[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Thank you for that, Pastor Henry. It is an honor, my privilege, to! is an honor, my privilege, to be up here today, to speak to you all on a topic that I have chosen for today.
[0:15] It resonates very well with the song we just sang, Father, not my will, but yours be done. I've titled it, The Will of God, How Should I Live?
[0:28] and I would like to take a look at that, how that looks in a believer's life on a daily basis. How many of you have ever wondered if you are living in the will of God or if you are doing what God has purposed you for, what he has made you for?
[0:47] How many of you have thought that you are living that today? By a show of hands, how many of you think, how many of you have thought that or wondered?
[0:58] Or pondered or whatever. The world would have you believe to follow your heart, do what your heart tells you to, be true to yourself.
[1:09] And as far as being true to yourself goes, that is partially true. There's only one of you. You are uniquely created by God. So, yes, be true to yourself. But follow your heart is a very dangerous piece of advice.
[1:21] Jeremiah says, The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I don't know about you, but I would rather not be followed, or I would rather not be following a deceitful thing or a deceitful person if we look at it as a leader in our life.
[1:38] We wouldn't follow someone who is deceitful in our lives. So, today I would like to take a little closer look of what God's will is.
[1:53] Not so much what God's will is for me, uniquely, but what is God's universal will on a daily basis for a Christian believer. What does that look like? It says in Jeremiah 29, 11, For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.
[2:14] Plans to prosper you, not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future. But what exactly does that look like for us in our daily lives? God may have placed a calling on your life, a unique will for your life.
[2:31] I'm not here today to tell you what that is. I can't do that, unfortunately. Nobody can do that for anybody. God has placed unique gifts of the Spirit on each one of us. And I can't tell you what that is, but more on what's called the universal will of God.
[2:50] There is four of them. And I would like to take a look at those four. In Proverbs 19, 21, it says, Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails, is what God can do through you, not what you can do of yourself.
[3:10] And which is confirmed in Philippians 2, 13, For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose. So let's look at that purpose for us in our lives, in our daily, in our lives as a daily believer.
[3:28] Let's look at the four universal wills of God. Number one, being the most important one, believe in Jesus and that He is the Son of God.
[3:43] This is the most fundamental, this is the basis of our daily life as Christians, as a believer, that we believe that Jesus, we believe in Jesus and that He is the Son of God.
[3:55] Now, if a person does not believe this, then the rest of the four wills of God doesn't matter or it doesn't apply to them because if this one isn't focused, number one, then it won't matter what else you do.
[4:10] You won't be living in the will of God. So, for this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes Him should have eternal life, and I will raise Him up on the last day, John 6, 40.
[4:27] Again, by far the most important one out of the four wills of God, it is that you believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He is your Savior. It is the basis of our church, in fact.
[4:38] Matthew 16, 15 through 18 says, But what about you? He asked. What do you say? Who do you say I am? Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
[4:51] Jesus replied, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah. For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
[5:09] The rock being the confession, of course, that Jesus is the Son of God. It is what we are here, it is why we are here on this every Sunday to worship God.
[5:20] If we don't believe this, then there's no purpose of the church. Church foundation, the rock of the church, is Jesus. So, when we believe and accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior and the Son of God, we then, of course, receive the Holy Spirit, which is then how we can continue to live in the will of God, doing the next will of God.
[5:46] Number two, be thankful in everything. This one might be a bit of a challenging one to live by on a daily basis, because we don't always have a great day, every day.
[5:57] Every day is not a great day for each person. We all go through things, we all have days where it's not all that great, and yet it is imperative that we remain thankful in every situation, in every circumstance.
[6:11] This verse has three in one, but we can look at it in the giving thanks. Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
[6:27] 1 Thessalonians 5, 16-18. This one is important to live by if we want to have an enjoyable life.
[6:39] An unthankful person and an ungrateful person becomes a bitter person. Nobody likes bitterness. Bitterness becomes a situation where it's not, you don't connect very well with other people, and it makes the whole room negative.
[6:58] If we take a look at the Psalms, one of my favorite books in the Bible, maybe cliche, but it is a very beautiful look at what David's prayer life looked like, what David's conversations with God looked like.
[7:11] They weren't always positive. There is wrath Psalms, there is worship Psalms, there is lament Psalms, there is all across the board, but more often than not, David's Psalms begin or end with some form of worship, some form of recognizing who God is and thanking Him for it.
[7:34] Whether it's what he's done for David in the past, whether what he will do in the future, who God is, simply thanking him for that. The Psalms is a beautiful look into what a prayer life should be like.
[7:47] He's not deceiving himself that he's always positive, he's not bringing everything good before God and then kind of hiding everything else so that maybe God wouldn't know because God looks at the heart, He knows already.
[8:00] So there's no point in lying to yourself that it's all good, but it is important to rejoice, pray continually, and give thanks in every circumstance. Another example of this would be Job.
[8:13] He has the worst of circumstances. I cannot come up with a worse circumstance to live in than the one Job lived in. He had riches, he had livestock, land, whatever he wanted, he had.
[8:26] He was rich. And he had children, seven of them. And in one day, within 24 hours, he lost everything, including his children.
[8:37] His own friends accused him. His wife tried to get him to blaspheme God so that God would kill him and get it over with. Still, in the end, Job was able to praise God simply for who God is.
[8:55] He didn't have to be thankful for the sores on his body or that he lost his seven children. He just rejoiced that God was still God, that Job was not God, and he was able to give thanks in that situation.
[9:13] So based on these two Bible characters, I deduct that there is no circumstance in life where there isn't at least one thing that we can be thankful for.
[9:24] At least one little whatever it may be that we can say this is positive in our life. Mike Donahue, a pastor, a musician, if any of you are familiar with him, he has an interesting look on the will of God.
[9:41] He tells of where a fan came to him and they asked him, when did you know that being a musician was God's will for your life? His answer intrigues me a bit.
[9:52] He says, it wasn't. It's not. Being a musician was not God's will for his life. If he was in an accident, broke his hand, couldn't play, what then?
[10:03] Or if he got sick or if he injured his throat, couldn't sing, what then? Have I missed the will of God in my life? He says that in his point of view, he says that God's will for your life isn't so much a career path, what you do, it's how you do it.
[10:22] It's the posture of your heart. And being thankful corrects the posture of your heart. Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances. This is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.
[10:35] It's not so much should I be a doctor or should I be a teacher. The question should be more like what kind of a doctor would I be? What kind of a teacher would I be?
[10:47] The posture of your heart. Not to say that God hasn't placed a unique call on your life. This is universal that I'm speaking here.
[10:59] And you might say that this is impossible to always be rejoicing, to always be praying, and to always be thankful. That it's impossible to do that.
[11:09] And you would be right. Humanly, it's not possible. It's not in our human nature to always be rejoicing, to always be thankful. But God went ahead and fixed that little problem for us.
[11:25] If you look at the last little phrase in that verse, I believe it's verse 18, it says, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
[11:36] You cannot do this out of yourself. It's not in and out of ourself. In Christ Jesus, we can be thankful, we can rejoice, and we can pray. And being thankful becomes, makes the next will of God, third will of God, a whole lot easier to do.
[11:56] The order in which these are placed is also perfect because first you come to God, come to Jesus, repent, then you fix the posture of your heart. Once you've done that, you can do number three.
[12:09] Do good. Simple phrase. Do good. For this is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people, 1 Peter 2.15.
[12:22] The world judges us on our actions on a daily basis. The world will not listen to us as much as look at us. We can say whatever we want, however we want to say it.
[12:32] If we don't live by it, they won't believe it. So, by doing good, we can silence the talk of the ignorance. We can show the world in our actions that we are the children of God.
[12:49] Each of us should please our neighbors for their good to build them up, Romans 15.2. We don't have to be out in a mission field to be doing good or to be doing the service of God.
[13:01] It can be Romans 12 has a beautiful guideline of how a daily life should look like as a believer and one of them says if your gift is compliments, give compliments.
[13:13] It can be as simple as that. Do good. Build each other up. Please our neighbors for their good to build them up. for we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.
[13:29] So, when we come to Jesus, when we become a believer, God has prepared work for us. There's always work to be done. And one of my teachers, he had some advice on depression.
[13:45] He says, if you're ever feeling depressed, excuse me, if you're ever feeling depressed, do good. Donate a day's wage or work a day for someone who needs help selflessly, not in the intention to be paid.
[14:10] He says, that can drive away a great deal of depression to just do good selflessly for others. Not thinking so much of yourself, doing good for your neighbor, for their good.
[14:24] And in doing good, it is also important that we prepare ourselves, that we equip ourselves with the good works. 2 Timothy 3, 16 through 17 says, all scriptures is God-breath and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
[14:49] So, again, it is imperative that we also equip ourselves with doing good. It is something we train ourselves to do, and we can do that with scriptures.
[15:01] Scriptures is a beautiful guideline to how we should do that on a daily basis. but more importantly, it is also important that we do this out of love.
[15:19] Paul says, if we do not do this out of love, we have nothing. And it is with God's help that we can do all of this, believing in Jesus, being thankful, to do good.
[15:33] And it is especially God's help that we need to do the fourth one. The fourth time the will of God is mentioned in the Bible is in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 3.
[15:47] It says, it is God's will that you should be sanctified, that you should avoid sexual immorality. Four times God's will is mentioned in the Bible, specifically saying this is God's will or the will of the Father or this is my will, whatever version you're using, four times.
[16:07] And this is one of them. This is God's will that you should be sanctified. This one is a bit on a different note. There are many portions of texts in the Bible that you might argue they are, you can interpret them differently.
[16:28] There's, for instance, the Corinthians has plenty of those where some people would interpret it one way, some people would interpret the other way. We have churches that believe differently and yet we're all under God.
[16:43] God. This is not one of them. This is black and white, as black and white as it gets. This is a command that we should be sanctified, that you should avoid sexual immorality.
[16:57] There's no different interpretation. There's no different meaning to the word. It is what it means. It's exactly what it means. Paul says to flee immorality.
[17:09] You do not fight it. You do not face it. You flee. This is the one time Paul says to flee. It is not something you can overcome by yourself.
[17:20] It is not something you face on your own. You flee. You remove yourself from any circumstance, any environment. This is also one where more time for the majority is generalizing, of course, but this is one that we can control by our environment.
[17:38] Abstaining. It is if we remove ourselves from the environment that has this temptation, it will be less likely that we will fall for it. Flee. It is a sin that is against our own body.
[17:54] Everything else goes outwards. And this one arguably has more dangerous or more dire consequences than other sins. Sin is sin, don't get me wrong.
[18:05] But if we look at David, what happened to his life after he committed adultery? He had a brother kill a brother.
[18:17] He had that son try to kill him to take the throne. His family was messed up and one of the consequences was his idolatry. It is a sin against our own body.
[18:32] And it destroys from within. It destroys your self-confidence, your self-worth, how you look at yourself, how God created you.
[18:43] It will destroy that. And then, on top of that, it is more often than not, it is a secret sin. Something nobody knows. And in the criminal world, what's common with secrets?
[18:54] They're used for blackmail. And our enemy will not hesitate to use this as blackmail. either, whatever it may be, it might look like he might try to convince you that you are the only one with a problem, the only one with this temptation, the only one, if you were really a believer, you wouldn't have this issue to deal with.
[19:18] And that is a lie as old as time. We're not special enough that Lucifer would come up with a whole new tactic to destroy us.
[19:30] nothing is new under the sun. Nothing hasn't already been done. Nothing hasn't already been looked at. Whatever you can imagine, someone's already went through it or someone's already going through it with you.
[19:46] You're never alone in whatever it may look like in your life. The lie is never truth. Obviously.
[20:00] Nothing is new under the sun, Ecclesiastes. So, in black and white, abstain. There's no other definition for this.
[20:11] Abstain sexual immorality. How do we go about doing this on a daily basis? There's four. If we look at this in a circle, let's say, or a square, being the four wills of God, believing in Jesus, being thankful, doing good, and abstaining, these are the lines, these are the boundaries that God has given us to live within.
[20:40] As long as we live within these four, God can then reveal his unique will to us within those four wills. And for a lot, for most part, generally speaking, God allows us free will within these four.
[20:55] As long as we stay within these four, we have free will within them. Of course, we have the commandments, Sermon on the Mount, apostles, whatever, advice, commands that we have within this, but as long as we stay within these four, we have free will within God's will.
[21:12] Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.
[21:23] This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will, his good, pleasing, and perfect will is.
[21:41] Romans 12, 1 and 2. Romans 12, by the way, is a beautiful guideline of how a daily life should look as well as 1 Peter 5, I think.
[21:54] So, if beyond these four, God places a call on your life, a specific unique call to you, whatever that may be, I do suggest you take it, don't be Jonah, after God explicitly told him what to do, where to go, and what he would do if he didn't, or what would happen to the people if he didn't, Jonah planned a little vacation in Joppa.
[22:21] Might have been nice that time of year. So, offer your bodies a living sacrifice, and like I said, God may place a unique will on your life, but if you're not living in within these four wills, he cannot do that.
[22:36] If you, he has given us these four specifically, if we do not live within these, how can he trust you with a unique will on your life, if you can't stay within these four, if we can't live within these four.
[22:53] So, renew your mind, renewing of your mind. Psalm 16, sorry, Psalm 143, 10, says, teach me to do your will, for you are my God, may your good spirit lead me on level ground.
[23:11] Psalm 16, 11, you make known to me the path of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasure at your right hand.
[23:23] Seek him and you will find him. The Bible is our guideline, it is our map, it is how we get advice from God, it is how we get knowledge.
[23:36] James 1, 5 says, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. Seek and you will find.
[23:48] We may often get distracted by trying to find the higher purpose, the higher calling for God. It is like trying to find a little dot within that square that we may never find.
[24:02] If God has placed it, he will make it known to you. Proverbs 16, 3 says, commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your ways, your plans.
[24:22] Then in Psalm, we also have, your word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path. Again, the Bible, God's word, is what we use to discern right and wrong.
[24:33] It is also what we use to train ourselves to do good. Our conscience must be trained for the good. Evil doers do not understand what is right, but those who seek the Lord understand it fully.
[24:46] And if we seek the Lord daily, in his word, in prayer, thankful, believing in Jesus, being thankful, doing good, and abstaining from sexual immorality, the blessing in Psalm 32, verse 8, is ours.
[25:02] I will instruct you and teach you in the ways you should go. I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.