In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: Our eternal life is Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit living within our spirit. He has given to us himself that is my life. He that hath not the son hath not life. Do you know what that means, my friend?

It means as good as you are, as smart as you are, as intellectual as you are, as wealthy as you are, as prominent as you are, if you do not have Jesus Christ living within your life, my friend, you are a walking dead man. I didn't say that; God said it. He says where in times past, that is before Christ, you were dead in trespasses and sins.

Guest (Male): God forgives and eternally saves anyone who asks him through faith in Christ. And nothing and no one can change that. But as you'll learn today on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, our security isn't a license to sin. Instead, it's a powerful, gratitude-filled motivation to live a holy, obedient life. Our series, "How the Truth Can Set You Free," continues.

Dr. Charles Stanley: All of us who have been saved realize that there have been times in our life where we begin to wonder, what is it that's keeping us from being able to enjoy the Christian life to the maximum? What is it that cheats us out of that cutting edge of real peace and joy in our Christian life? As we begin to examine what God says in this eighth chapter of John, for example, when he says, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." That is, make you free of the bondage and the shackles of those things that keep us from reaching the maximum of our potential of what God wants us to be.

We mentioned three areas that oftentimes are overlooked and unseen by many people who read the Bible, and that is the feelings of insecurity, inferiority, and inadequacy that Satan just keeps sending in just beneath the surface of our Christian life. We discussed the fact of how we've been programmed since children to think certain ways that are not scriptural, but that's the way we were taught.

As we begin to understand God's truth and comprehend three specific truths, then Satan is defeated in these areas. We begin to reach out and to enjoy and to reach the maximum of our potential. Those three truths are: first of all, our position in Christ; secondly, who we are, that is our personage; and thirdly, our possessions.

When you begin to understand what your position is—that you are baptized by the spirit into Christ Jesus and became an everlasting part of him—and who you are—you've become a saint, an ambassador, a child of God, and forever that—and when you begin to understand what you have in him, then these feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, and insecurity begin to fade away.

Something happens. There's a greater sense of confidence, a greater sense of security, a greater sense of worthiness, a more secure feeling of belonging, and a sense of being able to face and meet and match any situation in life victoriously, triumphantly, and not in the sense of defeat. So today, we are in the possessions—that is, what we have in Christ Jesus. We've discussed the fact that we have everything in him and access to that everything. He says we have an inheritance in him and many, many areas in which we have.

Today, I want to talk about three of them, and two of these you may not think in terms of their being something we possess, but they're very, very vital to the fact of who we are, what our position is, and what we possess in the light of overcoming these feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, and insecurity. Before we begin the first one, let's think about this for a moment. Everybody desires to feel like or to sense acceptance, approval, and appreciation.

When we don't get that, when we're somehow not able to feel that and sense that from other people, then we do exactly what the world does. We fall into their pattern of trying to be able to feel this acceptance, this approval, and this appreciation. One of the things that slips by us—what you and I possess that we're not aware of—is that one of the most priceless possessions we have, having been placed into Jesus Christ and having become the person that we are, is our acceptance by God just the way we are.

Think about this for a moment. When he says that we are accepted, when you think about the power of the awareness and the realization that Almighty God your creator, Almighty God your savior, has accepted you. That is, when you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior, you first of all accepted Christ's death on the cross as payment for your sins, and you accepted God's method of forgiving you.

When you accepted God's method and his way and accepted him through Jesus Christ on the cross, God the Father accepted you at that moment just the way you are. He didn't say, "When you clean up your life, when you straighten up this, when you get rid of your habits, when you add these ten laws, when you follow the Ten Commandments, when you stop committing the following sins, then I will accept you." God the Father, in his righteousness, in his love, in his mercy, said in that moment when you were a jewel in the rough, he'll take you just the way you are.

When a person genuinely understands the meaning of acceptance by God—that he takes me just the way I am, that he knows all about you so you can't disappoint him—he knows past, present, and future. Knowing ahead of time, thousands of years ahead of time, that you were going to blow it over and over and over again, he says, "I'll still take you." He accepted you just the way you are.

That will not be motivation to go out and sin against God; that's motivation for holy, obedient living. God, knowing all of your weaknesses, all of your failures, how many times you were going to blow it, he says, "I accept you just the way you are." So we're not talking about license to sin; we're talking about liberty to live freely in Christ Jesus.

If God the Father has accepted you just the way you are, and you don't have to keep living up to measure up to something, you and I can rest in him with absolute security about our future. He lives within us and is able to provide everything we need for every single moment. We certainly don't have to be inferior to anybody because we have Christ living within us. We've been accepted by the Holy of Holies, God Almighty himself. That is a freeing, liberating thought that he's given us.

The second thing I want you to notice as far as our possessions here is in John chapter five. In this fifth chapter, in the 24th verse, he says not only do you and I have the possession of his acceptance every single second of our life for eternity, but you and I have eternal life. For the believer, eternal life is not something that begins at death. It begins the moment you receive Christ.

"Verily, verily, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes on him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life." Every single believer is the present-day possessor of eternal life. Usually, we have a short-sightedness. We think of eternal life as something that God gives us from heaven that gets us to heaven, but that's not it at all.

The Bible says, "He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." So what is our life? What is our eternal life? Our eternal life is Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit living within our spirit. He has given to us himself. That is my life. He that hath not the Son hath not life.

Do you know what that means? It means as good as you are, as smart as you are, as intellectual as you are, as wealthy as you are, as prominent as you are, if you do not have Jesus Christ living within your life, my friend, you are a walking dead man. I didn't say that; God said it. God has a standard that he provided at the cross, and when Jesus Christ died, he opened the door for you to be saved. If you're unwilling to come to Jesus Christ and you die without him, you won't have anybody to blame but you and your stubborn, rebellious pride and self-will.

Would you ask God if I've told you the truth? Would you look into your life for just a moment and see if I've told you the truth? Within you, there is that self-will that you're going to do it your way. God says there is only one way, and that's his way, and that's the cross. The quality of eternal life is divine life. You and I have God Almighty living within us. That's what eternal life is. It is a quality of life that brings fulfillment, contentment, security, and a sense of worthiness.

Eternal life is all that I need. Everything that I need in this life is wrapped up in the gift of eternal life, which is in the person of Jesus Christ. When we quote John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life," what we usually think about is either hell or heaven. That's not it at all. Heaven is the prophetic place where we are going to be. It is a literal place, no doubt about that, but eternal life begins now.

When you have Christ in your life now, you have eternal life now. You have a whole different quality and character of life that's more than in length, but its quality in depth, contentment, and fulfillment. You have God Almighty; you have divine, supernatural life within you. That's why you can never be lost because you've become a child of God, and within you, within your spirit, is the living life. He says, "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish." Jesus didn't say they shall never perish unless they fail in their performance.

Without Jesus Christ, the only thing you've got to go on is performance. If it isn't by grace, it's performance. You will never know how well you've performed. You come to your deathbed and you begin to think about all the things you didn't do. It isn't performance; it's grace. If it were performance, all of us would be lost. But because it's grace, all of us can be saved.

There's a third gift that we have and one that we probably don't think too much about as a gift, and that is in First John chapter one. Here, John is talking about his relationship and their relationship to Christ and to each other. He says in verse two, "The life which was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and proclaimed to you, that is the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us."

He is identifying eternal life with Jesus. He says when you have Jesus, you have life. "The life which was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you, that is the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us in human flesh. What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ."

One of the most priceless possessions you and I have is the personal possession of being able to fellowship on a one-to-one basis intimately with the God who created this world. Every other religion in the world, regardless of what the religion may be, can worship their gods, they can revere their gods, they can honor their gods, they can praise their gods, they can make sacrifices and offerings to their gods, but there's one thing they can't do with their god: they can't fellowship with him.

For two people to fellowship, you've got to have two living objects. All these other gods are dead. The Christian is the only person in the world who has the powerful potential of fellowshipping with his God. The word fellowship comes from the Greek word koinonos, which speaks in terms here of relationship, of having something in common. When he says we have fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ, it is a sharing relationship. The word fellowship is a giving and receiving; it's a sharing.

When you and I think about the fact that we can have fellowship with God, we're talking about the kind of communication we can have, the kind of fellowship we have. Let me tell you why you and I neglect the most powerful, precious possession we have on this earth as believers: the privilege of talking to the God who created this world. He says he has it all in his hand. He can speak, whisper, or think and put galaxies into space, create multitudes of worlds, fling them from his omnipotent fingers. He says that you and I have the privilege of talking to him, just telling him how we feel.

Why do you suppose that having access to be able to carry on a conversation with Almighty God—and besides that, we have all these love letters that he wrote us—why do you suppose we don't talk to God more than we do? It's real simple. You might say it's sin, but that's not the reason. The primary reason we don't talk to this great, wonderful heavenly Father who's just poured out everything in heaven upon us is because we don't know him very well. That's the reason.

The reason we feel insecure, inadequate, and inferior, incompetent, worthless, that we don't belong, and feel rejected, condemned, and guilty is because we don't know him. The more I understand who he is, the more I want to talk to him, the more I want to listen to him, the more I want to seek his wisdom and guidance and direction, and the more confident I am that when I come to him, I'm going to get exactly what I'm looking for.

I don't know of many tragedies in life anymore than living a Christian life and never discovering what God is really like. It's like being married to the most wonderful, exciting, handsome, or beautiful, enriching, fulfilling, dream of your life as a marriage partner, fulfilling every single need you have, every desire of your heart, and being married to them and never talking to them, never listening to them, never accepting their love, never giving their love, and going through life and having missed one of life's greatest joys.

So many of God's people are stumbling and fumbling and floundering through life. Here's the heavenly Father saying, "Here I am. Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest." We just sort of move our way through life trying to figure it out and trying to get through and trying to make it somehow. Here is a precious, loving Father who's available and willing if we would just take time to talk to him.

He says, "Rest in the Lord." You can't rest in the Lord while you're fighting life's battles with stress, strains, insecurity, inadequacy, inferiority, worried, fretting, and doomed with life. He says one of the most priceless possessions you and I have is the second-by-second, moment-by-moment access into fellowship and conversation with the God who created us. You ought to make one of the priorities in your life to discover who God is, what he's like, what he can do in your life, and what he's willing to do.

Sometimes we won't go out of our way and initiate a new relationship because we're afraid of being rejected. If that's the reason you've not moved toward God, I can tell you this for sure: you don't ever have to feel or worry about being rejected. Not only will he accept you, but he'll move into the most intimate intimacy of your life to listen, to share, to give, and to receive. You can build a relationship and a fellowship with him that will sustain you through every trial and heartache of life.

That's yours because of your relationship to him. When you take those three possessions—acceptance, his eternal life, and the capacity for fellowship—then inadequacy, inferiority, and insecurity drain to the wayside. We just get stronger and deeper and richer in our relationship to him. That's my desire for you. If you'll discover what God's like, you will rush to that fellowship.

Let's pray together. Father, how beautiful you've made the Christian life. How accessible you've made yourself to us. How accepting you are of all types of folks. You are never a rejector of anyone who comes to you. I pray, Father, that many might kneel right where they are, where they're sitting, driving, whatever it might be, to say, "Lord, I want to ask you to forgive me of my sin. I receive Jesus Christ as my personal savior." And here and now, no longer performance, but I want to live by grace through faith in Christ. Thank you, Father, for all that you're going to do and for all the richness of this book and all the richness within our lives because of the presence of Jesus Christ. We pray, amen.

Guest (Male): If you're a believer and you know your position in Christ, you have a sense of belonging. By knowing who you are in Christ, you have a sense of worth. And when you realize your possessions in Christ, you no longer need to feel inadequate. Remind yourself of these truths often and allow them to liberate you. To review these lessons again, visit Today on Radio at intouch.org. To order Dr. Stanley's series on "How the Truth Can Set You Free," stop by our online bookstore. Again, that's intouch.org. Or to call or text, it's 1-800-IN-TOUCH. You can write to us at In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia, 30357.

We're saved by grace alone. But do you sometimes find that you've begun to think that you need to do something to stay saved? Today's "Moment with Charles Stanley" is coming up.

Dr. Charles Stanley: When he accepted you, he did not accept you on a performance basis. Those who believe that you can be saved today and fall tomorrow, you know what they're preaching? They're preaching salvation by performance. I'm accepted by grace; my salvation continues on the basis of performance. If I turn left, I'm rejected. If I turn right, I'm accepted. So what you have is you have salvation by grace and performance.

Nothing could present more insecurity to anybody alive than to think by grace God saved you, but now you've got to keep yourself by performance. Because you see, what that says is this: first of all, if that's my theology, I've got to figure out, well, what's the performance standard? The Ten Commandments? Well, that's already wiped me out. It wiped Paul out, it wiped everybody else out, so I can't do that. So I'm lost at that point.

So what's the standard? The Sermon on the Mount? Well, I don't measure up to that either. But I've still got to keep myself by performing. So what else can I do? I read the Old Testament, I pray, I give, I go to church. But how much do I have to give? How many times do I go? Do I have to go every Wednesday night? You could have a nervous breakdown trying to be a spirit-filled believer for the simple reason: what's the standard? What are you measuring up to? What's the performance? And you see, God Almighty never said you're saved by grace and kept by performance.

Guest (Male): Learn more about the hope you can have through faith in Jesus Christ at intouch.org. How are you challenged to live for God by what you heard today? We'd love to hear about that. Coming up next time on In Touch, we'll hear some simple steps that can guide us to freedom in our everyday lives. I hope you'll join us for our continuing series, "How the Truth Can Set You Free," on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia. And remember, it remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.