Giving Your Heart to God

So you ought not feel sorry for them when they have to go somewhere. They’ve been there a while, it becomes home, and then their heart gets planted there, and I’m telling you, it’s exciting to see God work, and it’s exciting to see young people that want to serve God, and all that God does in these foreign countries. And then we come back to America, and it’s like the light turned off.

Now, I’m not here to beat you this morning, I want to encourage you. But somewhere other in America, the fire kind of went out. We come this morning, and we look all slick and pretty, and we got our Bibles under our arms, and do all the things we do to come in and look spiritual. But somehow or other, the power is gone. And we need to get that back.

The brother had a good Sunday school class on Romans chapter 11 and Romans chapter 12, so I’m going to give you some Bible you’ve never heard before. Turn to Romans chapter 12, amen. Romans chapter 12.

And as Brother Hearn explained this morning about God, and what a great God we serve, and how excited Paul was to serve that God, and he gives us chapter 11. And because, well, let’s read verse 36 of chapter 11, for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. Amen. Chapter 12, verse 1, I beseech ye therefore, because of that, because how great God is, and all the things that God has done.

I beseech you therefore by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Let’s pray just a minute. Father, I’d ask you, Lord, to meet with us today.

I pray you’d be honored to come, Lord, and touch our hearts, and I pray your Spirit would have free course in this place this morning, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

We need to understand that Romans chapter 12, let me give a disclaimer first of all. I’m not talking about your money this morning. I’m not talking about you giving your life and going to Africa forever. I’m not talking about that. What I’m talking about this morning is your heart.

God really doesn’t want your money. He wants your heart. And we’re willing to throw some dollars in the offering plate or put it in a box or whatever you do here. We’re honored. We do that. And we’ll come and sit in the service, and we’ll say amen at the right time, and we’ll shake the preacher’s hand.

But there’s something missing there. And we come in, and we’re very glad that we’re here. We’re very religious. And we’ve become a denomination more than the mighty church of God, the mighty army of God that we need to be. And the problem comes back to this thing of Romans chapter 12, verse 1. So he said, present your bodies a living sacrifice. That harkens back to the Old Testament sacrifice where they killed the animals and offered them as an offering to God.

And they poured the blood on the altar and did all these sacrifices. But here he’s not talking about an animal sacrifice. He’s talking about our sacrifice on our altar. Individually, we have that responsibility not just to proclaim Jesus as my Savior. It’s not just the name. Christianity is an action organization. We don’t just come and sit and read and pray and go home. We are the army of God, and we’re supposed to be willing to give of ourselves to reach the world for Jesus Christ.

Now these missionary families that are here, I’m telling you every single one of them, when they surrendered for service to the foreign field, there was a time in that beginning where they had to put it all on the altar. We’re talking about family. We’re talking about future. We’re talking about fortune. Everything changes when you put your life on the altar for God. It changes. You’re never the same anymore.

But the problem is we won’t do that. We want to make spiritual decisions with hidden sin in our lives. You know, you can’t make a spiritual decision with a dirty heart. You just can’t do it. You really can’t pray until you’re walking with God. I don’t mean just mouth the words. I mean pray and God hear and God answer. Until you’re walking in the spirit with God, and you have that relationship where He is the Father and you are His child.

And again, the New Guineans, they had this idea that God was a fellow that’s sitting in a chair in heaven with a big long white beard, and he had a big stick. And all he was waiting to do was whack you with that stick when you did something wrong. That is not the God we serve. It’s God is our Father. He’s not an ogre with a stick in heaven.

Now, He does correct us. Yes, He does. But He’s not there. It’s like there’s children in here. When your child makes a mistake, you correct that child, but that love is still there. One of these little boys the other day, we were in the fellowship hall, and because of my bad heart, I couldn’t pick him up, but he came and stood before us. I was talking to somebody, and he kind of went like this.

He couldn’t talk. I guess that was a signal to have, here I am, pick me up. He was so cute, and I just wanted to grab him and hug him, and he was such a cute little fellow. Well, that’s the way God is for us. That’s the way He looks at His children. He’s a loving God. He’s a caring God. He’s concerned. God knows where you are right now. God knows the problems you’re going through.

God knows the beginning from the end. Listen, He knows where you are, and He’s allowed you to be where you are, to change some things in your life. So when you learn from that mistake and you confess that mistake, then that loving Father wants to hug you again. You all with me this morning? That’s the Father we serve.

But to be right with that Father, we’re asked to put our lives on the altar, our hearts on the altar, as it were, and give our heart to God. We’ll give our money. There’s trials and tests. Somebody smarter than me said that in the Garden of Eden, the tree of good and evil was a test of faith for Adam and Eve. And then in the Garden of Gethsemane, the cross was a test of faith for Jesus on this earth.

You remember in Matthew 26, verse 39, it says, And he went a little farther and fell on his face and prayed, saying, O Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but thy will be done. That was a test of faith. You see, Jesus in his humanity was just like us.

He had to make a decision. Aren’t you glad he made the right one? Amen. And he endured that cross for us. He bore the penalty for our sins as he was judged for our sins. And he hung on that cross and he gave his life a sacrifice for us. It was a test of faith. Well, our test of faith is Romans chapter 12. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

Now, what is this thing about holy? Holiness is when sin is confessed in our life. Holiness is when we are willing to separate from the world and live a godly life for Jesus Christ. So he wants a holy sacrifice, acceptable unto God. Now, here’s what we do. We have our prayer time and we’ll generally say, God forgive me for whatever.

And we’ll confess a couple of things, but way down deep in our lives, there’s things that are not right with God. I told Brother James, I said, he said, what kind of message you got? And I said, man, it is a bleeder. Going to have to have band-aids before the service is over. I’m coming down here to get some water to drink, but we’re all right. We’re still going, are we not?

But we hide these sins in our hearts and the Holy Ghost comes and can listen. When you pray, and I’m not talking about praying over your meal. I’m talking about when you pray, get along with God and pray. The Spirit of God will convict you of the sin in your life. You all with me so far? But we’ve become accustomed to confessing that which is obvious, but hiding that which we don’t want the world to know.

So what we do is we suppress that, we push it down. And the Spirit of God comes and the first time He convicts you, man, it’s strong and it’s just in your face and you’re trying to pray and get right with God and He brings this to your memory.

But we push it away in that little corner of our heart where we hide things that we don’t want anybody else to know. Sometimes it’s overt sin, it’s over the top. Sometimes it’s overt sin and sometimes it’s just what I would call smaller things, some hard feelings towards somebody. And we don’t want to forgive them because they’ve hurt us bad. But Lord bless this food and God help me to be right and help me to work with you in Jesus’ name, amen.

But we never confess that which He’s convicted us to confess. Let me ask you a question. When’s the last time you really got right with God? I mean really got right. Y’all know what spring cleaning is down here in South Carolina?

Doesn’t bother us men too much. But man when it’s springtime and mama gets that broom out, she wants to clean everything. I mean she’s sweeping, she’s moving, well you’re moving furniture because she thinks there ought to be some dirt under there. I don’t know how the dirt got under there because there’s a 200 pound couch sitting on it. But nevertheless, you got to move it out and she’s got a vacuum and sweep and wash windows and well you wash the windows at her direction.

I missed a spot over there. Spring cleaning. She wants to clean everything out that’s cluttered up the house through the winter time where it was too cold to do some things and now she’s going to move everything and clean it all out. And if somebody’s coming over, first thing she does is I got to clean the bathroom and we got to clean this and we got to clean that because company’s coming.

That’s what I’m talking about. When’s the last time you really had spring cleaning in your heart? I mean really got right with God and dug up those hidden things that you know God hates but what we do is we suppress it, we push it down.

And the next time God convicts us of that, it’s not as loud or as convicting as the first time. And then the next day He’ll convict us again. The Spirit of God will say, hey, well what about this?

And we push it down again because we want to hold that thing in our life. So we hide it from the world but it’s still there. And we wonder why doesn’t God bless us? Why am I having so many problems in my life?

And the Spirit of God is saying, what about this? Y’all humor me a minute. Put your hand over your ears just for a minute. Now if you got hearing aids they’ll scream in your ear.

Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? You see what happens? Because every time after you refuse to listen to God, you’re going to have to go back to your heart. Because every time after you refuse to do that, then the voice of God gets lower and lower and lower and pretty soon we don’t hear it at all. We’re used to that. We’re used to saying, well yeah, okay, and let’s go on with something else.

And we’ll pray and we’ll give our money and the offering and we’ll come to church and we’ll go downtown and pass out gospel tracts. And you’re saying, man, why is there no joy in the church? Why is there no fire in the church? What’s the problem here? You say, well the problem is with the preacher. No, no, no, the problem is with us. God wants to bless this church.

God wants to bless your missionary program. God wants to bless your life. But first there has to be that altar. Again, I’m not talking about going somewhere. I’m not talking about your money. I’m talking about your heart and getting your heart right with God.

You see, we’re going to say, well, are we going to support these missionaries? You want to make a spiritual decision from a carnal position and it just doesn’t work that way.

That’s like having a pastor in your church. That’s like having a pastor that’s not saved. How much power does he have in his preaching if your pastor wasn’t saved? Well, how much power do we have of God and how can we get the direction of God? How can we know the will of God when we’re afraid of that altar and we’re afraid to go and confess some things that we know we need to get out of our lives and ask God to bless us and forgive us and sweep all that nonsense out and unstop your ears where you can hear the voice of God and God can direct your life.

When’s the last time that you responded to an invitation in this church when the preacher preached and the Spirit convicted you and you wouldn’t come to the altar? You wouldn’t come to the altar. You wouldn’t come to the altar. You wouldn’t come to the altar. And you wouldn’t come to the altar.

I dare say some of you have never been to the altar to pray at an invitation. Getting awful quiet in here. This is serious business here. This thing of serving God and putting your all on the altar. If we are going to serve God, we’re going to have to get right with God and the Bible says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.

That’s Psalm 66, 18. I’m talking about those hidden things. Those hidden things. It’s a hard message. Serious business. Now if we don’t do that, if we don’t give that spiritual sacrifice, if we don’t put our hearts on the altar, get right with God and say, God, my life is yours.

My family is yours. My finances are yours. And God, I’m yours. Do with me as you will. If we don’t do that, you ever see a hamster in a cage? When I was a little boy, people got their kids hamsters and had a little wheel in the cage. And that foolish thing would get on there and he’d just run and run and run. He wasn’t going anywhere.

There was a lot of movement, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Our spiritual life gets like that when we come in on Sunday. And I’m glad you’re here. Don’t misunderstand. I’m glad you’re here. But we come in on Sunday, we sing the songs, we shake hands, we hear the message, we hear the Sunday School program, we throw a few dollars in the offering. We go out and we think, well, that’s my reasonable service.

And we do that without the altar. God wants our hearts on the altar. God wants us clean and he wants to use us. He wants to mold us and make us in the image of his son so the world can see Christ in us. And outwardly we say, yes, we want that too. But inwardly we say we want that, but we also want this over here.

But you can’t have one unless you get rid of the other. Listen, if you’re here and saved, you’re not going to be happy in the world. You just can’t do it. You try to walk two lines. You try to put one foot in the world and the other in the church, and you’re not happy in either place. You’re just not happy. There’s no joy. You don’t like it.

There’s no joy in your heart. Listen, if you wanted that joy to return, if you want to get back to that place like when you were first saved and God saved you and filled you with the Holy Ghost, and you were so excited and you were so happy and that burden of sin was gone, and then wasn’t life good? Everybody needs to hear about this. If we want to get back to that, then we have to come to the altar and say, God, I’m sorry, these hidden things, I need to get them out.

Forgive me and get right with God and that joy will return. Then coming to church is not a burden that you bear every Sunday, and you throw it off when you get to the back door. Then it’s a joy to fellowship with the brethren. Then it’s a joy to hear the Word of God preach. Then it’s a joy to go out and share the gospel with people.

It’s not now, these are things that you dread doing because God doesn’t have your whole heart. I’m not saying you’re not saved. I’m not saying that at all. I’m telling you that this victorious life and this life where we’re happy to serve God, that comes from being right with God. That comes from allowing the Holy Ghost of God to lead us, God to cleanse us, and we have that fellowship, and then we can hear the voice of God and get direction from God.

God, what should I do? We mess our life up making wrong decisions. Why not let God make the decision? Why not pray about things? You say, well, I know how to do that. You got a problem? You say, man, don’t worry, pastor, I got this. No, you don’t. No, you don’t. All we’re doing is making a bigger mess. Somebody said, if you’re in a hole over your head, quit digging.

Amen. Just get right and get it over with. See, this is painful, man. If I respond to the invitation, people are going to think I’m a sinner. Man, we’re all sinners. We’re all sinners. If you’re here today and lost, at the invitation, you walk up this aisle, and the hardest part about that is that first step.

And they think, well, if I’m in a hole, and they think, well, if I go up there, people are going to think bad about me. No, no, no. We were, everybody in this church that saved were right there where you are at one time. We were right where you are. We had to make that decision and receive Christ as our Savior. So we responded to the invitation, and somebody took a Bible and showed us how to receive Christ as our Savior.

Amen. If you’re, and I don’t know any of you, but if you’re here at the church, and you’ve made a mess of your life, these church members, if you respond to the invitation, say, Pastor, would you pray for me? Man, I’m sorry I did this, that, and whatever. I want to get right with God. They’re not going to laugh at you. They’re not going to point at you.

They’re going to come and hug you. They love you. This is our family here. You’ll be more aware of sin in your life. You ever see that verse, pray without ceasing? At one time I wondered, how do you pray without ceasing? Well, I’ll tell you what, you get right, well, you get really get right with God. And before you get out of here, you’ll have to pray again.

Say, why is that? Because you have, listen, the devil is going to come and get you. Say, why is that? Because you have, listen, the devil’s sitting on your shoulder and you all know about this. You’re praying sometimes, man. And I say, where did that thought come from? I said, oh God, please forgive me. I don’t know where that come from. Pray without ceasing. You walk out of here and you see somebody and you’ve had a problem with them in the past and you look at them and that old thing tries to get up again, that old flesh and yeah, I know that.

She said something about me. Oh God, I’m sorry. You’re just constantly getting right with God because we’re still in this wicked flesh. In this flesh dwelleth no good thing. Your body is not going to heaven. This flesh is wicked. All right, this flesh isn’t saved. This flesh has memories of everything you have done in your life. You say, I tried to forget that. Well, your flesh is not going to forget it.

And the devil’s not going to let you forget it. He’s going to bring it up and bring it up and the things that happened 20 years ago that you’ve already prayed about, you’ve been forgiven. It’s under the blood, it’s gone, but the devil’s going to bring it up again and say, well, what about this? You did this 20 years ago. Go with me today. It’s a spiritual battle and we need to get right with God about it.

If we’re going to have that victorious Christian life, if we’re going to walk with the Spirit and walk in the Spirit, then we’re going to have to be right with, listen, the Spirit is God. You understand that, don’t you? The Holy Ghost of God is God. Jesus Christ is God. God the Father is God. Have I given you new theology here? We just have to get right with God.

And God, well, listen, the work of the Spirit of God is to lead and guide us into what? Old truths. And what he’s trying to do in our lives as we have this daily walk is to guide you. And we’ll come along and listen, he doesn’t shout at you and it’s not an audible voice you hear in your ear. He speaks to your hearts. And you’ll say, don’t do that.

Don’t go over there. Go this way. You guys were downtown with us yesterday and somebody walks by and you thought, well, I’ll just let him go on. And the Holy Ghost said, give him a gospel track. Give him a gospel track. I was going to Bible school. I stopped one night for gas. We had classes at night. And this guy come out and I mean, he had a jean jacket cut off here and tattoos all over him.

Now this was in about 1983 or so. And he’s all snaggletoothed and man looked like he’d done 20 years and full some prison. And he was running that gas station. And God said, give him a track. And I didn’t give him a track. I got back in my car and drove on to school. Sat in that classroom as I started to go home. Listen, I drove 33 miles to school one way.

And I’m driving up that highway. And the Holy Ghost of God said, you better go give him a track. And in my mind, the devil said, man, he’s big and he’s mean and he’s probably been to prison and he’s doing all these things.

God said, go give him a track. So I pulled back in that same gas station. And this is a few hours later and he’s sitting in there. And I walked into the office in there. And he just looked at me. And I said, I was here before. And I said, I didn’t do this, but I need to give you this gospel track. And it’s just Bible verses that’ll show you how to get saved.

And I’m waiting, man. I’m waiting for him to throw something mean at me. And he smiled, a big toothless grin. And he said, thank you, sir. I appreciate you doing that. I said, you doing that. Amen. You see, all that fear and all that anxiety that the devil put within me and I fell for that nonsense and I didn’t listen to God, produce fear in my life, anxiety in my life.

But when I got right with God, all that anxiety was gone. All that fear was gone. You want joy back in your life, just get right with God. I’m not talking about giving me some money or I’m not talking about going anywhere exotic. I’m talking about having a personal relationship with spring cleaning in your soul to where you really, really, really, really, really get right with God.

Thank you. When’s the last time? When’s the last time? You say, preacher, this is a missionary conference. It is. It’s a conference to present some missionary presentations and for this church to look about those and pray about those if you don’t already support them and make a decision to support them or not. It’s a missionary conference about finances and what kind of finances that God would have you to give this year.

Now, I haven’t said a word about this all week, but how much you give is a spiritual decision. If you make it in the flesh, you’ll regret it. But if you follow God, you’d be amazed what God can do. If we’ll just take that first step and say, okay, God, what would you have me to do? What would you have me to give? Where would you have me to go?

And then you give it with joy in your heart. You don’t give it to the preacher. You don’t give it to the church. You don’t give it to the missionary. You give it to God. This is an offering to God. This is above your type. It is an offering, a freewill offering to God. And we want to give what God burdens us to give and give that offering honorably to God by faith.

And then there’s joy in giving. It’s not hard to do. You don’t regret that money. We’ve been supporting missionaries. I’ve been saved 43 years. We’ve been supporting missionaries 43 years. Amen. Been tied them 43 years. Why? Because it’s right. It’s biblical. This is what we do. Amen. We haven’t starved to death. We haven’t wanted for anything. God always supplies the need. So you get right with God.

You follow the leadership of the Spirit of God. That’s where it talks about that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Listen, you can’t know the will of God until you get on speaking terms with Him. Amen. That’s another reason. Now I’m starting to sound like him. That’s another reason that we don’t want to get right with God because we’re afraid of what He’s going to ask us to do.

It’s like me in the gospel track. We don’t want to do it. It’s out of fear. If I really get right with God, if I respond to the invitation this morning, come up here and pray, people are going to think I’m a sinner. You are a sinner. Amen. I’m a sinner. And we all have things we need to get right about this morning. But we don’t do it because of fear.

Fear always follows faith. Always. You make a spiritual decision. You’re making the spiritual decision right now. I’m telling you, the devil’s going to follow you out of here and say, man, what are you doing? Who do you think you are? Yeah. That’s exactly right. And he’ll follow you around, but you have to make that decision. You have to... Listen, you follow God. Somebody’s... We were talking about something, and we had a situation in New Guinea where, oh, somebody said it’s dangerous.

My wife had malaria. My son had malaria, and I had to get to town to get some medicine. And they were fighting on the road. There was a tribal fight. And the pastor and I said, John, I got to go to Mount Hagan. He said, I’ll go with you. He jumped in the truck, and we started over there, and we got to Pangaea Station, and they said they’re fighting on the road.

They’ve killed somebody. They’re stealing cars and stealing all the cargo. They said, you’d better not go. I said, but John, we have to go. We have to go. We pulled off there at Pangaea to the airstrip, and we started praying. I said, oh, God, we have to go. Would you go with us? Would you protect us? And we started praying and thinking about that thing. Man, I said, glory to God, John, let’s go.

Amen. Hey, listen, how do you threaten the Christian with death? How do you do that? I always tell people, don’t ever get old. There’s no prophet in it. And everybody says, well, it beats the alternative. No, it doesn’t, not if you’re saved. Amen. We’re absent from the body. Where are we? Present with the Lord. I’m telling you, there’s no mosquitoes in heaven. There’s no cockroaches in heaven.

You don’t have to sweep out your mansion in heaven. Come on now. You don’t have to walk in the mud. You preach this to New Guineans back in the village, and they say, glory to God, no mosquitoes. That’s wonderful. But when you really get right with God, death doesn’t...

Let’s see, what’s the English word for it? You don’t fear death anymore, because death is a door. And all you do is you leave this body, man, you just open a door and walk into heaven. And you’re there with Christ.

How do you do that? Listen, when we get right with God, everything changes. Your walk with the Lord will change. Your family will change. Your service to the Lord and the church will change. Everything changes.

I’m not going to sing, but I’m going to read you the words of my favorite song. It says, Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart, not be all else to me save that thou art. Thou my best thought by day and by night, waking or sleeping thy presence my light. Be thou my wisdom, thou my true word, I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord.

Thou my dear father and I thy dear child, I in thee dwelling with thee reconciled. Be thou my respite, my sword in the fight. Be thou my dignity, thou my delight. Thou my soul’s shelter, thou my high tower, raise thou me heavenward, O power of my power. Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise. Thou my inheritance, now and always. Thou and thou only, first in my heart.

Thou King of heaven, my treasure, thou art. High King of heaven, thy victory won. May I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s sun. Heart of my heart, whatever befall, be thou my vision, O ruler of all. I’m telling you, whoever wrote that, man, they were plugged in. I mean, this was written about 500 AD, and the story behind it is that the King of Ireland in those days said, he put out a decree, let there not be a light anywhere.

He worshiped another God, and he said, we’re not gonna light a candle or a candle to fire in honor of this God. And whoever wrote this song went up on the highest mountain. And if you see this in a song book, it’ll have the word slayed underneath it. Slayed is the name of the mountain he was standing on. And he built, he built the biggest fire he could build on top of this mountain.

And he wrote this song to the glory of God. I’m telling you, we can have that relationship with God where he just doesn’t become something on Sunday, he becomes our life. And when we’re hid in him, all fear is gone, the joy returns, the word opens up to us. Listen, ladies, when you really, really, really get right with God, that old ugly husband of yours, man, he’ll look like the most handsome man you have ever seen.

You’ll have a different take on him. And men, when you get saved, that wife of 57 years, I better be careful, I’m about to get in trouble. She will be the most beautiful girl in the world because your heart’s right with God. Amen, I’m trying to help you here. That joy will come back when you come to church, that fellowship will be sweet. And when you hear the pastor stand up and preach the word of God, know that this is the word from my father.

And it’s feeding my soul. And you can fellowship with the church, you can fellowship with God, and you can have a burden for the world outside because they’re all dying and going to hell. Amen. Now, when’s the last time you were really, really, really right with God? Musicians will come, and however you give an invitation around here, because I’m just a visitor.

Would you all stand up? They’re going to sing a song of invitation. And if you haven’t been on this altar in a while, it’d be a good time to get things right with God. It’d be a good time to restore that whole fellowship. It’d be a good time to find that joy of the believer again in your life. And when you walk out of here, the load you’re carrying won’t seem so heavy anymore.

Brother, what number are you singing?