The Character of Genuine Saving Faith
Tom Shrader presents a spiritual test based on 2 Corinthians 13:5, distinguishing between false markers of faith (visible morality, religious involvement, intellectual knowledge) and true evidence of conversion. He explains that genuine faith produces love for God, repentance, humility, devotion to God's glory, continual prayer, selfless love, separation from worldliness, spiritual growth, and obedience. Shrader warns that many church-going, religiously active people may not be truly converted, emphasizing that authentic Christianity is a heart issue rather than external compliance.
“You can go through all this stuff, come to the end of your life, and He says, I never knew you.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Miscellaneous
Recorded: December 21, 2000
Duration: 43 min
Themes: faith, salvation, repentance, conversion, assurance, testing, heart, authenticity, doubting salvation, questioning faith, church member, religious person, spiritually confused, seeking assurance, longtime churchgoer, religious family
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 13:5, Matthew 19, Romans 1:21, Matthew 7, James 2, Acts 24:5, Matthew 23, Psalm 42:1, 2 Corinthians 7:10, James 4:6, Matthew 5:1-12, Matthew 5:3, Matthew 5:14-16, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Isaiah 6
Theological Themes: soteriology, salvation doctrine, false conversion, sanctification, spiritual examination, regeneration, perseverance, genuine faith
Full Transcript
Glad that you're here. This is that time of year, and I say it to you, there are just so many competing options this time of year. You can see around, see a little space, and that's what Christmas luncheons do to us. So I really do appreciate you being here. It speaks volumes of you and your commitment to what we're doing.
Let me deal with a couple of things. Number one, we now take our Christmas break, and that's a couple of weeks. We start again on, I think it's the 11th or something like that. We'll send you a card in the mail, and that card will give you all the specifics on when we'll start again. We can't send you the card if we don't have the address. Many of you are on that mailing list, but not all of you. If you'd like to be just on the way out, drop a card in the tape box.
I came in a little bit late, so some of you were already in. Tapes are available from the last two weeks. So you can grab those tapes on the web. There's plenty of them there. That's not an issue at all. And maybe you know somebody who's typically here, and they always grab the tapes, and they're not here. Would you just grab a tape for them? That would be really helpful to us and save us the expense of having to mail them as they order them.
Somebody just mentioned the website. I haven't been on the website in a while, but prioritylivingaz.org, and everything that you need is on there. They tell me now you can actually, I think, download the outlines for the series that we're doing. I think all of the stuff is archived now as we're doing it. And that also then links to the church site, which is kind of a little bit of a different thing, but you would find the teaching there that we're doing on a regular basis. So prioritylivingaz.org, you can grab that.
Anniversary Celebration Details
One last thing, I just finished writing more of a, not a formal invitation for the 20th, but I realized we don't ever do this stuff, and you wouldn't have a clue what we're doing. So I wrote almost like a little letter giving you some information. But please, mark and plan on joining us on January 20th. And that's the 10th anniversary celebration for Priority Living. We're doing it out on the east side at the church that we're involved in on the east side. So you've heard about the church. Give you a chance to see it.
What I did was design two hours that I would enjoy going. So my thought was this. If no one showed up, how could I have fun? And so it's a little selfish, but I figured I'm just like you, so it will be a great time. I didn't mean like you and selfish. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I meant I'm like you in terms of taste, not selfishness.
So I picked music that I think you'd like, and Larry's grandson will be there to do some music for us. Larry Wright will be there, and I've got a guy coming over from Southern California who will just make the evening fun. And so that's what we're trying to do, is have some fun. You're going to get a letter, and in there an invitation and a response card. And in that letter I mentioned to you, I spend more time than I should on this, but we don't know what to expect. We don't know, you know, if it were me, I wouldn't go. I mean, that's me. Why would I go out on a Saturday night? But you may. So we need you to send that response card back. In fact, I even said, let's just make sure we stamp the envelopes so that there's no reason for you not to just complete it and stick it out in the mailbox. So help us, if you would, that way on whether you're going to be there or not.
Today's Different Approach
We're going to do something today. If you're with us for the very first time, you picked a Sunday, you picked a Thursday that's not exactly representative of what we do. Normally we take a topic, we give it, you know, four, six, eight weeks. We take a time that comes and try to take some biblical principles with a lot of wisdom and a lot of common sense and some illustrations that make it come alive and maybe just make a point to you. But hopefully in a way, or at least I like to think that I do it in a way that makes it practical, fun, and a little humor and all that stuff. None of that today.
In fact, my daughters, both of them just finished school. So they're off till the spring semester. And one of them needs a math, she needs a B in math. She's got to have a B in math as a prerequisite for what this thing she needs. And so I said, are you going to get a B? She said, I got no chance. I got no chance. She said, I got a chance. I mean, the chance would be if he grades, if he throws out the lowest score and grades that way, I might get a B. If he throws out the lowest two scores and grades in a curve, I might get a B. And I said, that's my kid. I'm so proud of you. I mean, I'd be so disappointed if you could get through this in one try, because I never did.
God Doesn't Grade on a Curve
And I tell my girls all the time, I never got any Bs when I was there. And they say, yeah, you never got any As either. All you got were Cs and Ds. And that's exactly what I did do. But it got me thinking about a test and how we approach tests in such a subjective way. And for some of us, our only hope is that God grades in a curve. And so I'm here today to tell you that He's not. And that He's not going to waiver, and He's not going to change His standard.
I was never good in school. I never worked at it. I thought it was kind of stupid. And part of it was, I never saw a correlation between what we did in the test and real life. The test that we are going to give you today has direct correlation to your life and to your death.
The Command to Examine Yourself
So you've got the outline in front of you. Outline's pretty important today. Second Corinthians chapter 13, verse 5 says this. It says, examine yourself. And I've got on my outline in front of me the word circled yourself. I'm not going to ask you today to examine the person to your left or your right, or the person that isn't here, or the spouse, or the parent, or the kid. I want you
Paul wants to examine yourself today to see if your faith is really genuine. He goes on to say, test yourself. If you cannot tell that Jesus Christ is among you, it means you've failed the test. The test that we're asking is, is your faith real? Are you truly a Christian?
The reason this test is so important is, if you are not—if you're not a Christian—then the consequences are bad in this life and you'll never find meaning here. But they're deeper than that. It means you're destined to eternity separated from God in a place called hell.
It's really interesting, because on Christmas Eve, I do church a little bit different than a lot of places. They gear it all up for Christmas Eve and then the guy does a half hour, 45 minute message. I do 10 minutes. That's all I do. Maybe 15. But no more than that. 10 or 15. And I'm really direct and I'm really clear and I say to the people, "A lot of you, the faces look familiar, but I haven't seen you since Easter, so it's foggy in my mind. I can't come up with a name. And so it's you that I want to speak to tonight. I want to speak to you who don't know Jesus. And I just want you to understand how important this is. Because if you get this wrong, all of your life is wrong and most importantly, all of eternity is wrong."
Understanding the Test
So it's the same thing to you. Now what I did is I just went right to the back of my MacArthur study Bible and took this right out of MacArthur's notes. So I gave MacArthur the credit at the top and this is exactly what you would find in that Bible. I think we kept most of, if not all, the references.
Here's the deal, and you're going to have to think. It's a good thing you're smart people, because the next 30 minutes you're going to have to think here. We're trying to test your faith to see if it's real. So what we're looking for is evidence. You're looking for evidence. I'm not looking for anything. You're looking for evidence in your life.
If you see these things on side one, you may or may not have real faith. Side two's the list. Side two's the list. These are the marks of authentic Christianity. So let me give you the conclusion. If side one is true, and it may be, but side two is false, then you aren't a Christian. Or at least, let me just say it, you've got some major concerns. But if side two is true, side one will inevitably be true in your life.
So we're going to go through them. I'm not going to spend a ton of time on them. I just want to kind of be a tour guide to take you through it as you test yourself. You examine yourself. Remember, we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven things that may be marks. May be marks of genuine faith. They may not be.
Visible Morality
In Matthew 19, Jesus is confronted by a young, rich guy, like some of you. And it says, "What do I have to do to go to heaven?" And Jesus says, "If you want to go to heaven, keep my commandments." And the rich guy says, "Okay, which ones?" And Jesus says, "You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself."
Now understand what's going on. This guy says, "What do I do to go to heaven?" Jesus is trying to point him not to the solution to heaven here, but He's trying to point out to this guy that you can't get there on your own. He goes to the law. The whole point of the law is not to say, although, if you could keep the law perfectly, you'd go to heaven, but His whole point is you can't keep the law perfectly.
Listen to the young man's response. "I kept all those things, what am I lacking?" And Jesus says, "If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions, give to the poor, you'll have treasure in heaven, come and follow me."
Now I'm going to spend more time on this than maybe any of these points on this side. Jesus is not here saying, "I believe in salvation by philanthropy," saying, "Here's how you become a Christian, sell everything and give it to this person." If poverty is the prerequisite for salvation, then the person I give my stuff to is condemned. See? So it's like time bomb. We used to have, when we were kids, that time bomb, you know, you turn it, you pass it around and then, ah, bam, it goes off in your hand. So apparently, under this philosophy, material things are like time bomb. You pass them around, you hope you don't die when you have them. Well, that's stupid. We know that's not what He's saying.
What Jesus is pointing out to this guy is, "You say you kept all your commandments," Jesus says, "You haven't kept the first one. Your stuff is in the way of a relationship with me." Jesus is giving him the answer to salvation at the end in Matthew chapter 19 verse 21, "Come and follow me."
But you may have people who are visibly moral. That's this guy's point. "I keep all of the, I've done it. If you want to check all these things off, I've done them." The problem is not that behavior, the problem is the heart.
Intellectual Knowledge
Here's the second thing, intellectual knowledge. Romans chapter 1 verse 21. "For even though they knew God, they're conscious of God, they did not honor Him as God or give Him thanks, but they came futile in their speculation and their foolish heart was darkened."
In Romans 1, Romans 1 is a very powerful argument. Paul makes the argument that anybody, anywhere, at any time, in any place, knows there's a God. That's why you can go in whatever the remotest part of the world, and when you get there, people that have had no contact with Billy Graham are worshiping something. Because here's what they say, all you got to do is look around. And as you look around, you see stars.
and a moon, you see a creation, you see other humans, you see the intricacy with which each one of us are put together, and you say, there has to be a creator. You got to look around. You cannot, unless you have a PhD, look around and say this came from nothing. You got to really be educated, not smart, educated to get to that point. Anybody knows you can't get something from nothing. There has to be a pre-existing cause.
Philosophically, we can get there. Intellectually, we can get there because we look at creation. You can have all sorts of intellectual knowledge, and even knowledge about God. In fact, in James 2, James says this: you believe in God, that's good. The demons believe and shudder. He's not talking about an intellectual knowledge.
The Danger of Mere Intellectual Knowledge
I met a guy not long ago who knows that Bible by heart. I'm talking about the whole thing. He knows it better than I do. He can cut it, slice it, dice it, move it around, and I'm telling you, there's no way on God's green earth he's a Christian. No way. But man, he's smart. See, you can intellectually know it. You can spit out the verses and still not necessarily be converted.
Two things, we'll tie them together: religious involvement, and I would add religious activity. Under religious involvement, in all of these, you can always use the Pharisees. They were very involved. They become the perfect illustration for every negative point that we would make. They're always involved.
The Deception of Religious Activity
Religious activity—listen to this, Matthew 7. This may be one of the most scariest passages to me in the New Testament: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but He who does the will of my Father who's in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, that judgment day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and perform miracles?' And I will declare, 'I never knew you, depart from me.'" Therefore, whoever hears these words of mine and acts upon them.
You imagine standing before God, and you go, "God, look at this. I did the prophecy gig. I'm casting out demons. There were great things that happened," and He says, "I never knew you." Understand what that word "knew" means? It doesn't mean intellectually. It's like Adam knew Eve with an intimacy. God said, "We never had an intimate relationship. You're out." And there was a bunch of stuff going on.
Let me make this point. These are church people. These are people who are going to be in church on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, and they're going to be there every Sunday. Some are going to be on Wednesday. These are people that are teaching Sunday school, people that are in the choir, people that are ushering, people that are writing checks, and He's saying, "You know what? All that activity's fine. All that religious involvement's great. All that movement's fine, but you know what? Your heart wasn't right."
The Risk of Protected Christianity
I had a couple of young men. There's two guys that came to me, oh golly, years ago now, maybe five, six years ago, and they said, "Our dad's not a Christian. Will you be our dad? Will you be our father?" And I said, "Well, no, not if it's gonna come... No, I'm not giving you money. Is it money? Is there money in this?" And they said, "No." I said, "What do you want from me?" They said, "We want to meet once a week. We want to be able to, or once a month, we want to be able to call you. We want to be able to have access to you. We want to be able to run stuff by you." And over the years, we've talked about everything.
I had the guys and their wives over the other night, and I'd do that so they could give me my Christmas present. So they're there, and we're talking about their boys. Their boys are about the same age, five and seven, and they each have two boys. They were talking about the boys' Spanish teacher was trying to teach them Spanish and using the Christmas story the other day. As she was teaching the Christmas story, she would make comments like, "Well, they came here on camels," and the boys would say, "Well, wait... Now these boys are five and seven. They would say, "Well, no, wait a minute. The Scripture does not say camel. And because it doesn't say camel, we can't just read camel into it. It seems reasonable that they'd come on camels, but we don't know that they came on..."
Now, that's a very good trait, and that is the way to handle the Scripture. Here's the problem with that, and any parent would be very proud of a five or a seven-year-old who could slice and dice and get to that point, wouldn't you? Sure you would.
The Bubble Boy Effect
Here's the problem. If you're there that early, and now I put you in a little Christian school. I homeschool you. They're homeschool boys. So now I put you in a little Christian school, and I put this little bubble over you like Bubble Boy, you know, in Seinfeld. You're like Bubble Boy except mobile. You got a bubble around you, and you don't get any of this on you, and you never do this stuff. There's always that chance that your faith is forever religious and never a heartfelt issue. It's a very scary proposition.
My girls have been raised in a Christian home, Christian environment, Christian, Christian, Christian, and one of my biggest fears is they've been around Christianity so long that it could just be rote for them, and they might never own it. All the compliance. See, they're little compliant kids. Those compliant kids, those are the hard ones, because you don't really know what's going on in their heart.
It's like you. When you bring a visitor in here, and a guy goes, "He's screwed up. I wouldn't go back there in a million years." Well, you can deal with that. The one that's got the hard one is the one that goes, "Well, that's very... that's very interesting. I mean, it's not interesting. I mean, it's good, or it's bad, or... you know, I don't know. It's nice. That's nice. I like what you said. Really? Oh, that's interesting." That's a very scary...
thing. Here you go. This can make you convinced your faith is real, but it might not be.
Conviction of Sin Isn't Enough
Conviction of sin. In Acts chapter 24, Paul came in contact with this guy named Felix, who had taken another man's wife for his own. Acts 24:25 says, "And as Paul was discussing righteousness and self-control and judgment to come, Felix became afraid and said, 'Go away for now. When I have a convenient time I will call for you.'"
You see what's happening? Paul's teaching him. This guy had stolen another guy's wife, so righteousness and self-control were not real high on his character traits. As Paul's telling him the truth, judgment comes. Conviction comes. He feels guilty.
Just because you're feeling guilty, don't for a second think, "Well, gee, I must really be a believer then." See, I can have all sorts of conviction of sin. We'll give you the other side of this in a minute, but he said he's frightened here. You ever been there? Ever been there where you're in the middle of something and you know it's wrong, and you run from it and you're afraid of it? Don't for a second think, "Well, gee, because I feel guilty about this, I'm converted."
False Assurance and Religious Confidence
Two more things, and I'm going to tie them together. One is what MacArthur calls assurance, meaning I have confidence in my faith. You mean we're not supposed to be confident? Yeah, we're supposed to be confident in our faith, but our confidence is not necessarily based on us or based on our faith. It's based on God's promises.
So you see there the reference, Matthew chapter 23 - it's the whole chapter. That's the flip side of the Beatitudes. Blessed, blessed, blessed. In Matthew 23, here's what Jesus says to the scribes and the Pharisees, to the religious people: "Woe to you hypocrites." Everybody talks about little Jesus and "be more like Christ and don't offend anybody." Hey, He looks at these guys - here you go, this to me sounds offensive, but I may be judgmental there. He says, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside, filled with dead man's bones on the inside." That's Jesus talking.
These guys were very confident. If you read Matthew 23, they're giving, they're tithing right down to even food particles, taking a tenth of them away. They're complying - there's this outward compliance, there's all these things. That's why I say they personify this. And they're coming - if you say to them, "Are you going to go to heaven?" - there's no question about it. In fact, if we don't go, who would go? That's their whole attitude. I meet people like that who are convinced they're going to heaven. They're assured of it. I don't mean you're going there.
The False Hope of a Time of Decision
Here's the last thing: pointing to a time of decision. Here we use a parable, the parable of the sower and the seed. There's rocky soil. Those who hear the word, they receive it, there's joy, there's affirmation, and then nothing happens.
I meet people all the time. Let me see if I can - I hope this makes sense to you. I meet people all the time who will say to me, "I'm not really sure I'm a Christian." And my friends would say, "Well, didn't you go to that CBMC luncheon and check a box? Well, didn't I see you at a Billy Graham crusade where you said yes to Jesus? You did that, didn't you?" "Ah, yeah." "Well, you have nothing to worry about."
See, when that guy comes to me and he says, "I'm not sure I'm a Christian," what I say to him is, "Gee, why do you feel that? There must be some reason you don't think so. Maybe you aren't." See, that's where I start. I start with "maybe you aren't." And then they lay these things out and you go, "Now we can deal with it."
Just because at some point in time, somebody took you to a lunch or a dinner or walked down an aisle at a church and you said, "I'm Yours, Jesus" - that doesn't mean... Here's the list. You got it in front of you? You see these seven things? There are people in hell - my sense would be a lot of them - who have visible morality, intellectual knowledge, religious involvement, active ministry, conviction of sin, assurance, and a time of decision. Got all those people in hell.
The Real Evidence of True Faith
People in heaven with those same things, but they're in heaven. The evidence and the certainty is because of the second list. See, this is a heart that's really converted.
I happen to be a person who believes that if you're truly a Christian, there's a change in your life. There's a visible manifestation of that. And it gets deeper and it gets more real and it gets more visible every day.
Here's some things. We'll run down them quickly. We have exactly 15 minutes and this is a longer list. How many items? I got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. So we'll tie some of them together. We'll move through it quickly.
Love for God: The First True Mark
Number one: there's a love for God. Psalm 42:1 is a psalm that you would never know, unfortunately, from the psalm itself, but from a song - which is good because at least we know it. "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for Thee." There's a desire for God.
You're called to love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength. Be a love for God. See, real faith has a love for God. It has a desire for God, a passion for God.
The picture here is of a deer who's thirsty, and the only remedy is that brook. They pant for that water. It's the water they desire more than anything else. If your heart's converted, the only real thing that will satisfy that is intimacy with God, love for God.
Real easy ways to look at it. These are real easy ways to look at it. Forget work. We're not even going to talk about work. Just take your free time. Let's take this week because it's fresh in your mind: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Let's add Sunday in there - Saturday and Sunday. I like this: Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. In those days, you and your mind get a rough number of how much time you spent reading the...
newspaper and the business journal and compare it with how much time you spent reading God's Word. That's an easy test. I'm going to guess for most of you, the newspaper won. So the evidence would be that you love the Arizona Republic more than you love God. That's hard to imagine. I don't know what other conclusion you could reach.
If you were dealing with one of your kids, I always find these illustrations helpful. If I'm dealing with one of my kids and they're saying they really love God, but all I see them do is reading books and going to movies and I never see them open that Bible, then as a parent I would have to say, "Listen, what you think you believe and what you say you believe isn't manifested in behavior. There may be a problem here." Well, in love I would say to you, if you love God, there's going to be evidence of it.
One of the evidences is going to be you're going to want to communicate with Him. You're going to want Him to communicate to you, and let me tell you, He doesn't do that when you're sitting on a rock contemplating your navel. He does it when you read His word. That's how He communicates to you. And then you communicate to Him through prayer. That's the gig. That's how you communicate with God.
So if you love God, you're in love. I was just talking to a guy this morning and his daughter's in love. So he's in love. And the other guy's in love. And I happen to see them all the time. They're in love. And they just talk all the time. You can't stop them talking. I said, "Well, clearly the only cure for this is marriage. That'll shut this down fast. They'll be done talking now."
You can see a couple—I can take you to a restaurant and say, "Sit right here, look at that couple across the way." You can tell from across the way whether they're married or dating. If they're dating, they're talking. If they're married, one of them's reading. That's not always true, but you see the point. When I'm in love and I mean love, love, love, then I can't wait to communicate with the person I'm in love with. What do you say? What do you think? What do you feel? How do you believe? If you love God, then you want to know how He thinks and how He feels and what's important to Him. That's His word. He wants to know what you have to say, and that's prayer.
Real Repentance
Here's the second thing. There's repentance. Not conviction of sin, real repentance. Put a little star by 2 Corinthians 7:10: "For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces repentance that leads to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death."
I had a guy one night and he's caught in adultery. Got him. Caught. So we're at the house. This is unfolding. We're going through some stuff and now it's late at night and we're all sitting around and he just says, "I'm sorry, I'm broken, I feel awful, I love you more than anything, I can't believe I did this." So we have victory. Everybody's crying. We got prayer, victory.
So the next day, one of the guys sees me and says, "What do you think?" And I said, "I don't know. Time will tell." "Well, he said he's sorry." I said, "Let's see what happens." That's been 16 years ago and this marriage has done nothing but grow since then.
About the same time, I'm dealing with a guy who calls and he says, "You don't know me, but I need to meet with you. My wife—I'm having an affair, she's caught me, I'm sorry, I'll do anything." Same words. Same deal. Because every caught guy says the same thing. Or girl, by the way, woman, although women are not nearly as emotional when they're caught as the guys, because it's more conscious going into it. The guy just kind of fell into this thing. That's my theory on that, by the way. I don't know if it's scientific, but it's probably true.
"I'll do anything." We meet with he and his wife, terrific lady, and "I'll do anything." And she said, "I just don't know if I can get by that." We meet a couple days. He's in San Diego working on a project over there. She called him and said, "Honey, yes, let's make a go of it." So to celebrate, we're down at the airport waiting for him. He comes in Friday, gives her some stuff, including some papers, because he's filed for divorce in the last couple days, and gets back on the plane.
My point is this: if you're sitting on the outside, you've got zero chance figuring out which one of these is real repentance, because it looks the same at the beginning. But see, real repentance, real brokenness leads to life, leads to salvation. Real "I'm sorry, I'm broken" says I hate sin, and I hate the sin that I'm in, and there'll be a difference in that.
Genuine Humility
Here you go: genuine humility. You cannot—let me give you two verses, you've got them on your outline. James 4:6: "God is opposed to the proud, gives grace to the humble." In Matthew 5:1 through 12, which is the Sermon on the Mount, the beginning of that's the Beatitudes. You cannot, it is impossible, by definition, it's impossible to be proud and be a Christian. You can't do it. You cannot be proud of yourself. You can't remain self-reliant and be a Christian.
Let me read it to you, Matthew chapter 5, verse 3: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The idea there is of a beggar, a spiritual beggar. The term we've used for years is spiritually bankrupt. When we think of a beggar now, we think of somebody going, "Hey, you got any spare change? You got any money? What do you got for me? Feliz Navidad."
The beggar in this day is somebody who's got their little place set up, they're at the side, they cannot even look up, they're so humbled by who they are, worthy of nothing, grateful for anything that comes their way. That's the picture.
a lot of Max Lucado, nor have I read this. Somebody sent me this, and this is pretty good. The first step, think of this now, we're talking about humility. The first step to joy is a plea for help from an acknowledgment of moral destitution. Those who taste God's presence have declared spiritual bankruptcy and are aware of their spiritual crisis.
Listen to these three short sentences. Their cupboards are bare, their pockets are empty, their options are gone. See, that's where you are at a point of conversion. Your cupboard is bare, your pocket is empty, your options are gone. They've long since stopped demanding justice, they're pleading for mercy. They don't brag, they beg. They ask God to do for them what they can't do without Him.
Oh, the irony of God's delight, born in parched soil of destitution rather than the fertile ground of achievement. It's a different path, a path we're not accustomed to taking. We don't often declare our impotence. Admission of failure is not usually an admission to joy. Complete confession is not commonly followed by total pardon, but then again, God was never governed by what is common.
The Difference Between Humiliation and Humility
You have to be humble. During the difficult times of the 80s, there was a guy and we had a mutual friend, a guy who was a developer type, and he lost everything. So my buddy says, you ought to go be with him because he's really been humbled by this process. So I met with him and we came back and he said, what do you think?
I said, you know, I'm not a really good judge of this, but here's my sense. He's been humiliated, but he hasn't been humbled. He's humiliated that he's down to two Mercedes. He's humiliated that everybody knows he's lost property. He's humiliated, but boy, I didn't hear brokenness and humility in there. There's a big difference.
By the way, this has nothing to do or is associated with even property. I know guys that drive around who think they're extraordinarily spiritual because they have this pathetic car, this 10-year-old car with 240,000 miles on it. They're not spiritual, they're cheap. That's the problem, and they're proud of how humble they are.
The Challenge of Measuring Humility
This pride humility thing is a dicey deal. This is a tough issue because you want, like I do, you want some way to measure all this stuff. Well, how do you measure humility? There's the story, which I presume is true, of Ben Franklin coming face-to-face with the fact that people were telling him he's a cocky, arrogant guy.
So he did his typical thing, which he made a list of things to do, and one of them was to be humble, to go out of his way to be humble. He talks about actually going a week being humble, and at the end of the week being swept away with how proud he was of how humble he'd become in the course of the week. It's just the nature of this thing.
True Humility: Seeing God for Who He Is
This humility we're talking about is not an "aw, shucks" attitude. It's an attitude that says, when I see God, I see who I really am. It's Isaiah 6. When Isaiah sees God, he goes, "Woe to me, for I'm undone."
By the way, we haven't spent any time in Isaiah 6 in a long time. At the end of that, then he says, "God, what would You have me do?" See, that's the cure. You ought to read Isaiah 6. That's the cure to a bunch of people in ministry who've not yet been converted.
You're not ready to do ministry until you've seen God for who He is, and when you see Him, inevitably, the only response is Isaiah's response: "Woe to me, for I'm undone." I thought I had it together. I got nothing together. I'm terrific if you compare me to you, or if you compare yourself to me, you're doing great. But once we compare ourself to God, we see who we really are.
To me, that's what humility is. Humility is understanding who you are in God's sight, not in the sight of who's who in America, or who's number one on campus, or who can bench press the most at the club. I'm following a guy around the other day at the club.
We're lifting weights. This guy is a stroke victim. He uses the elevator to get up to the second floor where we work out. So I'm thinking, this is my man. He gets on. He sits in this machine, and I just see him over there doing this. I'm thinking, man, I'm gonna follow him, because if I got to move any weights, I'll move him down. I always look good doing that. I got on the first machine. I went, all right, when do the real sick women get here, because I can't keep up with this guy.
Humility, see, that whole thing of humility, it's not that. It's not being beaten down. It's understanding who God is and understanding who you are, and understanding anything good in you as a result of God's work in your life. That's all that is.
Devotion to God's Glory
Let me give you a verse under devotion to God's glory that's not on this list. I would put it there, Matthew 5:14-16, where He says, "You're the light of the world. Let your light shine in such a way as men see your good works and glorify God who's in heaven." It's on there, a little star, 1 Corinthians 10:31: "Whether then you eat or drink, whatever you do, do it for the glory of God."
The idea there is that everything I do ought to bring honor and glory to God. That people ought to look at me and see a distinctiveness.
An Obedient Life
Let the rest of these run together, because I got one minute. Let me close it with what, to me, ties it all together, and that is an obedient life. There ought to be in your life a desire to obey God.
When we meet and somebody's saying to me, "I'm trying to figure out what to do," I'm always looking for this. Is there a right thing? What's the right thing to do? And frequently, there isn't a right thing. We're getting ready at our church to start another church, and my girls are thinking about, and probably will, go to the new church. They're a little worried. They don't want to hurt their dad's feelings and all the other thing.
The True Test of Faith
And so, I met with one of them the other day, and she said, "What do you think?" And I said, "Honey, this is not a right." She said, "I want to do the right thing." And I said, "There isn't a right thing here. This isn't a right thing or a wrong thing." Now, if she says, "Gee, I'm thinking about shacking up with a guy," well, then we say, "Well, there's a right thing here."
See, that's the question you want to ask when you're trying to figure out something: Am I doing the right thing by God's standard? I want to be obedient. Jesus says it simply, "If you love Me, you'll keep My commandments." You love God, you love Christ, then you're going to obey Him.
So, if you're just going along, and there's some sin, you got this basic sin that you like, it's your favorite sin—doesn't matter what it is, don't pick one out, because it may not be yours—but you got this sin, and you just stay in it, and stay in it, and stay in it, and stay in it, and stay in it, and you know who God is, and your life is characterized by sin and not obedience to Him, then you got major problems spiritually.
Examining Your Own Heart
Now, let me make this point, because I don't want you to say I'm up here judging you—wouldn't do it in a million years. You're judging your life. Do you see in your life, as you examine it, and you take a hard, honest look at it, do you see a life that loves God, that is repentant of sin, that is genuinely humble, that's devoted to God's glory, that's continually in prayer, that's filled with selfless love, that's separated from the love of this world, that's growing spiritually, and that's obedient to Him?
If you do, then what you see on side one will be there. Side one you can fake, side two you can't. Side one, you can go through the motions, and you can pass through the meter, got through. But side two, that's God looking at your heart.
See, these are all heart issues on side two. Where's your heart? There is nothing more important for you to figure out at this Christmas time than whether your faith is genuine or not.
The Heart of True Faith
Whether you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior or not. Do you know Jesus in a deep, intimate, personal way? Is He your Lord and is He your Savior? Have you come to a point in your life where you've acknowledged that Jesus is the Lord of your life? That you're lost without Him, that your sin has separated you from Him and based your life on His promises and what He'll do. That your confidence is not in yourself, but it's in Him.
And I'll tell you, the hardest group in this room to talk to are those of you that have been around church a long time, Christian faith a long time. Because you can kid yourself pretty good. Because see, you're doing really well on side one. But you can go—I just want you to understand this—you can go through all this stuff, come to the end of your life, and He says, "I never knew you." You say, "Look at all that, I taught junior high, I can't get any more committed than that."
I don't think it's that.
Looking Ahead
We get together in the second week of January, we are going to ask a question. It's the same question we've asked for the last ten years. We're going to ask, what kind of year was last year? We're going to ask you, what kind of year was the year 2000? We'll give you a quantitative way to measure it. We'll give you some things that you ought to think about for 2001. And then the next week, we'll tell you how to make 2001 the greatest year of your life.
After that, the series after that is going to be how to stay straight in a crooked world. And it's stuff that I did ten years ago that I'm revisiting, actually doing something I never do. I always study, but I never do any research. You know, like secular, let's get some illustration research. So we're going to actually do some research on this.
Living Your Faith During the Holidays
So I hope you have a great holiday. I know for some of you, you're dreading this. I know over these next couple of days, you're going to be with family members. They don't share your faith. They're driving you nuts. You know you're going to fight and throw spaghetti at each other, and it's going to be terrible.
Just let God's grace shine. Just go there and let them see you. You don't have to convert them. Let them see the difference and the distinctive in your life. And you go, "Yeah, it's Jesus." Let your light shine in such a way before men that they glorify your Father who's in heaven, not you.
It's a hard time. It's worse than I know. Let me pray for you, and then we'll go. Mark January 20th on your calendar. Make sure you're there. We'll get you the info. And we're going to have a great time.
Father, thank You for allowing us to see this truth. Thank You for the men and women that are here and just what they mean to me and their faithfulness to this place. God, we anticipate what You will do in our life if we'll just quietly obey You. God, help us understand that's what You're looking for from us, obedience. Let us give You that. We pray that in Jesus' name, amen.