But the Lord comes into our lives not just to save us, he also comes into our lives to make us new Christians. Creations.
So, that not only do we have an assurance for all eternity that we are children of God, but even here and now in this earth. God wants to change us from the inside out. Eternal life in the hereafter, abundant life in the here and now. That's the promise for all who come to faith in Jesus Christ. You're listening to Destined for Victory, where we feature the preaching ministry of Pastor Paul Shepard.
It's always a pleasure to have you with us. The moment you accepted Christ as your Savior, the old passed away and all things became new. You're a new person with a new potential, and you have a new power, the Holy Spirit, to teach you and help you grow in your faith. Today, Pastor Paul helps you understand how this change takes place and the role you play in your own spiritual growth. Remember to visit our website, pastorpaul.net, where you can listen to a recent message on demand, including today's.
That's pastorpaul.net. No. Let's listen closely to Pastor Paul's Destined for Victory message. I've got a new attitude. Romans chapter 12.
Verses 1 and 2. Paul says, Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy. To offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world.
But be transformed. By the renewing of your mind. If you mark in your Bible, Mark the words transformed and renewing. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test.
And approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing. and perfect will. We've been talking about the fact that God is interested. In changing our lives, we looked recently at Second Corinthians 5:17 and were reminded that When the Lord Jesus comes into our lives, when we put our trust in Him for salvation. He wants to do more than save us from our sins.
He certainly wants to do that. That is why Christ came, because all of us. Are sinners in need of salvation, and none of us can save ourselves. That is why God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes, puts His or her trust in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life. That results in salvation.
But the Lord comes into our lives not just to save us, He also comes into our lives to make us new creations.
So that not only do we have an assurance for all eternity that we are children of God, but even here and now in this earth. God wants to change us from the inside out. Wants to make us new creations. And when we were studying that concept, we saw that new in 2 Corinthians 5:17 is a Greek word, kynos, and it means new in kind. There's another Greek word that's often translated new in your New Testament that means new in time, a recent version of something.
But this word in 2 Corinthians 5:17 means not new in time because God doesn't want to make a new version of the old you. But he wants to make us new in kind. What God is up to in our lives when we cooperate with him and see his will come to pass, we become people who are so new we are unfamiliar with our past life. God wants to make it so that you hardly recognize yourself. When he gets through doing what he's doing in you, your temperament has been transformed.
Your ideologies have been transformed. Your way of thinking and behavior has been transformed. The old folk used to put it this way: the things I used to do, I don't do anymore. Because there's been a great change in me. And so God is up to change.
But the question is: now, how does that change come to pass?
Now, understand this. First of all, when Paul said in 2 Corinthians, if anyone be in Christ, he or she is a new creation. The old has passed, the new has come. He's talking first and foremost that we are changed positionally. We are new positionally.
What that means is when you get saved, instantly the righteousness of Christ is imputed to your account.
So that even though, in terms of your life and lifestyle, there are some areas that desperately need change, and God will be changing them. He first changes you by status. Then he changes you by lifestyle and by behavior and all of those things. But first, God changes your status, your standing, your designation. The moment you get saved, you go from sinner to saint.
Your lifestyle hasn't been all worked out yet. You still got your issues. You're still fooling with some besetting sins. You still got some rough edges on you and all of that. You don't look a whole lot like Christ yet in terms of your lifestyle, but by status, He stamps you with the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
In that good news, that's how you can go to sleep every night. Because if you die in your sleep, you don't have to say, oh, I wonder, am I when I meet the Lord, am I right enough to go to heaven? It's not about you being right enough, Jesus gave you His righteousness. And that's why we call salvation blessed assurance. I have blessed assurance that I am in Christ and He is in me.
And all while I'm under construction, all while He's working on some areas of my life, I can walk with Him with full confidence because He has changed my standing. I'm no longer a sinner, I am now a saint, a child of God. In fact, you need to get in the habit of stop referring to yourself and thinking of yourself as a sinner. You used to be a sinner.
Now you're a saint of God. Oh, I know you're still grappling with some stuff, but that doesn't designate you a sinner. Jesus took your sins and nailed them to the cross. I am forgiven for sins past, present, and future as I walk with the Lord. And so, my standing is already new.
I am new positionally by standing, by designation. But Paul also wants us to understand that the good news is not only did God give you a righteous designation, He now wants to work in your life to create true righteousness in your living and in your lifestyle.
So he wants you to be new experientially. God's plan is for us to be new and to have some real changes go on in real time in this world.
So the question is: well, now, how does that part happen? I realize that I am righteous positionally. I realize that I am new positionally. But how am I going to become new in terms of my experience?
Well, that's why you have the Word of God. The Word of God is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. I want to look at this passage in Romans 12, a very familiar passage, to help us begin to see how righteousness, how newness is going to unfold in our lives experientially, so that we actually see real change occurring in our lives as we walk with the Lord. Here's what Paul says about it in Romans 12, beginning verse 1. Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy.
Paul's right there now. Therefore, I've taught you whenever. You see the word, therefore, stop and find out what it's there for. And here, Paul helps us because you don't even have to back up. He tells you right in the context.
Therefore, in view of God's mercy, he's talking about the mercy of God. When you look at the last several verses of Romans 11, the passage that precedes this verse, you will find that he has been discussing how it is that God is at work both in the nation of Israel and among the Gentiles to bring about his eternal purpose in Christ. And he has been explaining that the Gentiles have been grafted in to the plan of God so that both Jew and Gentile will glorify God for his grace and his mercy. He's been talking about mercy. You are saved.
If you're saved, you're saved by grace and mercy. Meaning, we didn't deserve it, but God being so wonderful, He said, I'm going to save you when you are my enemy. I'm still going to send my son to die for your sins. And so we're saved by mercy. I hope you're not stuck up and think you're saved'cause you're cute.
Or say because you were almost saved anyway, and the Lord just helped you over a little bit. No, no, I hope you understand that all of us were undone, unfit. To have a relationship with a holy God. But that God is so wonderful that He saved us by His grace and His mercy. And in view of the mercy of God that has resulted in our salvation, here's what Paul says: He says, Offer your bodies as living sacrifices.
Holy and pleasing to God, he says, This is your spiritual act of worship. All right, let's unpack that. In view of the fact that God, through His mercy, has saved us, taken us from sinner to saint, given us His righteousness, and given us the promise that He is going to change our lives until we are unrecognizable to ourselves and to others. He says, Here's the way you do it. In view of God's mercy, God wants you and needs you to present your body, yourself, as a living sacrifice.
Now, You understand, you read the Old Testament, you understand that the Lord shows us through redemptive history that sin always has consequences that lead to death. And he illustrates that by causing people to offer sacrifices to say to the Lord, We know that we are unworthy, we know that a sacrifice must be offered to you. And you see in the Old Testament the system of blood sacrifice being offered. That meant something had to die. There had to be a sacrifice offered to a holy God.
And not only for sin, which is instituted under the law, but you see sacrifices just to say thank you to God in the Old Testament. Way back in Genesis chapter 4, Abel took fat portions of his flock and sacrificed them to the Lord because God has always honored sacrifice. And so Paul picks up on that theme and says, God now doesn't want you to be a dead sacrifice. Jesus died for you. God now wants you to be a living sacrifice.
What that means is, God wants you walking, talking, breathing, going through your day, but He wants you so surrendered, it is as if you are on the altar with no impulse to do anything but what God wants. A sacrifice. Have you noticed when you read about the sacrifice in the Old Testament? Nothing got up off the altar, jumped up, and ran out. A sacrifice is laying there, totally submitted.
to what God's going to do. Let's pause right there for a quick moment and stay with us. The rest of today's Destin for Victory message with Pastor Paul Shepard is coming right up. Yeah. Here at Destined for Victory, we believe in the power of prayer, and today we'd like to pray for you.
If you need prayer for any reason, please visit pastorpaul.net and click contact in the main menu on the homepage to share your request with us. Our ministry team is always happy to lift you up in prayer. While you're there, be sure to stop by our online store where you'll find some of the best Christian resources on the market, including books and video messages from Pastor Paul. True and lasting change always comes from the inside out. It's God at work in you, but you have a role to play as well.
Now, let's get you back to the rest of today's Destined for Victory message. I've got a new attitude. Paul picks that up and he says, God wants you to have that level of surrender to Him. He wants you to surrender, to yield your life. As a living sacrifice, so that God can do anything in your life.
He wants to do. A living sacrifice. I'm so glad I was raised in a church where the saints taught us: get on the altar until God has all of you. I'm so glad I was taught that getting saved is the start, but it's not the finish. God's going to be working on your life, and the way He's going to get His will done is you have to die to self.
You have to die to your own way, to your own will. You have to say, like Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane: not my will, but yours be done. You got to pray through until you are fully surrendered to the Lord. You got to pray through until God can do anything He wants to do in your life. That's what a living sacrifice is.
One that is there, yielded to God.
So, if we want to have the experience of newness, if we want to see God do new things in our lives, if you're like me and you're saying, God, I want to see you do something in me that you've never done before. I want to see you do some things in some areas of my life that desperately need change, and I'm not able to change it. But, Lord, I thank you that you promised to make me a new creation.
So, the way he's going to get that done is, he says, all right, now the first thing you need to do is present yourself as a living sacrifice.
Now, here's what you need to understand. That simply means That you are going to come to God and yield. Don't make God have to fight with you. He says, I want you to make it a presentation. I'm not chasing you for your surrender.
I want you to come and surrender yourself to me. And surrender so completely until all the fight. It's taken out of you. You know, Jacob, the way he got his change. Was he got to a place where Jacob realized, you know, my way isn't working too good.
All I have done is made a mess of my life. I got my brother looking for me, gonna kill me. I tricked my uncle, he tricked me, and I tricked him back. And I just got all kinds of craziness going on in my life. And Lord, I'm tired.
I am sick of this stuff. You got to get sick of some things in your life. I'm sick of this. And he got into a wrestling match with God. And some of us need to wrestle until God wins.
And until we submit. Totally yield.
So, okay, Lord, no more fighting me. I say, yes, I'm going to present myself. As a living sacrifice. No more fight. In me.
Now, that's the key, because a lot of times We will say yes to God, but we still got a fight going on on the inside of us. You can say yes to God and still have an attitude. You can say yes to God and still have some fight in you. You ever say, okay, Lord, I see that this is your will for this area of my life, and you're doing it, but you're doing it with attitude. That's not surrender.
Surrender is: not only am I saying yes, but I have no more fight, no more resistance. Your will is the only thing that matters in my life. I want to see what you'll do if I will just yield to you and trust you. That's where God wants you to get to that place of total surrender. No more fight, no more resistance, no more argument inside of you.
Several years ago, my wife and I were babysitting the children of one of our associate pastors. And we're not yet grandparents, and so we enjoy their children and some of the other children. And we thought, you know, we'll have them over to the house. It's a little bit like practicing being grandparents before you actually get there, you know. Because I've heard of the joy of that.
They say the joy of grandparenting is you can have the kids whenever you want them and enjoy them, have fun with them, go out, take them out, spend money, do everything you want to do, and then. You can send them on back. It's different than raising yours where you got to take them home every night and what have you. And so we've never experienced that yet. We hope to one day.
And so, in the meantime, we had them over and were enjoying their children. They had gone out on a date or something. I don't remember what was going on, but something they had to do. And so the kids were over at our house and they were having fun. And Meredith had pulled out some toys for them to play with, and they were just having a good old time.
Then it got about the time where we expected their parents to return, and Meta said, All right, your parents will be here soon, so let's clean everything up, get the toys put up, so that you'll be ready to go when they come to the house. And the girl in the pair of children was just, she was having such a good time, she didn't want to stop. And so she argued, I don't want to, I'm not finished playing yet, I'm having fun. And we said, we know that.
Next time you come over, you can have some more fun. But right now, you got to get ready to go. Woohoo! And she protested. She's having fun.
She wanted to keep on having fun. And you know, at first we kind of talked real casually with her.
Well, we know, yeah, you're really enjoying that. But, you know, it's about that time. And finally, we had to get a little bit of that bass in our voice. You know, where you say, all right now. You know, you get to that place where this is no longer a dialogue.
I dialogued with you enough.
Now I'm telling you, put those toys up. And so finally she got the message. That he is not saying, would you perhaps consider the possibility? of exploring the feasibility Of putting the toys up. I see that he means business.
And so she started putting the toys up, but she was still angry because she was enjoying herself. And we're making her stop. And so she was putting them up. And at one point, we heard her say, I'm putting them up, but I'm putting them up rough. Listen, let's not pick on her.
Every now and then, all of us have had the experience of saying yes to God, but we said it rough. I'm trying to surrender, but I'm mad, Lord. I got an attitude. I got an issue. I want to do what I want to do.
I want to feel how I want to feel. I want some sovereignty in my life. And God says, No, I am the sovereign of your life and the sovereign of the whole universe. And if you want your life to go well, you will surrender. And not only will you surrender outside, but you'll surrender inside.
You won't give me all that lip. We heard it growing up. Your parents would say, all right, now, you know, they tell you something to do that you didn't want to do. And every now and then you say, You should make him do it. I did it the last time.
He didn't do it yet. Whatever. And every now and then, your parents would tolerate a little bit of that. But finally, you would hear, all right, I want you to do it, and I don't want any more lip. That's old-fashioned.
I know that doesn't happen anymore, but I'm talking way back. Way back. No more lip. God says, if you want to see me make you new. You have to surrender, you have to understand that my plan is the best plan for your life.
That you will never know the miracle I will work in you and through you and for you. Until you are totally surrendered. To what I want to do in your life. This word comes to tell somebody, God says it's time for you to quit fighting. You're fighting blessing, you're fighting miracle, you're fighting transformation, you're fighting something that is so new, it is unfamiliar to you.
You don't know where I will take you until you say yes.
So Paul says we must present Our bodies, ourselves, as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. And he says, This is your spiritual. Act of worship. What we got to understand is that God says, now that's worship. When he sees you yielded, when he sees you saying yes, when he sees you no longer arguing against his word or his will, you're no longer trying to assert yourself against the will of God.
You are no longer trying to make your case. When you say, Lord, you know what's best. Lord, I realize that you're not a little bit smarter than me. You are infinitely wiser, and you know the plans you have for me. Plans to do me good and not harm.
Plans to give me hope and a future.
So, Lord, I'm going to totally yield and say yes. When you get there He says now that. is worship. In Christ, you are a new person with new potential and a new power, but you also have a new purpose. To achieve that purpose, we have to learn to submit to God's plan for our lives.
Let me encourage you, as a fellow believer in Christ, to learn to say, as Jesus did, Not my will but thine be done. Do that, and in Christ, you'll be destined for victory.
So let me ask you what does it mean to put off the old self? What should our new life in Christ look like? In our latest booklet, Truth, Temper, and Treasure, Pastor Paul Shepard walks you through three important areas of our life in which God wants to help us grow. You'll be encouraged to tell the truth instead of trying to manage or control it. You'll also discover how to handle anger without letting it fester, and how to manage our money God's way.
This is an outstanding resource for new believers, but also for those who might need to get back to the fundamentals of the Christian life. That's Truth, Temper, and Treasure. A gift we'd love to share with you this month is our thank you for your generous donation to the Destined for Victory Media Ministry. You can give by phone by calling 855-339-5500. That's 855-339-5500 or visit pastorpaul.net to make a safe and secure donation online.
You can also mail your gift to Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, California, 94538. God says, when you surrender, I can take you to a place where you choose to no longer. Conform to old patterns. But now you allow me to transform you by the renewing of your mind. What can a caterpillar teach us about salvation?
Find out tomorrow in our continuing message, I've got a new attitude. But until then, remember. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.
