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It's one of those facts that you'd probably rather not know. There are some things in life of which it would be better to live without understanding: like knowing exactly what they put in sausage. A few years ago, I discovered how exactly they make Slim Jim beef sausages and haven't eaten one since.

Let me give you another fact that you didn't want to know: if you wipe your finger through the dust on a shelf in your home, then you should know that the dust is almost completely made up of dead body cells from you and your family. That dust used to be you.

Our bodies have ten thousand trillion cells in it. We are completely made of cells, and all of them are in a state of dying. You also may not want to know that every inch of your skin surface is dead cells. Scientists estimate that we lug at least five pounds of dead skin around of which several billion tiny fragments are sloughed off each day. Turn to somebody and say "you don't look bad to be so dead!"

Where do all these dead cells come from? Most of our living cells don't last over a month or so, before they are replaced by a new cell. The only two cells that last longer are our liver cells which can survive for years, and our brain cells which last as long as you do. We are given about a hundred billion brain cells at birth and we lose about five hundred of them an hour. (If you are going to do any heavy thinking, then there isn't a moment to waste!) The reason that the liver and the brain cells are able to last so long is that the individual components of which they are made is renewed so often that no part of them is actually more than a month old. The result is that there is no part of your body that was a part of you nine years ago. You are alive only because your body is in a constant state of renewing. It's a fact of live that to survive, renewal must take place.

The renewal principle is the same with all other parts of life. Your pretty hair do probably isn't going to last the night, nevertheless survive for weeks. For the clothes that you have on to look presentable, you will eventually have to wash them and then dry and press them. Your new car will eventually need washing, and even it's engine will eventually need parts replaced and a tune up if it is to keep going. Your new paint job on your porch will last one maybe two years, depending on if you sprung for the good paint or not. You cleaned the house last week, but it will need cleaning again. Your beautiful muscular body will turn soft and droop if you don't keep refurbishing the muscles with active exercise. The lawn looks good after you just mowed it, but it's only temporary. Like everything in life, for things to keep going and keep moving, it will take a renewing of it's mowed state! If anything is to last into the future, then there must be a renewal take place!

Imagine the dumbness of business men going in and buying a state-of-the-art freight ship with all of the bells and whistles and running it from port to port without ever doing an inspection or ever bringing it into a dry dock to make repairs. Eventually what started out as the nicest ship on the sea will be ravaged and destroyed by the constant wear and tear of the sea, the wind, and the travels that it has made. Without a renewal, the best and greatest becomes the broken and the "has been." Take the best water that you can get and the prettiest fish that you can buy and put them in your aquarium and no matter how awesome it looks, if there is no renewal and refurbishing of the water then your fish will die in that green slime!

Perhaps you've heard the old joke about the man who was asked why he never told his wife that he loved her to which he replied "I told her once when I married her that I loved her and if I change my mind, I'll let her know." It doesn't work that way -- not if you want a successful marriage relationship that grows and stays fresh and exciting. Those roses that you bought her before you were married filled her "love tank" then but just like your car -- sir -- you need to make another installment every now and then! The time you spent with her last week was great, but what about this week. And it's the same with your kids and such. The greatest man and the greatest woman and the perfect match made in wedded bliss will come falling down if there is not activity to the continual renewal of that love! Your vow must be renewed over and over again through your actions! You said it, but now you've got to show them that you really meant through good times and bad times and in sickness and in health! And so like everything else, our relationships must have a constant renewing of commitment and trust and love in order to stay alive!

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We understand the process of renewal in the physical and the mental, but what about the spiritual!? The Bible speaks of the Word of life spoken to us as our "daily bread." Listen to what Jesus, Himself, said about Himself:

We understand that Jesus is our spiritual nourishment just as food is our physical nourishment. But it's very interesting that Jesus would compare Himself to the manna that fell in the Old Testament. That was the bread which came out of the sky to Israel. It's interesting because the manna was only good for the day that you gathered it, or for two days on the Sabbath. You couldn't stock pile it. You couldn't put it in little zippy freezer bags and freeze it until you later wanted to make "bamanna" bread. But every morning you had to get up and gather it anew. And so Jesus compared Himself with something that had to be renewed constantly!

It doesn't matter how much Jesus you had last Sunday, you still need Him to touch you this Sunday! It doesn't matter how much of a breakthrough that we had this morning, but we still have a need for a renewal of Jesus in our life tonight! He doesn't change, but as the writer said "his mercies are new every morning!"

I've known people to try to stockpile Jesus. They maybe totally committed to God for a few years when they were younger and now they want to slack off and live off their past commitment. They were faithful to the house of God for a month, and then they want to take a vacation from the things of God and live off yesterday's blessings. But you cannot do that because Jesus is the manna from heaven. In the Old Testament, there was a couple of fools that tried to store up the manna despite what God had said. They found that it bred worms and stunk! What was the greatest blessing from heaven one day, became the nastiest possible food when it was not renewed every day! Even angel food turns rancid without a continual renewal!

And so I'm preaching to you! The greatest blessing of God cannot sustain you for the rest of your life. The greatest meal at the King's table will only temporarily satisfy your hunger. The command to "taste and see that the Lord is good" was not a one time commandment meant to be obeyed at the beginning of your walk with God and then forgotten but it should be an everyday action! You can't come to God and "get saved" and then forget about the things of God! But you need the constant renewal of Jesus in your life!

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For life to continue we must have a continual renewing! The Hebrew and Greek words for "renewing" or "renewal" are used only a few times throughout scripture, but the places that they are used reveal four particular areas of our spiritual walk that we must -- we must if we are to make it living for God -- have a continual renewing process active in our lives.

Four areas that we must absolutely have a continual renewing; two are mentioned in the Old Testament and two in the New Testament. Let's start in the Old:

One area that we need a constant renewal is our spiritual strength! God will not faint, but man will and so we need God's help in this area. In scripture, there is a definite correlation with coming to church and the renewing of spiritual strength. Listen to what David wrote:

David said that "the Lord is my strength" and I find Him and behold His beauty at His house! There is a reason that we are "not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together" (Hebrews 10:25). It's because it's at the house of the Lord that we find strength and courage. It's at the house of the Lord that our strength in the Lord is renewed. The Bible says "iron sharpeneth iron" and it's at church where we rub shoulders with other believers and the Word of God and so we grow stronger and sharper!

Have you ever wondered why God commanded us to fast food? It think one reason is to show us in the natural what people do to themselves in the spirit. You know how it is with some people: they come to one good service and get blessed and then think that we are okay for several weeks! They hear one great sermon and then we think we have enough spiritual food to last for a while. People who would never dream about missing a physical meal and who will stop whatever they have to do to go answer the stomach growling, yet seem to not understand the same principle in the spirit. They wait until they are spiritually dehydrated and spiritually starving and isolated and until the devil is beating their brains in before they come back to church or come to hear the Word of God. No matter what the excuse nor how valid -- a missed service and sermon does as much or even more as missing a day or two of food does to you in the natural.

Although you can't tell it, I've fasted for long periods of time before so I know what comes with missing a natural meal! Here's what happens in the natural when you go on an extended fast without food: at first you get a headache and feel weak as the blood sugar levels in your body try to adjust. Then for me my speech goes crazy and I have trouble thinking clearly and forming my words. Then my desire to do anything is lessened and all I want to do is nothing! I have trouble handling two or three things at a time and get irritable and agitated by the slightest things. And then we begin to lose weight that I have gained. And eventually -- if you fast long enough (around 6 or 7 days) -- you really lose the desire to eat. Food seems almost repulsive to you. And then when you do eat, you can't eat as much as you want and what would have normally been only getting you started, stuffs you to the miserable stage.

When you miss a church service or sermon, it's the same as missing a meal. And the effect is even more pronounced when you don't take time for spiritual devotion of prayer and reading your Bible everyday. The old saying that "seven days without God makes one weak" is true and when you go 6 or 7 days without spiritual food and missing church certain characteristics begin to emerge in your spiritual life. First you become weak spiritually and unable to respond or even recognize or respond to the spiritual attacks on your life. Then your speech goes crazy and you have trouble witnessing and praying to God and you begin to talk negatively about everything in the spirit. Then your spiritual desire is lessened and you don't want to be involved in the kingdom of God or around your brothers or sisters. And then you begin to lose the ground that you had gained in living for God faithfully and you begin to lose the spiritual awareness and sharpness and focus that you had obtained. You become consumed and downtrodden and agitated by even the littlest problems, and after a week, you really lose your desire to eat. You really have no desire to go to church. You really have no desire to hear a sermon. What used to excite you no longer stirs you and even seems repulsive to you. When you can think of a dozen things that you'd rather be doing than going to church, then it is a sign that you are spiritually starving yourself! And then when you do come to a service, you can't handle all that God wants to give you or do in your life. What would normally be just getting you warmed up becomes so much to handle that you can't even focus in on everything that you need.

Whether we care to admit it or not, time and life causes a diminishing of our spiritual power and we need constant nourishment. The weakness issues in your life that reoccur are a result of your spiritual starvation. "How often should I come to church preacher?" "How devoted should I be to prayer and fasting and Bible study?" That's the spiritual way of asking "How many times should I go the gym?" That depends on "how strong do you want to be?" You determine your spiritual strength by how often you renew your strength! We need -- we must have a constant renewing of our strength!

After his affair with Bathsheba, David prayed:

The Living Bible puts it like this:

Hear this preacher: David failed because he did not have his opinion of sin renewed. And when he repented, he was saying "renew a right spirit within me" "let me get my focus back on you and let me see sin for what it really is!"

Sin is the refocusing of your God-given energies for something other than what He desires. Before the devil could talk Eve in taking the forbidden, he had to change the way she thought about the forbidden. And so a part of true repentance is a renewing of the right way to think about sin. If you ask God to forgive you and yet still view evil as something to be desired, then it won't be long till you are right back to it! We need God to not only forgive us of our sin, but also to "renew a right spirit within us!" We need the things of God to be what appeals to us and what looks appeasing. We need that renewal!

The world is on a constant advertising campaign to make sin look good and exciting. They don't just play one beer commercial a year and say "well that's all we need." But they play them over and over and over and over. They don't just have one television show with sexual immorality portrayed vividly but they show it over and over and over. They are trying to put the thought in your mind and then constantly renew it that sin is good and sin is desirable and sin is best and sin is fun. And the Bible says that there is a pleasure in sin but only for a season! And so we need not just one sermon on sin and not just one altar of repentance and not just one reminding of the consequences of sin, but we need it over and over and over again! And most of all we need God to replenish and renew a right view of what sin is and what it brings and the destruction and death that is the final work of it! "Create in me a clean heart" David prayed -- but he did not stop there! "and renew a right spirit within me!" I need a renewal of looking at sin in the right way!

Paul wrote in our first text:

The idea of our bodies being a "living sacrifice" is quite unique. The requirements of the sacrifices of the Old Testament were five-fold: First, the sacrifice had to be present at the temple of God. Second, the sacrifice had to die. Third, the sacrifice had to be spotless and blemishless and therefore "holy" for God. Fourth, the sacrifice had to be completely given up by the offerer, and, fifth, the sacrifice had to be completely consumed by the fire of the altar until nothing remained. There was never a sacrifice in the Old Testament that was offered twice because the very definition of the sacrifice meant that it had to be totally consumed and given!

And so our bodies are to be a living sacrifice! We must come to the house of God! We must be willing to die out to our sins and our past and our own will. We must repent and be baptized and therefore "spotless" for Him. We must be willing to give up everything about our life to God, and we must allow the fire of the Holy Ghost to completely consume us and purify us!

And so Paul tells us exactly how we become a living sacrifice:

The word for "renewing" here in the Greek is five miles long and I'm not about to pronounce it but it does NOT mean a one time action. It refers to a continual process that is never finished and that keeps going on and on. Paul is saying that we become a living sacrifice not by once coming to God and giving everything and making a one-time commitment but rather through the renewing of our mind's decision to serve Jesus and give all!

The life of a Christian is someone who constantly submits and constantly consecrates and constantly repents and constantly seeks God and constantly is cleansed and constantly presents themselves as a living sacrifice. Our life is not a one time offering, but rather a on going process of over and over again recommitting and growing closer and more sold out than ever before! And so we need a renewing of our made up mind to serve Him! We need it constantly! If you want to end this life having been faithful to God, then it will be because you consistently and constantly committed your life to Him! We are a living sacrifice that must be given completely and a offering that must be renewed!

It sounds strange doesn't it but the last thing that God informs us of our need of renewal is of the Holy Ghost! Paul wrote Titus in our other text:

God's mercy saved us! How? By two acts: the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.

The "washing of regeneration" is literally in the Greek the "laver of regeneration" and is a direct reference to water baptism. When you are baptized in the name of Jesus, there is a washing that brings a "regeneration" or a "restoring of lost life" that takes place. Your past sins are washed away and you become a new creature in Christ Jesus! The term in the Greek "washing of regeneration" indicates that it is a one time event. It is something that you do at first and then never need to do again.

And then we come to the second part of this verse. God also saved us by the "renewing of the Holy Ghost." We receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost just as they did in the book of Acts chapter 2 when they were filled with the Holy Ghost and spake in a heavenly language that they had never learned.

What does it mean by the "renewing?" When Adam sinned there was something that died in the Garden of Eden but it wasn't the flesh or the mind of Adam but rather his spirit man -- a close relationship with God as God intended is what sin killed first! And so when you receive the Holy Ghost, your spirit man is reunited with God! You are placed back in close communion with God! And that relationship that man lost in the Garden is restored and renewed! And usually we stop there and say "I've got the Holy Ghost and so I've got that relationship restored, but the word for "renewing" in the Greek -- remember -- means a continual, never-ending cycle! It could just as easily be translated as "continual renovation." And so we come to a revelation that maybe you missed but you must get this day: we are saved by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. Not just by receiving a powerful experience one time in the past, but by the continual process of allowing the Holy Ghost to work in our life! By allowing it to happen over and over and over. By allowing it to change us again and again and again!

Those of you who have received this precious gift, go back in your mind and think about what it was like right after you received it! When you received the Holy Ghost, you felt as if you could charge hell with a water pistol! You loved everybody even the people that irked you or hated you. The things that seemed in your life as such a major problems, suddenly didn't seem near as big! The things that you had wrestled with in your life now seemed insignificant compared with the desire to do God's will. You were excited about telling somebody else about what you had received! You were full of faith that they could receive it too! The Holy Ghost had come in and done a great work and changed your life, and at least for the day you were on "cloud 199!"

But without a constant renewal of the Holy Ghost, those blessings and changes don't last! The problem is not God -- He's perfect and never changes -- and so His Spirit is not the issue, the issue is that after we get the Holy Ghost, that same old flesh tries to raise itself up and take control again! Your past is washed away in the waters of baptism, but your memories are still there and your old emotions are there and the flesh is still alive so if you are to truly be a new creature in Christ Jesus, we must allow the Holy Ghost to constantly renew us! We must give the Holy Ghost free reign -- not in one service, but in everyday of our life! You can receive the Holy Ghost in a service but refuse to allow it to work in your life and die lost! Did you receive that great experience? Yes, but you did not allow the continuing renewal of God's Spirit in your life!

Let me read you one more interesting scripture. The events of the book of Acts are fairly easy to remember. In Acts chapter 1, Jesus ascends and tells the disciples to go wait in an upper room until they received "power from on high." In Acts chapter 2, that power, the Holy Ghost, was poured out on first the 120 apostles and then upon three thousand that gathered together at the "disturbance" and heard Peter's first sermon. In Act chapter 3 we find that Peter and John were going to the hour of prayer at the temple when they came upon a lame man and instead of giving him the pennies and spare change that he asked for, healed him through the power of the name of Jesus Christ! In Acts chapter 4, they are arrested and commanded under the threat of great persecution to stop preaching and teaching in the name of Jesus. Peter and John went to church and told the believers what had been said and let me read:

And then as they closed their prayer of consecration, look at what happened:

The place where they had gathered together was shaken and "they were all filled with the Holy Ghost!" Wait a minute! I thought that this was the church. I thought that they had just received the Holy Ghost! Most Bible scholars think that it's only been a matter of a week or two since the Day of Pentecost that this has happened. And surely the church (Peter and John included) haven't lost the Holy Ghost! So why would it say again about the same group of people "they were all filled with the Holy Ghost?" The answer is obvious: it was a renewing of the Holy Ghost! The Early Apostolic Church had been living for God, but they understood a principle that we must get ahold of today! A one-time-Day of Pentecost experience was not enough but they would make it living for God only through a continually "renewing of the Holy Ghost!" They needed yet another touch! And another touch!

And so I'm preaching to you! If we are to survive in living for God, then we must have a continual renewing of God's Spirit! If you are cold in God, then you need a renewing of the Holy Ghost! If you aren't excited about winning souls, then you need a renewing of the Holy Ghost! If you are having trouble praising God with your complete soul and mind, then you need a renewing of His Spirit! If you are not excited about coming to church as you once were and you have grown lukewarm to the things of God, you need a renewing of God! If you look at somebody that is hungry with fear instead of eagerness to tell them what God can do, then you need a renewing of the Holy Ghost! If the cost of doing right seems to outweigh the benefit and joy of serving God, then you need a renewing of the Holy Ghost!

You need to yield to God as you did when you first received that gift! You need to allow the Spirit to sweep over you as it did then! You need to remove all inhibitions as you did on that day long ago so that you can stand clean from tainted ness and the filth of this world and the philosophy of men and so that you can stand ready to do His will! We need a renewal of the Holy Ghost Power in our lives!

And listen to what the rest of the chapter says came about as a result of the renewal of the Holy Ghost in the Early Church:

They were of "one heart and of one soul!" The attitude of unity and sharing gripped the church! If all you can focus on is such and such issue or this problem and that is all you view when you look at the church, then let me tell you what you need! Not a relocation. Not a vacation. Not to retaliate and take revenge on whatever "wrong that you think needs righting" but when you are noticing the faults and issues of other people what you need is a renewing of the Holy Ghost that will cause you to bind together with your brother or sister in unity and face life and the valleys together! Unity is the

If you want to see the ministry to preach with great power and miracles and see "great grace" that reaches down and saves the worst sinner and the most unlikely candidates, then guess how you it's going to happen: when you allow the constant work of the renewing of the Holy Ghost in your life!

There is no problem that our church faces that cannot be solved by everyone being renewed continually in the Holy Ghost! We need a renewing of the Holy Spirit that would shake our very church and break forth in massive revival! We need it for the church's sake, but we need it for our own sake, for we will be saved only through the "renewing of the Holy Ghost!