How To Find Your Place My theme tonight is:
How To Find Your Place. I believe this is a message which
is important for every Christian. There are some messages from
the word of God which only concern certain people, but I believe this message,
How to Find Your Place, is of the greatest importance
for every Christian. I believe the lack of understanding
about this message often leads to great frustration
in the lives of Christians. So, I just trust that God will
enable me to present this truth in such a way that you’ll
be able to receive it and apply it whatever way
is appropriate in your own life. I want to begin with a Scripture
from 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 9. 2 Timothy 1:9. We have to read the last word
of verse 8, which is God, and then we go on with verse 9: ...God has saved us and
called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His
own purpose and grace which was given to us in
Christ Jesus before time began. So that Scripture says that if
you are saved you are also called. Let me ask you a question tonight. Ponder on it for a moment
and then respond. How many of you here tonight
know that you are saved? All right. Now if I were to ask how
many of you know that you are called I doubt whether... All right, how many of you
know that you are called? That’s a good response. The fact of the matter is
that many, many Christians who know that they are saved do
not know that they are also called. If you are saved you are called.
You may not know it but you are called because when
God saves us He also calls us. And Paul says with a holy calling. It’s very important to understand that God has a calling
for you which is holy. It is something that you need to
treat with the greatest reverence and respect. It is a treasure, it’s more valuable than any earthly
treasure that you can ever possess. I remember when God specifically
revealed His calling to me. I was saved as a soldier
in the British Army in 1941. Then the army sent me
to the Middle East and I was there for
the rest of my military service, four and a half years. And in due course the army took me to the country that was then called
Palestine which is now Israel. And there, in what was then
a little kind of settlement, it’s now quite a major populated area
called Kiriat Motzkin, north of Haifa, one day I was walking up and down amidst a lot of bales
of medical supplies because I was in the medical corps and they were storing medical supplies,
ready to take them into Europe when Europe should be
liberated from the Nazis. I was just walking up and
down between these bales and the Spirit of God came on me and I spoke very clearly and
forcefully in an unknown tongue. And then God gave me in English
the interpretation of what I’d said in the unknown tongue. This was not
the first time that it had happened. I would like to say in general God
has spoken to me this way probably, over the years,
several hundred times. And, I cannot recall a single time
that it was not absolutely accurate. I have discovered that if
we will hear the voice of God and let Him speak to us,
He speaks with total accuracy. And this time
the Lord said this to me —and He usually but not always speaks
in what I call King James English, which is very elegant English, much
more elegant than our modern English. Also, much more specific. One reason being that in King
James English, Elizabethan English, we have singular and plural for you. Thou is singular, ye is plural. And sometimes it’s very important to
know whether it is singular or plural. It was for me in this case. God said to me, I have called thee
to be a teacher of the Scriptures in truth and faith and love, which are in Christ Jesus
for many. Now, that was 45 years ago and as I look back on the 45 years
that have elapsed since then I have to say, every word of that
has proved totally correct. And, in those days I could
never have had any idea of how many the many would be. I suppose today through the grace
of God my ministry by radio, in cassettes, in the printed word
and in my personal ministry, reaches millions every day.
I don’t think that’s an exaggeration because it reaches mainland
China seven times in four dialect every 24 hours. It reaches Soviet Russia in Russian
two or three times every 24 hours. It reaches much of the
English-speaking world in English. It also reaches Central and South
America in Spanish. That’s the radio. My books and cassettes are in more than 100 languages in
the hands of leaders and teachers. In more than 100 nations,
thank you. And then there are the people that
Ruth and I minister to personally. But I suppose
we only see two percent of all the people who are
reached by my ministry. Now, if God had told me in 1944 that
I would be reaching millions every day I think I would have had
to say it just couldn’t happen. Because in those days they didn’t
have the means of communication. Radio was not yet fully developed,
there were no tape recorders and there was no television. And in
general, communication was very limited. But God knew in advance
what it would be. And so He declared to me then
the central thrust of my ministry, which is to be a teacher
of the Scriptures. Everything else in my ministry has been built on that foundation
of teaching the Scriptures. God has given me other ministries.
I have a ministry of healing, ministry of delivering people
from evil spirits, and so on. But everything is based on
the teaching of the word of God. And if I ever get away from teaching
God’s word I get into trouble. Actually, you probably heard
the saying: a duck in water. When I’m teaching the Bible
I’m like a duck in water. I mean, I’m absolutely free,
I’m in my element. But you take a duck out of water and
put it on land and it looks very clumsy. And that’s how I am if I ever get
out of the scope of my ministry. And I give you this
as an example because it’s true in some
measure for every Christian. In your ministry, in your calling,
you’re like a duck in water. When you get out of your calling,
if you’re not in your calling, you’re like a duck on land. A duck waddles on land,
it’s clumsy. You look at it and wonder
how it could ever get around. But once it gets onto the water
it’s altogether different. And that’s why it’s so important for every one of us to know
the area in which we are called. Another thing that I would bring out
in those words that God spoke to me, He said:
in truth and faith and love. And that again has
proved progressive. Before I was saved I was a philosopher,
I was a logician, I was a reasoner. So the first thing that I grasped
in the Scripture was truth. And I sought to find the truth
and fit the truth together and see what I would call
the intellectual framework. But, people used to tell me
I was very hard to approach. I was distant; I just presented truth
and let people help themselves. And also, truth really can
sometimes frustrate you if you can’t receive it with faith. Because, you can see what you
could be but you can’t appropriate it. So God led me into a place
where I could minister in faith and I could minister faith to
the people to whom I ministered truth so that they were then able by faith
to apprehend and apply the truth. But that wasn’t the end because
the end of the commandment, as it says in 1 Timothy 1:5–6,
is love. And basically I have learned that we really cannot help people in the
Christian life unless we love them. If you don’t love people
you can’t really do much for them. And I have to give God
the glory that gradually He has melted my somewhat
austere, military, British exterior and today I really love people.
I love you people. I look at you with the love of God. I
long for the best for every one of you whether I’ve ever known you personally or not. My desire is that you should be
all that you can be in Christ. So I just give that as an example
of the faithfulness of God in respect of calling. Now you don’t have probably
the same calling that I do but you have a specific
calling from God. And you will never
be really satisfied, you’ll never be a duck in water, until you’re in your calling. There
are many, many different callings. Going back to 1 Timothy 1:9,
we find it’s even more exciting. It says: God has saved us and
called us with a holy calling... I want to emphasize
that your calling is holy. Once I realized what
God had called me to be, I made up my mind that I,
by His grace, would be the best teacher
of the Scriptures that I could be, not comparing myself
with any other teacher. And for well over forty years
my life has been shaped by my desire to be able to teach
the Scriptures the best that I can. One of the things that I have
done is discipline my mind. I am very, very careful
what I let into my mind. Basically, I hardly ever read anything
unless I feel God wants me to read it. Before I was saved I read hundreds
of books in various languages. But I’m not that way now. I very seldom look
at a newspaper. If I want to find out
what’s going on in the world – my wife Ruth and I
have made up our minds – the best way is to buy
a weekly news magazine. I don’t want to advertise anyone
particularly on television but there are two or three magazines. You see, if you try to find
the news by watching television, you waste a whole lot of time. I don’t know whether you have
commercial television here. You’ve got to sit through
a lot of advertisements and a lot of news that’s absolutely
unimportant one week later. You might just as well
have never heard it. I don’t want to waste time.
For me time is extremely precious. And so I try to store my mind only
with the things that will enable me to teach the Bible with clarity. If I have one ambition
it’s to be clear. And sometimes I’ve
worked at it for years. There are truths in the Bible that were
very confusing to me years ago but I have plowed away at it,
worked at it, whittled it down, until in most cases now
what I teach I’m able to teach with simplicity and with clarity. My aim is not to confuse people. Sometimes at the end of a sermon
somebody will come to me and say, Brother Prince,
that was a deep message. And I say,
Lord, what did I do wrong now? I don’t have any aim to be profound
in the usual sense of the word. My aim is to be simple. People have said sometimes
about me that when I teach they think why didn’t I ever know that,
because it’s obvious. That’s my aim. I would like everybody to
go out of a meeting saying: Well, what he said
was absolutely obvious. I have no higher ambition than that. So I’ve disciplined myself. Let me give you an example
from athletics. Any athlete today that wants
to compete in the world Olympics has got to discipline himself
or herself. Such an athlete has to be
very careful about what they eat, about the way they
spend their time, the exercise they take,
the things they read, they’ve got to build up a
positive attitude in their minds. They’ve got to go into that competition
believing they can succeed. I was a very close friend
in my early years with one of the most famous
ballerinas of our century. Anybody who knows about the ballet,
her name is Margot Fontaine. I was a close friend of hers
when she was an unknown dancer. I consider her to be the most
successful ballerina of this century. That’s my judgment. But I’m not surprised because I know
how seriously she took her dancing. There were other ballerinas
in the same company that perhaps had the same ability, but they didn’t have
the same dedication. I’m not encouraging
you to go in to the ballet but what I’m trying to show you
is if you want to succeed you’ve got to discipline yourself,
you’ve got to order your priorities, you’ve got to eliminate
a lot of things out out of your life which are non-essential. So, it’s a holy calling.
I wonder if you understand that. I mean, it’s not
to be played with, it’s not to be bartered
for anything else. It’s holy. And then Paul goes on
here in 2 Timothy 1:9: ...has called us with a holy calling,
not according to our works, but according to His own purpose
and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before time began.
That’s an exciting statement. Before anything was ever created,
before God ever set time in motion, He knew what He was going to do,
He knew you would be born, He knew you would become a believer
and He had a plan for your life. I tell people you are not an accident
looking for somewhere to happen. There’s a divine plan and
purpose for every believer which didn’t start in time; it started
before creation. God foreknew us. The Scripture says
He predestined us. That means He arranged
the course that our life was to take and He had a specific plan
and purpose for every one of us. And then it says it’s not
according to our works. It’s not according
to what we can do. It’s not according, necessarily,
to what we have been trained to do. I think I can illustrate this from
my own case. I was an only child; I never had brothers or sisters. Girls were a very strange race to me. I didn’t understand them. I mean, I had girlfriends,
but that’s different. You can have a girlfriend
without understanding girls! And, you know,
I was intellectually very successful. So you’d think God would
have me to be a professor in some college
or something like that. When I discovered my calling
I married a lady who had a children’s home
with eight girls in it and I became a father
to eight girls in one day! You couldn’t think of anybody less naturally qualified
for that position than me. Basically God tends to put us in a
position for which we’re not qualified. That’s not always true. The reason being, He doesn’t
want us to rely on our own ability. It’s not according to our works
but it’s according to His grace. You think of some of the most
successful servants of God throughout the centuries,
they’ve been weak people. Often people with few qualifications who’ve been put in places
of danger and difficulty. You wouldn’t ever imagine
that they would succeed. But you see, the thing about grace
is this: Grace cannot be earned. You’ll never achieve grace
by working for it. Works and grace are
mutually exclusive. I explain it this way. Grace begins
where human ability ends. If you can do it by yourself,
why should God give you His grace? But when you come to the place where
God wants you to do something and you can’t do it, then you have to depend on His grace.
And that’s what God wants us to do. So let me read that verse again.
I didn’t intend to spend more than about two minutes
on it but anyhow, here we are. ...God has saved us
and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but
according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us
in Christ Jesus before time began. If you can just
begin to grasp that it will give you a sense
of being important. Not that you become conceited but that you realize you’re part
of a tremendous plan which God conceived
before He created anything. One of the greatest problems
with people in the world today is low self-esteem. They don’t think
they’re worth much. And I would have to say
a person with low self-esteem is unlikely
to make the best of life. And I believe that a Christian
should never have that problem. Let me explain two reasons.
First, the one I’ve given. If you’re a Christian you’re
part of an eternal plan. You have a special job,
you have a special calling —one that nobody else has. You have a responsibility
that no one else can carry out. And then secondly, you know how
to find out how much you’re worth? I’ll tell you. Right now my wife and I
are in the middle of selling a house. Let’s say we were told,
which we were when we bought it, that it was worth
55,000 U.S. dollars. When we tried to sell it we discovered nobody would
pay 55,000 U.S. dollars for it. So we are happy to get fifty. Now, what’s the house worth? It’s worth
what someone will pay for it. You can put any price tag you like
on something you want to sell but it’s worth what
someone will pay, no more. Now, you are worth what
God was willing to pay for you. What did He pay for you?
He redeemed you with what? The precious blood of Jesus Christ,
something that is infinitely valuable, something on which
you can put no price tag. And if you can grasp that fact that God was willing to pay the
blood of His Son to redeem you, you’ll never have a problem
with self-worth again. Because you’re worth what God was
willing to pay for you. You see that? Let's look in Ephesians chapter two. I’m sure you didn’t see that
because I look at your faces and you’ve got a kind of
look of surprise on your face. Well, try to digest it. Try to absorb it.
Meditate on it. Read it over and over again
until it becomes real to you. You see, God’s word is a mirror. And if you want to know
what you’re really like inside you have to look in the mirror. The first time you look
in the mirror it’s horrible. You discover you’re a sinner, you’re defiled, your garments
are horribly unclean. But if you’re wise and you act
on what God shows you, you repent and trust Jesus for salvation, you’re cleansed, you’re washed,
you’re sanctified. God takes away
your filthy garments and clothes you with a garment of
salvation and a robe of righteousness. And next time you look
in the mirror you’re astonished. You don't see the old,
whatever it might be... You don’t ever see that old person,
you see somebody quite different. You, changed, transformed, wearing a garment of salvation and
a spotless robe of righteousness. But that’s only the beginning because
God intends to go on changing you. I didn’t intend to look at this Scripture
but look for a moment at 2 Corinthians. Chapter 3, verse 18,
if I remember rightly. Yes, 2 Corinthians 3:18: But we all, with unveiled face
beholding as in a mirror... [What’s the mirror?
The word of God.] ...the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the
same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. You see, if you want the Spirit
of the Lord to transform you, you’ve got to keep
looking in the mirror. If you look away from the mirror the
Spirit of God no longer works on you. He only works on you when
you’re looking in the mirror. But if you go on looking in the mirror
and yielding to the Spirit of God you see glory. That’s for you.
And you think that’s wonderful. The next time you look you’ve
been moved from glory to glory. It’s progressive, you understand? The problem with most Christians
who have a low sense of self-worth is they don’t spend enough time
looking in the mirror. They spend a lot of time
looking in the physical mirror and they’re not always
satisfied with what they see. But they don’t spend time
looking in the spiritual mirror which is very satisfying
if you yield to the Spirit of God. And really, there are no limits. We are continually being transformed
from glory to glory to glory to glory. Indefinitely. Now let’s turn to
Ephesians 2:8-10, which was the passage
that Ruth and I proclaimed. For by grace we have
been saved through faith; and that not of ourselves,
it is the gift of God... I understand that to mean we didn’t
get the faith, God gave us the faith. He gave us the faith to be saved. I know when I was confronted with
the gospel I realized two things. I couldn’t understand the gospel and I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to
understand and I wanted to believe. But God brought me to a place where
when I did understand and I did believe I realized God had
given me the understanding, God had given me the faith.
I had nothing to boast about. It didn’t proceed out of myself,
it was given me by God’s grace. And then it says: We are God’s workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand,
that we should walk in them. That’s a wonderful Scripture. It doesn’t fully come out
in the English translation. The word that’s translated
workmanship in Greek is poeima. And it’s the word from which
we get the English word poem. So, we’re God’s poem. We’re not just something
He manufactured but we’re His creative masterpiece,
created in Christ Jesus. And then what really blesses me
when I meditate on this is when God wanted to show
the universe what He could create, to display His creative
ability to the whole universe —and all of it had
been created by Him— just to prove what He could do He went
to the scrap heap for His material. And that’s where He found
you and me, on the scrap heap. Is that right?
At least I know where I was. And God said: You want to see
what I can do with scrap material? This is going to be the crown
of all my creative genius. It’s the church of Jesus Christ,
the bride of Jesus Christ. That’s what we are.
We’re His poem, we’re His creative masterpiece.
And we’re created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared
beforehand, that we should walk in them. That brings out the same truth
as 1 Timothy 1:9. We don’t have to decide
what we’re going to do. We don’t have to fashion
a career for ourselves. We have to find out
what are the good works which God prepared
beforehand for us to walk in. You see, I’ve seen Christian
take two different courses. Some of them, they’re saved
but they’re personally ambitious. They want to make something
of themselves in this world. So they go about the ordinary way,
they get education and so on. They work hard at it
and they become something. But it probably isn’t
what God intended them to be. And then there are other Christians
who abandon themselves to God. They give up
their personal ambitions. They say,
God, make me what you want. I don’t want to boast
but in a certain sense when I married my first wife and
became father to those eight girls, I renounced a very
promising university career. The leader of my college told me that within a few years I’d get
such and such positions. And really, I was set for success, if you know the British educational
system before World War II. If you had become a fellow at King’s
College, Cambridge at the age of 24, you had it made. And a lot of people,
some of my friends, thought I was just
throwing my life away to give all that up and just
take responsibility for eight girls. Well,
if I’d gone back to Cambridge and got the position
that maybe I could have got, I would have had to retire
at age 65, if not sooner, with a very minimal pension. Here I am, nearly 74,
I’m not even thinking of retiring. I’m traveling the world; I’m doing
the thing that I enjoy most. I am seeing lives
continually changed. Why should I give that up for the sake
of some little career at a university? See what I’m saying? You’ve all heard, I’m sure,
of David Livingstone, the missionary who really opened up
Africa, who is a world famous name. He became a doctor
but then went to Africa. His brother also became a doctor. So when David went to Africa his brother thought he was doing totally the wrong thing. The brother said,
I don’t want that kind of life. I want to make a name for myself. Today in the British encyclopedia,
Encyclopedia Britannica, David’s brother has one line stating
he’s the brother of David Livingstone. David has sixteen paragraphs! You see, in the long run
it always pays to trust God. There’ll always be a step of faith.
You’ll always have to give up something. Jesus said you have to
give up your own life but if you lose your life you’ll find
the life that God has for you, which is exciting,
it’s challenging. I don’t for a moment suggest that you’ll have exactly
the same kind of life that I had but you will have a life that will be
rich and exciting and challenging. And when you come to the end of your
life you won’t look back on many years that have produced
nothing of permanent value, you’ll have fruit
that will endure for eternity. So, bear in mind
you are God’s workmanship, created for something special
that He has for you to do. And you will never find
full satisfaction until you discover
that special something. So my aim is to help you. I believe the best place
to turn to in the Bible for the steps to discover
what God wants you to be is Romans chapter 12,
the first 8 verses. And we’ll look through these
systematically. Romans 12:1–8. Paul begins: I beseech you therefore,
brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living
sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. The first line contains
the word therefore. I am always telling people, and
some of you have heard me say it, when you find a
therefore in the Bible you want to find out
what it’s there for. So, I want to tell you what the therefore
is there for in verse 1 of chapter 12. The previous 11 chapters have been the most
wonderful exposition, in my opinion, the greatest
masterpiece of logic in language, by which Paul has unfolded
the eternal plan of God for salvation through faith
in Jesus Christ. He’s dealt with it
in many different aspects. Also in chapters
nine, ten and eleven, he has particularly unfolded
God’s plan to deal with Israel. Now he has dealt with the theology,
and I want to point out to you that the New Testament
never presents mere theology. It always challenges us to apply the
truth in our lives in a practical way. So that’s where
the therefore comes in. Paul says in the light of all
that God has done for us, of all His grace and mercy,
what is our appropriate response? And now he tells us. I beseech you therefore,
brethren, that... Now, I love this passage because I was a philosopher and
I know how complicated philosophy can be, how involved. And a lot of theology is just
philosophy with religious language. If Paul had been
an average theologian he’d have come out with a lot of
complicated long sounding words. But, he didn’t. He came down to
what Americans call the nitty-gritty. And what is it?
It’s what you do with your body. So in the light of all this
glorious truth Paul says now, I want you to put your body
on God’s altar as a living sacrifice. So it’s essentially what you do with
your body that’s going to determine your success in life. Now why does Paul say
a living sacrifice? Because he’s contrasting it with
the sacrifices of the Old Testament where the animal sacrificed was
placed on the altar but it was dead. He says I want you to put yourself
just as really on the altar of God but alive, not dead. The response that God requires, is that we give ourselves
unreservedly to God as a sacrifice. We put ourselves on the altar. Now Jesus, in His teaching to
the Pharisees, pointed out to them that the sacrifice
didn’t sanctify the altar but the altar sanctified the
sacrifice that was placed upon it. To sanctify means to make holy. I don’t need to go into your
background but many of you, in the course of your lives
up to this point, have been involved in things that
were impure and sinful and unholy. Basically, that’s the major problem of the
younger generation in the world today; they’ve been involved in
sexual immorality, drugs, the occult. Maybe by God’s grace that
doesn’t apply to some of you. But suppose such a person gets
wonderfully saved by Jesus. Is there any possibility that
a body that’s been defiled by sin and evil practices
can ever become holy? The answer is yes
but only in one way. If you place your
body on the altar, the altar will sanctify
what’s placed on it. There’s no other way that
you can have a holy body in the light of all that you’ve
been through, some of you. And suppose you’re not married and you meet another Christian
and you want to marry. Marriage is a union of two bodies. Can you come together
with holy bodies? Yes, if you’ve placed your bodies
on God’s altar. It’s marvelous. When I think of my own background
and I don’t need to go into any details, I could look back on so many
things that I wish I’d never done. But I don’t have to spend the rest
of my life regretting what I did. All I have to do is
put my body on the altar and let the altar
take care of the past. The altar sanctifies the sacrifice.
Shall we say that together? The altar sanctifies the sacrifice.
Good, thank you. So that’s the first thing. And then Paul says that your sacrifice will be acceptable
to God and it’s your reasonable service. It’s the least you can do in view
of what God has done for you. You see, the first great sacrifice in
the Christian life was offered by who? Who offered the first great sacrifice?
Jesus, that’s right. He gave His body
on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins. He bore
our sins in His own body on the tree that we, being dead to sins,
might live for righteousness; by whose wounds we were healed. Now, if we follow
in the steps of Jesus we will come to the place where God
asks us to put our body on the altar. Not in literal crucifixion
but in a total surrender to God where you say:
God, now my body is yours. I don’t control it, I don’t choose
what happens to it. It belongs to you. From now on I don't decide the work I
do, the clothes I wear, the food I eat. All that’s your responsibility
because I’ve given my body to you. And then Paul goes on, verse 2: Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind... You cannot renew your own mind. But when you present your body and
make that surrender, God moves in, and begins to transform the way you
think and you are renewed in your mind. Basically the difference between
your natural way of thinking, your unrenewed mind, and the mind that God will give you
through the Holy Spirit is that your mind is self-centered. The renewed mind is God centered. In the natural we all say
what will I get out of this? With the renewed mind we say
what will God get out of this? Will this glorify God?
Will this please God? Paul says when your mind is renewed
then you will be able to prove, to find out in experience: ...what is that good and acceptable
and perfect will of God. You see, without your mind being
renewed you cannot find God’s will. God has a plan for you
but you can’t find it. The first step is present your body and let God renew your mind.
And with your renewed mind you can find out God’s will. And, it’s progressive. It’s good,
acceptable and perfect. It’s good. God never willed anything
evil for any of His children. You can trust God; He knows better
what is good for you than you do. Second, it’s acceptable.
The more you discover it, the more you are pleased with it. And finally, it’s perfect. This is an astonishing fact
but God’s perfect will includes every detail of our lives,
there is nothing left out. As I continue to walk with the Lord
I’m surprised from time to time by the fact that God has arranged
every tiny detail of our lives. I find myself in a situation sometimes
I didn’t plan. I look around and I say: God, you arranged that.
I didn’t even think about it. Ruth and I travel so much,
we’re always staying in hotels. But we’ve learned to pray: God, put us
in the right hotel, in the right room, and let everything
be the way you want it. We travel so much by airplanes,
we always pray: Lord, let us travel in the right
airplane. Let us sit in the right seat. It makes a difference what
side of the street you walk on. Did you know that? I think I told you I have an
adopted African daughter. About, I forget how many years,
four years ago she came to spend time with Ruth
and me in our home in Jerusalem. One afternoon she said she wanted to
go down to the center of Jerusalem. She described to us she was
walking on one side of the street, and she felt prompted just to cross
the street, she didn’t know why. A minute or two later
she ran into a couple who were old friends of hers,
who knew she was in Jerusalem, and had been praying that they might
meet her. See? God arranged that. There are no accidents
in the Christian life. Everything is beautifully
planned by God. If you could see heaven’s computer, it would astonish you. There is
nothing that isn’t programmed on it. That’s a metaphor,
you understand. All right.
We’re going on. Verse 3, Paul says: For I say through
the grace given to me to every one who is among you, not to think of himself more
highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, as God has
dealt to each one a measure of faith. Your renewed mind will cause
you to be realistic, sober. You see, I’ve discovered that the Holy
Spirit is the greatest realist on earth. He’s never sentimental, He never
exaggerates, He never misrepresents. He tells it like it is. Now, some of us when
we start the Christian life we may have great ambitions. I’m going to be an apostle, I’m going
to do this and I’m going to do that. Paul says be careful. Don’t let your imagination run
away with you. Be realistic. Find out just how much
faith God has given you because your faith will determine
what you’re going to do for God. But, if you walk in the faith
that you have faithfully, God will increase your faith. You see, if you wanted to be
employed by a bank in Singapore, you’re a young man or a young lady, you wouldn’t walk in and
apply to be president of the bank. That would be unrealistic. You’d possibly be quite grateful for a
job just emptying wastepaper baskets. But, I’ll tell you, this is a true story.
This is about a young man in Germany who got into the drug culture and his mind was absolutely
wrecked with drugs. Then he met Jesus
and was wonderfully saved and a Christian pastor took him
into his home to rehabilitate him. The teaching of the pastor was very simple: Whatever you do, ask Jesus
to help you and do your best. And I mean, he was unemployable, nobody would employ him.
But eventually, he got a job, I think in
some manufacturing firm. And all he was doing was emptying
the baskets and taking the trash out. But his method was:
Jesus, help me. I’ll do my best. And you know, the Bible says:
A faithful man, who can find? The only qualification
he had was faithfulness. So after awhile he got promoted. And then he got promoted and then
he was doing quite a responsible job. And then he thought:
Well, now I need more education because the Germans really believe
in education. I need special training. So he went to see his boss and said:
I think I’m going to leave and get some special training. And his boss said:
You can’t leave. You’re the only man in
this business I can trust! Stay with me and I’ll train you
to take over the business. That’s just the result
of faithfulness, you see? Doing what you’re placed to do. So, Paul says be realistic. Don’t expect to be the president
the first day. But whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord
and ask Jesus to help you. And then he goes on to say— and now this is very important, this is
really the climax of what I want to say. He speaks about the body of Christ;
that is, all believers. We’re all individual
members of one body. And you cannot find
fulfillment on your own. A lot of Christians
make that mistake. In order to find fulfillment you’ve got to find your place in
the body and take your place. You can’t be just a little finger
wiggling on your own. You’ve got to be
attached to a hand, which is attached to an arm, which
is attached to a body. See that? So the essence
of finding your place is finding your place
in the body of Christ. And so Paul goes on now: For as
we have many members in one body and all the members do
not have the same function, so we, being many,
are one body in Christ, and individually members
one of another. So each one of us
is an individual member but we’re all part of one body. And what Paul is saying
is if you’ll present your body, be renewed in your mind,
be realistic about your faith, start where God puts you; you can find your
particular place in the body, you can find your particular job. And then you will discover that
the faith that God has given you is the faith you need for that job. You see, a lot of Christians
are always struggling for faith. My observation is in most cases it’s because they’re trying
to do the wrong job. If they were trying to do the job
for which God created them they would find they
had the faith they needed. Take two members of my body,
my hand and my foot. Thank God I’m healthy. Essentially
they do what they were created to do. But suppose my hand tried
to be a foot. It would be a failure. I’d put a shoe on it
and begin to walk on it and I would be very clumsy
and ineffective. Or, suppose my foot
wanted to be a hand. It again would have
tremendous problems. So, it may be for some of you
that you are struggling and trying to be and do something
which isn’t what God created you to be. If that’s so, you need to
go back and ask God: God, where did I miss your purpose? And very often it’s because
you’ve been, let me say, sentimental, or you’ve formed a picture
of things which is not realistic. Paul says you’ve got to learn
to be sober, to think realistically, to see just what you are and
what God has enabled you to do. So, the aim in finding your place is to find your place
in the body of Christ. No Christian can be
truly fulfilled on his own. As an individualist without
any connection with the body, you’ll never find satisfaction. Then Paul goes on to speak about
gifts and the word is charisma from which we get the
famous word charismatic. Let me say that the word charisma is derived from the Greek word
for grace which is charis. So, basically the charismatic gifts
are expressions of God’s grace. They enable you to do things which you
cannot do by your own natural ability. You remember,
grace cannot be earned and grace begins
where human ability ends. So now Paul talks about
various different charismata. And he gives some suggestions
but they’re only suggestions. What I want to point out to you is, when you find your place and begin to function in that place, you’ll find that God has equipped
you with the gifts that you need. I think it is foolish to seek
gifts just on their own because you may be seeking a gift
which isn’t the one that you need. But if you’ll seek
your place in the body God will equip you with the gifts. At a certain time in my ministry I was thrust into the ministry of
delivering people from evil spirits. I didn’t apply for the job,
I had no ambitions; it dropped in my lap. I mean,
I was confronted with a situation where I either had to do it
or admit total defeat. So in desperation I came against
the demon and I won the battle. And that was a total
turning point in my ministry. I’ve often said about my first wife
and myself from that time onwards we never had to look
for customers! They would beat
a path to our door. And that basically would be true today
if I would devote myself to that ministry. But, why I say that is because
when I came into that ministry I needed certain gifts. I needed a word of knowledge. I needed discerning of spirits.
I’d had them maybe off and on but I suddenly discovered
I really had them. I remember a man
brought to me his sister who had a lot of
emotional problems. He sat her down in the living
room with my wife and me and I looked at her,
and I said to her: You need deliverance from...
and I named about eight evil spirits. And all the time I was saying it I
thought to myself: how did I know that? When it turned out to be
perfectly right, she got delivered. But as I sat there and thought about it
I said that was a word of knowledge. Why did I get the
word of knowledge? Because God wanted me
to help that woman and I couldn’t help her
without the word of knowledge. But it may not be that God
has that type of ministry for you. Don’t apply for it,
that’s my advice. Be thrust into it. It’s a funny thing,
but the people who volunteer for the
ministry of deliverance are usually misfits in it
when they come in. Now, we’re very near
the end of our time and I think I’ve spoken in
such a personal way tonight that I need to end
with something personal. There may be some
of you here this evening, you’ve never really presented
your body on God’s altar. You’ve never really surrendered your life to God
and said: God, you take over. You can run my life
much better than I can. And you see, you will never
go beyond a certain point in your Christian experience
until you make that decision. So if what I have been saying
to you here this evening has made sense to you,
you see: That’s it. And maybe you’re saying to yourself
why didn’t I see that before? But at any rate, you suddenly realize this is something
that’s real, important and for me. And you would like here this evening
to present your body to the Lord, I want you to do just one thing,
very simply and very quickly, I want you to stand to your
feet right where you are. As a declaration to God:
God, here I am, I’m putting my life on your altar. Don’t wait. If God has given you that
conviction don’t be embarrassed. Embarrassment won’t help you,
God will. I’m going to ask my wife Ruth to come
up and we’d like to pray together. We’re going to pray for those
people that are standing. Now I would like you,
you who are standing just to say very simply,
out loud to the Lord. Don’t say it very loud
but loud enough to hear yourself. Will you say these words:
Lord Jesus, I thank you that you
died on the cross for me, that you gave your body
as a sacrifice for me. And because of what
you’ve done for me I’m giving my body to you tonight. I’m just surrendering
myself to you. I give up my own ambitions,
my own ideas; and I ask you to renew my mind so that I may find out what
is your perfect will for me. Lord Jesus,
I thank you for this now. Amen. Now, Ruth and I
are going to pray together. Father, we just want to thank you for
every person standing here tonight. We thank you that right now
you are opening a door to each one that prayed
that prayer with sincerity. We trust you Lord to lead
them through that door into all the fullness of the life
that you’ve planned for them. We’ll be carefu
to give you the glory. In Jesus’ name, amen.
