The Alternative

Dr. Tony Evans: He wants you to have a divinely prescribed masterpiece view of yourself that is sound and that benefits others. You will now begin to see the will of God being worked out in your life, and you will discover you.

Guest (Male): Dr. Tony Evans says that's one of the first steps for lost people who want to be found. This is the Alternative broadcast, featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans.

Stocks, bonds, retirement accounts—there are plenty of ways to invest. But today, Dr. Evans talks about the investment God wants us to make in ourselves and the kind of return he expects from it. Let's join him as he begins.

Dr. Tony Evans: Most people are dissatisfied with things about themselves. They're not fully happy with their looks or their status in life or the stage that they're in or how things are working out.

And in order to hide how we look, we enter into camouflage phase where we cover up our reality. Now, the world has done a good job helping us to camouflage. It gets us to buy products to help us look better, buy clothes to give a better appearance. In fact, you can hire companies today to enhance your image or protect your brand, the public perception of who you are.

Because the reality is, if we were fully exposed as to who we really were and are, for many, it would not be a pretty picture. And so what we do is we pretend. In fact, one of the greatest places to pretend is in church. Because if you say, "Hallelujah" enough, "Praise the Lord" enough, sing enough, raise your hand enough, flip the pages in the Bible enough, you might give the impression that you and God have got it hooked up.

You and God are on good terms when, if the mirror really revealed where we were with God outside of this house, it could reveal that there is a big gap between what we display on Sunday and what's really happening in our lives.

He says, "I beseech you therefore, brethren," Romans 12, verse 1, "that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your spiritual service of worship." Verse 2 says, "Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed in the renewing of your mind that you will prove what is that good, acceptable, and perfect will of God." He says God wants you, and if God has you, the world has no claim on you.

You can't have God and the world. And by the world, we defined it as anything that leaves God out of the equation. If God is out of the equation, you are worldly even if you are in church. Worldliness is not first a location; it is a perspective that God is included in the totality of my life. He's not a Sunday morning special. He's not a place I visit or a person I occasionally reference; he is the point of reference of all of my life.

He says there is a payoff for that commitment. If God ever gets to own you, there is a payoff. At the end of verse 2, he says, "and you will prove the will of God." That is, God will be at work in your life in such a way that he will express his will for you, to you, in you, and through you. And God's will is his purpose for your life.

You see, a lot of people don't know who they are because they don't know why they're here. You see, when you know why you're here, then that helps you know who you are. Because they have no sense of a divine design, they have no sense of a divine purpose, they have no sense of a divine connection and a divine calling, that is, that they're living out the will of God.

But I've got good news. Jesus said the way you find yourself is lose yourself. He says, "Except a seed falls to the ground and dies, it shall in no wise have life." God says, "Lose yourself in me, and I will locate you for you." So he spent the first two verses saying, "Give me all of you. Present your body a living sacrifice, and give the world none of you."

Don't let it lay claim. Be in the world but not of it. In other words, don't let it dictate your value system. Don't let it dictate your orientation. Having said that, you will now begin to see the will of God being worked out in your life, and you will discover you. Not because you are looking for you, but God will locate you and tell you who you are.

When he does that, he says in verse 3, "For through the grace given to me, I say to every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think as to have sound judgment as God has allotted to each one of us a measure of faith."

In bowling, you have a bowling alley. On both sides of the alley are gutters. You can throw the gutter ball down on the right side, you can throw a gutter ball down on the left side, which means you're not in the lane. He says you can think of yourself in one of two faulty ways. You can go on this side of the gutter or that side of the gutter.

He says you can think too high of yourself. He says because when God starts working in you, when you commit yourself to God, don't get the big head. You ain't all that and a bag of chips. When God starts to do something in your life, don't get the wrong perspective. Because that's to roll a gutter ball. That's to think more highly of yourself than you ought to. On your best day, you're a sinner saved by grace. That's on your best day.

The other gutter is to think too low of yourself. "Oh, I'm nothing. I'm nobody." To say you're nobody when God says you were so valuable to me that I became a man, died on a cross, rose from the dead to give you eternal life, and you walk around talking about you are nobody? Now, I know some of us have been messed up with what folk say. That's the problem. We're listening to the wrong word.

He says, "I want you to think sober-minded." The Greek word there—King James version says sober-minded, the New American Standard says sound judgment—the word has to do with somebody who is drunken, sober. When a person is drunk, they're not thinking straight. So they can't walk straight, they stammer their words, they drive crooked, and that is because their judgment has been impaired.

If you let the world define you, you'll become a drunk Christian and not on the lane because you become intoxicated with the wrong definition of who you are. That's why we use the wrong definition of success and we use the wrong definition of humility and pride. Humility is not acting like it's not true when it is true. That's not humility; that's lying.

Humility or pride is thinking more of yourself than you ought. It's like the colonel. He was just promoted to be a colonel, and he's in the Army and he's a colonel now. So he's feeling pretty up on himself now. He's got a knock on his door in his new office. He said, "Yes?" It says, "It's Private Johnson. May I come in, sir?"

He said, "Just a minute, Private." He picked up the phone, held the phone to his ear, and spoke very loudly. "Yes, Mr. President. I know, Mr. President. I understand, Mr. President. Yes, I'll be right there to see you, Mr. President. Okay, real soon, Mr. President. Thank you." Click. "Private Johnson, now you may come in."

Private Johnson walked in, introduced himself. The colonel says, "I'm sorry I had you wait there. I had to finish up my conversation with the President. What can I do for you, Private Johnson?" Oh, he said, "I just came to hook up your phone." See, that's thinking more of yourself than you ought to think.

And so what people do is they wind up pretending. They wind up going through the motions. And that's why people want to hang out with folk who have a name so they can piggyback and say, "Oh, I know him." Be who you is because if you is who you ain't, then you ain't who you is. Everybody remembers Charlie Chaplin. True story: Charlie Chaplin went to Monte Carlo and entered a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest and got third place.

The beautiful thing about full surrender is you get to be who you are. You get to be fully who you are. If God intended you to be somebody else, you would have been somebody else. He gave you your own thumbprint and it cannot be duplicated by any of the almost seven billion people in the world. They don't have your print because God intended you to be you.

But we get so messed up by the world's definition of who we are, we can live our whole lives never knowing who we were or were supposed to be because we're being defined by everyone else. God wants to do a big give. He wants to give you you. But he can't give you you until you give him you. So if he can't have you, you can't have you. And so we've got a generation of people who don't know who they are because they are trying to see themselves with themselves.

Guest (Male): Dr. Evans will return with a little name-calling from God when he continues our message in just a moment. There's plenty ahead in Tony's current message series. It's called Return on Investment, and it digs deep into what can happen when we invest in God, in ourselves, and other believers, even in our enemies.

There are six lessons in this collection, including bonus material we won't have time to present on the air. But right now, we're offering all of these messages on CD, USB flash drive, or digital download as our thank-you gift when you make a financial contribution to support the Alternative. In fact, if you contact us right away, we'll also include the companion study guide.

It's a real help for your personal devotions and a must for Bible study or small groups. So don't wait. Get the details today on the Return on Investment series and study guide by visiting us online at TonyEvans.org. That's TonyEvans.org. Or call our 24-hour resource center at 1-800-800-3222. Team members are standing by to help you.

Either way, don't wait. This special offer will be ending soon. Again, that's TonyEvans.org or call 1-800-800-3222. We'll dive back into our study right after this.

The biblical roles of husbands and wives, the source of our authority as believers, understanding the concept of grace, winning spiritual battles—they're all important subjects but seem as different as night and day. What if it surprised you to know there's a common thread running through all four? You can discover what it is by taking the course on Ephesians in the Tony Evans Training Center.

One by one, you'll dig into the powerful themes of this book and make new discoveries about what Jesus' death accomplished, how to maintain unity at home and at church, what spiritual armor is all about. The course includes custom content from Tony not available anywhere else. Work through it at your own pace, collaborate with other students, get your specific questions answered through our online forum.

Connect with the Tony Evans Training Center at TonyEvans.org. It's like having a seminar on your smartphone or other device. Start today, TonyEvans.org.

Dr. Tony Evans: Did you know that God calls you a masterpiece? If you're a Christian, he says in Ephesians 2:10, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he hath created beforehand that we should walk in them." The Greek word for good works is the word masterpiece.

Do you know that masterpieces are rare? Masterpieces are special. Masterpieces have great value. And masterpieces bear the name of the person who did it. So guess what? God calls you as he's created you and redeemed you a masterpiece. Which means you are rare, special, valuable, and you are walking around with his name.

So what that means is anybody else who views you less than a masterpiece doesn't know who you are. And what's worse is if you don't know who you are because you were redeemed to be his poem in motion, his sonnet, his masterpiece. But if the world defines you or me because we've not given ourselves to God, we will never recognize how valuable we are.

And we'll always walk around trying to look like a model, trying to be a star, letting the world tell us who we are, how we should look, what we should wear, where we should live, what we should drive, giving us false definitions of success. Why will God show you you? Stick with me now.

Why does God want you to know you? And you can only know you if you fully belong to him. He tells you. He says in verse 4, "For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another."

He says, "I am going to show you you so you can benefit somebody else." The reason God wants you to give you to him is so he can show you you. And the reason he wants to show you you, verse 3, is to hook you up to benefit somebody else. There's a connection here. He says you are members of one another. And he talks about a body, a physical body.

God doesn't show you you so that it can only be about you. Folk come to church so I can get my blessing, so I can get God to do something for me, so that God will deliver me, so that God will give me my breakthrough. It's okay as long as you recognize you're not an only child. It can't only be about you. You are members of a body.

That's why—watch this now—God has tied some of your spiritual growth to how you relate to others. Some of your spiritual growth is directly related to how you relate to God because God has tied some of what he's going to do with you based on how you relate to others. So if you're not properly relating to others, you cut off what he wants to do for you.

And that's why you have to understand this is part of a bigger connection. The only disconnected part of a body that grows is in a horror film because things grow best and proper in relationship. First of all, giving all to God, but as a result of that, you are not on your own. You're members of one another.

And that's why the principle, "Give and it will be given back to you." What you want God to do for you, he says extend out to somebody else so that you know it's not only about you. This is not an only child situation. It's "Our Father who art in heaven," not "My Daddy who is in heaven" only.

And he says nothing shows your humility more than when God uses your own security that he's going to give to you because you've given yourself fully to God to benefit somebody else. But when a Christian gets so stuck up that it's only about them, we have cut off God because he says you are members of one another. It's bigger than that.

You know the chief sin that God hates in the Bible is pride? Of all the sins you can commit, nothing can compare with thinking more of yourself than your Creator has given you to think legitimately. Reminds me of the story of the two ducks and the frog. The two ducks and the frog had to cross the pond. The pond was getting dry.

But the frog had a problem. He couldn't get across the pond. It was too big. He couldn't get across. The ducks had it easy; they could fly across. But they configured an idea. They got together and they came up with an idea about how to get the frog across the pond.

The frog said, "Well look, there is the stick over there. So duck one, if you grab one end of the stick and duck two, you grab the other end of the stick, I grab it with my mouth. Both of you fly in sync, and you can carry me across the pond and we can keep our fellowship as we cross the pond and get to the other side."

The ducks thought that was a great idea. One duck took this end of the stick, the other duck took that end of the stick, the frog put his mouth in the middle, and they were taking him across the pond, flying him across. The farmer looked up and he said, "Whoa, I've never seen anything like that in my life. That was a great idea of getting a frog across the pond. I wonder whose idea that was." The frog said, "It was mine!"

That's what pride will do. Pride cometh before the fall. God does not want us to have a drunken view of ourselves. He wants us to have a connected view of ourselves, which is why he calls it a measure of faith. A measure of faith at the end of verse 3 means a biblical view that you can trust God with.

He doesn't want you to just make up stuff. He wants you to have a divinely prescribed masterpiece view of yourself that is sound and that benefits others. Nothing will enhance your growth in God like giving yourself fully to God, verse 1 and 2, understanding who you really are, verse 3, and connecting it so it benefits others, verse 4 and 5.

Now he says you are connecting in the way that God intended, and then it gets expressed finally in verse 6, "Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly." He deals with giftedness. Giftedness. Giftedness is your divine capacity to serve God as you serve others.

And everybody has one. Every person who is a serious Christian—only when you're serious may you discover it—has a divine capacity that they've been endowed by the Holy Spirit with in order to improve the lives of others. He calls that gifting. That's the biblical word for gifting.

See, when you give everything to God, God shows you who you are. When he shows you who you are, you can benefit others, and then he gives you the capacity for the benefit. Everybody in here has been given something by God. You may not know what it is yet, but you have been given this supernatural capacity to benefit the people of God and the program of God and the kingdom of God for the glory of God through your gifting.

The Bible knows nothing about an unchurched Christian. That's a contradiction. But he doesn't want you in church so you say, "I went to church this Sunday." He wants you there for your gifting. Not just to hear the sermon, but to share the benefits of what he's gifted you with. Then after each of the gifts he gives—there are a number of passages in the New Testament that give the gifts—but he gives this description, and each description can be summarized with this phrase: be good at it.

He says he listed different things, then he said if you have this, go for it. I hope whatever you do for a job you are good at it or you're trying to become good at it. I hope you don't go to work and say, "Well, if it's sloppy, it's sloppy, that's just who I am," because we will probably be praying for you for another job. Because the idea is to be good at it, to maximize your capacity.

The problem is, we will maximize things from men downtown and give God junk for the kingdom. We will maximize things for money, but we won't maximize things for his glory. He says give me all of you. Then I'll show you who you are. After I've shown you who you are, you benefit others.

The way you benefit others is through the gifting, the supernatural capacity that I'm going to show you what it is once I get your full commitment that you can use to benefit the program, the plan, and the people of God.

Guest (Male): And if you've never made that full commitment to God by way of a real relationship with Christ, visit TonyEvans.org today and follow the link that says Jesus. There, Tony explains everything you need to know about what being a real Christian is all about and how to start a brand-new life.

That's TonyEvans.org where you can get the latest on Tony's ministry and resources and sign up for his free email devotional. TonyEvans.org is also the place to go for details on getting a full-length audio copy of today's lesson, Giving to Yourself. Better yet, get it as a part of Tony's current series, Return on Investment.

Don't forget, for a limited time, we're offering all six messages in this series and the study guide that goes with them as our thank-you gift when you make a contribution to help us keep bringing you our program every day. Again, this special offer won't last long, so be sure to contact us right away.

We have team members standing by in our resource center around the clock to help you at 1-800-800-3222, so there's no need to wait. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222 or get even faster service including instant digital downloads by visiting us online at TonyEvans.org.

Every one of us belongs to a family. But next time, Dr. Evans points out that Christians are part of a second family and he'll show how God expects us to invest in our relationships with other believers. Be sure to join us to discover the importance of strengthening those bonds. That's coming up Monday right here on The Alternative.