TV 1727 | True Worshippers Conclusion

How can I serve God if I'm still living for me? If I'm on the throne and I have not laid down my life as a sacrifice, who am I serving? I'm serving me. And so God calls me to come to a place where I lay down my life. I say, Lord, I don't own myself anymore. I have been bought with a price. I belong to you. Teach me how this works. Help me to grow. And, of course, the Scripture recognizes. You don't just suddenly leapfrog into this spiritual state. Now we need to be transformed, don't we? In order to actually live out that sacrifice and be able to do what he wants, I need help. I need him to come in and begin to change the way I think. And wouldn't it be a good thing for every one of us to be just a little bit more humble about what we think we know? Who cares if you're a Bible student, if you could memorize the whole book? What good would that do? I need my thinking untangled. I need him to shine a light and say, wait a minute, where did that idea come ... This idea is in control of you. You keep going back there to this anxiety, whatever it is. Anxiety and fear are two things that are obvious, that most of us are afflicted with at one time or another. But it could be anything. It could be a lust. It could be all of the things we've talked about recently. I don't want to go back all through that. But I need for God to shine a light so that I can see where that idea came from and I can stop and turn and say, Satan, get behind me.

If I don't recognize something as of satanic origin, how can I deal with it? Am I just going to believe ... What I'm doing really is believing Satan's lie and saying, God, you're lying to me. I don't want to do that. I want to honor the one who has given me the truth. That's the only defense against Satan's lies. And he is more than willing to help us if we're willing. I need to take that attitude, and I believe every true believer needs to take the attitude, God, I need to be changed. The one who thinks he knows a thing knows nothing as he ought to know it. I want to recognize there's probably a whole bunch of stuff that's in here that Satan programmed in and it gets in the way of being an effective Christian. And I need God to shine a light. And when he does, I don't want to ... No, it isn't so. Oh no, not that. I'm not really that way. Yes, I am that way. And I need him to absolutely plant his word. And then I ... It's not some sort of a feeling. It's a choice that I then have to make. When God speaks, I need to make a choice to say, yes, I believe that. I'm not waiting for a feeling. If you said it, I believe it. And I'm going to act on the ... I'm going to act as if it's true because it is. I'm going to take action based upon what you said. I'll tell you, when that kind of thing starts happening, you think Satan's going to just sit on the sidelines and say, oh well, we are going to be opposed in every possible way. Anybody had any battles lately? Yeah.

I'll tell you one thing that I believe from living a while. When Satan really kicks up his heels and goes on the war path, and there's a whole lot of oppression and we become aware that he's active, why do you think that is? He's scared. He's afraid that we're going to get a hold of some truth and he's going to lose some of his influence. Praise God, go for it, Lord. Even if it means war, and it does mean war, but God has equipped us to fight the good fight of faith. I need the Lord, even if it means war. It meant war when the Israelites went into the promised land, didn't it? And they were told not to be afraid, but to be confident in the Lord. That's what God wants for every one of us, with every issue of our lives. Every one of us is different. We've all got the issues though. You don't have any spiritual folks here who, beyond all this, I certainly am not. If you can find somebody, go ahead, have them come up here. Doesn't work that way. Paul wasn't, Paul hadn't gotten to the place yet where he was beyond all it. He was still fighting the same battles, but he always knew where his help was and he knew that I need his truth planted in my heart and my mind. I need to see things as God sees them and be honest about it and not fight back and protect, try to protect self. God help every one of us. I thought about a natural example. Natural in some ways. In Genesis chapter 15, this is a scripture we've used in the past, and I didn't mark this, so anyway, we'll find it in a minute. But Genesis chapter 15, we have part of the life of Abraham, and we know that God absolutely made a contract, if you will, a covenant with Abraham, revealed Himself to him.

In chapter 15, after this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Do not be afraid, Abram. He was still called Abram at the time. I am your shield, your very great reward. But Abraham said, Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless, and so forth. He brings up the natural limitation. Then the word, in verse 4, then the word of the Lord came to him. This man will not be your heir, servant, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir. He took him outside. Look up at the sky and count the stars, if indeed you can count them. Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be. So Abram said, No way, or okay, that sounds good. There was an absolute choice that he made. I don't doubt God helped him do it. But there was a choice that Abram made to believe God. That's what it says. Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. That's all I can do. I can't work to make myself righteous, but I can believe God's promise. When he says something, I can commit myself and say, That's true. Even though there's opposition to it, it's true. Even though it doesn't make any sense to me naturally, it's still true. That's what the nature of the kingdom of God is all about. We're saved by faith, aren't we? He talks about the land and so forth. What the Lord does now is to give him something to do, and it was a sacrifice that he was to offer. There was a symbolism in all of this, but God gave Abram a sacrifice to prepare and

took some animals and prepared it. He does that, and now Abram's waiting. Have you ever been in a place where you did what you knew to do, okay, and now what? You're waiting for something to happen. You're waiting for a feeling. You're just waiting. You know God allows us to go through that to see what we're going to choose? Are we going to say, Oh, well, that sounded like a good idea, but forget it. I guess he doesn't care. Where do you think that wisdom comes from? I'll tell you, Satan will put everything in our minds in his power to absolutely turn us aside and hinder what the Lord wants, but God deliberately stepped back and allowed him to wait. What does it say in verse 11? Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but what happened? But, praise God for that but, but Abram drove them away. Boy, I'll tell you what, Satan is going to ... If we have a sacrifice, if we are laying down our lives as a living sacrifice, you don't think there are devils that are going to come and attack that and try to lay hold of it and say, Wait a minute. You're giving them ... You're giving God something that we were trying to use. Devils want, as we said many times, to use every one of us as devil's food. They feed on our old nature. If we lay down our lives, they are losing out. They're losing something that they can feed themselves on if we're not careful. They're going to attack and they're going to do everything in their power to say, That ain't going to happen. Give it up. You're mine. You're in my power. What God is looking for from true worshipers is saying, No, what God has said is true and

I am standing on it if I have to wait, if I have to fight. Whatever my feelings say, whatever the circumstances look like, what God has said is truth. If God says it, it's true and I'm going to believe it in a practical everyday sense. Am I a true worshiper if I'm not willing to do that? Or am I just got some needs that have got to be worked on? I don't want to paint such a negative picture that people say, Oh, I'm not perfect. I don't measure up. God's bringing us along, isn't He? But do you see what it means to absolutely stand in truth? He was called to stand and He did. And there came a time. time when the Lord did show up and absolutely affirmed the promise, gave him more information. I believe that God wants to do that for every single believer because we all have a place. Remember where Paul was going when he talked about giving our bodies as a living sacrifice and the fact that it's many bodies in one sacrifice and how God's changing our mind. Where does he go with that? He goes into the knowledge of this is what the kingdom looks like. It's a body of people with divine ability to help each other. Your life, once you give it to me, is not about you. It's about what I can do through you for others. Boy, that is an absolute opposite of human nature. I need him to do some major changes in my thinking. I suspect one or two of you out here probably might need some of the same thing. You think, is the Lord willing to help us? He sure is, isn't he? Praise God. Anyway, Abraham, that's all God was looking for. Abraham was a true worshiper and yes, it meant a sacrifice. You remember the Old Testament sacrifices, I think we preached on this one time, where when they brought a sacrifice, if I brought a lamb, I needed to offer a sacrifice.

I'd committed a sin and so I'm going to the priests at the tabernacle and I'm bringing a lamb. What did I do? Do I just say, here's the lamb, see you later, I got a lunch date? No, I stood there with my hand, probably no doubt my right hand, on the head of that lamb while the lamb was being killed. What's that saying? I'm identifying with this. This is me. This represents me and you see all of that truth is carried forward until ultimately we become the sacrifice. We become the sacrifice. May God help us to understand that our lives here are worthless without him. Nothing here would last. That's why he says, take up your cross. That's why when he went to the cross, he took you with him and we died there with him. We don't live as if that's true, do we? It's gotten quiet. You think there's some truth here that the Lord wants us to get in a deeper way? None of this is new to us, but I believe the Lord wants to focus our minds upon it to realize the tangle of lies that Satan has planted in every one of our minds that God is untangling if we're willing. Lord, do it. Do what you said, what you promised to do. I need you to change my mind. I need you to change my whole, the purpose of my life and everything I have is yours. If you want to leave me with a whole lot of stuff, fine. It's yours. Show me what to do with it. I don't own anything anymore.

Doesn't mean he's going to impoverish people necessarily. Very rarely does that happen and if it does, God's got a purpose in all of that, but I'll tell you, it's just that it's yours. Who I marry, what I do, it's yours, Lord. You make the choice. You know what's right. You've got a plan that you've already planned before eternity and I need to walk out that plan. So, Lord, I just present myself. As far as I'm concerned, as far as this world is concerned, I'm dead. Just teach me how to live, how for you to live in me. But here's the other thing that I've become more and more conscious of. It just didn't, Jesus did not just say true worshipers worship in truth. Spirit and truth because God knows that I've got to have some, I've got to have a source of life and power that is not in me. I need power and I believe with all my heart. God wants to make himself known in power in his church in a greater way. Now part of me is afraid of this because I've seen the wrong kind where people are glorying in the power and somebody, you heal somebody, oh come on, let's have a crusade. My God, it's not about those things. It's about the power of God should be resident in God's people without any show whatsoever. I mean, there might be an instance where someone is called to pray for somebody and there's a healing and nothing's ever said about it or just praise God, look what he did for me. But there's no, it's just like, it's not normal and natural. If Christ is here, he's got power to do anything. And I find myself needing. Believe that and stop looking at the things that make me fearful and anxious and wondering and questioning and all of those things that are so natural to us as human beings and just to say, Lord, you have put me in this position, I'm asking you for your power to do whatever you've called me to do.

That's not just me, that's you. That's every single one of us. God wants to impart his spirit and his power into you so you can grow to be what God wants you to be. Every single member of the body of Christ is meant to have him in you. That doesn't necessarily mean going out and raising the dead. It could. Do we actually believe God about these things? Kind of, sort of, yeah, well, on paper, yeah. Wouldn't it be a good thing if we would ask God to help us in this area, say, Lord, you're the one who said this, it's not just truth, it's spirit. You imparted your spirit so that we can, so that you can live in us. How much are, how many things are there that you want to do that we're in the way of? Because we're so full of self and unbelief. You think maybe the Lord's got some work to do in us? It's wonderful that we can know all these scriptures and say, yeah, that's true, praise God, it's wonderful, and worship him. That's good. But there's so much more that God wants to dig down in our lives and our hearts and change us and get us to the point where he can do whatever he wants, and it's just as natural as breathing because Christ is resident in his church. Anybody want to just pray with me and say, Lord, help us? Let me give you a little basis for doing that. I'm sure you know very well, Luke chapter 11, and this is where Jesus was praying. You have the record of what we call the Lord's Prayer, and it's all about acknowledging him and worshiping him and trusting him with our daily needs because he does care, doesn't he? He knows all about that. Forgiving people and all of that. But then Jesus said in verse five, suppose you have a friend and you go to him at midnight

and say, friend, lend me three loaves of bread. A friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I have no food to offer him, and suppose the one inside answers, don't bother me. The door is already locked, my children are in bed, and I can't get up and give you anything. I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, he will surely get up and give you as much as you need. Now why would the Lord give us a story like that if he were not calling upon us to absolutely exercise shameless audacity? If we're praying about something that we know is God's will, and I'm not talking necessarily about a situation, but we've used those scriptures about the prayers that Paul prayed, and fill us with his spirit, give us knowledge and wisdom and understanding. Every one of those things, we have the right to go to God with shameless audacity and saying, God, I'm not letting you go until you bless me. Wouldn't that be a good thing to do? Instead of just, oh well, here I am and going through, this is the way it's going to be. We've all been given lives of defeat and self-pity, but God wants us to have that kind of a spirit. So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. And every one of those is an ask, and keep asking, as some of the other translations say. For everyone who asks, receives. The one who seeks, finds. The one who knocks, the door will be opened. So which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, you will give him a snake instead? Anybody here would do that? I don't think so. If you then, if he asks for an egg, will you give him a scorpion?

If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? Do we have the right to call upon God and say, God, I need your spirit to come and fill me? Or if I got to, I got to do this, I got to do that, I got to get this right, I got to say this just a certain way, I got to go, God help us. Satan will put everything in our minds that he can think of. And then we're looking for an experience. How do I know it happened? Well, I spoke in tongues, or I did this, or I did that. God can come any old way. I've had experiences where I did feel exhilaration. I've had plenty where I didn't feel a thing. That has nothing to do with it. Abraham didn't believe God because he felt something. He believed it because of the One who spoke it. Jesus spoke this. It's meant to encourage His people to call upon Him and say, God, I need Your truth planted in my mind. I need Your Spirit to come and fill me and enable me to do what You have said because I don't have the power. Didn't Jesus die to give us everything we needed for life and godliness? He did, and yet we live as paupers. I haven't said a thing you haven't heard before. Anybody here needs any of this? Yeah. Yeah, we do, and that's why the Lord would say it over and over again until we get it. We think, oh, if I know these scriptures and I get this, I believe all of that, but I'll tell you how much of what is on these pages that we say we know actually is in control of our daily thinking and our daily choices. Boy, I need Him to go plant something in here, and I need His Spirit to give me the power to make those choices and say, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to recognize what Satan has said. I'm going to say, get behind me, Satan. Sorry, I only stutter when I talk, but praise God. I'm so glad He uses weakness because that's all I got. You know, that's part of what the Lord would work in me, just like He did in, I'm sorry, you know, Paul, but like He did with Paul. He's going to do the same thing with you at times. He's going to let us feel our weakness, and then what are we going to do? Say, oh, well, I'm weak. I guess I can't do

it, Lord. Or are we going to say, my strength is made perfect in weakness. Much more than will I glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. I wonder how many times the Lord longs to share Himself in greater power, greater reality, and we're holding back in self-conscious unbelief. I believe with all my heart God has so much more for every one of us to learn how to take ... He's going to give us. Didn't He say give us our daily bread? Well, that certainly applies to the natural needs, but Jesus also quoted the Old Testament, man shall not live by bread only, but by what? Every word that proceeds, present tense, out of the mouth of God. If we're willing, and we're asking, and we're expecting, there is a God who will speak His words into our hearts and into our minds, and when He does, we have a choice to listen and to treat that as the truth. If we're not, are we really honoring Him? Are we saying, basically, I believe what the devil says, Lord. I'm just not so sure about what you said, in a practical sense. I don't want to say that in a way that puts everybody in condemnation, but that would cause us to realize our need. Lord understands all this. He's not saying it to condemn, but He certainly is saying it to help us to wake up and realize He's got so much for us. If we will ask with shameless audacity for the stuff we know is His Word, we know it's His will, and we'll recognize I don't know the stuff I think I know. I can't do the things I think I can do. I need You, Lord, and I'm glad to just present myself and say, Lord, go for it. Make the changes in my heart and my life that are needful, and I'm looking to You, and I'm believing You to do what You promised to do, and then to You will be the glory, and then You can start living out Your life through me instead of me living mine. I'll tell you, is that worth praying? That's something where we need to be asking God actively and expecting Him to do it and understanding what's going on. I believe it is. To God be the glory. This has been the Midnight Cry broadcast. If you would like a DVD or CD of today's message in its entirety, please request it by program number. While it is not required, a donation of $10 for DVDs and $5 for CDs is suggested to help with expenses. Also, for those who request it, we will send you our quarterly

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