The Exchanged Life — John Van Gelderen

And as you're turning I'll mention a few more of the books that are available there. Colossians chapter 3, in the Word of God tonight, Colossians chapter 3 we are dealing of course with missions revival.

And oh, what a tremendous combination that really is a God-given combination. When there is genuine revival among God's people there is empowered missions, and that is what we need. So we looked at corporate revival Sunday morning, personal revival Sunday night.

Last night we saw the key of faith, which is the access to all of these things. And now I want to go further building upon that, crystallizing what we saw generally on Sunday, especially Sunday night, into a much more specific way.

Christ Our Life and the Exchanged Life

You know behind us is the banner of the theme of the conference, but God's heart to our hearts and through our hearts to other people's hearts. How is that going to work? You know the flesh cannot imitate the love of God.

It doesn't even come close. There's only one way this can really work, and so we want to see a passage of Scripture that delineates it in a detailed, specific manner for us. Colossians chapter 3, verse 4, we'll start with just the very first phrase of the verse.

When Christ, who is our life, Christ who is our life. What an incredible statement. The title of the message tonight is The Exchanged Life. Let's bow our heads for prayer. Will you join me in asking the Spirit of God to open our understanding and be our teacher tonight?

Blessed Spirit, we do thank you that you are the Spirit of wisdom and revelation and the Spirit of truth to guide us into all truth, to take of what is Christ who is at oneness with these words and reveal Him unto us.

Now Lord, would you do that tonight? Oh, may we see Jesus and may we see Him as our life. Open our understanding and thrill us with the fact that there actually is hope. Hope for victory over sin, hope for power in service, hope for missions that really has an impact.

Now Lord, give us that kind of understanding. We're asking for it tonight. Lord, help us. I plead the blood, Lord, protect us from the enemy who would seek to distract or to deceive or to confuse. And Lord Jesus, I claim my position you at the throne, far above all principality and power.

And I claim our protection in you there. So Lord, meet with us tonight, we pray. We thank you for it in Jesus' name, amen. When Hudson Taylor was 37 years of age, he had already founded the China Inland Mission.

It was already growing. Many would have already said, this is a successful man. And yet he writes in his journal that he was deeply disturbed because he knew that there was a greater victory available in Christ that he was not yet experiencing.

He said he would begin the day asking God for victory over sins like irritability and impatience. You know, I can relate with this man. And he would ask God for victory over these kinds of sins. And then he said by the end of the day he was having to confess the very same sins that he'd confessed the day before.

And he said he knew there was a greater victory available, but he knew not how to draw it out. At that time in his life of hungering and thirsting after God, he received a letter from a colleague in the mission by the name of McCarthy, who was on a similar pilgrimage as his leader, and God had opened his eyes to life-changing truth.

He had had an awakening that was rocking his life to the very depths and transforming him. And he wrote a long letter to his beloved leader to just declare what God was doing for his soul. In that letter McCarthy pointed out that Hudson Taylor had given him a little book, and that God had used that book to begin to open his eyes.

And he quotes from the book, The Lord Jesus received, His holiness begun. The Lord Jesus cherished, His holiness advancing. But the Lord Jesus counted upon as never absent, counted upon as never absent, would be holiness complete.

But he went on in this long letter to explain how God opened his eyes to that which was changing him. And in that part of the letter he made a statement, a simple statement, that God used to roll back the dark clouds and shed light into the understanding of Hudson Taylor.

Here was the statement, Not a striving to have faith, but a looking off to the faithful one, seems all we need. Now friends that may seem subtle and it is, but it's monumental in its impact. Not a striving to have faith.

See Hudson Taylor knew, as we saw last night, that the Bible says in 1 John 5, and this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. He knew that faith is the victory. His problem was he was striving to have faith.

Which means he was depending on himself. And with that simple shift to looking off to the faithful one, that shift from the subject of faith, us, to the object of faith, God. With that simple but monumental shift of focus, he said, when I looked, he said, I saw an all-sufficient Savior.

All-sufficient for every temptation. Sufficient for every trial. Sufficient for every circumstance. Sufficient for every situation that I face. And when I saw that all-sufficient Savior, he said, oh how joy flowed.

And friends, he began to experience what it is to look unto Jesus and access the very life of that Jesus. And that life of Jesus began to transform the life of Hudson Taylor. It was so real, everywhere he went he talked about it.

He was writing letters to his relatives and to his friends. And people at the mission knew that something had happened to their leader. And friends, what had happened is that Hudson Taylor learned what it is.

And it's not a one-time thing, it's a repeated thing. He learned to exchange the life of Hudson Taylor for the life of Jesus Christ. What a glorious exchange. Now if you're here tonight and you're born again, if that really is true, if you have cast your dependence on Jesus alone to save you once and for all from sin and hell, then at that moment you exchanged positionally your sin for the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

What an incredible exchange. Our sin put on Jesus so that his righteousness could be put on us. Hallelujah. If you are saved, if you're born again, you have already exchanged the destiny of hell for the destiny of heaven.

By the way, if you're here tonight and you've never made that exchange, you can make that exchange tonight. You can cast your dependence on Jesus alone to do all to save it, and that's what he does. He does all the saving.

He'll save you. And friends, if you're saved, then the day is going to come when we will exchange mortality for immortality. We will exchange faith for sight. But I want us to understand something. There's an exchange life right now.

There's a present tense aspect to this. You see, the text says Christ, who is? Our life. Christ, our life. Ah, have you discovered the blessing of the exchange life? Now perhaps you're wondering, what exactly do you mean, this exchange life, and how do you make the exchange?

Well, tonight here in Colossians chapter 3, I want us to notice three major concepts here in the chapter that explain the exchange life, and then we'll take a look at how to make the exchange. The first concept is the new man.

I'm using the words right out of the text. We'll see this in a moment. The new man, this is an exchange in the spirit part of your being. By that I mean in the human spirit part of your being. I'll go ahead and mention the second concept right now because these are going to dovetail.

The second concept is the new life. That's an exchange of life source or vitality. We'll explain this further as we move along. But the new man, the exchange in the center most part of your being, your spirit, look please with me at verse 3.

Now he's writing to the believers, to the saints at Colossae. He's writing to people who are born again, and he says, for ye are dead. Literally, you died and your life is hid with Christ in God, a double protection.

Now when it says you died, if you're a child of God, what he's talking about is true of you as well. You died. Now what in the world is that talking about? I think I'm preaching to live bodies tonight.

That may become questionable if I preach too long, but right now I think we have live bodies out here. What does it mean when it says you died? Let me ask it this way. What part of us died? You see, physical death is when your soul is separated from your body.

That has not occurred yet. That means we're not talking about soul and body. There's only one part of you left, your spirit. Ah, that's what's being talked about here. Oh, what exactly happened? Well, look at verse 9.

At the end of verse 9 it says, seeing that ye have put off the old man. That's not your dad, all right? But it is a part of you. You have put off the old man with his deeds. Now, whatever that is, notice it says you have put off.

This has occurred. In fact, the word that's used here literally means to take off completely. So whatever this is talking about is not partial. It is complete. You have put off the old man, verse 10, and have put on the new man.

Again, it's past tense. This has occurred. Whether you were aware of it or not, when you got saved you put off the old man completely. You have put on the new man. That's talking about the spirit part of your being.

You see, when you got saved, something happened in the spirit part of your being that is quite amazing. The old man, the unregenerated spirit, was exchanged for the new man, the regenerated spirit. That is, the old man died with Christ and was raised the new man.

Now, what does that mean? You know, we use these words. What are we talking about? You know, Romans 6, dead to sin, what does that mean? Well, it's all related here. I want you to just get the picture.

The New Man and Death to Sin

Prior to your salvation, in the spirit part of your being, or in the immaterial part of your being, there was a union between your unregenerated spirit, here called the old man, and indwelling sin, or what Romans 7 calls sin which dwelleth in me.

Two times we have that phrase in Romans 7. There is the essence of a union, much like a marriage, between our unregenerated spirit and indwelling sin. Now, the Bible says in Ephesians chapter 2 that prior to salvation, we're dead in trespasses and sins.

Now, don't get the wrong idea. Death means separation. Don't get the idea of just a corpse. No, what it's talking about is that prior to salvation, in the spirit part of your being, you are dead to God.

That is, we're separated from God. We are alienated from the life of God, as the Scripture says. But now get this, we're alive to sin. Dead in trespasses and sins. The old man is reveling. You see, what it's talking about is that we're dead to God.

We're separated from God, but we're alive to sin. That is, we're joined to indwelling sin. Do you realize that prior to salvation, sin is your husband? We're talking about a bad marriage. Ah, sin is your master.

And he's a taskmaster. Do you realize that everything, I'm talking everything an unsaved person does is done in union with sin? You ever wonder why the Bible says the plowing of the wicked is sin? You ever wondered about a phrase like that?

Well, why is the plowing of the wicked sin? Why? It's because everything, even the noblest, best humanitarian efforts that unsaved, unregenerated people do, is done in union or in cahoots, as my mother used to say, with sin, which taints the motivation, defiles it.

It is self-dependence producing self-righteousness, which God says is a filthy rag that falls short of the glory of God. Everything that an unsaved person does. Wow. Do you realize the only way out of that marriage, according to the first four verses of Romans chapter 7, the only way out is for one of those partners to die.

Now verse 3 makes sense. You died. You see, here it is, the moment you believed on Jesus, God identified you in Christ, with Christ. See, Christ died for us, Romans 5, 8. That means we died in Him, the person of our substitute.

He died for us. So that, when the Bible says Christ died for our sins, we died unto sin. Here's your dead to sin or died to sin concept from Romans 6. The moment you believed on Jesus, God identified you in Christ, therefore in His history, therefore in His death.

And at that moment, this union with sin was severed. You were separated from sin. You died to sin. Do you see it? And friends, not only did you die to sin, you were raised with Christ, a new man, so that you might be married to another, Romans 7, 4, even to Him who was raised from the dead.

Now friends, that means that indwelling sin is no longer your husband. You get it? Indwelling sin is no longer your master. Now, sin still seeks to operate within our body, but in the immaterial part of us, we're not connected to it anymore.

Are you with me? It comes back and tries to assert its power, but it has no more authority. We're not joined to sin anymore. No, we were separated from indwelling sin. We were raised with Christ, a new man, and so that we might be married to another, even to Him that was raised from the dead.

That is, our spirit was regenerated, then the Holy Spirit, second concept, the new life, the Holy Spirit moved in, and now we have a new marriage. We exchanged the old husband of indwelling sin for the new husband of the indwelling Christ.

Man, what a glorious exchange. And friends, the fact of the matter is, yes there is still a battle, but the battle is between the flesh, where the former husband of indwelling sin seeks to operate, and the spirit part of our being.

It's not between the old man and the new man. No, the old man died with Christ and was raised the new man. The old man is gone forever. You do not have an unregenerated spirit and a regenerated spirit in the same body.

The battles between flesh and spirit, that's what Galatians 5 and 17 says, for the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, Romans 8. You either walk after the flesh, or you walk after the spirit.

So, the battles between flesh and spirit, flesh where the former husband of indwelling sin seeks to operate, and the spirit part of our being. Now you say, is that your regenerated spirit, or is that the Holy Spirit?

And the answer is yes, because 1 Corinthians 6, 17, get it down, says, and he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. I think that's one of the greatest statements in the Word of God. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.

What an amazing truth. But I want us to think about this. This battle between flesh and spirit, they are not equals. You know often you hear the illustration, and if you've used it don't feel bad, we all have, but part of it is not actually very helpful.

Part of it is, but part of it is not. The old illustration is that, well this battle between flesh and spirit, we liken it to two dogs. Whichever one you feed the most, or favor the most, that's the one that wins.

Well that, the part that's helpful is yes, you and I make choices that make a radical difference. But the part of that that's harmful is do we not in our mind's eye picture two dogs the same size? Just think about it.

That's what we picture. Which means you have equals. That's not accurate, and ideas matter. Now look, it's not accurate. Not even a Chihuahua versus a Rottweiler would give us an accurate picture. Recently my wife and son and I were in a, she was recording and the engineer brought his little dog, he had a little Chihuahua, and you know Chihuahuas are usually little kind of yappy dogs, you know what I'm saying?

But this one was the calmest, quietest Chihuahua you'll ever meet, then we found out why. One day he had taken his little Chihuahua to the store and he had forgotten to roll down the window on a hot day and so the little Chihuahua roasted in the car, excuse me for having a smile on my face, and it had a stroke.

This Chihuahua is the nicest, calmest Chihuahua you'd ever want to meet. Now here's my point, not even that Chihuahua versus a Rottweiler would give us an accurate contrast. Yes, on the one hand there's the flesh, we're quite familiar with that, but on the other hand there's the spirit.

And it is that union of our spirit and the Holy Spirit, but think of what this union is. Do you realize in 2 Corinthians 5, 17 it describes the regenerated spirit with the words, a new creation, a new creature.

In other words, there is a creative act of God that takes place when you're born again. That new creature, part of you, is described in 1 John 3, 9 with this phrase, the seed of God. Let me throw a Greek word at you, you'll understand it.

Literally it's saying the sperm of God. Here's the truth, when you're born again, something of the nature of Almighty God is implanted into you. Hallelujah. That's why Ephesians 4 says that the new man is created after God in righteousness and true holiness.

That's your regenerated spirit. It's the seed of God. It is righteous. It is holy. It has to be. It's the seed of God. Do you realize that your spirit is completely saved? It has to be. It's the seed of God.

It's your soul that is being saved. Your body is not saved at all, and it won't be until it's glorified, so don't give it a chance. But here's our point here. Here's this tremendous regenerated spirit, but it gets even better, because according to Romans 7 we have already noted that when you're raised with Christ, it's so that you might be married to another, even to Him who was raised from the dead, indicating that when the Holy Spirit moves in, it is the spirit of the risen Christ who finished the work at the cross, rose again from the dead, was exalted to the right hand of the Father.

Since right now triumphantly far above all principalities and powers, it is the spirit of that enthroned, victorious triumphant Christ that moved in and joined your spirit. And friend, when you are in fellowship with Him, you access Him, Christ who is our life.

That's the victorious life. His name is Jesus. And when you access Him, it's nothing for Him to counteract and overcome the chihuahua of our flesh. There it is. You see, it's I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.

Christ in you, the hope of glory, for to me to live is Christ. We're not talking about the flesh trying to imitate Christ. The flesh cannot imitate Christ. We're not talking about imitation. We're talking about impartation.

Christ moved in to impart to you His life so that it is participation. We are partakers of the divine nature. That's where victory lies. Human animation can be exchanged for divine animation. The lower life of just us can be exchanged for the higher life of Christ in us.

The human battery can be exchanged for the divine battery. So there's the new man. That's the exchange in the spirit part of your being. And the new life, that's the new husband. The spirit of Christ moves in.

There's the new union because of that. And that brings us to our third concept. Now we get down to where the rubber meets the road, the new victory. This is the exchange of habits. Now look at this. It says in verse 4, when Christ who is our life shall appear.

Now often we take that to be, you know, when He comes again and so forth. However, this is a word that means is manifest. This is not a context dealing with when He comes again. And it says, when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear, be manifested with Him in glory.

In other words, when you tap into this life, Christ in you, the hope of glory, He is manifested. He is radiated through your personality. As Duncan Campbell put it, it's deity incorporated into human personality.

And friends, that's the life source that we need for victory. Therefore it says in verse 5, mortify. Now the word mortify means to put to death. Now wait a second, the old man already died. Well we're not talking about that.

But there's something else that must be put to death. It says mortify. And notice the word therefore. The only way to do this is on the basis of Christ who is our life. If you try to obey verse 5 apart from the engine of verse 4, you'll never make it.

But it says, mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, fornication, that's sexual sin of any kind, uncleanness, all the junk that leads up to it, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness which is idolatry.

I have been in churches out on the West Coast where I would have never known this unless someone told me, but I was told that there were several folk in the congregation that used to be sodomites, homosexuals or lesbians, and friends not only have they been born again, they have applied truth and based on the power of Christ in them have put to death an old bad habit.

And today you would never know what they used to be. I'm going to tell you something friends, that's glorious. And if God can give them victory, God can give you victory, whatever the issue is, your tongue, your temper, your attitude, whatever the case may be, the bitterness.

Do we see it? There's the provision. And I think we need to note He's talking to save people. He just said Christ was their life. You know what these new believers in the New Testament had some baggage, just like new believers do today.

But there's provision to deal with that baggage. And so it goes on in verse 6, For which things sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience. In other words lost people go to hell for this.

You're saved, Christ is your life, alright grab a hold of that as the engine to put to death these issues. Verse 7, In which ye also walked sometime when ye lived in them. In other words prior to your salvation.

But now, verse 8, Ye also put off all these. And He moves from outer man's sins to inner man's sins. Anger, wrath, that's a word that means blowing up. Malice, that's a word that means clamming up. Pretty well covers the personalities.

Blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lying out one to another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds. In other words since you have put off the old man, now put off the bad habits of the old man.

Verse 10,. And if put on the new man, there's a parenthesis of thought, jump to verse 12,. Put on therefore, on the basis of that new man that's joined to the new life,. Put on therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bows of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long suffering.

Now look at these words. Oh that our assemblies across our country would grab a hold of this. Mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, not arrogance, not nobody's going to tell me what to do. Humbleness of mind, meekness, long suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another.

Ye, if any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity. That's agape love, love that does right, even when you're wrong. That's beyond our human ability.

That's why we need Christ our life as the engine for this. But on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. In other words, since you have put on the new man, now put on the habits of the new man. What this is simply teaching us is that old, bad, acquired habits can be exchanged for new, good, acquired habits.

In other words, when you got saved, there was this radical change in the immaterial part of your being, but habits are another story. Do you realize that you and I were not born with bad habits? We developed them prior to our salvation, and even after you're saved, if you yield to your flesh, you keep ingraining a bad habit.

What this is telling us is that when you grab a hold of the fact that Christ is your life, He's powerful enough to deal with the chihuahua of the flesh. And if you keep choosing Him, you keep yielding to Him, you keep trusting Him, you access His life, and over time what you're doing is you are replacing, you are exchanging old, bad, acquired habits for new, good, acquired habits.

That's sanctification. It's hindered through unbelief, and it's accelerated through faith. We'll see that more in just a moment. But what we're seeing is very simply that the works of the flesh can be exchanged for the fruit of the Spirit.

And friends, what we're talking about is real. I think of a lady, she was a chronic worrier. I mean, she worried about everything. I mean, when there was nothing to worry about, she worried about that.

And you know, she discovered that Christ does not worry. And when she began to exchange her life for Christ's life, she found victory. See, that's what we're talking about. An old, bad habit exchanged for a new, good habit.

Why? Because when you exchange your life for Christ, He has good habits. Do you get it? This is not us trying to imitate Him. Forget that. This is accessing Him as the energizing, animating power to our personality.

There's a difference. It's an exchange of life source. Remember that? Now friends, you know what this means? It means there's hope. I think of a fellow back in my home church. He was grappling with all this truth, and then the Lord opened his eyes, he got it, and one of the things that he really longed for victory in was getting up in the morning to read his Bible and pray.

He was a sincere guy. He had made resolves, and they lasted for about two to three days. And you know, he just wasn't a morning person. But when he grabbed a hold of Christ, his life, and began to depend on Christ to enable him to get out of bed, and to read and pray with profit, he got out of bed, first day, second day his wife died, and he'll never make it until three days.

Third day, well okay, he got an extra day. Fourth day, well that's a little unusual. Fifth day, this is amazing. Sixth day, this is a miracle. And she's watching him, and he's reveling in God. And she knows something's going on here.

And she began to notice that he wasn't irritable and impatient with the kids anymore, and that made her mad. And she said, you know, you're being changed, but you're not telling me what's going on. And he began to explain it to her, and together they both had an awakening.

It was glorious. She told me, she said, I used to think that you got justified by faith and sanctified by struggle. She said, now I realize you get sanctified by faith too. Marvelous statement. Now friends, they began to change.

That fellow was, prior to that time, faithful as a clock to go soul wanting, but incredibly ineffective. But when he began to exchange his life for Christ's life, the next time he went soul wanting, he led a man to Christ.

The next week, he led another man to Christ. Do you know that from that day to this, now about five years later, he has regularly been used of God to see people saved and grow? I'm going to tell you something, I've known him for years, that's miraculous.

You know, the Holy Spirit is practical. He began to see victory in all these different ways, and then he got to thinking, you know, my family is always late to church. It's my fault. He said, I'm just one of these guys that have always been late, you know.

And it's amazing how some people are very punctual in their tardiness. But he decided that if he could trust God for victory in these other areas, he could exchange the life of Christ to enable him to get his family to church on time.

Twelve months later, he testified publicly, and that's putting your neck out there, of what I'm telling you. And he told the church family, in the last twelve months, our family has been late to church only two times.

Friends, I'm going to tell you something, it's a miracle. You know what that is? It's going from being regularly defeated, surprised by victory, to being regularly victorious, surprised by defeat. Man, hallelujah.

There's hope. So there's our concepts. The new man joined the new life to enable a new victory. Now, how can the new man access the new life to enable this new victory? In other words, how do you make the exchange?

What's God's part, and what's our part? Let's begin with man's part. What are we to do? Well, in this same book, Colossians chapter 2, verse 6, the Bible says, As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him.

We're to walk in Him. Then he used the words of Galatians 5, 16, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. So we're to walk in the Spirit. How do you do that? Man, I saw that verse when I was in Bible college.

Man, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. I thought, wow, this is fabulous. What a promise. Then I got to thinking, I wonder what it means to walk in the Spirit. And I wondered that for years.

Now, we talked a little bit about this last night. What is walking? It's reiterated. You can talk to me. Steps, remember that? So walking in the Spirit is reiterated steps in the Spirit, but what are they?

Well, let's listen to the verse in Colossians 2, 6. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord. How did you receive Christ? By grace through faith. In other words, you heard the Gospel. Somebody told you that sin is the problem, hell is the consequence, but Christ and Christ alone is the answer.

That because He's God, He came to earth as a man, died for our sins, rose again, conquering sin, death, and hell, He offers salvation. Sin is the problem, hell is the consequence. Christ is the answer, and Christ alone is the answer.

You need to trust Him. So what you did was you surrendered to that conviction about sin, righteousness, and judgment, thus making a choice to depend, faith, on Christ to save you. Okay, here it is. As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him.

How did you receive Him? You surrendered to that conviction and you depended on Christ. It's kind of two sides to one coin. So walk ye in Him. So how do we walk in Him? How do we walk in the Spirit? In the same way.

In other words, step by step, surrender to the leadership of the Holy Spirit and depend on His enablement to take that step. Surrender in faith. There's a sense where that's two sides to one coin in the sense that when you surrender all to Jesus, you're depending on Jesus.

And when you depend on Jesus for everything, you just surrender. Okay, so in that sense, you're talking about two sides to one coin, but this surrender faith decision is on two levels of issue. The first level is you're surrendering to His will.

That is, you're depending on His leadership. But then we're to surrender to His way. That is, we're to depend on His enablement. Some people say, I surrender all and I'm going to do it. No, you're not.

I tried that for years. It doesn't work. You can't do it. No, we're to surrender to His will, but we're to depend on His power. You see, surrender, what does it mean when somebody waves the white flag of surrender?

They are giving up. Now friends, when we talk about surrender, we're talking about giving up our will because we're giving in to His will. Now don't misunderstand. We're not talking about passivity. We're not talking about willing yourself into will-less-ness.

That's passivity. That's the devil's playground. See, the Holy Spirit demands a cooperating faculty. Satan demands a passive faculty. It has been proven that when congregations sing the same praise song for 45 minutes in a row, that the many of the people enter into the first level of the hypnotic state.

It's passivity. It's the devil's playground. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking, we're not talking about idle passivity. We're talking about active cooperation where you're using your will to give up what you want and give in to what God wants.

That's what we're talking about. That's surrender. Now, I find that usually this is much more practical than people make it out to be. People are thinking, well, how do you do this? Do you have to have an invitation and the music is playing, I surrender all, and you come and you say, God, I surrender all.

Well, it can be that if you know what that means. But usually it's a whole lot more practical. Usually there's a point of surrender. You say, what do you mean by that? It's whatever you're saying no to God about.

That's going to vary from person to person. For this person, it's some aspect of the world. For this person, maybe it's a TV program, and the Spirit of God says, no, give it up. For this person, it's an article of clothing, and the Spirit of God says, give that up.

For this person, it may be some bitterness, and God says, give it up. For this person, it may be some grudge or resentment. God says, give it up. For this person, it is their temper. They've kind of enjoyed exploding and letting people have it, and God says, that's got to go.

Do you see it? It's a point of surrender. Give it up. It could be an ambition. It could be a dream. That's not intrinsically wrong, but it's not God's will for your life. Many young people have dreams of what they want to do.