The Real Issue

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Today's program wraps up the series on the life that wins by helping you discover the real issue all Christians have to face. Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2. It's a familiar passage, but I want you to see this in the light of what we have been talking about all these weeks about the life that wins and the life that our Lord has provided for us. And so Paul says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

That you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. I want to show you something that I never saw in that passage before as many times as I'd preached on it. I was reading that in the Greek and realized that when he said present, he used an aris infinitive, which means to do something one time to present your body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

Now, I want you to stay with me and understand what I'm going to say here. He says, make a presentation to present your body. And when he says present here, he's saying we are to lay something down.

We are to make it available. That is, we are to place it at the disposal of someone else. When we present our body a living sacrifice, we put it to the disposal of Jesus Christ. He says a living sacrifice, not a dead sacrifice, a living sacrifice. But aris tense means something to be done one time.

Now let me just come back here to explain something. The idea of continually walking the aisle to rededicate your life is unbiblical. It has been a very, very deceiving and harmful act.

Because Paul said in this passage, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, I plead with you on the basis of God's mercy, that you make a presentation of your total being to Jesus Christ once and for all a living sacrifice. He said we were crucified, buried, risen, sit in the heavens, according to Ephesians chapter one and two, with Christ Jesus, everything you'll ever need is already deposited to our account. But here we are. And the question is, how do we live in victory day by day? Well, the average person who does not go better, and for years, I walked the same old path because I didn't know any better.

Same old defeats, just like many of you been defeated, asking God to forgive me for this and forgive me for that and forgive me the other and promising him I was going to do better, tried to do better, wanted to do better, worked at doing better, couldn't do any better. The simple reason that humanity cannot improve itself. You can live to be 500, you'll never be able to improve the flesh. The flesh is not improvable.

The flesh is not renewable, and you cannot regenerate the flesh. So the question is, what does he mean when he says I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your body a living sacrifice, death to self, death to sin, death to the world, death to temptation, death to the devil, death to sin. Because you see, even though you've received the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, and you're saying I want to walk in his Spirit, the life of Jesus Christ for the believer is a life of death. You see, that's a contradiction and right you are, because it is through death that we find life. So what he's saying here is to present our bodies a living sacrifice. That is, you and I are to live dead every day.

Now here's the problem. We said, first of all, you've got to want the life that wins, and secondly, you've got to be willing to pay the price. And here's what a lot of people have done. They have been saved and nobody instructed them any further than salvation. So they were told to read their Bible and to pray and to go to church and to give, and they'd get better and better one of these days, they'd die and go to heaven.

So they've begun to do those things. They decided that a long time ago something wasn't right. So they sin against God and they get trapped by this and trapped by that. They get on the rollercoaster of religion and sometimes it's just one big long slide. And so finally they decide, well, either this is what the Christian life was meant to be or I've missed something or I just can't live it. So nobody really tells them what the real problem is. So they go through life wondering why there is no victory. There is no victory because we can't. And somehow in our pride it's very difficult for successful people to ever admit anything.

I cannot do it. But I'm telling you, the Christian life was never given for human capacity. It was given to us for the Lord Jesus Christ to live his life in us. Now look, so here comes someone to rededicate their life, going to start all over again. That isn't what God wants.

And here is the basic problem. Many, many people have been saved and then when they began to hear sermons or read the scripture and God began to put his finger on things, they said, well, I'm willing to give up that. I'm willing to yield that and they get a revival meeting and I want to rededicate my life and I want to deal with this thing over here and I want to deal with this. But I want you to listen to what Paul said.

He said, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body, that is your total being, one time present your total being unto him as a living sacrifice. Now if I present myself, my total being to him, here's what that means. I've got to look at myself real good. I've got to examine my motives. I've got to check out my attitude toward money or toward relationships. I've got to look to see if there's any greed, any pride, any arrogance.

I've got to check to see if there's bitterness hidden back there or resentment. I've got to be willing for Jesus Christ to expose my life to me to the point that I am willing to be able to say, Lord, having looked at the whole spectrum of my life, having looked at it from the beginning to the end, every relationship I have with someone else, my attitudes toward business or money or finances or whatever it might be. As I look at the total spectrum of my life, Lord, yes indeed, I am willing to say this.

I am willing to say that I want the cross life. I'm willing to live dead every day to my rights. Now you see, we're living in a time when everybody wants their rights. The women want their rights. The men want their rights.

The children want their rights. Everybody wants their rights and nothing could be further from scriptural truth than that. When he says, I must be willing to give up my rights. I must be willing to be crucified to this world, crucified that my desires, my ambitions, my goals, my everything nailed to the cross. Everything that's nailed to the cross is surrendered to him. Everything that's nailed to the cross is yielded to him. Everything that's given to the cross, I've given up. I have forsaken my right to everything I'm willing for God to nail to the cross in my life. He says, not present your arm or your eye or your foot, present your whole being to Jesus Christ as a living sacrifice. That means I put it on the altar of the cross and I back off from it and then whatever God wants to do with my life, I forsake all my rights to claim any personal right for God to do anything with my life. You say, now man, that's too idealistic. Well, it may be, but that is exactly what Paul is saying.

It is idealistic because God has an ideal and he's standing for us and he's not going to bring it down to match some denominational plea or some church. The ideal is crucifixion. The command is crucifixion. Take up your cross then I'm to live dead to this world. And when pride crops up, I just say, Lord, I want to put that on the cross.

I want to thank you. I'm dead to that. We claim our position.

Now here's the real problem, friend. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ today is filled with people who've made partial commitments. It is filled with people who joined it, then baptized, sprinkled, poured on, filled with people who've made all kinds of decisions. I'm talking about a decision whereby you look at the whole spectrum of your life and looking at the future, the present, the past, you're willing to make one gigantic step in your life and you're willing to say, Lord, on the basis of what you've shown me about my life. And I look at my total life on the basis of that, yes, I'm willing to have every right that I have as a man, as a pastor, as a husband, as a father, as a citizen. I'm willing to have every single right that I have nailed to the tree. I'm willing to live crucified of this world. I'm willing to live dead to this world and be absolutely and totally available to you the rest of my life, whatever that requires and regardless of whether that may carry me or regardless of what they demands of me.

That is the entrance into the life that wins and there is no entrance on any cheap basis. And the problem for the weakness of the church today is that there are hundreds and thousands of people sitting in the church who've never done that. And let's be honest, you have a church membership and you love God, maybe you go to Bible conferences and you love preaching, but let me ask you this. Have you ever told God that you're willing for him to nail every single right that you have to the tree? Are you willing to live dead every day knowing that Jesus Christ will meet every single need that you have?

He'll provide every single thing that you need in his timing and his way. Are we willing to live dead to our old self and dead to the world? Here's what we do. We say, Lord, you have this hand, you have this leg, you have this arm, this hand, but Lord, I don't know why.

I don't know. After all, that little fingernail really isn't very significant compared with my brain. Let me tell you something, friend, I know because I've done it. I've committed and dedicated to going through all that stuff, going to give him everything, everything, everything. But when I got down to the hard, cold fact of looking at my total life, saying, Lord, am I willing for you to nail everything Charles Stanley owned to the cross, everything there is about him? Am I willing for you to nail that to the cross and to doubt every bit of that and say, Lord, absolutely, unequivocally, unquestionably, irrevocably not my will, but your will be done, whatever the consequences may be, and no turning back? My friend, that is the most liberating, freeing feeling in the whole world.

And I've done many, many years exactly what some of you are doing. You get right up to a point, but there's one thing you won't give up. Something you will not release. You tell God, Lord, I want you to have all of my life. I want you to use me. I want you to bless me.

I want you to bless my family. You see, listen, here's the thing you need to remember. You can't come in this body of yours and rededicate yourself to Jesus Christ and have that rededication accepted when you're holding something back. You may be dedicating this and confessing that and repenting whatever, but if you're not, you see, he says, present your body, body, soul, spirit, the total being we are to present to him.

And here's what we've got. We've got pint-sized Christians because they have never been willing to say, Lord, I died. Not, Lord, I'm willing to be baptized, not, Lord, I'm willing to join the church, not, Lord, I'm willing to tithe or give 20% or 30%, not, Lord, I'm willing to serve the Lord, but are you willing to die? The real truth is that God wants a spiritual explosion in this world, but he's got to find some people who are willing to live dead. And until he does, he cannot.

He will not lower the standard. Some of you have been a Christian 15, 20, 25, 35, 45, 55 years, but you've never come to the place in your life where you said, Lord, God, I die to every right that I have in order that you may have your perfect will in my life, whatever that means. Well, let's face it. If you've got sin in your life, you know it's there. You can't fool it. You can fool everybody but God. And you're telling him all the things you're going to do, God says, I'm not interested in that. God would never accept a lamb brought to the altar of sacrifice if the fellow who offered it said, wait a minute, priest reaches up, he says, I want that hind leg.

And that's exactly what we do. He says it must come holy and acceptable unto God. Did you know that's the only sacrifice that is acceptable, one that's holy, one that's clean and pure before God? And you see, it matters not where you've been or what you've done.

That has nothing to do with it. We're talking about asking the Lord Jesus Christ, telling him, Lord, I forsake my rights. Are you willing to forsake your rights as a businessman? Are you willing to forsake your rights as a husband, as a father? Are you willing to forsake your rights as a son or daughter, as a student? Are you willing for God to nail, to drive the biggest spike he's got right through yourself?

It is old self that we have a problem with. Are you willing to nail your pride there? Nail your ambitions there? Nail your desires there? Nail your wishes, your wants there? Are you willing to say to him, Lord, for one time in my life, I want to be crucified with Christ in a practical living way? That is, I want to live dead every day of my life.

Well, how do you do that? It's a matter of faith. I want everything about me that's not God let nail to the tree. And my friend, when you and I learn to live dead, we will be freed. We will be liberated. The things that used to bother us won't bother us like they used to bother us anymore because we will have learned to just nail them to the cross.

Just keep nailing them to the cross and you may have to nail 10 things there in five minutes. But as long as you put them there, what you're doing is you're giving up your right to them, giving up your desire, giving up your wish, giving up your will, giving up your ownership. Lord, it's yours, not mine. That's the price of the life that wins.

It is dying daily. I plead with you, Paul says, to present your body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is the proper and the reasonable thing to do. There's only one way in the world you're going to find what you're looking for in life and you can't buy it with money.

You can't achieve it with prominence and position. The only way you can do it is if you want to say, God, I'm willing to die to every desire in my heart. I want to be what you want me to be. I want to reach my potential. I want your life. I want the best for my life.

Whatever is left, God, I want the best. Until you're willing to do that, you'll never be able to be used of God to the maximum. You'll always be wondering what would God have done with you if you had really made the decision. Let me ask you this. What is there in your life right now that you are holding on to that when you get down to prayer, you really get serious with God. God brings that thing up in your life. You say, well, he's brought it up many times, but there is no if he keeps bringing it up, God wants to cut it off.

He wants to get rid of it. Let me ask you a question. What are you willing to forsake in order to live the life that God Almighty has provided for you and me? What is it in your life you've never forsaken?

That last little thing, what may be something whopping big right in the middle of your life, in the middle of your mind right now, what is it that you're not willing to give up your hold on, give up your right? Oh, you've got rights. The world says you've got rights. You may find preachers who will tell you you've got rights to what you're talking about, but I want to tell you, my friend, you have no rights on the cross.

No. No rights on the cross whatsoever. Paul said crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ is living within me, nor that Jesus Christ may live his life through me freely. And I simply want to ask you this.

It's a real simple question. Do you really and truly want God's best in your life? But my friend, you've got to tell God that you want him to nail everything about you there, and you're making a once time decision in your life. I don't mean you'll never sin again. Don't mean you'll never disobey God again. I'm saying many of you more than likely have never made that one time surrender, yielding totally everything and understanding the meaning of how to stay there. And I'm simply asking you, what is it that you're holding on to, that you're not willing to give up, which is going to cheat you out of God's best, cheat you, deprive you, deny you out of becoming the person you want to be, God wants you to be, deny you the privilege of being a blessing to so many people.

My friend, let me tell you what's going to happen. You're going to face death one of these days with a terrible sense of disappointment, that you heard the truth, and you were unwilling to die to this whole world in order that Jesus Christ may make you the person he wants you to be. If I knew how, and if anything I could do could get you on your face before God today to confess your sin, repent of it, and take your position that I'd do it, but you see, there comes a point that neither God nor I can do anything about it. It must be an act of your will. I want to plead with you in Jesus' name. I want to beg of you in the name of the highest name above all names, Jesus Christ.

Would you tell him today, you look at your life and you're not holding anything back, you're willing to nail every single desire of your heart, you want him to have absolute maximum control of your life. Thank you for listening to The Real Issue. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.