Welcome to the In Touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, January 5th.

Think carefully. As you step into a new year, will you follow Jesus no matter the cost?

Take your first step of faith by saying yes to the call to commitment.

Most of you have already trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. No doubt in your mind about that.

You're sure of it. But let me ask you one question. Has there ever been a time in your life where you

evaluated your life and you made a personal commitment of your life to the lordship of Jesus Christ, whereby you said,

I deliberately and willfully surrender and yield and acknowledge and make available my life to him for his purpose,

whatever God may require of me, leaving the consequences of

that decision to him. That is what we're talking about when we talk about true, genuine commitment.

A lot of people have made decisions, but many, many people have made decisions who have never made a commitment

to Jesus Christ, the way God intends for us to commit ourselves, being the Lord and master

of our life.

Well, there are about 10 Greek words in the New Testament that relate to commitment.

Most of them relate to commit sin or commit this act and so forth, but about four of

them relate to the whole idea of committing oneself. And in essence, here's what it means. It is a

deliberate, willful laying down of oneself before someone or for something. That is, it is the surrender. It is the yielding of oneself. Or, in one of the

other words, it is entrusting oneself, depositing oneself at someone else's disposal. That is,

as Paul says in Romans chapter 12, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,

that you present your body.

It was a technical term used for sacrifice, that you present yourself a living sacrifice,

holy and acceptable to God.

Now, when a man presented a sacrifice, he took his hands off of it. He surrendered it to, or entrusted it to someone else, and from that point on, it belonged to someone else.

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