Three Prerequisites For Change Part 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. It takes time to develop bad habits.

It also takes time to get rid of them. But first, we have to believe some key principles, and when we do, we're on the way to freedom. Today, we learn about more prerequisites for real change.

Stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, you've been sharing three prerequisites for change.

Remind us about the first two and tell us about the third. Well, Dave, you know, I like to emphasize the fact that first of all, people have to believe that God is good. And why is that so important? It's because there are many people who don't want to give up their habits. They think that they are quite content the way they are. We have to believe that God has a better path for us. And then I like to emphasize that we need to own our own behavior.

Colloquially, sometimes we speak about it as owning your own stuff. And there are many people who simply won't. And the blindness of the human heart is something that we always need to be reminded of. And then, as we continue to talk, we have to emphasize God's grace and his willingness to change us. You know, to all those who are listening today, I need to remind you that this sermon series was preached many years ago.

But its relevance is very obvious because it helps us where we live, and it helps us to bring about the transformation that we know God wants in our lives. It's entitled How to Break a Stubborn Habit. And for a gift of any amount, these messages can be yours. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com.

That's rtwoffer.com, or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now, at the end of this broadcast, the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you this contact info again. For now, I want you to listen, and I want you to think about God's goodness in helping us as he pulls us out of the pit, so to speak, and gives us a whole new path forward.

You listen carefully. Now, do you know, there are many people today who think that if God were to deliver them from their sinful habit, they would be missing out on some great pleasure. And that's why they don't really want to be delivered. A student in one of our Bible schools here in America said, quote, some of the students in this school look at the world and think they have been gypped. Do you know that if you ever work with young people, you discover that the number one problem with young people, and I might add of older people too, except that they are more subtle, the number one problem is that they envy the wicked. They believe that God is withholding something good and they believe that in their sensuality and in their habits of laziness and in their habits of covetousness, they really believe that if God were to deliver them, that they would be missing out on something that is pleasurable in life. And consequently, they are not convinced that the way of God is better than the way of the devil. You know that that's number one problem?

That's the number one problem with people who come to other people for counseling. They are not convinced that if they were to give up their sin and they were to give up their bitterness, they are not convinced that that would be right because after all, that would not be pleasurable because then you couldn't get even with the person against whom you have that grudge. People basically believe that they have some pleasure even in their sin that they don't like to give up, and tonight you cannot give up that sinful habit until you are convinced that the pleasures of sin are not nearly as satisfying as the pleasures that exist on God's right hand. You can't give up your sin unless you're convinced of that.

It is only when you say, God, I believe that your fullness and knowledge of you and freedom is better than slavery to some of the sinful things I'm doing, it is only when you come to that conclusion that you're a candidate for God's deliverance. Oh, Satan does this? Do you know what he said to Eve? He said, Yea, hath God said that ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And then you remember Eve said, Yes, we may eat of them all except one. There probably were hundreds of trees in the Garden of Eden that they could eat from, but does Satan point out to Eve all of the trees that she can eat from?

Oh, no, no, he zeroes in on the one that she can't eat from, and it is that one that he magnifies and exaggerates, and in the process he blinds her eyes to all of the things that she can do in the garden. Now Satan is the same way. He comes to you and he says, You mean to say that God says you can't do this?

Well, I really think that you're going to miss out on some pleasure in life. You mean to say that your God restricts you and you have one thing that you can't do or five things you can't do just to think you go around once in life and you've got to grab for all the gusto you can get, and you won't get any gusto if you follow God. And some people believe him. Isn't it tragic to think that there are some things that we can't do if we're yielded to Jesus Christ? But do you know that for the things that we cannot do, there are 101 blessings waiting for us to participate in, and we are participants of the oceans of God's infinite and matchless grace, and Satan blinds us to that and he zeroes in on the one or two things that supposedly give pleasure and say, You mean to say that your God wouldn't let you do that? Now, I want you to realize then that the first thing that you have to believe with all of your heart is that God is good, and slavery to God is much better than slavery to the devil. It is better to be a servant of the Most High than it is to be a servant of the devil, and you've got to believe that with all of your heart. You have to believe that God is not in heaven simply taking the fun out of life. You have to believe that the commandments of God are basically given not only for God's glory, though they are that, but also for our good. And if you don't believe that, I doubt whether you're going to be delivered.

I really do. I think that you will look at the world or look at your sinful habit and say, I'm going to keep it, because if God delivers me, I'm going to miss out on something. And if you aren't convinced that God's way is best, you're going to get back into the old sinful patterns.

There's a second thing that I think we must do. The second thing that we have to believe in is—and this is tough now, this is tough—we have to believe that we are responsible for our failures. I really am amused as I read this passage, because it's so human. You remember that the Lord came and asked Adam where he was, and Adam said that he was hiding. And it says in verse 12, the woman—notice what Adam says—the woman whom thou, thou, oh God, the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she took of the tree and I did eat. The man blames the woman, the woman blamed the serpent, and the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on. You know that Will Rogers says that there were two eras.

There is the era of the passing of the buffalo and the passing of the buck. And do you know that you cannot be delivered from your sinful habit—and I've done enough counseling to know this—unless you stop blaming everyone and take full responsibility for your actions? You know, we live in a day and age where it's so easy to say, oh, but the circumstances caused it, David could have said, but Bathsheba was bathing herself very immodestly.

If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have done that. This may be true, he would have, but he cannot find deliverance or forgiveness until he says, against thee and thee only have I sinned. Do you know that God leads you into the place of temptation? It says that the Spirit drove Jesus into the desert to be tempted of the devil. And the Spirit of God puts us in places where we're going to be tempted. Now when that verse says in James that God does not tempt people with evil, it means very clearly from the next verses where he says that every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed, it means very clearly that God does not cause us to sin.

That when we sin, it is not God making us to because it says every good gift and every perfect gift comes from above. But the Scriptures make it very clear that it is God who leads us into places where we will be tempted. He leads us into the place of temptation, but he does not cause us to fall into temptation. That's why even in the Lord's Prayer you pray, lead us not into temptation. And as I mentioned a moment ago, God does it to give us a clear choice in life whether we will choose him or whether we will choose our flesh.

And he does it for that purpose. But even though we are in circumstances that are so tempting, we cannot blame those circumstances. We must come to the point where we say, I am guilty. A person who is a member of the gay community and whom God delivered from the gay way of life told me that he could find no deliverance in Jesus Christ as long as he blamed his parents even though his parents were blameworthy because part of the reason that he was that way was because of some ugly circumstances in the home.

But there was no deliverance until he says, I am guilty. And listen, you can't blame your parents. You say, yes, but you don't know my home.

No, I don't. But as long as you blame them you'll be caught in that sinful habit. You must be willing to say, I am the one that takes full responsibility and it is me, oh God, that you must change. Nor can we blame our environment, our circumstances.

We can't blame other people. We have to be able to take the responsibility. There is a third thing, and that is this crucial, absolutely crucial, if you want deliverance. You must believe that deliverance is possible. You must believe that deliverance is possible and how wonderful it is that in this chapter, which so clearly designates the mess that people have gotten themselves into. Right there the Lord makes a promise in verse 15. He says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed.

He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. God was talking to the serpent and God was saying that the serpent and the seed of the woman are going to be involved in a great struggle. The serpent and the seed of the woman are going to be in a great battle, but the serpent will be able to only nip the heel of the seed of the woman, but the seed of the woman will be able to crush the head of the serpent. And you remember later on Jesus Christ said, when I be lifted up I will draw all men to me, but also, he says, now is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And the Bible says in the book of Colossians, it says that Jesus Christ having disarmed the principalities and powers made a show of them openly triumphing over them in it. And because of that victory that Jesus Christ gave on the cross, we have the privilege of being able to participate in that victory and to break the power of that sinful habit. Now in the process we're going to learn an awful lot. Oh, we're going to learn about ourselves, we're going to learn about the strength of the devil, we're going to learn about God, we're going to learn about his grace. It is not going to be an easy struggle because one act of yieldedness to God is not going to do it, even though yieldedness is the place to begin. But in the middle of that struggle God is going to so teach us and we're going to learn to handle temptation and we are going to learn to be able to be victorious over those bad habits that ensnare us because Jesus Christ provided a victory in which he gives us the privilege to participate. One of the greatest problems that people have when they try to break their sinful habits is that they try to fight a battle that they are convinced that in the end they will lose. And if you are convinced that you're going to lose the battle and you're going to lose the struggle that you are going through, if you are convinced you will lose it, you will lose it.

And tonight I'd like you to be able to look at the cross of Jesus Christ and to know that in that great struggle with Satan there was a great victory that was won and Jesus Christ invites us to participate in it. You know the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 10 verse 13 that there is no temptation that has taken you but such as is common to man. And God is faithful and he will not allow you to be tempted above that you are able, but will with the temptation make a way of escape that you'll be able to bear it. Did you know that there is no temptation that you have ever faced that someone who is just as great a sinner as you has faced it and has faced it successfully?

That should give us hope. Joseph overcame the great temptations of lust. Day after day Potiphar's wife tried to seduce him and he said no. He said how can I commit this great sin? Moses overcame the sin of pride.

Here was a man who was leading the children of Israel, the greatest leader probably in the whole world, one of the greatest men in the Bible and he turns out to be the meekest man on the face of the earth. God can deliver you from that sensitivity that you have regarding your reputation. God can deliver you. You say oh well I don't know because if you knew me and I know that I don't know your heart, but God can deliver you. You can be delivered from covetousness.

Elijah was a great man of God who could have been very wealthy but when he was offered a lot of money he said no to it. God can deliver you from that. There is no temptation that has ever overcome us but such as is common to man. It's common to man.

It involves all of us and I'm no different than you are because we're all part of the same human race. The Bible even says that Elijah was a man of like passions such as we are. Like passions. We think that some of the saints in the Old Testament were superstars. We think that they went to heaven every evening and returned again in the morning. Well Elijah went to heaven one evening and didn't return in the morning but he was still a man of like passions such as we are and it is for people of like passions such as we are, it is for people like that that redemption was accomplished. If you feel that you are hopeless tonight I want you to know that it is exactly for people like you and like me who are hopeless for whom redemption came. Now you say well what do we have to do to get rid of those habits then? How do we have to apply the redemption?

How do we have to go about changing our minds and changing our thought patterns and changing our habits? Well that's what I'm going to talk to you about next week so you've got to come back. But tonight I want to stress that before you can even get that far you must be convinced that God is good and that you want deliverance. You must really say God I genuinely want to be delivered and I'm willing to pay any price for deliverance and even if you make some demands of me that I don't like I'm willing to face up to those demands because I believe that your way is best. Secondly, you've got to take all the responsibility. You've got to stop blaming all other people for the way in which you are and say I am responsible for my own responses in life and I take that responsibility and then thirdly you've got to believe that deliverance really is possible.

It's possible. And when you really believe those three things God can begin to apply the word of God to your heart and you can be delivered from sinful habits. Now what I'd like you to do between tonight and next week is begin to think of some of those sinful habits that you have.

Begin to read the word of God with the idea in mind of how God is going to use those habits to teach you something and how it's going to be one of the greatest experiences in your life in being able to shed some of the things in the past and so you will experience God's grace and God's power and learn about yourself and it will be a tremendous teaching experience of being free from some of the things that you thought would bind you forever. They don't have to because Christ died to set you free. Let's pray together. Father tonight we thank you that you gave us the story in the Old Testament how sin came into the world. We thank you that we can see clearly the error of Eve and Adam and the wiles of the devil. And we pray Father that tonight initially we might as an initial expression of our desire to be free commit ourselves to you fully as a first step in the area of deliverance. And we pray that in our own lives in my life and in the others who are here this evening that all of us might see your power clearly displayed in the midst of weakness, in the midst of temptation, and in the midst of our struggles.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well my friend this is Pastor Lutzer and you have heard me just lay out for you a roadmap as to how transformation is possible. But I need to remind you it can be also very painful. You know you've heard the expression that you hope so and so sees the light. My own experience has taught me that people don't change just because they see the light.

They only change because they feel the heat. In other words life is so miserable that they decide that God's way is best after all. You know this series of messages which I believe is a blessing to you and in your mind you can now think of other people who need to listen to it. It can be yours as a permanent reminder of the fact that God is able to bring deliverance and you can share these messages with others. Here's what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com.

RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now I'm going to be giving you that contact info again to give you time to get a pencil, a piece of paper so that you can write it down. But in the meantime I want to thank the many of you who support this ministry. You know it's because of you that running to win is now heard in more than 20 different countries in three different languages and this is because of partners just like you. You are being blessed because other people have made an investment in this ministry and God may be asking you to make an investment in this ministry for others. Thanks in advance for supporting us. Here's what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com.

That's RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. From my heart to yours today as this broadcast has gone out it is with our prayer that it will bring about the transformation in your life that honors God. Remember God is interested in spiritual fruit and sometimes he has to prune us to bring it about.

You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. We must believe that God is good, that we are responsible for our actions and that deliverance is possible. These are the three prerequisites for change as brought to us by Dr. Erwin Lutzer. In the meantime, we'll build on this foundation as we learn how to develop habits of righteousness. Keep listening as our series on Getting to Know continues. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.