Giving to God

I know many come to church to hear what the pastor will present in the sermon. God comes to church to see what the saints are going to present to Him. Dr. Tony Evans says the thing God wants us most to present is ourselves. The password to your spiritual victory is the word surrender. 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. When God says He wants His people to be givers, He's talking about a lot more than money. We'll find out what He means today as Dr. Evans begins a series called Return on Investment.

Let's join him. Many of you have on your phones or on your computers password restrictions. In other words, the only way you can get into all this stuff that's available to you is if you know the password.

That's to keep others out who you don't want to be in there and to let you in so you can take advantage of what your phone system or computer system has available to you. So I want to share with you today the password to your spiritual victory. Now don't get me wrong, when I say spiritual victory, I don't mean there aren't gonna be challenges or problems. That comes with life, Jesus says. But I'm talking about a password that won't let those realities rule you anymore.

You can't get rid of all the issues of life, but you can be an overcomer. The password to your spiritual victory. Now don't get me wrong, when I say spiritual victory, I don't mean there aren't gonna be challenges or problems. That comes with life, Jesus says. But I'm talking about a password that won't let those realities rule you anymore.

You can't get rid of all the issues of life, but you can be an overcomer. The password to your spiritual victory is the word surrender. Romans 12, 1, and 2 read as follows, Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your body the living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Many folks here, I hope all the folks here, have made the decision to trust Christ as your personal savior. You've decided to become a Christian. That's a decision. The problem today is many who have made decisions have not yet become disciples. They've made a decision at some point in time to trust Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, but who've not gone on to become a follower of Christ as a disciple of Jesus Christ. And the difference between a decision maker and a disciple is surrender.

Surrender. Paul says that what God is asking from you is to present your body. Now, anything God's going to do with you, to you, or for you will involve you.

It's your body, it's your hands, your feet, your nose, your eyes, your brain, and mind. So when he says present your body, he is saying present your life. He says, I want God wants you to place you on the altar. The picture is of an Old Testament sacrifice, a lamb. They didn't put the head on the altar, they didn't put the legs on the altar, they didn't put the frame on the altar, they put the body on the altar, which meant the life was being placed on the altar.

All of the lamb was placed on the altar. In fact, when you look throughout Scripture, you will find whenever God wanted to do something and He wanted to do something big, He required a sacrifice first. There had to be something present that demonstrated that you were, one, sincere and that, two, you were doing it based on God's standard. That's why He says holy. God says He wants you to present you to Him. He calls the presentation of you to Him your worship service. If He doesn't get you, you haven't worshiped, even if you're at church. He says your worship or your service of worship is in your presentation. I know many come to church to hear what the pastor will present in the sermon, what the choir will present in the song. God comes to church to see what the saints are going to present to Him. And without the presentation, He says there is no worship. And therefore, what God is asking for is for you to surrender.

That is, to present yourself. Why? Why? Why is He asking for that? He says I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God.

I want you to surrender because of God's mercy. Those of you who have kids in college, college is expensive. And because of the high cost of college, you want them to take studying seriously. You don't want them playing around in college. That's too much money for play. You want them to enjoy college, but you want them to surrender to study.

You don't want the peripheral things to become the main things because the price is too high. God has paid a high price to get your surrender. Therefore, because there's a high price paid, I urge you, brethren, to present your bodies a living sacrifice. I want you to give it all to God. Now, stick with me here. I don't want a piece of it. I don't just want you to have your bags packed and your belt on.

I want the phone off or we not going anywhere. Not like the story of the chicken and the pig. The chicken and the pig are walking down the street. They come to a grocery store with a sign in the window, bacon and eggs desperately needed. Chicken looked at the pig. The chicken said, well, you know what? I'll give him the eggs and you give him the bacon. Pig said to the chicken, you got to be out of your mind. The chicken said to the pig, well, what's wrong? I got eggs, you got bacon.

Oh, he said, there's a big difference. He says, Mr. Chicken, for you, it's a contribution. For me, it's the whole thing. See, what a lot of Christians want to do is give God an egg here and an egg there. He an egg there, an egg everywhere, an egg, egg. And God wants some ham hocks, chitlins, fat back, pork ribs. He want the whole thing, pig feet. He want the whole thing.

We're satisfied with an egg. He says, present your bodies a living sacrifice. He's asking for surrender. He calls it a holy act. The word holy in the Bible means special, unique, or that which is set apart. He says, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy.

That is, set apart, don't treat me as regular. Now, to do that, he goes to verse two. Because he going to break it down, break it down, break it down. He says, the first thing I want you to understand, if you're going to give me the whole kit and caboodle, the first thing I want you to understand is you are not to be conformed to this world. What he's saying is don't let the world squeeze you, pressure you, press you into what it wants you to look like. Don't let the world tell you what to do. Don't be pressured.

Now, why? First John chapter two says this, Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world. For if any man loves the world, watch this, watch this, watch this, the love of the Father is not in him. He says, if you want the world, you can have the world, but you can't have me and the world.

You can't have both of us. He does not mean you lose your salvation if you're truly saved. He's saying you lose your relationship with me and your fellowship with me. You lose intimacy with me. You won't sense my love. You won't sense my reality.

One of the main reasons why we are so defeated so much is the world has too much of our attention. He says there are only three things in the world, by the way. He says the lust of the flesh, that's passion. He says lust of the eyes, that's possessions.

And then he says the pride of life, that's position. And so we become pressed and squeezed and then it destroys our relationships. It destroys our sanity. We hang out with people we shouldn't hang out with. We wind up dealing with stuff we shouldn't deal with because the world has told us we're nobody without it. And all the time pursuing the world, losing the love of God.

Losing the experience of his reality in our lives because we don't want to deal with the password. God wants us to unlock our spiritual victory, and Dr. Evans will tell us more about that in a moment. First though, I'd like to tell you about two great resources we've paired together to help you dig deeper into what we'll be learning in the days ahead. The first is an audio collection on CD and digital download containing all six full-length lessons from our current series, Return on Investment.

But we're also including the study guide that goes with it. It's the perfect way to deepen your personal devotions or to share what you're learning with your Bible study or small group. Best of all, for a limited time, you can get this Return on Investment study package as our thank you gift when you make a donation to support Tony's continuing work here on this station. This offer won't be available for long, so visit us right away at TonyEvans.org or call our 24-hour resource request line at 1-800-800-3222 for details before time runs out.

I'll have our contact information again for you after part two of our lesson and this. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, they all claim God is on their side, but Dr. Tony Evans says we all need to line up on God's side. The word of God must trump your political alliances if you call yourself a Christian. That's why the Tony Evans Training Center just introduced an exciting new course, How Should Christians Vote, an in-depth look at what every believer needs to know before stepping into the voting booth. I kind of want to know where God stands, so I know where I'm supposed to stand as a child of God. Believers depend on the Bible to guide our lives. This course will equip you to stop changing books when it comes to politics. Whether it's immigration, taxation, abortion, since it's a nation under God, what does the God over us think about what the nation wants to do?

The How Should Christians Vote course will teach you to sort through the spin, hype, and double-talk this election year and make a truly godly decision at the polls. All with the help of in-depth content from Tony, probing discussion questions, access to full-length messages, and an online discussion forum where you can ask specific questions and get detailed answers. Visit tonyevans.org today and connect with the Tony Evans Training Center. Let's say you have a trainer, and you go to him once a week. This is a trainer, and he knows nutrition. He knows weightlifting. So you come to him, and you get your workout on, and you're sweating, and he says, Okay, this is what I want you to eat.

This is why we'll meet again next week. So you had a good two-hour session with the trainer. Now, when you leave the training, okay, you drive through churches, you get your fried chicken and your gizzards, and I'm confessing here, you drive through churches, you go to the cafeteria, you get the chicken fried steak smothered with gravy and potatoes. You know, you get your slice of cake, you go through the grocery store, you get your Blue Bell ice cream, but you don't feel bad because you did your workout. See, for two hours, I gave my workout. Now I'm doing my thing. Not only did you do your workout, go do your thing, but you're going back to the trainer next week, same time, same place.

He gonna tell you the same thing he been telling you for years. The problem is, when you leave the trainer, you cancel the training. You leave the trainer, you cancel the training, because what he said did not become the way you roll, be the way you operated, the way you moved, and because it did not become the way you move, it became a wasted two hours. So what we often do is come to church and waste two hours on a weekly basis, because then we leave and let the world tell us what to do, how to do it, what to spend, how to spend it, who to hang out with, who not to hang out with. It begins to define us, and therefore God keeps His distance while the world makes us feel like we've lost something. We've lost something, alright?

We've lost something big, and that is the living love of God being experienced in our lives. Now that's the negative, but now he comes with the positive. He says, but be transformed, verse 2, by the renewing of your mind. He says, don't be conformed, but then he switches words. He moves from conform to transform.

That's a different Greek word. And transformation occurs, he says, not from outside pressure. That's what the world does to conform us. He says it takes place with a change in your thinking. He says be transformed, watch this, in the renewing of your mind. If the mind does not change, the change does not occur. There must be a mental transformation that takes place if God is going to change you from the inside out. And how do you know it's a change?

Transform and not a management conform. How do you know the difference if you could be doing it either way? How do you know the difference? Here's the difference. You want to.

He changes your have to to a want to. We've all seen the biggest loser. These are huge people who go on this competition to lose weight.

They're the biggest loser. They go on the show, and the principle of the show is you become what you eat. It's exercise and all that, there's discipline, but fundamental to the show is diet. What you take in will determine what you look like.

Obviously, they've been taking in a lot of wrong for a long time. Some of it's discipline problems, some of it's the family they grow up in, some of it's how mama cooked, there's a whole bunch of stuff, but the idea is I'm moving in the wrong direction. So they come to the big loser, and they get in this competition, and even the ones who didn't win have lost a lot, because they're in an environment that's dealing with them thinking differently so that they are eating differently. What's true of the big loser is true of the Christian. You are what you eat spiritually. You become what you eat spiritually, and that's why we're so messed up, because what we're eating is the world, and so we are becoming worldly. We're not eating the word, we're not hanging out with people who feed us the word, who know how to cook the word, and therefore we are not people of the word, and therefore we are not spiritual. You become what you eat, and he says that means you must renew your mind. You must operate on a different frame of reference. You must begin to develop one simple question and answer it.

What's God's view on the matter? And you must ask it first. See, most people ask that after none of the other views have worked. Whenever you are in a changing process, adaption becomes difficult. Becomes difficult, because you're starting out. So whenever you start out something you're not used to, work it out. The first time you go jogging, don't plan five miles. That's not gonna happen. One block would be better suited. The first time you fast.

Don't fast for no whole week, eat nothing but water. Okay? You have to adapt to this new reality, because it's awkward at first. You're not used to going to God first, getting God's perspective for you. You're not used to it, and so the carnal part of you is gonna resist that.

It's gonna say it's too hard, it's too difficult, I don't know whether it's not. You're gonna come up with all this, but when you develop the habit and you get used to it, your spiritual taste buds change, and you want the spiritual first. He says, renew the mind, say no to the world, yes to God's perspective, God's point of view. Don't go back and forth, don't be double-minded.

But that leads us to the final question. Yeah, I'm supposed to, I may even want to, but what's my incentive? Well, God hasn't left you without an answer to what should motivate you to use the password of surrender, motivate me to use the password of surrender and us, collectively, to use to become a surrendered church. He says at the end of verse 2, So that you may prove what the will of God is, which is good, acceptable, and perfect.

What's your motivation for doing this? Experiencing God's involvement in your life at a level you've never experienced it before. Well, I want to motivate you to say, you know what, I'm gonna use this password, because you get to experience the will of God, God's direction for your life, involvement in your life, plan for your life, governance of your life. You get to see God at work in you that you will never see or limitedly see. If the world is your dictator and you are saying yes to it, you see God's will at work in your life. So the question you have to ask is, do I want to see that?

Because if you don't want to see it, you don't have to see it. The problem is, we have too much static on the line. We listen to so many views that even when the Holy Ghost is talking, we can't hear him because he's whispering and the world is screaming. And we say, why won't God talk to me? He is talking.

It's just the station you're listening to is screaming. He says, and you will see the will of God, the program of God, the plan of God, the answers of God. Yes, there will still be challenges and problems, but you will see the movement of God, the frequency of God. That's God's plan for your life.

Why settle for second best if God is offering you first best? Dr. Evans will come back in a moment with a final illustration to wrap up today's message, giving to God. If you'd like to get the complete full length version, check with us for details. Or better yet, you can receive this lesson as a part of Tony's current series, Return on Investment. As I mentioned earlier, we are offering all six messages in this series, both on CD and instant downloads, along with the personal or group study guide that goes with it as our thank you gift when you support our ministry with a financial contribution. Contact us at TonyEvans.org for the details, or call our resource request line at 1-800-800-3222. We have team members there around the clock ready to help you. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222.

Stocks, bonds, 401Ks, there are plenty of ways to invest, but not all investments are financial. Tomorrow, Dr. Evans will talk about the investment God wants us to make in ourselves and the kind of return He expects. Right now, though, he's back with this final story for today. A little girl went to her father one day and said, as we closed, she said, Daddy, give me a nickel. Daddy reached in his pocket. He didn't have any change. So he said, I'll give her a dollar. She's been a good girl, so it opened up his wallet to give her a dollar, but he didn't have any ones. He only had a 20. He thought to himself, he said, you know what?

I'm going to give her a 20. He said, here, baby, here's a 20. She said, no, Daddy, I want a nickel.

Well, he knew she didn't understand. He said, girl, this is a bunch of nickels. She said, but Daddy, why won't you give me a nickel?

He went deeper. He said, let me tell you how many nickels in a one, how many nickels in a five, how many nickels in a 10, how many nickels in a 20? She started crying and screaming and you won't even give me a nickel.

That's what God's people do. We settle for a nickel when God offers us a $20 bill. God is saying, here's the $20 of my love. Here's the $20 of my will. And we're crying about why won't He give me a nickel? He says, you will receive the good and perfect will of God. 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.