I Want to Be a “Shall Be”

Carter Conlon from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. If you've come to the place of understanding that you have really nothing to offer God, you're actually on the journey that needs to be taken before God can make you into what you need to be.

That's Carter Conlon, and thank you for joining us on this week's A Call to the Nation program. God is not looking at you the way you look at yourself. He sees you as what you will become one day.

That happens when you understand you are nothing and He is everything. Let's join Carter now with today's message titled, I Want to Be a Shall Be. Would you be surprised if I told you that you might just be right in the place where you need to be for God to actually use you and do a miracle in your life? Let me explain that from John chapter 1, verse 40. Who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. And that's John the Baptist introducing Jesus Christ as the Son of God. He first found his own brother Simon, verse 41, and said to him, we have found the Messiah, which is translated the Christ. In other words, Andrew comes to his brother Peter and says, we found the one that's promised to us in the scriptures. We found the one who's going to wipe away all tears, the one who's going to give us victory, the one who's going to fight for us and win our battles. We've been promised this Savior, this Messiah that's going to come to us. And Andrew says to Simon, we found him. And he brought him to Jesus. Like I'm speaking to you to closer to Christ than you've ever been before. I found the Christ.

That's true. I have. I know this is the Messiah. I've heard his words. I've had an opportunity to meet him.

I know what he can do in a life because of what he's done in my life. So I'm speaking to you, reaching out through the internet, and I'm drawing you to the Christ that I know. And I'm telling you, I have found the one that you've been looking for. I have found your Deliverer. I have found your Messiah. I have found the one who heals every wounded and broken heart.

I found the one who wipes away every tear. I found the one who opens every prison door, who gives the treasure of strength to those who know that they're poor in spirit and can't go forward. I found him. I found him. And I'm inviting you to come to him. Now, he brought him to Jesus. And when he saw and when Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon, the son of Jonah, you shall be called Cephas, which is translated a stone.

So let me suggest this one thing to you. When you come to Jesus, he knows what you are, just as these people who put in these prayer requests tonight. He knows you're weak. He knows you don't have a good self-image. He knows you have failed. He knows what you are. He knows everything about you. He knows all your struggles. He knows all your trials. He knows all your secrets. He knows the things about you that nobody else knows but God and you. And he deals with you and I honestly. He says, now, this is what you are, but I'm going to talk to you now about what you shall be. I thank God for that with all my heart. You know, a lot of people feel that as we approach the son of God, all that he's concerned about is what we are.

And a lot of people come to church that way, feeling that one new every week, God just waits to point out one new sin in their life. This is what you are. This is what you are. You're a failure. You're an addict. You profess to love me and you don't.

And you're dysfunctional. And all of these other things that we hear and we feel that God actually confirms our feeling about ourselves, which is not true. He doesn't call us what we are. He calls us what we shall be.

Isn't that amazing? I want you to get that in your heart because it can be the pathway to an incredible victory in your life if you begin to realize that God is not looking at you the way you're looking at yourself. He doesn't see you as ugly or addicted or a failure. He sees what you shall be. As you begin to walk with him, that means there's going to be a transformation happen in your life. You remember, the scripture says if anyone be in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things in his or her life pass away, which means they lose their power over you.

They lose their hold. Your past no longer can dictate your future. Your future is now in the hands of God. And all things, not some things, all things become new.

Thank God for that. You're a new creation. The old things in your life pass away and all things become new. So if you can hear what I'm saying to you is God is speaking to you if you will allow your heart to hear it, not about what you are, but about what you shall be. Now in order to become what we shall be, in Peter's case, he had to get over some things in his own life to get to the place. Now first of all, he was an impulsive man. He was filled with ideas. And he had all kinds of ideas for God. I mean even in the Garden of Gethsemane, he had an idea of how to win the victory. So he pulls his knife out and he cuts off a high priest servant's ear.

He's just filled with ideas and he's led by his own impulses. And some of us in the early years tried to serve God like that. Maybe you tried that in the beginning. You had good ideas. I know how I can do this. I know how I can advance the kingdom of God. And the reality is we set out to do it. We cut off somebody's ear and the next thing we know is Jesus is telling us to put our weapon away. And we thought our idea was such a good idea, didn't we? And it just failed. And it amounted to nothing. And I think of the numbers of people I'm talking about that when you first came to Christ, you had some good ideas, didn't you? About how the kingdom of God could advance through your life.

And you set out to do it and it seemed like it failed. It seemed like God wasn't behind it. He actually put out his hand and said, put your ideas away. I don't need your ideas.

I don't want your ideas. I'm doing something you don't fully understand. So in order to begin to become what we shall be, that means we have to put our ideas away and start listening to the voice of God and start walking in the pathway that God has set before us and start moving and doing the things he has called us to do in the strength that he provides to do it. Now Peter was a man with an improper self-image.

And so he felt, I'm sure he felt like he had to bring some kind. If I'm going to walk with the Messiah, I have to make a declaration of how loyal I am, how strong I am, what a brave heart I am. In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 26 and verse 33, Peter said to Christ, even if all are made to stumble because of you, I will never be made to stumble.

I don't know. You remember those early years when you sang those songs, though none go with you, still I will follow, only to fall flat on your face and realize that your profession of strength and loyalty is not as great as you once thought it was. You became discouraged and you thought that's the way God sees you. You thought you had to bring something to him of loyalty. You thought it was all about you professing your love. And we all did it when we were young.

I did it and many of you online did it. You know exactly what that's all about, only to find out, well, you're not as loyal as you thought you were. Remember Peter, he said, even if everyone else stumbles, I will not be made to stumble. But did he ever stumble before he became what Jesus said he will be? He stumbled, he fell. It was a terrible fall in a sense. He denied and cursed with an oath that he never even knew the Son of God.

He stumbled in his mind. His whole sense of love and loyalty just went down the drain in a moment of crisis. When he felt that God needed him the most, he just wasn't there. He professed a bravery he didn't possess. The worst thing you can ever do is boast to God about your love and your loyalty, only to find out it's not as deep as you and I think.

It is better to admit you're a coward than to be found out that you are one. He said, even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you. And let all of the other disciples in this, and it was not even several hours later than he's actually fearing before just a little servant girl, denying that he even knew the Christ.

And yet such a profession of love and loyalty had come out of his mouth. See the point is, God has to bring us down to the place where we understand that we really have nothing without him. He has to reduce us, in a sense, to nothing. And so if you've come to the place of understanding that you have really nothing to offer God, you're actually on the journey that needs to be taken before God can make you into what you need to be. It's truly an amazing principle. We don't bring him our strength, our ideas, our love, our loyalty.

We try, but we are deficient. Paul the Apostle said it this way, I'm convinced that within me dwells no good thing. He had finally come to the place, and I'm sure Paul just in the beginning gave it his best. He gave it his strongest, because he was a naturally very zealous man, only to find out, as Peter did, that these are not the things that God requires of us. It requires an admission in our hearts that Lord, I have nothing without you. My whole being has fallen short of the glory of God.

My best ideas and my deepest boasts and all of that, all fall short of what you have for my life. I can't help you advance your kingdom, because there's nothing in me as a natural man that can do it. This is a kingdom that's beyond me. Like with the King David, when the arrow was shot into the field and the servant of Jonathan said, the arrow is beyond thee, David. The plan of God is beyond our strength. It's beyond your ability.

It's beyond your natural mind. It's beyond your declarations of love and loyalty. And the best thing that can ever happen to you is you and I finally get to the place as Isaiah did in chapter six of Isaiah.

It says, God, I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. David the King said it the best.

Oh God, if you dealt with us according to our iniquities, who would stand? The greatest people ever to be raised up in the kingdom of God oftentimes went down as low as you can go in your own estimation before God could raise you and I up. And so he doesn't call you what you're calling yourself. He doesn't call you ugly or addicted or suicidal or dysfunctional or beyond help.

He doesn't call you any of these things. He starts to speak to you now, not about what you are, but about what you shall be. And that's where the journey becomes supernatural. That's where, as the scripture says, as the Spirit of God raised Christ from the dead, even so by the same Spirit, we are raised into newness of life. When we reckon ourselves, Paul said, as dead, that's when the Spirit of God lifts us and we become a new creation. And we start walking in a way that God has chosen for our lives through which his strength, not our strength, but his strength begins to be made known.

Paul said it this way, when I am weak, then I am strong. You shall be. You are, in other words, you are a man of the flesh.

You are a natural man, Peter. But he said, you shall be a stone. I'm going to do something in your life. Once you have come to nothing and you are willing to let my strength become yours and my life replace yours, once you've come to that, I am going to make you into a stone. I'm going to give you, make you into a man or woman, as is the case with some, that is entrenched in the strength of God, unmovable, transformed and sustained by the inward power of God. A man or woman who has, just as Lazarus did, you've come out of that place of death, you've come out of that tomb, you've come out of that place of powerlessness where you recognize I can't do anything without the Spirit of God. And you hear his voice calling you. You move towards the sound of his voice and suddenly God himself, through his son Jesus Christ, begins to speak into your life about what he intends to do through you. The strength that only he can give you. Jesus himself said, when the comforter has come, when the Spirit of God has come, he will take the victory that is mine, that I won for you on the cross, and he will show you things to come. Things to come in your own life. Things that only God can do.

Places that only God can take you. So you see, I'm speaking to the weak. I'm speaking to the failures. I'm speaking to those who feel unlovely in the sight of a holy God. I'm speaking to those who know now that you have nothing to offer God, but suddenly there's a faint whisper in your heart that says God has everything to offer me. That's why he sent his son to a cross. That's why he gave me his word. That's why he gave me his Holy Spirit.

That's why I feel him just like Lazarus calling me out of the grave and into this marvelous light and life that I am promised will be mine through Jesus Christ. Jesus said to Peter, I'm going to take you from being the man that you are, in a sense impulsive, with a false self-image and a false boast of love and loyalty, and I'm going to make you into a solid man of God. I'm going to give you a life that can sit upon the foundation stone who is Jesus Christ of the church that God is building in the earth. I'm going to take you and make you into a man through whom I can build a spiritual house. In other words, I'm going to give you a strength that's not your own.

It's going to be mine. It's established on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ, and on your life others will find a place to be built to as well. Peter knew this incredible and great truth because he wrote about it in the book of 1 Peter chapter 2, and let me just read it to you beginning at verse 4. He talked about us, he said, coming to him as a living stone.

Remember what Jesus had said to him. You are Peter, you are Simon, the son of Jonas, but you shall be called Cephas, which means a stone. He said, now coming to him as a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious. You also as living stones are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Therefore it is also contained in the scripture, behold I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and he who believes on him will by no means be put to shame. In other words, when you put your trust in Christ and not in yourself, when you put your trust in Christ's loyalty to you and not your loyalty to him, when you let your life be built on his promises to you and not your promises to him, he said, you will become one of these precious stones in the sight and in the hand of God, who sits upon the cornerstone, Jesus Christ, and then he makes this incredible promise, you will not be put to shame, which really means you will not be overcome. You will not be put in a place where you give in to human weakness, you will stand in the strength of God's Holy Spirit.

You won't find yourself warming yourself by a fire, denying and cursing with an oath and saying I never knew the man. You won't be doing impulsive things that God has not asked you to do. You will be sitting on that foundation as a precious stone, formed, fashioned by the hand of God, and God's promise to you is you will not be overcome.

You will not be put to shame. You've put your trust in God. You've put your trust in Jesus Christ as the son of God.

You've yielded your life and you've said in your heart, God Almighty, you make me, you fashion me into the man or the woman, the young person, whatever your situation is that you've destined me to be. I bring nothing to you. As the old hymn says, in my hand no price I bring, simply to thy cross I claim. I make no boast, I have nothing to give you. God, you don't need my ideas, you don't want my loyalty because it's sufficient, you don't want my love because it will fail.

You don't want anything I have but my heart. And so I give you my heart and I give you my empty life and in return you promise that the power of an endless life will become mine, that you will invade this physical body as I trust in Jesus Christ for my salvation. You will lift me out of the power of death and you will bring me into a place where instead of wavering or following, like water following a crack in the road, I will suddenly become solid and stable and my life will be able to sit on the foundation of the church that Jesus Christ is building. And upon my life and upon the testimony of my life, others will be built on that foundation as well as God is building this wonderful, immovable testimony in the earth called the Church of Jesus Christ.

The beauty of it all is that he builds it with the weak and the foolish and the nobodies and the nothings and the despised in this world and things that are not like in the sight of men, things that look like they're nothing so that no flesh can glory in the presence of a holy God. And so I thank God for you that are reaching out and you might feel like you're no more than a whisperer in the dust but God hears your voice and he will raise you up and give you strength and the testimony of your life will not be about the love and the loyalty and the plans and things that you did for God but the testimony will be about how you came to him in your nothingness and he did everything to bring glory to his name through you. And so I don't call you, I refuse to look at this tablet with hundreds and hundreds of prayer quests from all over the world and I don't call you addicted, I don't call you afflicted, I don't call you a loser, I don't call you ugly, I don't agree with your assessment of yourself. I call you mighty men and women of God. I call you the victorious church of the risen Christ.

I call you redeemed and delivered and empowered with a specific purpose in the earth that God has assigned uniquely for your life so that his name would be brought to glory by the work he chooses to do through you. That's what I call you because that's what God says about you and it's time to stop agreeing with your assessment of yourself. It's time to stop agreeing with what others have said about your life. If you sit in that place of agreement with what your heart says or what others have said about you, you'll never hear the voice of God. Time to put away those voices.

Peter went away and he wept bitterly, bitterly and then one day, not long after, the voice came to him of a messenger that Christ himself told, go get Peter and tell him to meet with me and when Jesus came into the room where Peter was in John chapter 21, he just said to him, peace, peace, be at rest, be at rest. Your personal failure had to be part of the journey otherwise you would be relying on yourself for the rest of your days and you would be constantly failing. I don't know about you but I want to be a shall be. I don't want to be an R, I want to be a shall be. I want to be everything that Jesus wants me to be.

I'm more excited about it now than I've ever been in my life. I don't know how many years I've got left ahead of me but I know this one thing, I want to be a shall be in those years. I want to be everything that God says I'm to be. I want to go everywhere he calls me to go. I want to speak everything he calls me to speak and I want to rely on him for every ounce of strength that I will need to finish the journey. Hallelujah, hallelujah. The greatest deliverance I've ever had in my life is the realization that I don't have to do anything for God. I just allow him to do what he wants to do through me.

That's the shall be part. I don't have to do it. I don't have to cut off somebody's ear. I don't have to profess my loyalty. I don't have to declare my bravado.

None of that stuff. I have to trust him for life and for breath and for everything that my life will ever amount to. See I can tell you like Andrew said to Simon Peter, I found him. I found him. Come to him. Come to him. Come to him as you are. Don't make any boast about what you will be in your own strength because you won't amount to anything in your own strength. Just come to him as you are.

Let him speak plainly to you. In other words he says to you I know what you are but let me tell you what you will be. And when you start reading the word of God, when you start opening your heart to the truth of scripture and the power of the Holy Spirit, you leave a natural place and you enter into a supernatural place where the strength of God now becomes your strength.

This is a wonderful life. Don't let it be just this constant burden that never goes away. It never takes away from me this amazement that meets me every morning when I get up wondering what God is going to do today through my life. Who is he going to speak to? Where is he going to lead me? What is he going to show me in his word? What new gem?

What new treasure? What new part of my life is he going to fashion to help me sit squarely on that cornerstone called Jesus Christ? It is an amazing life and don't you let it become anything else in your life. Don't you ever because the promise of God is that if you are one of these stones that is fashioned by the word and the presence of God, you will sit on the cornerstone and you will never be ashamed. You will not be triumphed over. If you've never opened your heart to Jesus Christ before, just do it now. Just admit your sin. Just admit that you need a Savior. Believe that Jesus Christ died in your place and just invite him.

Confess with your mouth. Just say, just like I did in 1978, I prayed a simple prayer. I said, Lord Jesus, if this is true, what I've heard, I open my heart and I invite you to come in and be my Lord and my Savior. That was my prayer.

God heard it. He received it and he took me for his own and that's what he will do for you. So if you've not ever received him, do it now in your heart. Just say, Lord Jesus, thank you for dying for me. Thank you for forgiving me.

Thank you for giving me the promise of new life. Just do it right now. Just where you sit. God sees you a different way than you see yourself. You're not ugly.

I want to speak to the lady out there. I don't care what anybody tells you. You're not ugly. You are incredibly beautiful in the sight of a holy God. He loves you. As a matter of fact, he says in the Song of Solomon, you only have time to turn one eye towards him and he fell in love with you.

Isn't that amazing? That's what he said. That's how he sees you. As precious, as lovely, as beautiful. He doesn't see you as dysfunctional.

He doesn't see you as addicted. He sees you as the person that you will become when you turn towards him. Thank you for joining us this week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City. For more information, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. You can count on a powerful message each week on A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.