God’s Condition for His Full Blessing - Part 1

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, August 29th. Surrendering to God can seem scary, but today you'll learn why giving yourself to Christ is the safest thing you can ever do. What are the possibilities of the ways I could be blessed if I let God do it His way? You see, most Christians are not very happy with their Christian life.

They struggle over this and they struggle over that and they complain about God doesn't answer my prayer and my needs are not all being met and God has not given me the desires of my heart and they moan and they groan and they complain about the Christian life's not what it's all cracked up to be and on and on and on they go. Never stopping to ask the question, wonder why things don't work out right for me? Wonder why God doesn't seem to be favoring me?

Why am I not experiencing all these blessings? Well, there is a reason and that's what I want to talk about in this message and if you will listen very carefully and follow some Scriptures that I want to give in this passage, God can absolutely change your life. Revolutionize your life, change your sense of circumstances and change the flow of the blessings of God in your life. I want you to turn, if you will, to Romans chapter twelve and the title of this message is God's Condition for His Full Blessing. Well, Romans chapter twelve, these first two verses, he says, Therefore I urge you brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is.

What's that? That which is good and acceptable and perfect. Now with that in mind, I want to talk about this one condition in order to receive God's full blessing.

There are not many conditions, there's one ultimate condition that is the bottom line to receive God's best. And when you look at this passage, it's very evident here that God's condition for full blessing calls for a full surrender. God's condition for a full blessing calls for a, listen, calls for a full surrender.

What does he say? I urge you brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your body. He's not simply talking about your physical body, but that's your whole being. Body, soul and spirit, the total being as a sacrifice, living, holy sacrifice, acceptable to God. Now, when you think about sacrifices, for example, usually the word sacrifice or surrender or yield are very threatening words to some people.

In other words, they want to talk about God's love, God's goodness, God answers prayer, God's kindness, God's mercy, on and on we go. But when you start talking about sacrifice, when you start talking about surrender, when you start talking about yielding, these are rather threatening words because the implication is that somebody is about to get into my business. Somebody is about to want to control my life.

Somebody is about to want to tell me how to operate. And so therefore, all of us like our freedom. Well, you don't want anybody controlling us, dominating us, telling us what to do or how to go about it. We want freedom.

What we don't realize is the freest people in the world are those who have come to the place in life to recognize that the life fully surrendered to Almighty God is the freest life of all. So when you go back in the Old Testament and you look at those sacrifices, people would bring their sacrifices, animals or something else that they had grown or whatever it might be and they offered them to God. Now, a sacrifice is something that we give to another either as an act of worship or as a gift, as an offering. And so the offerings were given and when that sacrifice was made, that sacrifice was made in this manner.

You had to relinquish, you had to give it up, you had to surrender it. And so, for example, let's say the sacrifice because of sin. Someone would bring their lamb and as an offering for sacrificial offering for their sin, they would place it in the hands of the priest. When they placed that offering in the hands of the priest and he cut the throat of that lamb, laid it on the altar of sacrifice, the person who was offering the sacrifice for the forgiveness of their sin couldn't go back and take that lamb back. Once it was given, it was relinquished, it was taken away, couldn't go take it back. When people gave offerings as acts of worship, they wouldn't go take the offering back, the sacrificial offering back.

It was given over, it was surrendered, it was yielded. And so what he's saying at this point, which his Roman readers would certainly have understood, and that is when he says, I beseech you to present your bodies, to make a presentation, to make an offering. An offering of what?

Our whole being, body, soul and spirit to Almighty God through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He said an offering, a sacrifice that is holy, that is one that is separated and given unto God for the purposes of God. He says a living sacrifice, one that can mean something, one that can be used of Almighty God. He says that's the reasonable right thing to do for the children of God to live in such a fashion that their life is a sacrificial offering to Almighty God. Now in order for that to happen, a person has to change their lifestyle. And here's what he says, he says now, and he puts this in a form that says, stop being conformed to the world.

He says stop allowing the world to draw you away from your commitment to Jesus Christ. Stop allowing the world to pour you into its mold so that you will think the way they think and act the way they act, behave the way they behave. That isn't who we are.

As the Lord Jesus Christ has saved us from our sins and made us His children, we are new creations in Christ Jesus. We don't fit the world's mold. That's the reason they criticize the church. That's the reason they criticize you personally or persecute you or laugh at you or make some smart remark about you because you don't fit their mold. And because you don't fit their mold, you stand out.

Because you don't fit their mold, sometimes you make them very uncomfortable. He says, listen, he says, you want God's best, you present your body a living sacrifice to Almighty God. You make a full surrender of yourself to Him and do not allow yourself to be pulled away and remolded and shaped like the world. God's best blessings are going to come your way. God offers His best.

He has prepared His best. And the truth is I can either be satisfied with less than God has to offer or I can ask the question, God, what would you do with me if I gave you my whole life? What would you send my way if I offered my life without reservation, without any bargaining, without any kind of holding back in any area of my life? What would you do? What could you do? What are you willing to do?

What do you want to do? One thing for certain, God has prepared the very best that He and His infinite wisdom and unconditional love can possibly provide for every single one of His children. Does that mean it'll always be what I want it to be? Not necessarily. Does that mean that if we offer ourselves in full surrender to Him, that things will always go the way we want them to go?

Absolutely not. Because sometimes what we think is the best way is not the best way at all. And sometimes when we surrender our life to the Lord Jesus Christ, sometimes when we give ourselves in maybe some particular thing that He's dealing with in our life, things don't always turn out the way we expect them to. But one thing for certain, when we are fully surrendered, they will turn out for what is for our good, our best, from the wisdom, listen, and the goodness and the love of Almighty God. So when He says in this passage, I urge you, I plead with you, I beckon you, listen, He says to present your bodies a living, holy sacrifice acceptable to God.

The only kind that is acceptable to God when we come to Him in the right spirit saying, Lord, here is my life. Now, He has the deed to your life. The tragedy is that many people trust that Jesus Christ is their Savior and nobody ever told them now that you've trusted Jesus as your Savior, you have given over all rights to Him because He is the Lord. We sing about Him being Lord, we talk about Him being Lord, we read the Scriptures about Him being Lord, but the truth is we don't live out. We don't acknowledge in our daily life that He is the absolute Lord of our life.

Because being Lord, He has absolute right, authority, ownership, control, and possession of our life. Therefore, He has the right, He has the awesome right to demand that you and I walk in obedience to Him. And that is that we live a surrendered life, yielded to Him, totally given over to Him. Now, so one of the basis of that call for full surrender is the fact of who He is. But a second one is this, and that is simply this, that God has planned the very best for us.

One of the reasons He calls for full surrender is because of what He wants to do for us. Now, look at this passage because oftentimes we think, well, I don't know that God loves me and so forth. Look, if you will, in Jeremiah chapter twenty-nine. I want to give you two or three verses here that are just indications of what God wants to do in our life, that He has planned and He has the best provided for us. And so listen to what He says in this twenty-ninth chapter. He says in the eleventh verse, for I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. Then you'll call upon Me and come and pray to Me and I will listen to you. You'll seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all of your heart.

Look at that. God has a plan for us. Here's His plan for you.

No matter what you may think about your life and the past and what you don't have and what you could have and what you ought to have and what you should have and what you'd like to have, listen to what He says. He says, I have plans for you. What kind of plan is that? It is the best plan that an infinite, all-wise and all-loving God could and would plan for you.

It's the very best plan. You can expect the best. You can expect the very best that God could possibly conceive of and plan for your life. That is the very character of God. So if we are needing and if we are dissatisfied and discontent and our Christian life's not what it ought to be and we don't think our relationship with the Lord is right, we don't feel intimacy with Him, I'm telling you, listen, we're not waiting on God.

God's waiting on us. He wants the very best. He's calling for a full surrender. Somebody says, well, you know, I think that's a wonderful idea and I would like to do that, but what's the purpose of all that in a way?

Well, let's talk about it for a moment. One of His purposes is this, is that God wants us fully surrendered to Him because, listen, watch this now, He loves our worship. God loves for us to worship Him. He's a jealous God. He wants us to worship Him and Him alone.

So let me ask you a question. How can I come to church and worship God? In other words, I can sing and pray and read the Scriptures or listen to a message or whatever it might be. How can I come to God and really worship Him?

That is, this is the living, sovereign God of the universe. How can I worship God at the same time reserving areas of my life for myself? How can I come to God and genuinely and truly worship God and at the same time reserving areas of my life that I am unwilling to yield to Him? I'm here to tell you it is not genuine, true worship. All the praying, all the singing, all the preaching, all the reading of the Scripture, there's no substitute acceptable to God other than full surrender. God, I want you to have your way in my life, whatever that is.

Let me ask you a question. How can I come to the Lord's house and worship Him? When there's some area of my life, I refuse to surrender. It may be financial, it may be that God's been telling you to tithe for years and years and years. You say, God, I'm going to praise you, I'm going to worship you, I'm going to serve you, I'm going to do all these things.

Five percent God's all I can handle. What you're saying is that, think about this, you're saying to this God whom you worship, I praise you, I worship you, but I don't trust you. It's real simple, isn't it?

I mean, when this gets down to it, it's just real simple. How can I worship a God I don't trust? You see, one of the reasons He wants a full surrender is because He wants genuine, true worship. A second reason He wants full surrender is because He wants our service for Him to be effective and fruitful. Now, a person can serve the Lord without being fully surrendered, there's no question about that.

And here's what happens. If we are serving God in the flesh the way we want to do it, we're going to have our way. What happens is God may use some decisions that are made or He may use what we say, but you know what? We're going to miss the blessing.

And besides that, it's not going to have the impact it could have. So let me ask you a question, think about this. Why do you want to live your life and not make the full impact? Why do you want to live your life and not receive the full blessing? Listen, why do you want a little bit when you can have more? Why do you want to be what you are when you can be something else?

Why do we want to risk going through life, trying to figure things out, having our way when God's way is the best way and He is more than willing to show us what His way is? So one of the things He wants, He certainly wants worship. The second thing He wants is certainly He wants service. And third, now watch this. The third thing He wants is, listen, now watch this one. God wants freedom to bless us.

You say, now wait a minute. Is He omnipotent? Yes, He is. If He's omnipotent, I can't give Him freedom.

Well, let's see if that's true. Does God have principles by which He governs things? Yes, He does. Would God violate His own principles?

No, He would not. What's one of His principles? Obedience brings blessing. Whatever we sow, we reap. What we sow, more than we sow, later than we sow. So therefore, what happens is when you and I fully surrender our life to Him.

We lay it all down. No bargaining. Think about this for a moment. How in the world can you bargain with God?

Many people, I hear people say, well, now God, if you'll do this, and so here's what I'm going to do. Let me ask you a question. Let's go back to what we said in the very beginning. To whom do we belong? God, right? Sole ownership. What do we have?

So let me ask you a question. What are you going to bargain with God with when you don't have anything anyway? You can't bargain with God. And so the whole idea of trying to manipulate, you can't manipulate God. And so we come to acknowledge we don't have any bargaining rights.

We don't even have anything to bargain with. It's a matter of obedience or it's a matter of disobedience. And what He's simply saying here to us is this. He says, present your body a living sacrifice because, listen, in order to worship God properly, He's got to have all of me. In order for the service to be really and truly acceptable and really fruitful and make an impact, He's got to have all of us. And not only that, in order for God to be able to bless us the way He wants to, He's got to have freedom to do it.

Now watch this. He's not going to violate His own principles. He's not going to violate His own character.

Whatever we sow, we reap what we sow, more than we sow, later than we sow. Blessing follows obedience. God, listen, cannot condone disobedience. He cannot condone rebellion. He does not overlook sin. He does not ignore our ignoring Him and insisting on having our own way. So therefore, here's what we do. We say, God, I want you to bless me, and we slam the door.

God, I want you to bless me, but we choke up the channel because we position ourselves so as, because of the principles by which God operates, He's not going to pour the full, listen, the blessing upon us when we have refused, listen, to surrender every aspect of our life. Now is it easy to give it all up? No, it's not. Is it the right thing to do? Yes, it is.

Is it the wise thing to do? Yes, it is. And after it's done, we look back and say, thank God, thank God, thank God, you finally got me to see that it was the wisest thing to do, to yield everything to you.

Is it easy? No, it's not. But what I want you to say is that you want God's full blessing? When you say God can't do something, somebody says, I can't believe you'd say that God can't do anything. He cannot act outside of His own character. That is His own self-imposed character. He is not going to violate His own law. So if we choose to have it our way, live in rebellion, disobey Him, withhold things from Him, He's going to do it our way, you know what?

He can't do it. So we're the ones who are responsible for the slowdown and the blessings of God and some people live their whole life and you know what? They'll complain all their life and look back and think, oh God, why didn't this happen to me and why didn't that happen to me and why didn't that happen to me and why did this happen and why did that happen? And the truth is because we decided we were smarter than God. God said, I want to fill your hands. You say, well Lord, I'm willing for you to fill my hand, but it's like this. Let's suppose I had a hundred dollar bill in my hand and that was very valuable to me and so I wouldn't open my hand. You said, I'll just exchange what I want to give you for what you have. I said, no, I'm having a hundred dollar bill in a long time so I can't let this go.

And you pulled out ten thousand dollars and say, here's what you could have had if you'd opened your hand. I'm here to tell you my friend, that is exactly the way most people are living their lives. They're holding on to pennies when God has blessings innumerable. They're holding on, listen, holding on to what they can do in life when you can discover what God can do in your life. Why not discover what God can do in your life? Give him the privilege and the privilege, listen, demands a full surrender of my life.

Why? If God pours out a full blessing, he wants to be in full control. How can God give his best?

How can he give all that he's planned unless we're willing to give him full, absolute, total, listen, authority, right, privilege, which is his anyway, to rule and to reign and to govern and to guide our life. Thank you for listening to God's Condition for His Full Blessing. 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.