Jeff Schreve - The Acceptable Resolution
Summary:
In this New Year’s message, the preacher argues that while common resolutions like losing weight or getting out of debt are good, the only one guaranteed to please God is to fully surrender one’s life to Him, based on Romans 12:1. He outlines three directives: develop a proper biblical understanding of God as majestic, sovereign, and merciful; offer oneself completely as a living and holy sacrifice in daily surrender; and resist conformity to the world by renewing the mind through Scripture to live out God’s perfect will. The sermon emphasizes that true pleasing of God flows from orthodoxy leading to orthopraxy, illustrated by the story of William Borden who lived with «no reserves, no retreats, no regrets.»
New Year’s Resolutions and Pleasing God
You know, one of the biggest New Year’s resolutions that just tops them all is when people say, as they leave December going into January, it has to do with weight. It has to do with getting fit and going to the gym. «I’m gonna start working out, I’m gonna lose weight, and I’m gonna get in better shape.» Here’s a picture of the gym in December, and then in January it’s like that, and then in February it’s back to nobody being there, you know.
But we want to make these resolutions, and they’re not bad. I mean, we make resolutions that we want to get out of debt—that’s a good thing. That we want to spend more time with our family—that’s a good thing. That we want to break a bad habit—that’s a good thing. But there’s really only one resolution that we know for sure in Scripture pleases God, and that’s really the name of the game: to please God. That’s what all of life boils down to as a Christian.
Are you pleasing God? Because one day, you and I are gonna have to stand before the Lord and give an account of our lives. If we didn’t please God in our lives, we’re gonna have to say, «Lord, my life was a bust. I was a failure because I didn’t do the most important thing.» And the most important thing is to please God. You know, we always say, and you hear it at funerals, that when the person dies, no doubt he met the Lord, and the Lord said to him, «Well done, my good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your master.» I’ve used that at funerals, but I’m careful when I use that at funerals because it’s not just a blanket statement over every single Christian where the Lord is saying, «Well done.» Some Christians don’t do very well.
What is an example in the Old Testament of a believer who didn’t do very well? The Lord didn’t say to Lot, «Hey, well done, Lot, all those years you spent in Sodom wasting your life; good job.» What matters in life is pleasing God, and there’s a resolution that every Christian needs to make and needs to keep because the Bible says that this is acceptable to God, well-pleasing to God. It’s in Romans chapter 12, verse 1. Paul says to the Roman Christians, «I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable, well-pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.»
Hey, how can you really please God in this new year and every day beyond this new year? Every day of your life, you can please God. I can please God if we do what the Scripture tells us to do. How can you really please God in the new year? Three directives are given in Romans chapter 12.
Directive 1: Develop a True Understanding of God
Directive number one: Develop a true understanding of God—a true biblical understanding of who God is, not what you think about God, but what does the Scripture say about the Lord? You know, there are words that you learn in seminary, and seminaries are big on big words. One of the things that you learn in seminary is this concept called orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is basically just the right way to think; it’s the right way to believe. It’s orthodox; it’s right. And orthodoxy is about the glory of God, so it’s the right way to think about God and to believe about God.
Then there’s another word called orthopraxy. Orthopraxy is the right way to practice—the right way to act, the right way to conduct yourself. Now, you have to have good orthodoxy, the right way to believe, in order to conduct yourself in the right way because the thought will come before the action. You have to have the right thoughts.
Paul goes on in the book of Romans. If you’ve ever spent time in Romans, you know that Romans is very, very deep. The first 11 chapters of Romans are all theology, heavy-duty theology, and then in chapter 12, he starts with the practical. So, it’s the theological for 11 chapters and then five chapters of the practical. Why is that? Because you have to have good orthodoxy in order to have good orthopraxy. As Paul ends up in chapter 11, he starts with the doxology. He just starts to praise God.
In chapter 11, verse 33, he says this: «Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has become His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.» That’s just a praise to God; he just can’t contain himself anymore, and he begins to praise the Lord.
You and I, in this new year, need to develop a true understanding, a proper understanding, a biblical understanding of God. Now, I want you to notice three things about God. First of all, God is the majestic King—the King who’s worthy of all our praises. The Bible says in Psalm 104, verse 1: «Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty.» Majesty means glory, beauty, magnificence, excellence, and God just exudes that out of every pore of His being—His majesty.
We used to sing that song, «Majesty, worship His majesty, ” because the Lord is majestic, and He’s clothed with splendor. You know, we talk about the fear of the Lord, and I learned this from Gary Smalley, who’s now in heaven, but I’ve never forgotten it. He said, „You know, an easy way to remember the fear of the Lord is this: The fear of the Lord is not 'Ha-ha.' He said the fear of the Lord is 'Wow! God, look how glorious you are! Look how beautiful you are! Look how magnificent and majestic you are! '“ God is the majestic King.
And God is the mighty King; He’s the sovereign King. As the Scripture says in the New Testament, He’s the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, and He is the mighty King. God doesn’t have counselors; as He says in verse 34, „Who has known the mind of the Lord or who became His counselor?“ God doesn’t get together with some of the angels or maybe Moses and Abraham and say, „Hey, let’s have a little huddle. What should I do here?“ God doesn’t do that because He’s God. He doesn’t answer to anyone; He doesn’t consult anyone when He’s ready to do something. The Lord does as He pleases in heaven and on earth; He’s the sovereign God, the mighty God, and there’s nothing too difficult for Him. Everything comes from God; He’s the source of everything. Verse 36 of Romans chapter 11 in the New Living Translation says, „For everything comes from Him and exists by His power and is intended for His glory. All glory to Him forever! Amen.“ God is the mighty sovereign King.
Then it says that this great God, this majestic God, this glorious God, this mighty God, this sovereign God, is a merciful God. I urge you, therefore, brethren, Paul says, „by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice.“ By the mercies of God! Not by the holiness of God, not by the majesty of God, not by the judgments of God, not by the wrath of God. See, all those things would cause us to want to back away from God. But he says, „I urge you, I plead with you, I entreat you to come before the Lord because of His mercy.“ God is a merciful God. Aren’t you glad that God is a merciful God? We fail; we blow it in life—all of us, you, me, the Apostle Paul, everybody. And we come before a merciful God—a God who sits on the throne of grace, not on a throne of judgment. God doesn’t sit on a throne of judgment with a billy club in one hand and a bag of thunderbolts under the other. And He’s ready to whack you over the head and throw down a thunderbolt on you if you mess up or get out of line. God is the God of all grace. God is the God of mercy. God is the God of compassion.
That’s why the prostitute in Luke 7, who was just covered in the slimy fingerprints of sin, could come to Jesus and fall down at His feet because she knew He is merciful, and He is gracious. A friend of mine, when I was in college, and we were talking just about things that college guys struggle with—lust and things like that—I remember my friend Ron Moore told me, „Jeff, you know when I set my mind on those things and think about things I shouldn’t think about, and when those things happen, I just feel so guilt-ridden. I just can’t come to the Lord. I can’t pray when that happens because I just feel like I’m so separated from God; the guilt comes in and the shame comes in.“
I understood what he was talking about, but God is a God of mercy. He’s a God you come to; you come to Him, you don’t run from Him. When you mess up, you don’t do what Adam did when he hid from God. When the Lord said, „Adam, where are you?“ you come to the Lord. When you sin and when you blow it, you say, „God, have mercy on me! Forgive me!“ You have genuine and true repentance, and you get things right with Him.
You know, I think the greatest picture of God in the New Testament is the father of the prodigal son. That picture of God needs to be hung in every Christian’s mind. That is God. Because all of us mess up. When I started From His Heart Ministries 11 years ago, or 12 years ago, whatever it was now, somebody asked me, „What’s the mission statement of the ministry?“ I said, „The mission statement is this: No matter how badly you may have messed up in life, God still loves you, and He still has a plan for you. He is the father of the prodigal.“ And when you take a step back to God to get your life right with God, He runs to you and embraces you because He’s the God of mercy.
There’s no guilt in life and no fear in death, as we sang, because this is the power of Christ in me. So, the very first thing we have to do is develop a true understanding of God. So many of us have a warped understanding of God. If your orthodoxy is not right, if it’s warped, then your orthopraxy is not gonna be right. You have to start it off right. As I’ve told you before, you have to get the first button of your shirt right to button the rest of the shirt. If you miss the first one, it doesn’t matter how well you do the rest of them; your shirt is off.
So, we need to have a true understanding of God’s Word.
Directive 2: Offer Yourself Completely to God
The second directive, once we have that understanding of God and understand that He is the great majestic King, mighty King, merciful King, then what does that mean to me? What do I do in response to that?
„I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.“ Which is your reasonable service of worship? To offer yourself completely to God—that’s the second directive. You offer yourself completely to God. You say, „Well, that sounds like a lot.“ It’s your spiritual service of worship, as it says in the New American Standard. But that word for spiritual is reasonable; it’s where we get our word logical. It makes sense: It is reasonable in light of all that God has done for you, in light of the mercy of God, in light of the cross of Jesus Christ and the empty tomb. It makes sense that you would offer yourself completely to God—not 50% to God, not 75% to God—not your New Year’s resolution, „Well, I’m gonna start coming to church on Sunday morning; I’m getting involved in a Bible study class. I’m gonna come on Wednesday night.“ Those are all great things.
But then you don’t say, „But you know, Monday is mine. I’m gonna do whatever I want. X day, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I’m just gonna do whatever I want. But, you know, you have the Lord’s day—that’s Sunday—and then my days are the rest of them.“ No, they’re all the Lord’s days because everything comes from Him. Because He’s the blessed and only Sovereign; He is the mighty King. And so, I offer myself completely to God.
Mark it down; every Christian is to be a living sacrifice. „I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice—present your bodies a living sacrifice.“ That’s priestly language. That’s what the priest did—they presented offerings. They took the offerings from the people and presented them to God. The priests were the intermediary between God and the people, so the people would come to the priest, and then the priest would offer the sacrifice.
In the Old Testament, the sacrifices would be tied to the altar so it wouldn’t run away. Then you would kill it; you’d slit the bull’s throat, the goat’s throat, the lamb’s throat; the blood would be there and then they would burn it up. It was a dead sacrifice—it was living at one time—but once you sacrificed it, then it was dead.
Here’s something totally different: In the New Testament, we don’t do sacrifices anymore because Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. No reason to do sacrifices anymore that we read about in the Old Testament, where they sacrificed and sacrificed. All that was a foreshadowing and a picture of the Lamb of God who was to come, who was to take all the sin upon Himself and die and rise again. Then sacrifices are no more.
But in the New Testament, the sacrifice that is still in play is not a dead sacrifice; it’s a living sacrifice. We offer ourselves because of the mercies of God. We offer ourselves as a living sacrifice. We come before the Lord and we say, „Lord, I give You my life.“
Now, we have to do that in order to become Christians. If you don’t give the Lord your life, then you’re not gonna be a Christian because you can’t give part of your life to God. You can’t just kind of dip a toe in the water, so to speak, and say, „I’ll just check this out.“ No, if you’re gonna come before the Lord to be saved, you give your heart to Jesus; you give all you know of you to Jesus, and He gives you Himself. It’s the great exchange of the Christian life.
But then every single day, I’m faced with a challenge: Who’s gonna live my life today? Is Jeff gonna live it, or is Jesus gonna live it? Because Jesus now lives in my heart; He lives in my life. And there’s one throne in my heart. Who’s gonna sit there? As you’ve heard me say before, in every Christian’s heart, there is a cross and there’s a throne. When self is on the throne, Christ is on the cross, but when Christ is on the throne, then self is on the cross. That’s the struggle in the Christian life.
As Paul said, „I die daily.“ I die daily. I die to myself every single day, and I say, „Not I, but Christ.“ I say in Galatians chapter 2, verse 20, „I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me.“ So, I come as a living sacrifice, a willing sacrifice, and say, „Not my will, Father, but Yours be done in my life.“
Now, here’s the problem with a living sacrifice: A living sacrifice can move off the altar. A living sacrifice can be there, and you can come to church, and you can get revved up emotionally, and you say, „Yes! I want to be that living sacrifice to the Lord.“ But then it’s Monday morning, and then comes the pressure, and then come the difficulties. Then you’re tempted to want to take control of your life again, and you want to pull off the altar and say, „Well, I’m gonna go in my direction.“
That’s the pressure and that’s the challenge for every single Christian. That was the challenge that Paul faced. So, we have to come before the Lord every day—maybe it’s 20 times a day—and we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice. „God, I got myself off the altar, and I come back, and I want to be yielded to You.“ So, every Christian is to be a living sacrifice, and every Christian is to be a holy sacrifice.
„To present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice.“ What does it mean to be a holy sacrifice? It means you’re set apart for God. Your life is set apart for God, and you’re consecrated to the Lord. You can’t be the person you once were because you’ve been bought with a price, as it says in 1st Corinthians chapter 6. Your job now, being bought with a price, is to glorify God in your body.
You know, literally, you’ve become the temple of the Holy Spirit. Just as in the Old Testament you had a temple, and in the innermost part of the temple was the Holy of Holies—that’s where the Ark of the Covenant was, that’s where the Shekinah glory of God dwelt—now as we enter into the New Testament, God doesn’t have a temple for His people; He has a people for His temple. The Lord lives inside you, and you become the Holy of Holies.
There are things that we do in our bodies that we would never in a million years do in this church. We would never, ever, if we traveled back to Old Testament times, think about doing things like that in the Holy of Holies. No one came into the Holy of Holies except the high priest, and he came with fear and trepidation because he was coming into the presence of God. If we were to think, „Hey, let’s have a beer bash in the Holy of Holies. Bring the cards, bring the girls, let’s get together, ” you would never do that because you would fear God might strike you dead. The majestic God, the holy God, the sovereign God—you can’t do that.
But your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you’re not your own. So, we’re to offer ourselves not only as a living sacrifice, but a holy sacrifice because that’s acceptable to God. The Lord says in 1st Peter chapter 1, „You shall be holy, for I am holy.“ You shall be holy, for I am holy. God wants us to be like Him in how we act and how we react. God is a holy God; He’s a pure God.
God doesn’t fly off the handle; God doesn’t say certain things and then have to say, „Oh, excuse my French.“ God doesn’t do any of that stuff because He’s God, and He’s holy, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.
And we have a teaching today called hyper grace, and hyper grace says this: „You know, it’s all about grace; it’s just all about grace.“ The only way we can come to the Lord is through grace; it’s all about grace, so it doesn’t really matter how you live. Remember the Hebrew word I told you years ago? Baloney! That’s just baloney; that’s not true. We come to the Lord through grace, but Jesus was full of grace and truth.
In Romans chapter 6, they were having that discussion with the Apostle Paul, saying, „Well, you know, if sin brings grace, maybe we should sin more and get more grace.“ Paul said, „Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid! That’s not how it works.“ Once the Lord saves you out of a life of sin, then He calls you to Himself to live a life of holiness—to live a life that pleases Him. A life that says, „Lord, You’re holy; I want to be holy. Change me from the inside out.“
I was thinking about the difficulty many of us have—and all of us have. Paul had it too; he talked about it in Romans 7, the struggle he had—the good that he wanted to do, he didn’t do, and the bad that he didn’t want to do, he ended up doing. „Wretched man that I am!“ he said, „Who will set me free from the body of this death?“ But here’s the thing: when you struggle with sin, whatever the sin is, everybody has certain sins that seem to attack them more than others.
Some people in here, the sin that is the monkey on your back has to do with alcohol. For others, it’s not alcohol; that’s not a problem. For some, it’s drugs; for others, drugs are not a big problem. For some, it’s insecurity; for others, that’s not a big problem. For some, it’s lust; for others, that’s not a big problem. Everybody struggles with something! So, you look at your life and say, „Man, I’m not doing very well in my walk with the Lord because I keep sinning in this area, ” and we tend to beat ourselves up. We say, „I’m a terrible person; I’m a horrible person. God must not love me anymore.“ And then we listen to the lies of the Devil, and then we back away from God instead of coming and pressing into the Lord with our problems and sharing our situation with Him.
But here’s the issue: It is always an issue of love. Anytime you’re disobeying God, it’s an issue of love because Jesus said, „If you love me…“ John 14:15. „If you love me, you will keep my commandments.“ So if you’re not keeping His commandments, it’s because there’s a love problem there. You’re not loving the Lord like you’re supposed to.
You say, „Well, then, okay, then I just need to love the Lord more. I’m gonna grit my teeth and say, ‘Lord, I’m gonna love You more. I’m gonna pray more; I’m gonna do more; I’m gonna sing louder. I’m just gonna love You more.’“ That’s not how you love God more. We love because He first loved us. The way you love God more is by understanding how much He loves you.
When you’re not doing well spiritually, it’s because you’re not living in the fresh revelation of how much God loves you. The cross is not fresh; you’ve forgotten your purification, as Peter says in 2nd Peter chapter 1. You’ve forgotten your purification from your former sins; you’ve forgotten what the Lord did for you, and it’s become old hat. You’ve gotten calloused to Calvary, and you need to go back. As the Scripture says in Revelation chapter 2:4, where the Lord says to the Ephesians, „I have this against you, that you’ve left your first love.“ You don’t love me like you used to. We’re not in that love relationship like we used to be before, and you need to spend more time with me understanding how much I love you.
Develop a true understanding of God that pleases Him—that is orthodoxy that produces orthopraxy. Offer yourself, secondly, completely to God; you leave nothing back. You’re a living sacrifice; you’re a holy sacrifice.
Directive 3: Do Not Be Conformed, But Be Transformed
Then, third directive: Do not be conformed, but be transformed. Don’t be conformed, but be transformed, and that’s what he says in verse 2. „And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.“
Now, you mark it down. The Devil is at work to try and conform you to this world. That word conformed literally means to squeeze you into its mold; it means to conform to the same pattern as the world. We see that happening all over the place—in churches and in the people that come to the church. They’re getting squeezed into the mold and into the thinking of the world.
Now the Bible says in 1st John chapter 2, verse 15: „Do not love the world, nor the things in the world; for if any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.“ Remember, it’s a love issue. Your love is low; you’re like an oil light in your car when it comes on. It means, „Hey, you’re out of oil.“ And when you start loving the world, it’s just an indicator that my love for the Lord has waned because I’m not understanding how much He loves me. And the way to get my love back is, „We love because He first loved us.“
„Do not love the world, nor the things in the world; for if any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God abides forever.“
So the Devil takes the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life, and he tries to get you squeezed into that world’s mold so that you conform to the world, so that you go along with everyone else.
When we talk about the sexual revolution taking place in our world today and things that were obviously wrong just 20-30 years ago—everyone said, „Yeah, that’s wrong.“ Now, everyone says, „You know, I think that might be right.“ If you say it’s wrong, then you’re condemned for saying it’s wrong. But thirty years ago, everybody knew it was wrong!
I like what my friend David Huayra shared with me. He said this: „Wrong is wrong even though everybody is doing it, and right is right even though no one may be doing it.“ Because we respond to God and what God says is true. The Scripture says in Romans, „Let God be found true, though every man be found a liar.“
So there’s this pressure to conform to the world, and don’t allow yourself to be squeezed into the world’s mold. You know, some of us think, „Well, surely, I mean, if you go with the majority, you’re gonna be okay.“ You read in Genesis chapter 6 when God brought a flood upon the world of the unbelievers. There were millions of people on the earth, and there were only eight that were saved—Noah, Mrs. Noah, and Ham, Shem, and Japheth—his three sons and their three wives. Eight out of the millions and millions and millions of people on the earth! Why? Because wrong is wrong even though everyone is doing it.
God is a holy God, and God says, „Listen, there’s always gonna be pressure for you to conform.“ Daniel had pressure to conform when they came out with the decree: „Hey, you can’t pray to any god except the king for thirty days, ” and Daniel, what did he do? He said, „I’m praying to God as is my practice.“ Three times a day he would go into his room, open up the windows toward Jerusalem, and he would pray. He continued to do that even though that landed him in the lion’s den. He felt the pressure, but he wasn’t going to be conformed to the world in which he lived, and we better not be conformed either.
Don’t be conformed; the Devil has worked to conform you and me to the world, and the Lord wants to transform us by His Word. „Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.“ That word transformed is where we get our English word metamorphosis. It’s the same word that’s used when Jesus went on the Mount of Transfiguration, and He was transfigured before Peter, James, and John, and His face started to shine like the Sun, and His clothes became white like lightning. It’s the same word: Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
How do you renew your mind? You renew your mind with this book. That’s how you renew your mind. You’ve got to spend time in the book. It’s January 1 of the new year; this is an opportunity to spend time in the book. Lots of people—my wife has done this for eight years—read the Bible through. Since she was 23, she’s been doing that—reading the Bible through every year.
You know, for some people, that’s overwhelming. It looks like, „Man, I could never do that; that’s a thick book!“ How about reading the New Testament through? Get something and say, „I’m gonna start spending time in the book.“ Why? Because that renews my mind, as it says in Ephesians 5: „The washing of water with the word, ” and our minds get dirt in them from the world, and we have to wash it out through the Word.
The Devil, who is prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour, we defeat him as we stand on God’s Word but resist him, firm in your faith. The Scripture says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. It’s the Word of God that makes the difference. God speaks through His Word and begins to transform us as the Holy Spirit begins to work in our lives through the Word of God.
And then He finishes by saying this: So that you may prove what the will of God is. So that you may be a billboard for the will of God. What is the will of God? It’s that which is good and acceptable, well-pleasing, and perfect. It’s tailor-made for you. As Adrian Rogers used to say, „The will of God for your life is what you would want for yourself if you had sense enough to want it, ” because it’s a good thing; it’s well-pleasing. And God has a plan for you, and God has made you like a puzzle piece, and He has a place for you to be where you are going to be hitting on all eight cylinders, and you’re gonna be fulfilled, and you’re gonna be an example to the world of this is the will of God; this is what God has for a person.
The Story of William Borden
I was thinking about the life of William Borden. William Borden was born in Chicago or grew up in Chicago. His father was very wealthy in the real estate business. When William Borden was just a grade school kid, his mother took him to the Chicago Avenue Church, which became Moody Church after Dwight L. Moody was there. But R. A. Torrey was the pastor, and this young boy William Borden began to hear sermons through the great oratory, and God spoke to his heart.
As a young boy, William Borden began to grow in his faith. When he graduated from high school in 1904, his parents, very wealthy, sent him on a worldwide tour just to go to all these different places and see the world. As William went to look at the world, he started to have a burden for the hurting people in the world. It was on that trip that he determined he heard the voice of God calling him to be a missionary.
Well, he told his family; he told his dad. His dad had thoughts of William coming into the business and taking over the business for Dad. That wasn’t gonna happen because William said, „Well, God’s called me to be a missionary.“ The attitude among his father and others was, „You’ve thrown away your life.“ William Borden wrote in his Bible two words: „No reserves.“ No reserves.
William went on to college; he went to Yale in Connecticut, New Haven, Connecticut. He had a love for the Lord; he was on fire for the Lord, and he began right off the bat making a difference on campus. He started a Bible study his freshman year on campus, and students started to come. More students started to come, and in his senior year, in his Bible study and prayer time of the 1300 students at Yale University, a thousand of them came to his Bible study and his prayer time. He began the Yale Hope Mission as he worked with people in the city who were struggling with drugs and other things, and he began to witness and lead those people to Christ and help them.
He was just a powerhouse for the Lord. Well, then he graduated from college, and his dad was thinking, „Well, maybe I can talk and coax him back to coming and being a part of the business because obviously the hand of God was on this kid, and he was sharp and would be a great asset to anybody’s business, especially his father’s.“ But he told his father, „I’m not going to do that, Dad.“ His dad said, „Well, then you can never come to work here; you’re cut off from the family business.“
William Borden wrote in his Bible under the words „No reserves“ and „No retreats,“ he wrote these words just days before he died, in very scratchy penmanship: „No regrets.“ No regrets! He had offered himself as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. He said, „Not my will, but Thine be done.“
One of the things they read in his journal entry said this: „Say no to self and yes to Jesus, every time, every time.“ I urge you, Paul says, „by the mercies of God to present your bodies living and holy sacrifices because that’s acceptable to God.“ And that’s your reasonable service of worship because of all that He’s done for you—you’ve been bought with a price.
And don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold, but you be transformed day by day by the renewing of your mind so that you can be a walking advertisement to the world about the will of God, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
Closing Hymn
I’ll close with this story. Alicia Hoffman, in 1900, wrote a hymn. The chorus says, „Is your all on the altar of sacrifice laid? Your heart does the Spirit control? You can only be blessed and have peace and sweet rest when you yield Him your body and soul.“