Giving to Yourself

He wants you to have a divinely prescribed masterpiece view of yourself. Dr. Tony Evans says that's one of the first steps for lost people who want to be found. You will now begin to see the will of God being worked out in your life, and you will discover you. This is The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of The Urban Alternative. Stocks, bonds, 401Ks—there are plenty of ways to invest, but not all investments are financial. Today Dr. Evans will talk about the investment God wants us to make in ourselves and the kind of return He expects.

Let's join him. Most people are dissatisfied with things about themselves. They're not fully happy with their looks or their status in life or the stage that they're in or how things are working out. And in order to hide how we look, we enter into camouflage phase, where we cover up our reality. Now, the world has done a good job helping us to camouflage. It gets us to buy products to help us look better, buy clothes to give a better appearance.

In fact, you can hire companies today to enhance your image or protect your brand, the public perception of who you are. Because the reality is, if we were fully exposed as to who we really were and are, for many it would not be a pretty picture. And so what we do is we pretend. In fact, one of the greatest places to pretend is in church. Because if you say hallelujah enough, praise the Lord enough, sing enough, raise your hand enough, flip the pages in the Bible enough, you might give the impression that you and God have got it hooked up.

You and God are on good terms. When if the mirror really revealed where we were with God outside of this house, it could reveal that there is a big gap between what we display on Sunday and what's really happening in our lives. And so what we do is we play the religious game, and we let the world define our identity for us. We flip magazines that tell us we ought to look pretty like these folk and get as skinny as they are. We watch TV shows that give us an impression.

Commercials tell us even if you can't afford it, you gotta have it. He says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, Romans 12 verse 1, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable under God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Verse 2 says, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed in the renewing of your mind that you will prove what is that good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. He says God wants you, and if God has you, the world has no claim on you. You can't have God and the world, and by the world we defined it as anything that leaves God out of the equation. If God is out of the equation, you are worldly even if you are in church. Worldliness is not first a location, it is a perspective that God is included in the totality of my life. He's not a Sunday morning special.

He's not a place I visit or a person I occasionally reference. He is the point of reference of all of my life. He says there is a payoff for that commitment. If God ever gets to own you, there is a payoff at the end of verse 2, he says, and you will prove the will of God. That is, God will be at work in your life in such a way that he will express his will for you, to you, in you, and through you. And God's will is his purpose for your life. You see, a lot of people don't know who they are because they don't know why they're here. You see, when you know why you're here, then that helps you know who you are.

But I've got good news. Jesus said the way you find yourself is lose yourself. He says, except the sea falls to the ground and dies, it shall no wise have life. The way you find you is to lose you, and then you'll discover you.

Now, I know that doesn't make sense, because Madison Avenue won't explain it like that. They're going to tell you to find who you are, buy this, wear this, hang out with these people, do this, have this much, drive this, live here, and then you are somebody. God says, lose yourself in me, and I will locate you for you.

So he had spent the first two verses saying, give me all of you. Present your body, a living sacrifice, and give the world none of you. Don't let it lay claim. Be in the world, but not of it. In other words, don't let it dictate your value system. Don't let it dictate your orientation. Now, having said that, you will now begin to see the will of God being worked out in your life, and you will discover you.

Not because you are looking for you, but God will locate you and tell you who you are. When he does that, he says in verse 3, For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think as to have sound judgment as God has allotted to each one of us a measure of faith. In bowling, in bowling you have a bowling alley. On both sides of the alley are gutters. You can throw the gutter ball down on the right side, or a gutter ball down on the left side, which means you're not in the lane. He says you can think of yourself in one of two faulty ways.

You can go on this side of the gutter, or that side of the gutter. He says you can think too high of yourself. He says, because when God starts working in you, when you commit yourself to God, don't get the big head.

You ain't all that and a bag of chips. When God starts to do something in your life, don't get the wrong perspective, because that's to roll a gutter ball. That's to think more highly of yourself than you ought to. On your best day, you're a sinner saved by grace.

That's on your best day. The other gutter is to think too low of yourself. Oh, I'm nothing. I'm nobody. I'm never gonna be anybody. They told me I'm not gonna be anybody. And you walk around with this pitiful self-image. To reduce yourself to less than God recognizes, created, saved you, and redeemed you to be is to insult the Creator. To say you're nobody.

When God says you are so valuable to me that I became a man, died on a cross, rose from the dead to give you eternal life, and you walking around talking about you are nobody. Now I know some of us have been messed up with what folks say. That's the problem when listening to the wrong word. He says, I want you to think sober-minded. The Greek word there, the English King James Version says sober-minded.

The New American Standard says sound judgment. The word had to do with somebody who was drunk and sober. When a person is drunk, they're not thinking straight. So they can't walk straight.

They stammer their words. They drive crooked. And that is because their judgment has been impaired. If you let the world define you, you'll become a drunk Christian.

And not on the lane, because you become intoxicated with the wrong definition of who you are. That's why we use the wrong definition of success and we use the wrong definition of humility and pride. Humility is not acting like it's not true when it is true. That's not humility.

That's lying. Pride is thinking more of yourself than you are. It's like the colonel. He was just promoted to be a colonel, and he's in the army and he's a colonel now. So, you know, he's feeling, you know, he's smelling himself.

He's pretty up on himself, and I'm a colonel now. He got a knock on his door in his new office. Somebody was knocking. He said, yes, it says it's Private Johnson. May I come in, sir? He said, just a minute, Private.

He picked up the phone, held the phone to his ear, and spoke very loudly. Yes, Mr. President. I know, Mr. President. I understand, Mr. President. Yes, I'll be right there to see you, Mr. President. Okay, real soon, Mr. President. Thank you.

Click. Mr. Johnson, now you may come in. Mr. Johnson, Private Johnson, walks in, introduces himself. The colonel says, I'm sorry, I had you wait there. I had to finish up my conversation with the president. What can I do for you, Private Johnson?

Oh, he said, I just came to hook up your phone. See, that's thinking more of yourself than you ought to think. And so what people do is they wind up pretending.

They wind up going through the motions, and that's why people want to hang out with folk who have a name, so they can piggyback and say, oh, I know him. The beautiful thing about full surrender is you get to be who you are. You get to be fully who you are. If God intended you to be somebody else, you would have been somebody else. He gave you your own thumbprint.

And it cannot be duplicated by any of the almost seven billion people in the world don't have your print. Because God intended you to be you, but we get so messed up by the world's definition of who we are, we can live our whole lives never knowing who we were or were supposed to be, because we're being defined by everyone else. God wants to do a big give. He wants to give you you. But He can't give you you until you give Him you.

So if He can't have you, you can't have you. And so we've got a generation of people who don't know who they are. Dr. Evans will come back with a little name-calling from God when he continues our message in just a moment. There's a lot more ahead in Tony's current message series, Return on Investment. It digs deep into what can happen when we invest in God, in ourselves, in other believers, even in our enemies.

There are six lessons in this collection, including bonus material we won't have time to bring you on the air. But right now we're offering all of these messages on CD and digital download as our thank-you gift when you make a financial contribution to support the alternative. In fact, if you contact us right away, we'll also include the companion study guide.

It's a real help for your personal devotions and a must for Bible study or small groups. So don't wait. Get the details today on the Return on Investment series and study guide by visiting us online at TonyEvans.org. That's TonyEvans.org or call our 24-hour resource center at 1-800-800-3222.

Team members are standing by to help you. Either way, don't wait. This special offer ends soon.

Again, that's TonyEvans.org or call 1-800-800-3222. We'll dive back into our study right after this. Check, check. Oh, our sample ballots came?

Yeah, I'm marking mine now. Check and check. Wow, you're tearing right through that. Well, they make it easy. They list the political party right there under the name. Voting the straight party ticket, following some family tradition, doing what your friends do, all common ways to vote, but not necessarily godly ways. The Lord has an agenda for His kingdom, and Dr. Tony Evans says we need to back it with our ballots. That's the point of the newest course in the popular Tony Evans Training Center, How Christians Should Vote. The body of Christ has been divided illegitimately by allowing the politics of men to determine our function under God. The How Christians Should Vote course teaches vital principles about God's agenda on earth so you can cut through all the campaign hype and focus on the people and propositions that best reflect kingdom values. There's also lots of custom content from Tony and a forum where you can get your specific questions answered.

Go to TonyEvans.org and follow the link to the Tony Evans Training Center. It's like having a seminary on your smartphone or other device. Did you know that God calls you a masterpiece?

You know, if you're a Christian. He says in Ephesians 2.10, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which He hath created beforehand, that we should walk in them. The Greek word for good works is the word masterpiece. Do you know that masterpieces are rare? Masterpieces are special. Masterpieces have great value, and masterpieces bear the name of the person who did it.

So guess what? God calls you as He created you and redeemed you a masterpiece, which means you are rare, special, valuable, and you're walking around with His name. So what that means is anybody else who viewed you less than a masterpiece doesn't know who you are. And what's worse is if you don't know who you are, because you were redeemed to be His poem in motion, His sonnet, His masterpiece. But if the world defines you or me because we've not given ourselves to God, we will never recognize how valuable we are. And we'll always walk around trying to look like a model, trying to be a star, letting the world tell us who we are, how we should look, what we should wear, where we should live, what we should drive, giving us false definitions of success. Why will God show you you?

Stick with me now. Why does God want you to know you? And you can only know you if you fully belong to Him.

He tells you. He says in verse 4, For just as we have many members in one body, and all the members do not have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. He says, I must show you you so you can benefit somebody else. The reason God wants you to give you to Him is so He can show you you. And the reason He wants to show you you, verse 3, is to hook you up to benefit somebody else. If I come to church so I can get my blessing, so I can get God to do something for me so that God will deliver me, so that God will give me my breakthrough, it's okay as long as you recognize you're not an only child.

It can only be about you. You are members of a body. That's why—watch this now—God has tied some of your spiritual growth to how you relate to others. Some of your spiritual growth is directly related to how you relate to God. But the reason we're going to go through the one anothers of Scripture, because they're all over the Scripture in the New Testament, is because God has tied some of what He's going to do with you based on how you relate to others.

So if you're not properly relating to others, you cut off what He wants to do for you. And that's why you have to understand this is part of a bigger connection. The only disconnected part of a body that grows is in a horror film.

You remember the Adams family, don't you? Thing. The hand that would go all over the place. It was disconnected, but it could move. You got to have a monster to have a disconnection that grows, because things grow best and proper in relationship. First of all, giving all to God. But as a result of that, you are not on your own. You're members of one another. And that's why the principle give and it will be given back to you, what you want God to do for you. He says extend out to somebody else so that I know you know it's not only about you.

This is not an only child situation. It's our Father who art in heaven, not my daddy who is in heaven only. And He says nothing shows your humility more than when God uses your own security that He's going to give to you because you've given yourself fully to God to benefit somebody else. But when a Christian gets so stuck up that it's only about them, we have cut off God because He says you are members of one another. It's bigger than that.

You know the chief sin that God hates in the Bible is pride? It reminds me of the story of the two ducks and the frog. The two ducks and the frog, they had to cross the pond.

The pond was getting dry. But the frog had a problem. He couldn't get across the pond. It was too big.

He couldn't get across. The ducks had it easy. They could fly across. The frog said, well look, there's a stick over there. So duck one, if you grab one end of the stick, and duck two, you grab the other end of the stick, I grab it with my mouth, both of you fly in sync, and you can carry me across the pond, and we can keep our fellowship as we cross the pond and get to the other side. The ducks thought that was a great idea. One duck took this end of the stick, the other duck took that end of the stick. The frog put his mouth in the middle, and they were taking him across the pond, flying him across. The farmer looked up and he said, whoa, I've never seen anything like that in my life. This was a great idea of getting the frog across the pond. I wonder whose idea that was.

The frog said, it was mine! That's what pride will do. Pride cometh before the fall. God does not want us to have a drunken view of ourselves. He wants us to have a connected view of ourselves, which is why he calls it a measure of faith. A measure of faith at the end of verse 3 means a biblical view that you can trust God with.

He doesn't want you to just make up stuff. He wants you to have a divinely prescribed masterpiece view of yourself that is sound and that benefits others. Nothing will enhance your growth in God like giving yourself fully to God, verse 1 and 2, understanding who you really are, verse 3, and connecting it so it benefits others, verse 4 and 5. Now, he says, you are connecting in the way that God intended. And then it gets expressed, finally, in verse 6, since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly.

In order to improve the lives of others. He calls that gifting. It's the biblical word for gifting. See, when you give everything to God, God shows you who you are. When he shows you who you are, you can benefit others, and then he gives you the capacity for the benefit. Everybody in here has been given something by God. You may not know what it is yet, but you have been given this supernatural capacity to benefit the people of God and the program of God and the kingdom of God for the glory of God through your gifting. I hope whatever you do for a job, you are good at it, or you're trying to become good at it.

I hope you don't go to work and say, well, if it's sloppy, it's sloppy. That's just who I am. The idea is to be good at it, to maximize your capacity. The problem is, we'll maximize things for men downtown and give God junk for the kingdom. We'll maximize things for money, but we won't maximize things for his glory. He says, give me all of you, then I'll show you who you are. After I've shown you who you are, you benefit others.

The way you benefit others is through the gifting that you can use to benefit the program, the plan, and the people of God. And if you've never made that full commitment to God by way of a real-life relationship with Christ, visit tonyevans.org today and follow the link that says Jesus. There, Tony will explain everything you need to know about what being a real Christian is all about and how to start a brand new life. That's tonyevans.org, where you can get the latest on Tony's ministry and resources and sign up for his free email devotional. tonyevans.org is also the place to go for details on getting a full-length audio copy of today's lesson, Giving to Yourself.

Better yet, get it as a part of Tony's current series, Return on Investment. Don't forget, for a limited time, we're offering the six CDs or downloads in this series and the study guide that goes with them as our thank-you gift when you make a contribution to help us keep bringing you our program every day. Again, this special offer won't last, so be sure to contact us right away. We have team members standing by in our resource center around the clock to help you at 1-800-800-3222, so there's no need to wait. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222.

Or get even faster service, including those instant downloads, by visiting us online at tonyevans.org. Large, small, good or bad, every one of us is part of a family. But Dr. Evans says that Christians are also a part of a second family, and tomorrow he'll explain how we should invest in those relationships. I hope you'll be with us. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by the Urban Alternative and is made possible by the generous contributions of listeners like you.