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The
God-Planned Life |
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A Pocket Paper Robert J.
Morgan Next week officially begins our “Forty Days of Purpose” Campaign. We’re going to be studying the same thing together in our personal devotions, our small groups, our Sunday School classes, and in our worship services. The other day as I was reading an old book related to this subject I came across a phrase that intrigued me a great deal. It was the phrase—the God-planned life. Who would you like to plan your life? You say, “Well, I want to plan my own life.” But we can’t really do that, because we don’t know what the future holds and there’s no way we can plan for all the contingences that may come our way. George Herbert said, “Life is half spent before we (even) know what it is.” In some cases and in some cultures, the parents plan out their children’s lives, sometimes even choosing their spouses. In some Communist and totalitarian nations, the government plans a person’s life and directs him or her as to where to live and into what vocation to enter. But what if the all-good, all-loving, all-wise, wonderful God offered to plan your life for you. Well, He does. I want to show you some Scriptures today, and it would be helpful if you would turn to them in your Bibles. They all use the same phrase. It’s a phrase that occurs twenty-five times in the New Testament, and while we can’t look up all twenty-five occurrences, I want to look up a few of them, because they all drive home the same point. The common phrase in all of them is “the will of God.” Let’s begin with Mark 3:31-35 Mark 3:31-35 Then His brothers and His mother came, and standing outside they sent
to Him, calling Him. And a
multitude was sitting around Him; and they said to Him, “Look, Your
mother and Your brothers are outside seeking You.” But He answered them, saying,
“Who is My mother and My brothers?” And He looked around in a circle at
those who sat about Him, and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God is My
brother and My sister and mother.” This seems a little strange to us at first. Why wouldn’t Jesus acknowledge His family who had come to visit Him? He was arriving at popularity, great crowds were coming, and His family members showed up to see what was happening. I remember several years ago we celebrated our 40th Anniversary at a church by throwing up a great tent and having a wonderful service. In fact, it’s one of the best services we’ve ever had, and I don’t know when I enjoyed speaking and preaching so much. We invited back the former pastors and most of them were here. We were beginning to move toward building this Celebration Center and there was a festive atmosphere. But the thing I remember most was walking out of the church that morning a few minutes before the worship service and here came my sister and my aged mother. My mother, despite her infirmities, had wanted to come and be here on that special day. And as long as I have mind and memory, I’ll remember her showing up unexpectedly and how delighted I was. Jesus, however, didn’t
feel that way when His mother and sisters and brothers showed up. He didn’t even go out to see
them, and in fact He sort of snubbed them. Why? Because of what we find earlier in the
chapter. Look at verse 6: Then
the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against
Him, how they might destroy Him.
But Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the sea. And a great multitude from Galilee
followed Him, and from Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and beyond the Jordan;
and those from Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they heard how many
things He was doing, came to Him.
So He told His disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for
Him because of the multitude, lest they should crush Him. For He healed many, so that as many as
had affliction pressed about Him to touch Him. And the unclean spirits, whenever they
saw Him, fell down before Him and cried out saying, “You are the Son of
God.” Now, look down at verses
20ff: Then the multitude came together again, so that they could not so
much as eat bread. But when His
own people—His family, His relatives—heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said,
“He is out of His mind.” His mother, brothers, and sisters had showed up because they thought He had lost His mind, and they were trying to lure Him out so they could take Him away and have him committed to a hospital for the mentally ill! Of course, they didn’t have any such hospitals in that day, but you know what I mean. They wanted to restrain Him, to take Him home, to nurse Him back to His senses. So they arrived on the scene, but they couldn’t just break through the crowd to hustle Him away. There were too many people. So they said, “Let’s get Him out here alone. Send word that we need to see Him. And then between us all, we can restrain Him and get Him somewhere so that we can help Him recover His emotional and mental health. He’s gone bonkers. He’s off His rocker. He’s gone off the deep end. He’s lost His marbles. He’s not right in the head. He doesn’t have both oars in the water.” Jesus, however, knew exactly what He was doing, and He wasn’t about to be lured out. Instead, He said something very wonderful that has a direct meaning to you and me. He said, in effect: “I want to be your Brother. I want to be your Son. I want to be your Father. I want to be your Best Friend. I want you to be My family. I want to be in an intimate, personal, daily, family relationship with you. But there’s one thing that’s necessary. You must be committed to doing the will of God in your life.” Luke 7:30 Now, let’s take it a
little further and look at another passage in the Gospels, Luke 7:28ff. Here, Jesus was commenting on the role
of John the Baptist. In verse 28,
He said: But I say to you, among those born of women there is not a greater
prophet than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of God is
greater than he.” And when
all the people heard Him, even the tax collectors justified God, having been
baptized with the baptism of John.
But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the will of God for themselves,
not having been baptized by him. Notice that awful phrase: they rejected the will of God for themselves. That’s the way Luke puts it. God has a plan for our lives, but He isn’t going to force it. He has a will for us, but it’s optional. You can reject it. Ephesians 5:17 That brings us to Ephesians 5:17 and this is a great verse to memorize: Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. When we do the will of God, we are the brothers and mothers and sisters of Jesus. But we can also choose to reject the will of God for ourselves. Our great need, then, is to be wise and not unwise, understanding what the will of the Lord is. In other words, there are two ways to live—wisely and foolishly. There are two kinds of people—the wise and the foolish. What’s the difference? What is the difference between a wise person and a fool? The foolish reject the will of God. The wise understand what the will of the Lord is. That implies that the will of the Lord is understandable. We can find it for our lives if we want to. God will reveal it to us if we meet certain conditions. What are these conditions? Well, that brings us to our last passage, one that I touched on recently, but we can never refer back to these verses too often. Romans 12:1-2 Perhaps the greatest passage in the Bible on this subject is Romans 12:1-2. As you turn there, it’s a good place for me to mention that when you read through the writings of Paul the Apostle, he was very desirous that God’s will be fulfilled in His life. Let me just quote some verses to you: ▪ He said to the Romans: …that I may come to you with joy by the will of God. ▪ He introduced himself in 1 Corinthians 1:1: Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God. ▪ In 2 Corinthians 8, he said that the Christians in Macedonia had given themselves and their gifts faithfully according to the will of God. ▪ He told the Colossians that Epaphras was always wrestling in prayer for them that they might stand firm in all the will of God (Colossians 4:12). ▪ Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 4:3: For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that your abstain from sexual immorality. ▪ He wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:18: In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. So it isn’t surprising that this great apostle tells us not to be foolish, but to understand what the will of God for our lives is. You say, “Well, yes, but that’s just it. How do I know the will of God? How do I discover His plan for my life?” Well, that brings us to these two verses in Romans 12. This is the Bible’s classic three-point sermon. These two verses give us three ways of finding God’s will. First, we must offer our bodies as living sacrifices; then we must make a break from the world around us; and finally, we must get the Bible into our minds and be transformed by God’s Word. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you
present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is
your reasonable service. And do
not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your
mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of
God. Let me read
this two you from two paraphrases, the first being the new one called The Message: So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your
everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and
walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing
what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him. Don’t
become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even
thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from
the inside out. Readily recognize what He wants from you, and quickly respond
to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level
of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity
in you. I like that paraphrase by Eugene Peterson, but no one has ever restated this better than J. B. Phillips in his version of the New Testament. Let me read it to you: With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as
an act of intelligent worship, to give Him your bodies, as a living
sacrifice, consecrated to Him and acceptable by Him. Don’t let the world around you
squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your minds from within, so
that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets
all His demands and moves toward the goal of true maturity. What does God want from my life? He wants my whole life. He wants my entire life. There is not a single verse of Scripture that says you can be a Christian and then live any way that you want to. God doesn’t want 10 percent of you, or 50 percent, or 85 percent, or 99 percent. He wants all there is of you. Jesus told a story about this once in Luke 9: Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to
Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes
have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to
lay His head.” Then He said
to another, “Follow Me.”
But he said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead
bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.” And another also said, “Lord, I
will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my
house.” But Jesus said to
him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit
for the kingdom of God.” Do you see the problem with
these men? Jesus said,
“Follow me.” But what
did these men say? Look at verse
59: But Lord, let me first…
Look at verse 61, But Lord,
let me first. Do you see those words: Lord, me first. That’s a contradiction. You can’t say, “Lord, me first!” Because if He is Lord, He is first. He has got be first in our lives, our bodies a living sacrifice, our lives divorced from the world, our mind renewed by the Scripture. The Bible says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.” This takes discipline. This takes the cross. But it leads to living a God-planned life. Recently I read the autobiography of the great Christian composer, John W. Peterson. He grew up in church; and then at a certain point in his life, he invited Jesus to be his Savior. But as a young man, someone gave him a copy of a book about John and Betty Stam, who were missionaries to China when the Communists took over. Perhaps you know this story. The Stams were taken captive by a roving gang of Communist bandits and commanded to renounce their faith. When they refused, they were paraded through the streets, subjected to all kinds of humiliation, and finally John was forced to kneel beside a block of wood. While Betty watched helplessly, he was beheaded. And then she, too, was murdered. The story of such dedication and sacrifice had a profound effect on John W. Peterson. He couldn’t put the book down, and then he couldn’t get it out of his heart. He knew that Christ was commanding him to offer his life fully in devotion to God. Whatever it meant. Hours passed, and John struggled with the decision. Finally the last wall of his resistance crumbled, and he cried out, “Here I am, Lord. I don’t know what You want of me, but even if it’s China and martyrdom, I’m willing.” And that became the defining moment of his entire life. He later explained that there were three phases of his understanding of Christianity. The first was as a child, when Christianity was little more than stained glass windows, going to Sunday School, and being a good boy. The second was his conversion when he began to understand that the spiritual birth was something real, a personal encounter with God through Jesus Christ. But now, he saw that Christianity was something more. Jesus Christ was to be Lord of all there was of life, and he as to be a living sacrifices. And that understanding changed his life. What about you? Are you at the stained glass stage? Is Christianity little more than coming to church and trying to be a good boy or girl or man or woman? Or have you had a real encounter with God through Jesus Christ? Or are you at the Lordship stage when you’re beginning to understand that God wants to be the Lord of all there is of you. It’s at that stage that we begin to understand and to prove the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For the Bible says, Do not love the world or the things in the
world. If anyone 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 pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the
world. And the world is passing
away, and the lusts of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.. Copyright StatementWe grant permission for any edition of The Pocket Paper to be photocopied for use in a local congregation or classroom, provided no more than 1,000 copies are made, the material is distributed free, and the copies include the notice: "Copyright (year) The Donelson Fellowship."For any other use, advance permission must be obtained from The Donelson Fellowship church office. |
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