How to Know the Will of God: Presenting Our Lives as a Living Sacrifice

The following message from Pastor Greg Laurie is made possible by Harvest Partners, helping people everywhere know God. To find out how to know God personally, go to knowgod.org. K-N-O-W, knowgod.org.

Hey, would you do me a favor? Share this message with someone who needs to hear it. To be a half-hearted Christian is illogical. Present yourself to God as a living sacrifice. Especially when we're trying to determine God's will for our lives. Pastor Greg Laurie says we need to make sure our will isn't in the way.

Just take care of everyday life. Here it is, Lord. Here's my career. Here are my relationships. Here are my possessions.

Here is everything I have. I give it all to you, Lord. Then you will know God's will. This is the day when the lost are found. This is the day for a new beginning. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. Oh, can you hear when the angels are singing?

This is the day, the day when life begins. God's will is hard to understand from a distance. As you get closer to God, His will becomes easier to see.

And the best way to get close to the Lord is by removing those things that get in the way of that spiritual intimacy. Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie helps us take some giant steps forward in clearing the way for discovering God's plan for our lives. It's an important message you'll want to have on hand for the future.

Get a copy at Harvest.org. This is the day, the day when life begins. How can we know God's will for our life? We wonder, does God still speak to people today? Is He actually interested in what happens to us as individuals? Does the Lord have a master plan for our lives?

And if He does, how do I discover it? How can I learn how to know the voice of God? How can I discover the will of God? Here are some steps you can take to sort of prepare the ground to hear the voice of God and know His will. I'm going to read verses 1-2 of Romans from the New King James Version. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

All right. So that is what we call a conditional promise. Here is the promise. You will know what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Here are the conditions. I must present myself to Him and not be conformed to this world, but I must be transformed by the renewing of my mind. Notice Paul starts with the word therefore. As I have said to you before, whenever you see the word therefore, find out what it is there for.

And it is always drawn upon what is previously said. So what has been said before Paul is writing these words. Romans 12. Well before Romans 12 is Romans 11. And the whole book of Romans for that matter. And what is the real message of the book of Romans? Well it establishes clearly that we are sinners separated from God. But God loved us so much He intervened. He sent His Son who died for our sins. We must turn from that sin and put our faith in Christ.

So effectively Paul is saying hey listen to this. In light of what God has done for you, considering the fact that Jesus has died for you and given you salvation, in light of this therefore I urge you brothers. And the word that he uses here for I beseech you. That is a King James word. Beseech.

It means urge. Plead. Even beg. I beg you brothers and sisters.

I am pleading with you. Present yourself to God as a living sacrifice. In other words Paul is saying God is not saying hey if you wouldn't mind could you do me a favor.

God is saying look man I bought you with a price. I love you. And this is what I want you to do. Give yourself to me. Another translation of these verses goes as follows and I like this. Here is what God wants you to do. God helping you. Take your everyday life, your ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, drinking, going to work and walking around life and place it before God is an offering.

I like that. Take your everyday life. Here it is Lord. Here is my career.

Here are my relationships. Here are my possessions. Here is my ministry.

Here is everything I have. My bank account. I give it all to you Lord.

I present it to you. Present your body as a living sacrifice. Now generally sacrifices are dead so it is trickier to present a living sacrifice. I think a living sacrifice might have a tendency to crawl off the altar. Remember the story of Abraham and Isaac. When God told Abraham to take his son, his only son, and offer him as a sacrifice and Abraham obeyed as did Isaac. They made their way up to the place where he would be sacrificed and at one point Isaac said hey dad where is the sacrifice and Abraham said God will provide himself a sacrifice. And so as they made their way up and laid Isaac down on that altar Abraham was prepared to take the life of his own son. And you know at the last moment of course an angel stopped him because it was never God's will to take the life of Abraham's son.

But it was God's will to see if Abraham would commit everything to the Lord. But here is an interesting thing you know we don't realize maybe because sometimes in film and religious art Isaac is portrayed as a very small boy. The fact of the matter is Isaac is probably a teenager. He is a young man.

Probably full grown. So I mean very easily as dad was laying him on the altar Isaac could have said you know what dad you are getting kind of old why don't we sacrifice you. But Isaac went along with it and this story is in the Bible for a number of reasons but it is a picture of God sending his son. The father loved us so much he gave his only begotten son but let's not forget that the son willingly laid his life down. So present yourself to God as a living sacrifice. What does that mean? It means we give our total being. Bodies means your total being. So we need to present our minds. Present your mind to God. What does that mean?

It means fill your mind with the Word of God not the junk of this twisted culture. I read an interesting article in the paper this week. A survey was done from a San Francisco based nonprofit group that tracks children and their technology use. They found that teens age 13 to 18 spend almost 9 hours a day on entertainment media. 9 hours a day.

That is more by the way than they usually sleep. That is social media, music, gaming, or online video. We are just glued to our phones and we are just filling our minds with whatever is on our phone. I guess it comes down to what apps you have in your phone. I guess it comes down to what websites you visit.

I guess it comes down to what videos you stream. But you can put good stuff in your phone. We have a Harvest app.

You probably know that. And you can go to our website and read daily devotionals. We have a read through the Bible program. In fact if you are lazy it will even read the Bible to you while you are getting ready.

Just push a little speaker and it will read the Scripture for the day. Then we have got our radio broadcast and we have got our TV show. We have got services that were just done.

It is all there. It is a great app. And there are a lot of other apps put out by great ministries that you can utilize. So that can be a good thing.

But then you can play Angry Birds forever and you can just be wasting a lot of time just endlessly going over Twitter and over your Instagram. And you know how many people liked what you just posted and all that. Not that that is a bad thing. But we can become a bit obsessed with it. So fill your mind with the things of God. Present your mind to God. Philippians 4 it says, Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

So if the things you are filling your mind with doesn't meet that criteria then change your diet spiritually. Number two we need to present our tongues. And by that I mean what we say.

How we use our words. James 3 5 says, The tongue is a small thing, but what serious damage it can do, a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire. This one little flame can ignite a forest. I remember I was visiting a friend who had a little cabin in Virginia.

And so he let my wife and I stay there. And the problem is he didn't really have a heater. He just had a fireplace and he had a stove that you had to fill with logs and it sort of heated this cabin. But it was very cold and you had to constantly be filling this. And I am not a great fire starter.

I live in California. I mean my idea of logs is a Dura Flame log from the market. So I said, okay this is really stupid.

I am embarrassed to even ask it. But tell me how to start a fire again. Like you start with kindling. I said, okay great. Where do you buy that? No.

You are thinking stupid Californian. You just pick kindling up off the ground. Could you go out and show me what it looks like? And so we basically sort of like twigs and things like that to kind of get the fire started. So you go and grab your kindling. Then you chop the logs and all that.

So you know they showed me how to do it. We used newspapers too. So I got the fire going. And man it would get so cold that I would have to get out of bed and run in there and put another log in the fire and keep the fire going. Well after a while I filled this fireplace and this wood burning little heating unit to the top and I had to empty it. And so they told me, you know, put the coals in a bucket. There is a metal bucket. So I put the ash and the coals in the little metal bucket. But now the bucket was full and I needed to empty it. And I thought, well it has been a while.

I am sure they are cooled down. So I walked outside and I was on the porch and I threw the bucket out and all this ash went out. And I saw about 25 burning embers go out too.

No. And they hit the forest and it was just like. Four or five fires start immediately. I am not making this up.

I almost had a heart attack. Because I am out there in my pajamas with the Hello Kitty slippers the whole deal. I am going to burn the forest down. So I run in the house looking for some kind of bucket to throw water with. And they have this tiny little bucket and I run and I fill it with water. And oh just what am I going to do. And I finally got out there and I picked the little burning coals up and threw them up on the gravel with my hands.

And all night long I kept looking through that window fearing that I would have started a fire. Just one little coal can do that much damage. And one word can do it. And now today with social media man you can spread a message out there that can be really false.

And there is a saying that says, A lie is halfway around the world while truth is still putting its shoes on. And you know today we can just tweet this out. Who knows if it is true.

I will just post this. Who knows if it is accurate. I will just pass this along because someone else said it and I am sure they did the research. Yeah well wait a second. That could damage someone's character.

That could hurt somebody deeply. We don't think about things like that so we need to present our tongues and should I also say our posts. Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment.

We hear from listeners all over the country and from countries all over the world. Thank you very much Pastor Greg for everything you do. Every Sunday I watch online Harvest at Home service from Spain with my husband. Your sermons have been a blessing to us and we praise God in these difficult times. Even though we can't go to church in person we give all glory to God for his blessings. You can tune in to Pastor Greg's Harvest at Home services as well at harvest.org. And if you have a story to share with us call 1-866-871-1144.

That's a special number 1-866-871-1144. Well today we're learning from Romans 12 how important it is to present our bodies as living sacrifices. Pastor Greg is showing us that it's a prerequisite to discovering God's will for our lives.

Let's continue. We need to present our hands and our feet. Our hands and our feet. Proverbs 6 says there's six things the Lord hates. No seven things he detests. Haughty eyes. That means arrogant eyes. A lying tongue. Hands that kill the innocent.

A heart that plots evil. And feet that race to do wrong. How much better it is to dedicate our hands and our feet to God.

Romans 10 15 says how beautiful are the feet of those that bring good news. So instead of using my hands and feet for destruction and tearing down I use them to build up and to help and to bring the message of the gospel. That's good use of your life.

And by the way this is the logical thing to do. To present my personality. To present my mind. To present my words. To present my tongue.

To present my hands and my feet. It's a logical thing to do. Paul says in verse 1, I urge you therefore brothers, by the mercies of God, present yourself to Him as a living sacrifice. This is your reasonable service.

And the phrase reasonable service can be translated the logical thing to do. In other words to be a half-hearted Christian is a logical. You know when I came to Christ I came out of complete darkness. You know I was raised by my crazy alcoholic mother living her wacky life. But then I myself made a lot of bad decisions and got into drugs and my life had just gone downhill. And when I heard the gospel I believed in Jesus. I put that whole life behind me. I wanted nothing to do with it anymore and I was ready to go for it.

So I started going to Bible studies and I started you know learning Scripture and learning what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. And I met a few people that were kind of trying to live in two worlds. And I looked at them like what is wrong with you?

I've just come out of that. And I've seen things that a person should never see. And you do not want to flirt with that world. You know and they were kind of living in two worlds you know. And I thought that doesn't make any sense at all because I know where that leads. And I think in the same way here's what Paul is saying.

Don't try to live in two worlds. I mean it's logical. It makes sense to dedicate everything to God. That means as you grow older your commitment should grow stronger.

You should be more committed to Christ at 57 than you were at 17. You know it's cute when a little baby needs help you know eating. Or maybe they need their diaper changed. Or you need to watch over them. But it's not cute when they're 40.

I've met believers that have known the Lord for years and it's like they've never grown. It's like they're in a state of suspended animation. There's that same person always struggling. Always having a hard time. Always falling back and recommitting. Falling back and recommitting.

And it's like man come on. Get with the program here. Totally commit yourself to God. And do it every day. And be filled with the Spirit. And live a pure life. And have an attitude of gratitude.

Start putting those things into play. This is what God wants you to do. So number one present yourself to God. Here's point number two if you want to know God's will. Don't be conformed to this world. Look at Romans 12 again. Don't be conformed to this world.

But be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Now what do we mean when we say the world? You know sometimes we throw this term around a lot as Christians. You mean they're truly worldly? Don't be worldly. What does that mean to be worldly? Sometimes if someone is a little fashionable.

That's worldly man. You shouldn't be in style. You should be lame like me. And even talk like this. Because it's spiritual. No you're just weird.

Okay that's all that is. That's religious weirdness. You don't even know what you're talking about. Well don't.

Man it's wrong. You know watching TV is worldly. Or going to a movie is worldly. Well granted maybe some TV and some movies could be worldly.

But I don't think you can say all those things are necessary. Let's try to understand what the Bible means when it says the world. When we talk about the world in a biblical sense. God is not speaking of the earth or the planet. The Bible even says the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

God gave us this beautiful planet that we live on to enjoy. Now when the Bible speaks of the world it's speaking of a mentality. It's speaking of a culture. It's speaking of a sinful way of thinking and living. And the Bible tells us that the whole world is in the sway of the wicked one. Meaning Satan. So he is the one that is manipulating the evil horrific godless things that are happening today. Here is what 1 John 2.15 says from a modern translation defining the world.

Listen. Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father.

Practically everything that goes on in the world. Wanting your own way. Wanting everything for yourself. Wanting to appear important. It has nothing to do with the Father.

It just isolates you from Him. The world with all of its wanting wanting wanting is on the way out. But whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.

I like that translation. The King James says, Love not the world neither the things that are in the world for all that is in the world. The lust of the flesh. The lust of the eyes and the pride of life. That is just a modern way of saying sort of a self-obsession. Where it is all about you. Everything is about you. This selfishness that can drive us. Don't live that way. Don't be conformed. And the word conform is an interesting word that Paul uses. It refers to the act of assuming an outward appearance that does not accurately reflect what is within.

Let me say that again. The idea it conveys is assuming an outward appearance that is different than who you really are on the inside. Sort of like Halloween.

You know when we dress up on Halloween. You know so you take on this person. I am this person.

But you are really not that person. I have told you about these wacky warning labels that are out there. You know that they put on different items that you may buy or whatever. Or things that you use. Warnings that you should not use these things for the wrong purposes. This is a wacky warning label.

I am not making this up. On a Superman costume. It says wearing this suit does not enable you to fly. This is actually on a Superman costume. I am thinking you know why that is there.

Because someone somewhere probably climbed up a tree or maybe even on a roof and off they went. So you are assuming a persona that is not really you. You say well what does that mean. The Bible is saying don't act like you are something you are not.

The Phillips translation puts it this way. Don't let this world squeeze you into its mold. Don't be a poser. Don't be a wannabe. Don't worry so much about being cool. Focus on being godly.

That is the thing. Be godly. To me the coolest thing around is a godly man. A godly woman. Someone that doesn't cave into culture and march in lockstep with what everyone else says they should do.

A person, a man, a woman, a young person who thinks for themselves because they think biblically. And they do what is right. And that is what God is saying. Don't act like you belong to this world. Don't be ashamed of who you are as a follower of Jesus. We are living in a time where you can catch a lot of flack for being a Christian. We are living in a time where you may be ridiculed. You may be even physically assaulted for being a follower of Christ. In some cases some have even been killed for their faith.

And we even hear more of that these days sadly. But 2 Timothy 2 says, if we endure we will reign with Him and if we disown Him He will disown us. Don't disown Christ. Stand up for Christ. Don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Then you will know God's will. Music Pastor Greg Laurie with practical insight on how we can discover God's will for our lives. And there's more to come here on A New Beginning in Pastor Greg's message called How to Know the Will of God. And by the way, you can get an instant replay of today's message If you missed any part of the insight just go to our website harvest.org Or call us for a CD copy 1-800-821-3300 That's a 24 hour phone number 1-800-821-3300 You know Pastor Greg our listeners really love it when Kathy joins us here on the program.

I think they enjoy hearing about the two of you. You've talked once or twice about how you met Kathy and began dating. But that's told in some detail in your book Jesus Revolution against the backdrop of the Jesus movement.

You and Kathy really had a front row seat for that movement didn't you? Yeah that's true and you know we did not realize at the time that we had a front row seat to a genuine spiritual awakening but indeed we did. And I wanted to share my story not to live in the past but hopefully to prepare for the future. You know if you get in a car you'll probably notice that the rear view mirror is a lot smaller than your windshield.

That's because you need to spend more time going forward than going backward. Okay so it's good to reflect back because we can learn from the past. And we can reflect back on the great works that God did. You know in the Psalms we read the phrase oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and his wonderful works to the children of men. And we'll see the psalmist repeat the great things that God did for the nation Israel. It's good to remind yourself of what the Lord has done.

And then it's also a great thing to say Lord would you do it again. We've had revivals in the history of America in the past and I would say we're overdue for one right now. In fact I don't know what else could change the course of our nation. We're so divided politically. We're divided racially. We're divided in every way imaginable. And only Christ can bring us together. We need a change of heart.

We need the Lord to pour his spirit out on our churches and on our country. But it starts with us. So I've written a book called Jesus Revolution. And I tell the story of how I came to faith. How I met my wife. How we came together. How we saw the Lord work.

How we started our church. There's a lot there. There's also some historical backdrop there to help you understand what we are facing at the times.

And I think as you read this book you'll say wow that sounds a lot like our nation right now. So it seems to me that we can learn from the past in this case. As I've said before the fame of revival spreads the flame of revival.

So let's talk about that fame. Let's look back a little bit and let's pray that God will do it again. I'll send you a copy of this book Jesus Revolution for your gift of any size. Whatever you send will be used to help us continue to teach God's word and call people to Jesus Christ. And I hope this book will be a blessing for you. Order your copy now of Jesus Revolution. Yeah that's right you can call 1-800-821-3300. And someone is here to take your call around the clock seven days a week. We'll be glad to send it to you to thank you for your investment. So that we can continue to bring these studies your way each day.

And share the gospel with hundreds of thousands of people each year. So once again call 1-800-821-3300. Or write A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, CA 92514.

Or order online at harvest.org. And by the way when we send you Jesus Revolution we'll also include the brand new study guide that goes with it. To help you get even more from the helpful insights and principles in the book.

So contact us today. Well next time Pastor Greg comes back with the finale to his insights on knowing God's will. And the final installment in his message series what every growing Christian needs to know. Hope you'll tune in here on A New Beginning with Pastor Greg Laurie.