a minute.

Two rules of life up front that I have: when things go good, don’t play God; when things go bad, don’t play the victim. I am not going to let my circumstances get between me and God. Hallelujah! Listen, over time, one of two things is going to happen: either your theology is going to conform to your reality, or your reality is going to begin to conform to your theology. I’m not talking about denying reality; I’m a Stockdale Paradox guy. Right, confront the brutal facts, but do it with unwavering faith. Jesus said, «In this world, you will have trouble. Take heart; I have overcome the world.»

So you have to forgive reality for what it is. Is there an offense that you have taken? You will stop playing offense and start playing defense! Like when Jesus went to Nazareth, it says He couldn’t do many miracles. Have you ever noticed this? Why? Because they took offense at Him! Offense will short-circuit the working of the Holy Spirit. The gifts won’t be operational; miracles won’t happen. Why? Because you took offense and you’re playing defense now. So is there a seed of bitterness that you need to uproot?

Mark, how important is this? Well, Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, if you’re at the altar offering a gift, and you remember, «Wait! I have something against someone, or someone has something against me, » He said to leave your gift at the altar! Stop the presses, go and make it right! Now, forgiveness is not excusing bad behavior. I bet there are some situations that you need to exit. There are some things that you’re subjecting yourself to. That’s not forgiveness; that’s enabling. I don’t even know what that word means, and I don’t even know how to spell it, but I think it’s that. You have to forgive reality for what it is.

Listen, two bouts with cancer that Laura’s had over the last seven years—we’ve had to forgive reality for what it is. I mean, just days ago, at a dear friend’s funeral, she left us too soon. You have to forgive reality for what it is. And by the way, the reason why we’re able to do that is because we believe in a reality that’s more real than the reality that we can taste, touch, hear, smell, and see. It’s the reality of a dimension of existence that the Bible calls heaven.

A Prayer Exercise
Can we just do a little exercise? You’re online—if you’re driving, keep it 10 and 2—but in the house, D.C. Nova, won’t you just stand for a moment? Just stand for a moment. I love the way the Quakers would pray—they prayed with body posture, and it’s something that you might want to incorporate into your rhythm this coming year. With hands faced down, just kind of symbolizing, «Hey, let go and let God.» There are some things that you are white-knuckling—situations that you are obsessively trying to control. There are just things from the past that you can’t let go of. It’s so hard to open our hands faced down and just let it go, but that’s what the Quakers did. And then they would turn their hands over.

Can we pray this way today? Lord, with hands faced down: Lord, there are memories that we can’t forget but we need to forgive. Lord, we need to cast our cares upon You. Lord, there are mistakes that we’ve made that we haven’t forgiven ourselves for; we’re the hardest person to forgive. But You’ve forgiven us, so far be it from us to not forgive ourselves. And so, Lord, whatever it is that the Holy Spirit is surfacing in our hearts and minds, we let go. We let go. And we turn our hands over today in a posture of receptivity. We say, «Come, Holy Spirit—Your will, Your way, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Come and fill us with Your Spirit all over again.» God, I pray joy unspeakable; I pray for peace that passes understanding. God, I pray for a love that makes no sense, but it’s the love of Christ at work in us. Oh God, transform us from the inside out by Your Spirit, in Jesus' name. Amen, amen, and amen. You can grab a seat.

We’re going to go into 2025 with a learning posture: «What have you come to teach me?» We’re going to go into 2025 with a growth mindset. Listen, my job as a pastor is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Why? Because you tell me the last time you were uncomfortable, and I’ll tell you the last time you grew. The status quo isn’t going to get us there. But I know that there’s got to be moments where we reset, where we forgive reality for what it is.

Grounding in God’s Word
Now let me talk about number two: you have got to ground yourself in God’s word. Can I tell you that on the weekends, I’m just so grateful for everybody who teaches at NCC? Such tremendous giftings and anointings. I’m grateful for the guests that we have come in to share the word with us. By the way, Pastor John Jenkins from First Baptist Glenarden will be with us for revival. Our dear friend Donna Pani will be back at NCC for revival. I’m just so grateful! But I want you to hear my heart here. The goal of our teaching on the weekend is not to feed you. We have to feed ourselves! Amen! Come on! The goal is to create an insatiable hunger for God’s word that no sermon can satisfy.

Like, come on, let’s get into God’s word! Let’s get God’s word into us! You got to ground yourself in God’s word. The world will ask you who you are, said Carl Jung. And if you don’t know, it’ll tell you. And that’s where a lot of people end up—we just absorb. We conform to the world around us. Why? Because we spend a lot more time consuming those narratives, those trending hashtags than we do allowing scripture to overwrite the negative narratives and rewrite the false narratives. That’s why we’ve got to be grounded.

How does transformation happen? By the renewing of our mind. There’s this false narrative that we are a cosmic accident, the result of random chance. With all due respect, I don’t believe that. We have a theology of dignity. I’m going to tell you who you are, and I know it from God’s word. This is where I find my identity: you are the image of God! Wow! You’re the apple of God’s eye! You’re fearfully and wonderfully made! You are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, prepared for you in advance—all the days ordained for you, written in His book before one of them came to be. You were made a little lower than the angels and crowned with glory! Hallelujah!

Why is this so important? Well, it transforms what I see when I look in the mirror because in 2 Corinthians 3:18, it’s the other place where metamorpho is used. This word for transformation is in Romans 12, but it’s also in 2 Corinthians 3:18: «We who with unveiled faces are being transformed into the image of Christ with ever-increasing glory.» But you’ve got to look in that mirror! Yes, yes, and begin to take that identity for who you are!

Fighting Words
Now, two stories: Ellie and A. Corey. I picked up this little devotional called Fighting Words. I like the title! By Ellie Holcomb. She tells a story about a friend who was struggling with depression. She listened to her friend, and she was struck by the narrative, by how many lies her friend was believing. Lies about who she was, lies about who God was. And suddenly, Ellie realized that there were lots of lies that she was believing too. All of a sudden, she got mad. Here’s what she said: «My heart was pounding in my chest. I started to get angry because I remembered that there was an enemy and he’s called the father of lies. Lies are his native language.»

So she grabbed her Bible and started flipping pages, looking for the promises that she had underlined in that Bible. And she said, «We’re going to start memorizing these verses together. These are going to be our fighting words.» She said it didn’t necessarily change their circumstances, but it changed them from the inside out because it gave them solid ground to stand on. It was a shelter, a shield, an anchor, and a light—a balm, a song that they began to sing into the shadows.

Come on! You have got to prophesy the promises of God! It’s not defying reality; it’s defining reality! God is writing a bigger story, church! God is writing a better story! You’ve got to believe that! And so we begin to declare the promises of God! How did Jesus, 40 days in the wilderness, fasting— when the enemy tempted Him three times? And by the way, go and read it—Luke 4—and notice how he goes after His identity. That’s what the enemy always attacks: «If You really are the Son of God.» Basically, «Prove it!» The wrong way! That’s what the enemy is going to try. But listen to me, don’t miss this! In the Kingdom, identity is not achieved; it’s received. You are not the mistakes you’ve made. You aren’t your successes, either. You are the righteousness of Christ! That’s who you are in Christ!

So you’ve got to begin to understand and assume that identity. So what did Jesus do? Three times, «It is written! It is written! It is written!» «Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.» That’s grounding yourself in the word of God! I think we all need seven promises just kind of in our back pocket that we can pull out anytime. Seven promises that we memorize! Can I give you a little challenge? Little homework assignment: seven promises, and you’ll find me in the message notes on the app. But man, there are verses I go back to all the time! I’ve already quoted some of them, but Philippians 1:6 says that He who began a good work will carry it to completion! Come on! It’s not over! It’s not over! «Take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ» (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Psalm 84: «No good thing will God withhold from those who walk uprightly.» Joshua 3:5: «Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow He will do amazing things among you.» Many years ago, one of my verses of the year—Proverbs 19:11: «It is to the glory of a man to overlook an offense.» I need these promises, these verses in my back pocket so I can pull them out! Why? Because these are my fighting words! This is how we fight our spiritual battles—with the Word!

The Depth of Scripture
This is fascinating to me, by the way. You want to fall in love with the Bible all over again? Just pop over to the Museum of the Bible! What a beautiful— I mean, this book is so deep; what a deep well! Do you know Jewish rabbis said that every word of scripture has 70 faces and 600,000 meanings? The word of God is so layered! So it’s no wonder Deuteronomy 17:16–18 gives these instructions to the kings of Israel: «He must write for himself a copy of the law in the presence of the Levitical priests. He must always keep that copy with him and read it daily as long as he lives, that he may learn to revere the Lord and follow carefully all the words of the law.»

Okay, are you kidding me? I did the math because I do the math! The Torah, what it’s talking about, has about 79,800 words. I calculated how long it takes to write, so eight hours a day, it would have taken the king just the first five books—the Torah—13 days to make a copy of the law in his own handwriting. Okay, isn’t that something that the king would delegate? No! That’s how you begin to personalize it! God wanted to make sure, like, «Hey, for the first 13 days, let’s get the Torah from here to here to here—internalize it, personalize it—and then had to keep it on their person at all times, » which is kind of awesome. Much easier today with a phone! And then read it every day of their life!

Can I challenge you? Maybe check out YouVersion and download a reading plan. I won’t go too deep on this, but I do want to show you a picture of a note card that I keep in my Bible. It’s the «Whatever keeps me from my Bible is my enemy, however harmless it may appear to me.» So what I want to do is stay in the Word, but I need a plan to work, and then I have to work that plan.

Here’s what I do—this is something; take it or leave it. But the law of requisite variety: if you go to the gym and work out the same way, same reps, same sequence every time, it loses effectiveness because your muscles adapt—they stop breaking down and building up. This is human nature! So what you have to do is confuse your muscles! That’s what a good trainer does: they give you a different routine!

So the key to spiritual growth is routine, but once a routine becomes routine, you have to change your routine. So what I do every year is I just pick up a fresh copy of the Bible. Man, sometimes when I open it, it’s overwhelming—it’s a big book and nothing’s underlined yet, and it’s almost like dropping off an old friend at the airport when I put last year’s Bible on the shelf. But then I’ve got a new friend! I have never read through the Berean Standard Bible. Why did I choose it? I don’t know, but it causes my synapses to fire in slightly different ways.

If you’re wired the way that I’m wired, man, I would go on YouVersion. Then you get one week under your belt, and you’ll start to get the hang of it! And listen, you can read the Bible cover to cover! You could start with the New Testament if you felt like that’s what you were able to pull off. But whatever it is, man, if you don’t have a plan, it’s hard to work that plan! Are you with me?

So go check out YouVersion, download a daily reading plan— that’s how we’re going to ground ourselves in God’s word!

Corrie ten Boom’s Story
I promise you one more story; I’m going to run out of time, and that’s okay. I put my faith in Christ when I was 5 years old after watching a movie called The Hiding Place. It was a movie about Corrie ten Boom. Corrie and her family were hiding Jews during the Holocaust, and they were discovered, put on a train, and sent to a concentration camp. Somehow, someway, Corrie was able to smuggle in a copy of Scripture, and she said it saved her life. She said that was her lifeline.

She said they would sit in those barracks, in those dorm rooms in that prison camp, and they would sit around a fire in the freezing cold. They would open their Bible, and she said they would devour the word. She said, «We would gulp the gospels!» Why? Because it was their only hope! God has to be writing a bigger story here! But this book is where they found their identity, found their destiny, found and defined their reality!

So Corrie said this: «The blacker the night, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burn the word of God. I would look around as Betsy read, watching the light leap from face to face. More than conquerors!» It was not a wish; it was a fact! We knew it! We experienced it minute by minute—poor, hated, hungry—we are more than conquerors, not «we shall be, » we are! That gets me! You see, part of the bigger story that God was writing through Corrie was me watching that movie, going home after it, and saying, «Mom, can I ask Jesus into my heart?» There was something about the life she lived that impacted my life. Why? Because she grounded herself in God’s word.

I’ll just share this one little thing: one night, they were reading 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18—small verses, hard verses. «Rejoice always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.» Now that’s easier said than done, especially in a death camp. But as Betsy read those words, she started thanking God for this and that and the other thing. Then at one point, she thanked God for fleas! And Corrie got a little upset. She said, «There is no way I will ever thank God for fleas! Fleas were the pain of their existence; fleas were the constant nuisance. Those fleas made their lives miserable!» Until many days later, Corrie had a thought: those fleas were the only reason why the guards would not come into their barracks and confiscate their Bible. Those fleas were the only reason they would not physically abuse and use those women. What Corrie realized is those fleas were their guardian angels! And Corrie prayed a prayer she thought she would never pray: «Thank You, God, for fleas!»

All I’m saying is there’s a lot happening around me that I would love to change. And listen, prayer changes things! But I also know that my default prayer is, «Lord, change my circumstances so I don’t have to change myself.» But sometimes the circumstances that we ask God to change are the circumstances that God is using to change me.

See, the painful truth of this passage, Romans 12:1 and 2, is it’s not about transforming circumstances; it’s not about transforming society; it’s not about transforming systems or ecosystems; it’s not about transforming what’s happening around me; it’s about transforming what’s happening in me. How am I thinking? How am I feeling? And is it in alignment? Is it grounded in God’s word? There are so many algorithms designed to keep us in our echo chambers. There are so many trending hashtags that will get you depressed in a hurry! There are so many things happening out here. You know what? I’m going to stay grounded in God’s word. Why? Because this is the story of God! And when I give Jesus, the author and perfecter of my faith, full editorial control, He begins to write His story in and through me.

Closing Prayer
And I just think I’m done. Yeah, we’re done here.

Lord, I pray as we enter a new year, Lord, there is some reality we need to forgive. Lord, there are some things that we’ve been conforming to. This is our moment to just step up, to take a stand, to just be who we are in Christ, to stop believing those false narratives. Listen, don’t let anyone label you who didn’t make you! You are not this issue or that issue; you are a child of God! Let’s live into that destiny! Let’s come alive in Christ! Let’s ground ourselves in God’s word! And so, Lord, we stand on Your promises today that He who began a good work will carry it to completion! In Jesus' name, amen! Amen!