Jim Van Gelderen: Welcome to Thee Generation Podcast. This is Jim Van Gelderen, and I am podcasting from Fayetteville, Arkansas, where my wife and I are starting up a seven-week stretch of revival meetings at Lighthouse Baptist Church. We’re excited about the good start today, Sunday, and trusting God will give us a great week.

Well, anyway, we just finished a very busy week up at the Victory Conference at Falls Baptist Church in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. This year’s theme was Rise Up. Now some of you are familiar with the Victory Conference and it’s in a certain sense a conference for pastors and laymen and really a conference on the Christian life issues, growing deeper in your walk with God, really nurturing faith in your Christian life really is the burden of the conference and it was exciting to have a wonderful crowd, many pastors and a lot of family and folks from our church and the auditorium was filled every night and almost filled every day during the daytime sessions. So it certainly was a very exciting week.

But most importantly, it was the truth that was presented to us. Now the idea of rise up is not just grit your teeth and do better and just get up and do right. It really was the idea based on all the truth we know. In the last few years of the conference, we’ve really dealt with some of the key truths in the Christian life. For instance, who we are in Jesus Christ, the identity of truth, we’re dead to sin in Jesus, alive in the God in Jesus, we are accepted in the beloved, we’re complete in him, all those wonderful truths, but they need to be acted upon.

The Bible tells us in Romans 6 that not only are we to know that we’re dead to sin and alive in the God in Jesus, we’re not only to reckon it to be true, but we’re to act on it, to present our yield, present our members as instruments of righteousness unto God. So action always follows the apprehension of truth. And the idea is we’re supposed to, by the grace of God, act on what God is telling us is true.

I’ve said this before on the podcast, but I was up at Treasure Mountain Bible Camp last summer, and the summer before as well, part of their training time, and Pastor Ward Smith presented some wonderful counseling material from the Wild’s Christian Camp. And in there, there was a saying that was kind of the paradigm for counseling, you do what you do and you say what you say because you desire what you desire. You desire what you desire because you believe what you believe about God, yourself and the Bible.

It really comes down to this, every wrong action and every wrong word comes because we’re not believing right about ourselves or about God or the Bible. It’s the root problem for all of us. I’ve said this in other podcasts. But the idea of rise up is then the same thing. When you have the right concept of who God is and who you are because you’re in union with Jesus, the reaction from that or the blessing that comes out of that is to rise up and obey in dependence on those truths, in dependence on his strength, not yours. And you hear that from time to time here on the podcast because our burden is to nurture faith in the next generation.

Well anyway, that was the conference theme and I certainly wanna encourage you with it, but just to highlight a couple of messages that may particularly be helpful to you as a teenager, the conference is opened by Pastor Johnny Pope on Monday night dealing with moral purity. And purity is an issue every young person faces, either gender, and I would encourage you to listen to that message because I believe it will help you have some Bible understanding of truth that can set you free in a very sensual age in which we live.

Brother Shettler, the next day, how actually it would be Wednesday, it’d be a conference that started on a Monday night. It was Wednesday afternoon, Brother Shetler talked about rising up again. Many young people fail, fall, give up. And he talked about, what do you do when you fall? Talked about rising up again. I would highly recommend that message as well. Many other good messages, but those two stand out as ones that I think would particularly be helpful to you as a teenager.

Now I preached a message on Wednesday morning. It was a little more like seminary class, but the idea was, I was endeavoring to help young people understand what theologically or biblically the Christian life looks like. We call it sanctification. How we can live in victory as a Christian and live with a freedom from sin and live with a divine optimism. And we’re gonna battle sin to the day we die, but God has a battle plan. And he has a way for you to live in victory and to live with forward movement. And if you wanna listen to that message, I encourage you to do that. Just make sure you have your thinking cap on because we are gonna drive through the Bible, particularly certain passages that help us understand the relationship between faith and works.

Because the Christian life is not just about action, it is about what you believe. Without faith, it’s impossible to please God. The Christian life always starts with believing God. And for years, I’ve said, that if faith is always a means, you get saved by faith, you get assurance of salvation by faith, you grow in your Christian life by faith, you have victory by faith, et cetera. And I think I’ve even said, if works are ever a means, you’re off theologically. Well, I came to James chapter two and I realized that’s not a fully correct statement.

Many times I’ve thought, well, works are a result of faith and that certainly is true. But James 2 tells us that works are also a means. And they’re a means for three things. And I’m just gonna read this. If you want more information, you can certainly go. By the way, you can get these messages on www.victoryconf.org. And so you can definitely get all the messages accessed there. But when I dealt with the message here, back to James 2, the verse of scripture is, “Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect. And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him,” or imputed unto him, “for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God”

Now, notice what it says, “Seest thou how faith wrought with his works and by works was faith made perfect.” Now what does it mean? It means the idea that faith was producing works, but those works, in turn, became a means for something. And so the idea is you start with faith, you believe God, it results in action, that action then becomes a means—it stirs your faith. What does it stir your faith to?

Number one, the Bible says faith is perfected. Now the idea there is that word Jesus used on the cross, it is finished. The idea is that your faith matures, it grows, it gets completed, and it reaches the goal. Let me just simply say that when we obey God in dependence upon who we are in Christ, in dependence on the Christ who lives within us, his strength not ours, and we obey him in that, you know what happens? Our faith gets strengthened. Our faith, we begin to have a confidence, it kinda meets the need. It reaches the goal of that particular action and our faith has matured.

Second thing, the Bible says the scripture was fulfilled which saith Abraham believed God and it was imputed for righteousness. In other words, friends, when he got saved in the sight of God, he became righteous, legally and forensically righteous in the sight of God. But when he obeyed God in that regard to Isaac being offered, of course God provided a lamb at the last second. But when he obeyed God in that situation, his righteousness became, how do I say this, imparted righteousness.

So he became righteous at salvation, but when you and I obey God in dependence on his strength, dependence on who we are in Christ, guess what happens? That imputed righteousness becomes imparted righteousness. It is the righteousness of Jesus Christ being fleshed out through our dependent obedience. “But of him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness,” there it is, “and sanctification and redemption, that according as it is written, he that glorieth let him glory in the Lord.”

Friends, the way imputed righteousness becomes imparted righteousness is when you believe God enough to obey him. And that’s a wonderful truth. Works becomes a means for imparted righteousness. Because if we didn’t obey, there’d be no righteousness. But it’s dependence on him and who we are in Christ. It is imparted righteousness based on our imputed righteousness at salvation. Now if you don’t get that, listen to the message, hopefully it would become clearer. 

And the third thing is, you become the friend of God. People know that you love God, walk with God, and you have a friendship with God.

So let me encourage you young person, God has action and obedience as part of the Christian life. “Now without faith it’s impossible to please God,” it always starts with faith. That faith results in action or obedience. and that obedience becomes a means for perfected faith, for imputed righteousness becoming imparted righteousness, and it becomes the means for us being called the friend of God. People see that we love God and have a relationship with him.

Well, I hope this is a help. I hope you’ll be able to go back and listen to some of the Victory Conference. It was a tremendous blessing. Wonderful crowd was there. You can even join us next year. It’s the first week of March. Starts on a first Monday in March. It goes through Thursday night. It’s a wonderful conference. I know you probably have to have your parents come with you, but it’s a wonderful conference. Listen to the messages this year, maybe you’ll be encouraged to make it a part of your year next year in 2025, once we hit that calendar year. It’ll be in March, the third month there.

Well anyway, it’s great to talk to you, and certainly appreciate you tuning in. Be encouraged, friend, because God is doing great things. And as we surrender to him and depend upon him, wow, that’s when God, He stirs our faith, our imputed righteousness becomes imparted righteousness and we’re called the friend of God.