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Lafayette Church of Christ
Come to the Altar, and Stay
Romans 12:1–2 · Preached by Cameron Miller · July 19, 2026
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A full Vacation Bible School kickoff Sunday, with several voices sharing lessons that morning. This issue carries Cameron Miller's message from Romans 12.
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At a Glance
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Scripture
Romans 12:1–2
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Speaker
Cameron Miller
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Theme
A living sacrifice isn't something you owe. It's a gift you get to give.
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01
Sacrifice and Transformation Cannot Be Separated
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| · Romans 12:1 is the “living sacrifice” verse. Romans 12:2 is the “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed” verse. We love to split them apart, but they sit side by side in the same breath. As Cameron put it, they are “a part one and a part two of the same thing.” |
| · The VBS week tie-in made it plain: the altar up front stood for the sacrifice of verse 1, and the Transformers stood for the transformation of verse 2. You cannot have the one without the other. |
| · Church camp memory: the Gatorade cooler where the ice melted and watered the mix down to almost nothing. It's our natural reaction, when something is strong and dense, to water it down into something more manageable. |
| · The wood sealer that only worked as a “part two” once you'd laid down the “part one.” Cameron said he was holding back no information: sacrifice and transformation work the same way, and cannot be used independently of each other. |
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Ask Yourself
It's easy to take the strong stuff and water it down until it goes down easy. Where in your walk have you diluted something Jesus meant to be full strength, just to make it more manageable? What would change if you took it the way He mixed it?
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02
A Living Sacrifice Is a Mercy, Not a Mandate
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| · Verse 1 calls it “your spiritual worship,” and some Bibles footnote that as your rational or reasonable service. Cameron pointed out that even a person far from God, if he is honest and reasonable, would admit that if the God of the Bible is who He says He is, then laying down your whole life is the only sensible response. |
| · We tend to swing this verse like a hammer: the book says be a living sacrifice, so be a living sacrifice. That's not wrong, but it misses the heart of it. |
| · The opportunity itself is a gift. Even being able to make the sacrifice, even being able to hear the appeal to turn to God, shows His patience and His mercy toward people who don't deserve it. |
| · “Present your bodies” means the whole self, not just the hands and feet while we keep the heart back. All of it, laid down. |
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Ask Yourself
Most of us carry our faith like a chore list we're behind on. What changes this week if you stop treating a surrendered life as one more thing you owe God, and start seeing it as a gift you get to receive?
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03
Look at Who You Are Handing It To
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| · Before we fret about our sacrifice, Cameron sent us back to the end of Romans 11: “Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.” We are handing our lives to the One who has never once gotten it wrong. |
| · So the sacrifice runs the other direction from what we think. It is not a gift from us to God, who needs nothing outside Himself. It is a gift from God to us. |
| · A living sacrifice is us laying our whole self on the altar and then staying, not walking away and trying to forget about it. It is not Abraham laying Isaac down and hoping to move on. It is a life lived on the altar, where God has the control. |
| · And that's the hard part. Like the old line Cameron shared, living sacrifices keep trying to climb back off the altar. The call this morning was to climb back on and stay. |
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Ask Yourself
The scary part of handing something over is not knowing what the other person will do with it. But look at who you are handing it to. Is there one thing you keep climbing back onto the altar to grab, that you could finally leave in the hands of a God who has never gotten it wrong?
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Key Quotes
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Cameron Miller · on Romans 12
“Sacrifice and transformation cannot be separated.”
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Cameron Miller · on the true direction of the gift
“Our sacrifice is not a gift from us to God. Our sacrifice is a gift from God to us.”
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A line Cameron Miller shared · on living sacrifice
“The hardest thing about a living sacrifice is living sacrifices keep trying to climb off of the altar.”
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Cameron Miller · on giving your life to God
“It truly was a gift from him to me, and it was the thing that I thought I didn't want to give up, but it's the thing that actually gave me everything.”
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Lafayette Church of Christ · Romans 12:1–2 · July 19, 2026
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