I want to talk about something that has
meant more to my life than perhaps any
other thing the Lord has taught me.
And I just, for lack of a better
name, call it Becoming What You Are.
It has to do with something that was
set forth in a book that was circulated
widely a few years ago, called, it was
called Psychocybernetics.
Now many points of psychocybernetics were true, but
I feel that there were a number of
things that were borrowed from the Bible.
But how you achieve the new self-image
was really not the biblical way.
What I want to talk about this morning,
though, is the very real message that the
Bible gives to us about actually becoming what
you are and changing your self-image to
what God says you really are.
You know, whether we realize it or not,
and I'm sure the majority of people don't
fully realize it, is that we have a
very complete mental image of ourselves.
In our subconscious mind we've been developing a
kind of a mental blueprint of what we
are.
And this has been achieved by our own
interpretation of our various experiences through life.
We've experienced many things.
We have had good experiences, bad experiences, but
of every experience that we've had we have
an interpretation.
And this goes down into our subconscious mind,
and we form a mental image of ourselves
based on that.
All of our actions and behaviors are really
determined by what we think we are.
And it's very difficult to act any way
other than what you conceive yourself to be.
Now, this is paramount to understand, if you're
going to understand what God has done for
you, and understand how he wants to effect
a change.
I think one of the best illustrations of
this is one of the case histories that
was listed in Psycho-Cybernetics.
In this book, the man who actually wrote
it was, first of all, a plastic surgeon.
And he tells of how a member of
a royal family from somewhere in Europe came
to him.
He was a prominent plastic surgeon in New
York.
And this girl was the ugly duckling of
the family.
She had a sister who was very beautiful,
but she always was considered, especially by herself,
the ugly duckling of the family.
And one of the big problems is that
she had a hooked nose.
And so the doctor agreed to operate and
to change her nose and a few other
minor changes in her features.
The doctor operated, and of course, her face
was swabbed in bandages for a few days.
But then came the critical moment.
And the doctor already knew from past experiences
that this would be a critical moment, because
as he removed the bandages, he wanted to
watch her expression when he showed her the
mirror.
Well, he took the bandages off, and the
doctor himself was really startled by what a
change had been made in this girl's appearance.
Because as he took those bandages off, he
found that she was absolutely beautiful.
This had just completely changed her appearance, and
she was just beautiful.
Well, he took a mirror, and he held
it up to her, and she looked intently
into the mirror for about 15 seconds before
registering any real expression.
And then she began to cry.
And she said, you see, it didn't work.
And the doctor said, now look carefully.
And she looked carefully, and she said it
didn't work.
This girl had such a complete and tenacious
self-image of being ugly.
And she even had thought that she was
uglier than she really was.
But this was such a tenacious self-image
that even presented with the fact of the
fact that she looked different, she couldn't accept
it.
She still conceived herself to be what she
had always been.
She, through this self, this subconscious mental image,
she just could not overcome the fact that
she was different.
And so the doctor had to begin to
work with her, and as a matter of
fact, this is how Dr. Maltz shifted from
being exclusively a plastic surgeon to becoming somewhat
of a psychologist.
Because in case after case where he changed
a person's appearance, he would find that they
still thought they looked the same way.
And he would have to convince them that
they were different.
It took him over six months to convince
this girl that she was really what she
was.
And he said that when she finally saw
in the mirror what was really there, that
her behavior, her personality, changed overnight.
It was radical, and it was a complete
change of personality.
Now why?
Well, because this girl conceived herself to be
ugly, she acted a certain way around people.
She was always trying to build herself up,
because she never thought that she was good
enough for people to accept.
She kind of hung back in society, because
she felt that people really wouldn't want to
know her.
After all, in her own self-image, she
was not worth knowing.
And so even though she was changed after
this operation, she still acted the same way.
But the moment that she realized that she
was different, she began to immediately act differently.
She began to have a self-confidence.
She began to have a confidence about meeting
people.
She began to have a confidence about everything
in life.
She began to think of herself as a
success, instead of as a failure.
Now I have a more graphic illustration of
this, and something much more close to my
heart, because I have twin daughters.
They're 10 years old now, but about three
years ago, one of my twins named Jenny
began to get horrible grades in school, and
especially in math.
She could not seem to grasp the very
simplest facts in math.
And she brought home a report card that
just startled both my wife and I.
She flunked math.
And we began to sit and talk to
her.
The other twin was very good in math.
And so we began to talk to her
about it, and to try to see what
the problem was.
Well, it seems that it went back to
a situation where the teacher said, Jenny, I
guess you're one of those who just isn't
good at math.
And she began to develop a self-image,
and of course it was confirmed by her
bad grades.
And the more it was confirmed, the worse
she got.
So she developed the self-image that she
couldn't learn math, and therefore she couldn't learn
math.
Now, it took us a while, but we
began to build her confidence and to work
with her.
But the first thing we did was say,
don't try to be good at math.
Just recognize that you can be good at
math.
And we began to change that self-image.
And do you know something?
She is far superior to the other twin
now.
She has become tremendous at math, and as
a matter of fact, we have another problem
now.
Robin, who's the other twin, who is a
naturally good student, I mean, she just picks
things up like that so easily.
And she likes to study, at least she
used to.
And Jenny was the twin that, you know,
had to study a little more.
But she's bright, it's just she wants to
play all the time.
She doesn't want to settle down.
She's more like I was.
And so Robin began to see that Jenny
got all of the attention because she got
bad grades.
And so Robin just quit.
And so now we're giving her lots of
attention because she's making bad grades.
But it's a deliberate thing.
But all of these things go back to
self-image.
And it is a known fact that you
just cannot consistently, and there's the key, you
cannot consistently act differently than you conceive yourself
to be.
Now you say, that sounds like, I didn't
come here this morning, Hal, to hear a
lecture on psychology, especially elementary psychology.
Well, I certainly didn't come here to give
you one either.
But I think this is a principle that
the Bible talked about long before Freud or
Maltz or any of these people.
It's important to understand that without going into
all of the technical details, the Scripture does
talk about and does deal with your self
-image first and foremost.
For instance, have you ever noticed in the
epistles of Paul, for instance, how that the
first part of every letter begins how?
What does he do?
The first half in some of them and
the first part in at least a number
of them.
What does Paul do?
Huh?
Well, in a sense he does, but it's
a very special way that he does.
He tells them what they are.
And there'll be a phrase that's connected with
it in every instance, in Christ, in Christ.
He says, you're holy and without blame before
God, in Christ.
Well, is that a myth or is he
telling the truth?
He talks about us having an inheritance with
Christ that we're going to share with him
forever.
He talks about us being made a new
creature in Christ.
Now, is all of this just a bunch
of words or is it true?
And if it is true, what significance does
it have to us?
It has a tremendous amount of significance, because
you see, God first begins to deal with
you and tell you what he has already
made you, the moment that you receive Christ
and he puts you into union with his
Son.
Turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 5,
verse 17.
Now, if you have the approved version, that's
page 279.
The approved version is the New American Standard
Bible, which is the best that's ever been
put in the English language.
2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17.
Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he
is a new creature.
The old things passed away.
Behold, a few things have become new.
Is that what it says?
Behold, all things have become new.
Now, this verse is so staggering that most
people look at it and they say, man,
that's neat.
But they'll either just sort of put it
out of their minds or they will say,
well, a few things are made new.
But very few take this verse literally.
And why do very few people take it
literally?
I'll tell you why.
Because after we become believers, we still have
something within us that keeps tempting us and
keeps dragging us to do the things that
are not God's will.
As a matter of fact, I remember when
I first became a believer, for the first
time in my life I noticed a tremendous
civil war within my soul.
I had noticed the pull of certain twinges
of conscience before I was a believer.
But never anything like I sensed after I
became a believer in Jesus Christ.
Because after the experience of knowing Christ, I
became very aware of what God wants in
my life.
And I also became very aware of something
within me that kept drawing me away from
God, kept tempting me to do things that
were contrary to God's will.
And so I experienced a tremendous tug of
war, a tremendous civil war within.
And so I would look at a verse
like this and say, well, either this verse
is not true or I'm not a Christian,
because all things are not new as far
as I can see.
And I happened to be going to a
certain church in the South, which shall remain
nameless, but it's one of the largest denominations
in the South.
And the emphasis of the preaching was to
sort of dedicate the flesh to try harder
to be what God wants me to be.
And the preaching was constantly sort of using
a kind of a guilt motivation.
You know, why aren't you like this?
Here's what you ought to be.
Now why aren't you like that?
And so they'd lay a big guilt trip
on us.
And then they would talk about all of
the things that I ought to be.
And it was sort of an avalanche of
ought to be's.
And it was always an emphasis of do,
do, do, do, do, with not enough of
how to do thrown in to where you
could even tell it.
And so how this filtered down to me
was that I was continually rededicating my life
by walking forward.
I was continually making vows to God that
I was going to try harder.
And I tried harder and I failed more.
I coined the phrase in those days, Avis
Christianity, we try harder.
And that's why I was always second best.
But I'll tell you one thing, as far
as being available to God and as far
as wanting to do the will of God,
no one could fault me on that.
I'd make a hundred percent on that.
But the misery and the frustration kept piling
up until I came to a crisis point
where I said, I don't know whether I
want to be a Christian.
If this is what it is, I don't
know whether I want to be one.
Because I've never been a person who can
kind of just halfway go at something.
And if it doesn't work out, I'm not
very disappointed.
No, I'm the kind of person who goes
all out.
And therefore, if it doesn't work, I'm so
disappointed, I'm ready to get rid of it.
And so under that kind of tutelage, I
came to the point in life where I
was sincerely trying with all of my heart.
And I'll tell you, the more I tried,
the more I failed, the guiltier I got,
the more I vowed, the more I failed.
Because you see, God doesn't want us to
vow that we will try harder.
He wants us to first recognize that he
has already made us something entirely new.
That the real you is something that is
already holy and without blame before him in
love.
The real you has been transferred from being
a slave to sin, to being a slave
to righteousness, according to Romans 6, 17.
You are now a slave of righteousness.
Now that's why you want to serve God.
Now how did he make us a slave
of righteousness?
Through two great doctrines, which are facts.
Number one, through the new birth.
The moment that you believe in Jesus Christ,
you are given a new self, which has
within it a nature that always wants to
follow God.
And the Spirit of the living God, the
Holy Spirit, comes to dwell in this new
self.
He gives us in this new birth a
whole new dimension of life, which is spiritual
life, God's life.
And we can know and perceive God as
a person.
We can relate to him as a person
when we're born again.
And so we have been made something that
really wants to follow God.
And the real you, as a Christian, will
always want to follow God.
And 1 John chapter 3 says, the real
you never sins.
Let's look at that.
Hold your place here, though.
Hold your place and turn to 1 John
chapter 3, verse 9.
1 John chapter 3, verse 9.
No one who is born of God practices
sin.
Right now, in the original Greek, the word
practice is in the present tense, which is
a tense that means continuous action.
And so the idea here is, no one
who is born of God will habitually practice
sin.
No one will keep on practicing sin as
a habit of life.
You can't just do it carelessly anymore.
You can sin as a Christian, but you
can't be careless about it.
You will be concerned about it.
All right, now why is this?
He goes on to say, because his seed
abides in him, and he cannot sin, because
he is born of God.
All right, now, the seed that is put
in the Christian is born of God.
And the he, after it says his seed
abides in him, refers to this new self
that is born within us.
And it's talking about the new self, and
it says he cannot sin.
And so there is a part of every
Christian which absolutely cannot sin, doesn't want to
sin, and always wants to follow God.
In other words, God has planted himself within
our souls, and that part of God's life
is a new self which always wants to
follow God, which will be miserable when you
sin, and which will always want to follow
him.
Now, that is the new creation that's within
you.
And this new self that you have been
made is holy and without blame.
It does not ever sin, it doesn't want
to.
All right, turn with me to Ephesians chapter
4, where we learn more about the new
self.
Ephesians chapter 4, verse 23, or
let's begin with verse 22.
That in reference to your former manner of
life, you lay aside the old self which
is being corrupted in accordance with the lust
of deceit, and that you be renewed in
the spirit of your mind and put on
the new self which in the likeness of
God has been created in what?
In righteousness and holiness of truth.
Put on the new self which is in
the likeness of God, and it has been
created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.
Now, to illustrate what we're talking about here,
laying aside the old self, putting on the
new self, let's go back to this case
of the princess who had the plastic surgery.
All right, now when she first looked at
the mirror and she said it didn't work,
what was her problem?
She still had the old self, didn't she?
Her old self was her mental image of
herself.
All right, was the image of her old
self true?
Not anymore, no.
But you see, even though she had been
changed, she still had the image of the
old self.
Now, as long as she had the image
of the old self, how did she act?
Like the old self.
Now, God says that you have been made
new, the real you does not sin, the
real you has been created in the likeness
of God in righteousness and holiness of truth.
Is that true?
All right, is it true of you?
Absolutely.
Listen, whatever God says is true of you,
whether you feel like it or not.
No matter what your past history says, if
God says something is true, it's true.
As a matter of fact, the most true
thing about us is what God says is
true about us.
Wouldn't you say that?
We do believe in the inspiration of the
scripture.
We do believe it's the infallible word of
God.
All right, if God says this is true,
it's true.
All right, then what's the problem?
Most of us are still going around with
the old self image.
Now, what's the old self image like?
What's the old self like?
The old self was corrupted.
The old self loved to sin.
The old self wanted to go its own
way.
The old self was selfish and self-centered.
That's all it could be.
The old self might have been mentally sick,
something a lot of people don't know about
me.
I was very, I was very much mentally
ill when I accepted Christ.
I'd lived five years on the brink of
suicide and very nearly took my life several
times.
And when I came to know Jesus Christ,
I was so emotionally damaged, I was so
mentally ill that my expectation was that I
would spend the rest of my life in
a sanitarium.
Now, when I became a believer in Jesus
Christ, everything didn't disappear overnight.
In fact, I floundered around as a Christian
for about a year, and I didn't go
to church for about a year.
I just read the Bible.
There were some improvements in my life.
I began to have an assurance that Jesus
Christ really was in my life.
Then I started going to this certain church
I mentioned, and then I very nearly really
cracked up because of the guilt of failure.
And then I went to hear a Bible
teacher who taught the Bible verse by verse.
The first message I ever heard him teach
was about the Suez Crisis in 1957.
It was a prophecy message.
Well, that got me convinced that the Bible
was absolutely the Word of God.
Then I began to listen to him teach
out of the Epistles of Paul, where he
happened to be, and I began to get
a new self-image.
I began to get the truth of 2
Corinthians 5, where it says, if any man
is in Christ, he is a new creation.
Old things are passed away.
Well, what I did was take and apply
that to my situation.
The old self was mentally sick and riddled
with problems which were so complicated, the only
hope I would have had in the world
would have been to go to a psychiatrist
for the rest of my life, and probably
wound up taking my life anyway.
But I began to see myself as a
new person, and that my mind could be
renewed.
Well, these things meant a lot different than
most of the people who were hearing them.
But I believed what God said, and God
began to give me a new mind, which
was really mine.
I began to see myself as something all
new in Jesus Christ, and I wasn't believing
a myth, because God said it was true.
And you know something, I found this.
Whatever you count true, which God has said,
becomes true in your experience.
First you don't feel like it.
I didn't feel like it when I first
began to believe these promises.
But in spite of my experience, in spite
of the terrible periods of depression, I would
say, I don't have to be this way,
Lord.
I am a new creation in Jesus Christ.
I believe you.
Now you put up, or shut up.
I've always been that kind of person, and
God has been gracious with me.
But you know something, God cut off with
me and everything else, but he also kept
his word.
And I began to experience a sense of
peace, a sense of a new person.
And this was absolutely fantastic.
Today, I'm not plagued with those things at
all, haven't been for years.
And God just erected a new person over
the old person that I was.
And the new person has in it the
divine viewpoint of life which has been constructed
on a study of the scripture.
But not just studying it as if it
was something out there that I could tell
other people, but studying it as something that
is true of me, that I could apply
to myself.
And the big problem I found is this.
How do you put on the new self?
By beginning to see yourself as God says
you are.
And regardless of whether you fail God today,
yesterday, and day after day before, you begin
to say to yourself, I don't have to
act that way.
I am a new creation who can trust
the Holy Spirit to work in me God's
righteousness.
I don't have to try to be what
God wants me to be.
I already have been made a new person
and I can depend upon the Holy Spirit
to make me what I already am.
And to put down any invasion of the
old self that tries to take over my
life.
And it's a moment by moment believing that
what God says is true of you in
spite of how you feel and depending on
the Holy Spirit to make it an experience.
Now this is the pattern that the scripture
says and it transforms life.
It transforms lives, I don't say that theoretically,
it's transformed mine.
And God took me out of an horrible
pit as the psalmist says and put a
new song in my mouth, even praises to
God.
And God said many shall see it and
turn to fear the Lord and trust him
reverently.
And that's why I like to share my
own experience because the Lord said if you
share how he took you out of the
pit, that it will encourage others to believe
him too.
Now I want to read something from a
psychiatrist named Dr. Knight Dunlap.
This man to my knowledge is not a
Christian, but he formulated this statement on the
basis of many clinical tests and many case
histories.
Now this this quote is so fantastic that
it thrills me.
Now this is what Dr. Dunlap says, not
on the basis of the Bible, but on
the basis of many clinical cases.
He says, and I quote, self-effort is
the one big deterrent to either breaking a
habit or learning a new one.
Did you get that?
Self-effort is the one big deterrent to
either breaking a habit or learning a new
one.
Making an effort to refrain from the habit
actually reinforces the habit.
Would the Christians would learn that and that
some Bible teachers would learn it.
Exalting people to get self-effort into the
act and try to change their habits only
reinforces the habit.
How many people have I seen try to
stop smoking for instance?
Now there's a goodie.
A particular church I attended in the south
said that if you smoked you probably weren't
a Christian.
Not that smoking is right, I'm not saying
that.
But they set up a whole list of
habits which you if you became a Christian
you had to stop immediately or else you
might not really be a Christian.
You couldn't drink, smoke, dance, go to movies,
or play cards.
We used to call them the big five.
Well since I was a former riverboat captain
and that's what I was doing when I
came to know Christ.
I was a tugboat captain on the Mississippi
River.
I practiced all five of those things plus
a few more.
Since I lived in the French Quarter for
five years I had them all and some
they hadn't thought about.
But when I kind of drifted into that
church and I found that if you know
if you did these things you might not
be a believer, I made a vow to
God I would stop.
And you know something?
I stopped all of those things in the
flesh and I managed to keep from doing
those things for quite a while.
But you know what happened in this place?
I found that the real spiritual Christians would
get up and share how they had stopped
doing certain things.
And I saw that if you really wanted
to be spiritual what you did was tell
what you'd given up and appear humble about
it.
Well I got to where I could share
glowing reports of what I had given up
for the Lord and still look humble.
And I got proud I was so humble.
I used to weep about what a humble
guy I was.
And then as all things like that do
they begin to backlash and the old habits
began to come back after a while.
You know after the kick of the praise
of the people wore off the things started
coming back.
Well there's nothing wrong with getting rid of
those habits and I believe that the Holy
Spirit will deal with many habits in our
life as we grow.
But there's one thing I've learned that if
you've been a Christian for about 15, 20,
30 years don't expect the Lord to suddenly
deliver a newborn Christian of the habits that
took him 20 or 30 years to kick
out of your life.
In other words don't expect them to do
something you weren't able to be led to
do.
Recognize that babies spiritually are babies and it
takes a while.
But the Lord must work from the inside.
The Lord must be able to work in
our lives from the standpoint of seeing that
we are a new person and then the
Holy Spirit being set free to work on
our inner desires.
And then the Holy Spirit one by one
will begin to put his finger on certain
things in our life that are displeasing to
us.
And it won't just be external things such
as drinking and smoking etc.
It will also be gossip.
It will also be character assassination.
It will also be stretching the truth or
bearing false witness or spreading rumors or causing
division among the cisterns.
I always have to have a little trouble
shifting from talking to men to girls here.
But the Lord will begin to put his
finger within on certain things.
And you know when the Lord says okay
this ought to go, then you can depend
on the Holy Spirit and count it true
that you are already set free from any
bondage to any habit.
And yet you don't try to put it
out of your life yourself.
You see that you are free from being
in bondage to any habit because you've been
crucified with Christ and you no longer live.
And the life that you now live is
the life of the Son of God.
And so you see that you already are
a new person who has been freed from
all bondage to all habits.
It's just a matter of claiming it and
letting the Holy Spirit enforce it.
And so you depend on the Holy Spirit,
not human resources, to put things out of
your life.
And when the Holy Spirit puts them out
they're really out.
And you can't go around and what you
did because you didn't do it.
The Holy Spirit did it.
And what he does is a beautiful thing.
Now turn with me to Romans chapter 7.
Verse 15.
Now I'm reading from the New American Standard
Bible.
It may be just a little different from
some of yours, but just I think it'll
all be very close.
Verse 15.
For that which I'm doing I do not
understand.
For I'm not practicing what I would like
to do, but I'm doing the very thing
I hate.
But if I do the very thing I
do not wish to do, I agree with
the law confessing that it is good.
Now have you ever been in this place
where the things you do you don't even
understand?
And the things you keep wanting to do
you don't do.
The things you hate you keep doing.
I call it Christian schizophrenia.
And you keep being prodded by God's commandments,
the law of Moses and so forth.
You keep being prodded that certain things are
wrong.
And you just with all your heart try
to live up to these external commandments.
And what happens is you don't understand what's
going on, but you keep breaking them.
You keep falling short.
You want to with all your heart, but
you keep falling short.
Now Paul says that through this, this is
an experience of the Apostle Paul personally after
he was a believer.
He's giving us an autobiography in Romans 7
of his own experience after he was a
young believer.
And he tells us how he discovered certain
things about himself.
Now he says the fact that I keep
wanting to do the things I are, I
keep wanting to do certain things and not
doing, and I keep doing the things I
hate.
He says this makes me see that the
law is good.
Now why does it make him see the
law is good?
Well because it shows that the law is
God's perfect righteousness and perfect standard of righteousness.
And he sees that he in himself keeps
falling short of it.
So it's accomplishing his job.
And it's good in that it shows us
where we fail.
But it's also good in that the law
keeps probing into our soul and it keeps
forcing us to see something.
And Paul tells how he discovered something within
his soul as a Christian that he didn't
know was still there.
And what was that?
Well let's look at verse 17.
He says, So now no longer am I
the one doing it, but sin which indwells
me.
For I know that nothing good dwells in
me, that is in my flesh.
For the wishing is present in me, but
the doing of the good is not.
For the good that I wish I do
not do, but I practice the very evil
that I do not wish.
But if I am, if I am doing
the thing I do not wish, I am
no longer the one doing it, but sin
which dwells in me.
Now actually this is a passage that I
read over for years and years.
Even as a victorious Christian and didn't fully
understand what it was saying.
I had a natural human blindness to it.
What is this passage really saying?
It is saying that when I sin I
am no longer the one doing it.
You see that?
Who is the I in this passage?
The I.
I am no longer doing it.
The new self.
So why do you sin as a Christian?
If you're a new creature, all things have
been made new.
And the real you wants to always follow
God.
Where does the sin come from?
The old flesh.
Or as it says here, sin in the
singular.
And sin in the singular refers to the
nature of sin.
Sometimes it's called the flesh.
Sometimes in this passage it's just called sin
in the singular.
But whenever it's called sin in the singular
in Romans 6, 7, and 8.
It's speaking of the nature of sin.
The root nature with which we were born,
which we still have as a believer, and
which still tries to bring the old self
back as the pattern of behavior.
Now it says, so now, no longer, verse
17, 7, 17, no longer am I the
one doing it, but sin which indwells me.
So Paul discovered through the law, forcing him
to sin more, really.
The law kept prodding him.
And the more it prodded him, the more
he tried to keep it.
And the more he tried to keep it,
the more the old sin rebelled.
And the more sin rebelled, the more he
did sin.
So the law kept prodding him and saying,
hey, Paul, you can't make it on your
own.
You can't live the Christian life by your
own efforts.
And Paul kept saying, yes I can.
All I need to do is dedicate myself
a little more.
And so boy, Paul would come back bloody,
but not vowed.
And he would keep trying to keep the
law, and trying to keep the law.
And he kept trying with all of his
might to be what God wanted him to
be.
And what did he experience?
The things I hate, I keep doing.
The things I want to do, I don't
do.
I don't understand myself.
And so he would come back for more.
I must not be putting it together right,
Lord.
Just give me a few more days and
I will keep your law.
And he would keep trying and trying.
And finally, you know what happened?
Verse 25, or verse 24, wretched man that
I am, who will set me free from
the body of this death?
This is the great Apostle Paul, who became
the greatest Christian ever lived.
So I'm excluding Jesus from that.
But Paul became the greatest Christian that ever
lived.
He was the man who single-handedly took
the gospel to the outer limit of the
Roman Empire in his one lifetime.
But here he was, before he discovered the
principle of self-image and walking and being
filled with the Holy Spirit.
Here he is, he's trying to live for
God.
And he tried real hard.
He's kind of, I guess I'm patterned like
him.
I throw myself into it so the disappointment
is much more overwhelming than the usual.
Paul tried so hard that he finally said,
oh wretched man that I am, who will
deliver me from the body of this death?
Now that was the great Apostle Paul as
a Christian.
You know what he was saying?
What do you mean when you say, get
me out of this body?
What do you think that means?
Hmm?
He wanted to die.
He finally came to the place where he
was so miserable, he said, Lord just take
me home.
Get me out of the body of this
death.
Now in the process, though, he tells us
that he discovered something.
And it's very important to get these points.
In verse 18, look at it again.
For I know that nothing good dwells in
me.
For the wishing is present in me, but
the doing of the good is not.
Did you notice any inconsistency there?
I'll read it again.
For I know that nothing good dwells in
me.
For the wishing is present in me, but
the doing of the good is not.
What's wrong?
Huh?
The wishing is good, but I left something
out, didn't I?
I left out that is in my flesh.
You know why I did that?
Because the average Christian reads it that way.
He doesn't see that the qualifying clause, that
is in my flesh.
And this is where the common mistake comes.
Where Paul said, I know that nothing good
dwells in me.
Our minds usually stop right there.
And we fail to see the qualifying phrase,
that is in my flesh.
Now, you know, I used to think, and
I was taught this by several well-meaning
teachers, I used to think that it was
spiritual to passionately hate myself.
I used to think that it was really
part of God's will for me to sort
of mentally castigate myself and to say, what
a no good person I am.
And of course, when I sinned, I would
really confirm that.
And I would go through this sort of
a self-imposed penance where I would say,
man, I'm rotten to the core, Lord.
Forgive me.
Forgive me, Lord.
I know I'm rotten.
And that's why I did this thing.
And I would quote to myself, there's nothing
good in me, Lord, but you.
Is that true?
If it's true, God's a liar.
In fact, I've heard many testimonies where people
got up and said, I'm nothing but a
no good, rotten, dirty sinner.
You know, when someone gets up and gives
a testimony like that, I try to get
out of their way.
You know why?
Because when a person says that, that's their
self-image.
So how are they going to act?
Like a no good, rotten, dirty sinner.
Now, Paul said, there is nothing good within
me that is in my flesh.
And the flesh is rotten, and it is
dirty, and it can't even be reformed.
That's why God's self, because he didn't even
try to reform the old self, is impossible.
But he gave us a new self, which
is created in the likeness of God in
righteousness and truth.
Now, for me to go around and to
hate myself as a believer in Jesus Christ,
and to keep looking at myself as something
that is a failure, and something that just
has to sin, and something that just has
to be a slave to the old habit,
is to call God a liar to his
faith.
And it also guarantees that we will continue
to act exactly the way that we acted
before we were believers.
Because as you conceive yourself to be, so
you are.
As a man thinks in his heart, what?
So is he.
That's talking about your self-image.
What do you think about yourself?
The Bible says, love others as what?
As you love yourself.
Now, this is not self-centeredness.
You know, it took me a long time
to see I could accept what God had
made me.
That I could accept the new self that
God has created within me.
And to accept that new self is not
to be self-centered, or egotistical, or any
such thing.
It is simply to count true what God
says is true, and to rejoice in what
God has done.
I didn't make me what I am.
God did.
And so I can begin to accept the
new person that God has made me.
And as I do, I begin to become
what God says I am.
I begin to look at the mirror of
God's word, and I begin to see that
I'm a whole new person.
Now, turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter
3, verse
16.
But whenever a man turns to the Lord,
the veil is taken away.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty.
But we all with unveiled face, beholding as
in a mirror, the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image, from
glory to glory, just as from the Lord
the Spirit.
Now the veil, the veil that is over
the heart of people, is that veil of
unbelief that fails to take literally true what
God says.
That's the problem of the Jew.
But you see the Christian has that problem
too.
Now we can't help it, but as we
can help it, but I mean it's a
natural thing to have this veil.
We have to go through a crisis, I
believe, of when we come to see that
we must take true what God says, in
spite of how we feel, or in spite
of our past record.
We must come to count true about ourselves
what God says is true.
Now when we begin to live like that,
what happens?
It says, we with unveiled face, behold as
in a mirror, the glory of the Lord.
Now as we look in the mirror of
God's word, you see the mirror stands for
the Bible.
As I look in the mirror of God's
word, is there a veil over my face
so that I can't really see what the
Bible says I am?
Or as we begin to just count true
what God says, the veil drops and I
begin to see myself in the scripture as
I really am.
Now what happens when that happens?
I begin to see the very glory of
the Lord about myself, because we are being
conformed in what?
His image.
And it's a process from one glory, to
another glory, to another glory, to another glory,
and on and on and on.
But how does it happen?
Through the Holy Spirit.
But we must set the Holy Spirit free
to transform us.
And how do we do that?
By expecting to be and experience what God
says we are.
Now that's why I said in the beginning,
the title of this talk is Becoming What
You Are.
You already are a new creature in Jesus
Christ.
You are already accepted in the Beloved, Ephesians
1.6. Who is the Beloved?
Jesus.
And you're accepted in him, with the same
love that Christ has, because you're in absolute
union with him.
And God sees you as he sees him.
You're already accepted with God.
Jesus has so completely removed any barriers of
sin from you, past, present, and future, that
God will never stop accepting you once you're
his child.
And so let me ask you this question.
If God accepts you, can you accept yourself?
If God can accept you, how dare you
not accept yourself?
And if you see that God accepts you,
and you begin to accept yourself, you know
what automatically happens?
You begin to accept others as they are.
How revolutionary this is, when two people who
are married get a hold of this concept.
And I've found that if you accept people,
and love them, that this in itself is
creative.
They begin to change, because they are released
by your acceptance and your love.
God's love and God's acceptance is creative with
us.
We find that we are free from guilt.
Hebrews 10.17 says, the Lord no longer
takes note of our sins.
He says, their sins and their lawless deeds
I will remember no more.
God has a good memory, but he's chosen
not to remember, because they're already paid for,
so why dig up something that's been buried
in the deepest sea, through the cross.
We find that we are free from Satan's
dominion.
Colossians chapter 1.
I'll get the exact reference on that.
Verse 13.
We have been delivered from the domain of
darkness, and transferred to the kingdom of his
beloved Son.
You know, it's really a good thing that
I knew that, while I was writing Satan's
Alive and Well on Planet Earth.
Because Satan hit me with trials and temptations
that were so great, and he's still hitting
me, but not quite so furiously now.
But in the two years I was writing
that book, Satan hit me with every area
of weakness that I have, so tenaciously, that
if I hadn't have known, that in my
new self I'm delivered from his authority and
power, I would have been swept away.
We have been set free from slavery to
sin.
Romans 6, 17 and 18.
We have been set free from human efforts.
Romans 8 verse 4, where it says, in
order that the righteousness of the law might
be fulfilled in us, who do not walk
according to the flesh, but walk according to
the Spirit.
We walk in a moment by moment dependence
upon the Holy Spirit, and stop trying to
live for God ourselves, and step out on
faith expecting the Holy Spirit to overcome our
temptations, to give us a positive deliverance over
fear, to give us positive abilities to serve
the Lord.
And he does.
In the Christian life, you always get what
you expect.
You expect nothing, you won't be disappointed.
But this is one of the crucial truths
of the Christian faith.
As you look in the mirror of God's
Word, every time you see the scriptures say
something that is a straightforward statement about you,
the believer.
Begin to write it down on a card,
and carry that card with you, and read
it to yourself several times a day, and
just say, Lord, I don't feel like this
is true maybe, but I count it as
true.
And I thank you that the Holy Spirit
will make it real, and an experience.
Begin to do that, and you'll see the
Spirit of the Lord begin to transform you
from one degree of glory to another degree
of glory, into the same image of Jesus
Christ.
This is what Paul meant in Galatians 4,
19, when he says, My little children with
whom I travail in birth again, until what?
Christ be formed in you.
It's possible for Christ to be formed in
us.
It's the work of the Spirit, but we
must set the Holy Spirit free to do
it by believing and counting what God says
as true.
Don't be like the princess with a whole
new face, looking at the mirror, weeping over
how ugly you are.
You're beautiful before the Lord.
You're something special to him.
You've been made a new creation in Jesus
Christ.
Become what you are.
Let's pray.
Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the
privilege of having this treasure dwell in earthen
vessels.
The excellency of the power might be revealed
as coming from you and not from us.
We pray that each one of us might
continually believe what you've said, and that we
might moment by moment rely upon the Holy
Spirit, not ourselves.
In Jesus' name, Amen.