Creflo Dollar - What Are The Conditions of a Worthy Walk? - Part 1
This is our third stab at this. I think we'll get it today. We're talking about the "Worthy Walk," and I think you're gonna be so blessed to be able to see just what this is all about, considering what we thought it was about, I think it's gonna make life a lot more comfortable as you walk with the Holy Spirit. Go with me to the book of Romans chapter 12. Romans chapter 12 and verse 1 in the King James and then the NLT. And I wanna begin here. Now, let me start off with this statement here, and you might wanna jot this down. Under grace, the first thing that God does, under grace, he reminds us of what he has done in grace.
So when you're living a life under grace, you wanna be reminded of what he's already done in grace. You've been made righteous by the grace of God, you've been saved by the grace of God. We're talking about your deliverance, you're holy because of the grace of God. The grace of God established your stance in heaven. You are that. You may not be that right now in your living, but, through grace, he has declared you righteous, he has declared you holy, he has declared you sanctified, he's declared you a part of his family, sons and daughters of God. All of this is the work of grace. It was nothing you did. All of it is the work of grace that God has done for you.
And then, on the basis of that, on the basis of everything you remind yourself, you know, when you act crazy one day, you remind yourself, "I'm still righteous because that was a gift that God gave me. I'm not quite there yet, but let me remind myself I'm still holy because this is what God has done through his grace. Let me remind myself that I am these things", and then what, hopefully, will happen, is when you get up in the morningtime, you remind yourself that you're up and everything about your life, this is the thing that just blows my mind, that under grace God decided by his grace and mercy to see you faultless. That blows my mind because I know we are not without fault here on the earth, but God decided to see you faultless because he sees us through Jesus Christ.
And you have to remind yourself because if you don't remind yourself, then the condemnation and, you know, coupled with the enemy, he'll start telling you you're no good, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Then you start feeling guilty and you feel bad. "Oh, if I'd have did this," and the next thing you know, you've talked yourself out of a heavenly situation into a carnal, fleshy situation because you failed to keep in remembrance and remind yourself of the work of grace and what God has done for you by grace. If you understand all that, say, "Amen".
Now, on the basis of that, you find the Bible begins to show you different appeals. God start making, he start making appeals for a life that's in harmony with what he has done. So God starts coming to us and he says, all right, now, let's now harmonize your living with what he has done by grace. All right, by grace you're righteous. Your life, it's still developing in that. And that's good because what he's wanting to happen is let's now develop to this place of what grace has said. Now what we've gotten in church is this. Let's go ahead and do right so we can earn the right to be righteous. That's not what he's saying. He says, "I've already given you the right to be righteous without you earning it.
Now, let that motivate you to harmonize with what I have already done". Harmonizing with the works of grace. I'm not accepting credit for what God has done, and it's not by my self-effort that it got done. It's not by my sweat that it got done. But since it is finished, I like that. Say "It's finished". Since it is finished, now God help me to harmonize with who God says I am. God says I'm righteous. God says I'm holy. God says I'm perfect. God says I'm without fault. Help me to harmonize this natural life on the heavenly plane of where God sees me. Now, here's the wonderful part about it. God's already declared all this, so certain things are already set in motion. He sealed it with the Holy Spirit.
So you don't have to be falling on your face, "Oh Lord, am I still going to heaven"? Do you still believe in Jesus? "Yeah". You heaven-bound. That's taken care of. Now, I know none of us really want to go to heaven without knowing that we were in the process of harmonizing our earthly life with this grace declaration of who God sees us and how God sees us. It's not gonna be enough for me, "Oh, I'm in heaven. Oh, look at the streets, they're..." No, I'm not interested in that. This is all a relationship now. I love you so much, there are certain things I don't wanna do no more. I'm tired of holding out against somebody. It wastes my energy. I'm tired of hating, I'm tired of walking in unforgiveness, I'm tired of trying to, you know, figure out how not to bump into you and every time I see you across the street, I gotta go somewhere else when I need to go right that way you headed across the street. I don't wanna do this no more.
So what's going on? God, by the Holy Ghost, is changing your want-to's, the stuff you used to want to do, you don't wanna do it no more. So the Holy Spirit is working in this transition, transitioning you to this place of grace, of what grace has done. That's so amazing to me. God looked at our lives and looked at me and looked at you and said, "They are really dirty, but I'm gonna adopt 'em into my family. And through Jesus Christ, I'm no longer gonna look at them without looking at them through the lens called Jesus. So I can't help but to see him as cleansed because I'm looking at him through Jesus. I can't help but to see him as holy 'cause I'm looking at him through Jesus", and you gotta quit thinking that he looking at you without looking at you through Jesus.
So something ought to be going on, on the inside of you where you're saying, "What are the appeals that he is making? I wanna live right now. I wanna live right. I wanna live right". "You better live right or you're gonna go to hell". No, no, no, hell's not my motivation for wanting to live right. It was, but I didn't know none of this. Hell used to get everybody. "You better get right or you're going to hell". "Okay". That's not my motivation now. My motivation is so much deeper than fear. My motivation is something that's being born out of a growing relationship with this amazing God who is filthy rich in mercy and grace. I wanna do right because I still don't understand why you died for me when I was acting like a fool. I don't get why you went to hell for me and didn't let me go. I don't understand how you can say I'm righteous when you know good and well what I did last night was unrighteous.
How do you do that? And he says, "Because I love you". And I'm thinking, "If this God loves like this, I want in, I want in. And I want to know how to do this thing". And it becomes pleasing to him. And so in Romans chapter 12, as an illustration of what I'm trying to teach here, he says, "I beseech you therefore, brethren". He says, "I'm really trying to motivate you, but I'm not doing it out of fear, I'm motivating you by the mercies of God". Remember, mercy is the bad you deserve, you don't get. Mercy is when you did something crazy, you know you deserve something bad, and you don't get it.
Wow, "By the mercies of God," he says, "I'm making this appeal to you. I'm not doing it out of fear. I'm not doing it, telling you you've got to do it to earn sonship". He says, "I gave that to you by grace. I'm not telling you you've got to do this so you can earn righteousness. I already gave that to you by grace". He says, "All the stuff that the church has taught you you had to do to get, I gave it to you by grace and mercy, so I'm not asking you to do these things to try to get what I've already given you, I'm asking you to do it in recognition of my mercy and my grace, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice". Could you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, and acceptable unto God? He said, "That's your reasonable service, or your reasonable worship".
Do you think you can... where is that? Look at this in the NLT. Look at this in the NLT. I was reading the NLT, and I thought, "Wow, I see that from another perspective". He says, "And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you". Yeah, I got it. Because of all he has done for us, don't you think you can do this? Don't you think you can walk and keep this appeal. When he says, "Lie not to one another because of all that he has done". This is in the natural. How do you respond in the natural when there's somebody in your life and they just keep giving to you, they keep loving you, they love you in spite of yourself, they just never leave. They're there, they just keep doing that.
And then one day, they ask you to do one thing, "Could you call me tomorrow and remind me of this? After all I've ever done for you," and all of a sudden now, that's the least you can do. That's the least you can do, recognizing all that God has done for you, because of all that he has done for you. You see where God's coming from? I'm gonna blow your mind with my goodness so that when you read in the scriptures, saying, "Don't do that, walk away from that, don't let that happen," to you it's gonna be, "That's the least I can do. He made me a son, he adopted me into his family, he made me royalty. I was born into something I could not have ever earned". And then he asked me to do something. "Don't hold no bitterness".
Yeah, Lord, that's the least I can do. "Don't walk in unforgiveness". That's the least I can do. "Can I have your bodies? Don't sleep around with Fred, Tyrone, Jethro, and them". Lord, that's the least I can do. So what are you doing? You're sacrificing yourself, your emotions, your desires, all of those things, and you're saying, "That's the least I can do," but what you don't understand is not, when you take that step to say, "Yeah, Lord, because of what you've done for me, I'm ready to keep all of the appeals".
When what you don't understand is he is never going to leave you by yourself to finish something that he started. So even when you accept the appeals to do what he tells you to do, he gonna be right there helping you along. Gonna be right there changing your heart, working with you, changing situations, changing, I think what he's saying is, "I just wanna know that you would do it for me. That you would do it for me. That you would love your wife as I love the church, you would do that for me. That you would treat other people the way you wanna be treated. I just wanna know, in light of everything I've ever done, I just wanna see if you would wanna do it for me". And it's not about, "Well, I don't feel like I wanna do it, or I don't think it take all that".
"But if I asked you, would you do it for me? Moses, will you do it for me? David, would you do it for me? In light of everything that I've done, will you? Will you do it for me"? Wow, I'm never going back to that religion that says I have to sweat and work real hard to try to get God to do something for me, when, in fact, he's already done everything that needs to be done in my life. Now, listen to this. So, remember, he says, "I beseech you by the mercies of God". He talked about his work of grace first, mercy. Then he went ahead with the appeal, you know, "because of all that he has done, let them be a living and a holy sacrifice, the kind he will find acceptable". He said, "This is truly the way to worship him".
The way to worship him is in light of what you've done, what do you wanna do through me? I'm your glove for your hand. What do you wanna do for me? In light of what you've done, here I am. See, the ministry of Jesus is still operating, but through you. He wants to continue the ministry of Jesus through you. "Lord, what do you want me to do"? You know, I was reading a scripture in 1 Peter chapter 3, he says, "You wanna live a happy life? You wanna live a good life, prosperous life"? He says, "Watch your mouth. Quit lying and talking about people". I thought about that and I was, like, "Ooh, can't we find justifiable reasons to gossip"?
"Well, I ain't trying to talk about nobody but," "Don't get me to lying around here, but..." Seem to me you need to get your "but" out the way and quit letting it do that to you. And then when you read scriptures like that and he was, like, "Dude, don't speak lies. If your mouth can't speak good, just keep quiet, and then you'll be happy". Check yourself out the next time you get in a real good gossip. You carry some of that stuff with you. It affects your peace, it affects your ease, 'cause you done got in a atmosphere where lies might be being spoken. You don't know. Some folks just assume stuff and then they convince their self that it really happened. And then they tell you, and then you think it really happened. And people end up dying.
I know people who have died because one lie started a gossip trail and caused so much hurt and pain to the people who were involved. I just wanna show y'all how to live. This thing getting ready to wrap up in any moment. Ain't nobody in no contest to see who got the biggest that, the best that, blah, blah. I just wanna see Jesus, you understand what I'm saying? I just wanna see Jesus, you know? I'm not coming out here trying to, you know, twirl and give you a good show to see if you can come back next Sunday. That's up to you and the Lord if you come back here the next Sunday.
I wanna teach you how to live so you're gonna wake up tomorrow morning with your eyes open and feel happy and at peace and like what's going on and, you know, you just changing jobs but you ain't worried about nothing 'cause you know if the God that got you the last one is the one that's gonna do this. Because you wake up trusting in God. I want you to learn how to live, and stop playing. We gotta stop playing. We play too much, man. You got a brother and sister, like, "Go, man, you playing too much. You can play too much. You play too much".
Now here's the deal. God's appeals, those are the things when he says, "Could you do that, would you do that, would you do this, would you do that, would you make sure you don't do this"? God's appeals for godly conduct are only gonna be valid when they're based on his works of grace. Those appeals are only gonna be valid when they're based on his works of grace. So here's what happens. By omitting God's works of grace, standards for godly living are brought down from a divine plane to a level of the human plane. You're trying to do what God told you to do, but you're bringing it down on a fleshly human plane and not, "I'm doing this because of the mercy and the grace that has been afforded to me".
You forget about all the grace. You forget about what he's already done, and now you're trying not to be bitter in your own self-power. You gotta discipline yourself, "I'm not gonna be bitter, I'm not gonna be bitter, I'm not gonna be bitter, I'm not gonna be bitter," and as soon as you see Frank who left you for that other woman, you saw Frank out, you're engaged with Frank and you saw Frank at a restaurant with his ex. And all of a sudden, you go from, "I'm not gonna be bitter, I'm not gonna be bitter, I'm not gonna be bitter," now you're trying to get that done through, that's what we've done most of our Christian life. You know, you better be good, you better be right. You know, I say that's Santa Claus religion, "You better watch out, you better not pout, I'm telling you why. Santa Claus is coming to town. He sees you".
Well, Jesus is coming back. "He sees you when you sleeping". Oh, no. "He knows when you're awake. He knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake". Oh yeah, oh yeah. And like my mom used to say, "You better be sweet before Santa Claus come 'cause he got a monkey and if you awake, that monkey gonna climb up in your bed and scratch your eyes out". And I'm like, "I can't go to sleep. I'm trying, but I think that monkey at the bottom of my bed". And we've been motivated by fear to try to do what God's trying to get us to do because we ignore what he's already done and what he'll continue to do with us. So by omitting God's work of grace, we reduce ourself back to the standard.
Now here's what I... if you could, write this down, 'cause this really helped me out. God's appeals have no force when his mercy and grace are ignored. Everything God tells you to do, be holy, be perfect, everything he tells you to do, every appeal he makes for you to live by are void if you ignore his mercy and grace. Someone say, "Why you come to church"? "'CauseI need to come to church 'cause God ain't pleased if I don't come to church". That's not why I come to church. "Well, Pastor, why do you come? Because you're a preacher"?
That's not why I come to church. There are several other things I can do. I don't have to be a preacher here. I come to church because at least I can do is what he want me to do, to carry out the will of God for his life. Look at what he's done for me. Why would I wanna rebel against somebody who's done so much for me? "But I don't want to. I wanna do something else. I'm tired. I'm tired. I don't know any of them people. That why..." no, God has done too much, and maybe you've forgot about it, but if it weren't for him, you wouldn't be where you are right now. If it weren't for him, you would have died in that car accident. If it wasn't for him, a whole lot of stuff would have been messed up if it wasn't for him. Honey, God was carrying you when you thought you were walking all by yourself.