On God's Will

My pastor at church is presenting a sermon series on discerning God's will. Unfortunately, for the last two weeks, I have had to miss the 2:12 service, because of work and such (yes my work is making me break the Sabbath... they're promising that hours are going down... but we'll see. If they don't I'm going to have to tell them that Sundays are a quittable offense.) but I'm glad I was able to make it this week.

He opened by sharing a story about how he was feeling down and depressed (much like myself a few days ago) and then he shared about his reflection on that and shared three insights that he realized.

1) When we live for pleasure and happiness, eventually we will despair, as there is no happiness apart from holiness.
2) When we try to do things according to our own wisdom, we deprive ourselves of the wisdom of God to lead and straighten our crooked lives.
3) Obedience is important to any spiritually fulfilled life. Without obedience, we cannot be privy to God's plan.

It made me think about the study in the Cru.comm series about walking in the Spirit and in Romans 8 where it says that without the Spirit is impossible to please God. When we are filled with the Spirit and live a life led by the Spirit, then not only do we demonstrate that Christ is in us, but we are able to truly commune with and glorify God.

Chang continued on by jumping to the meat of his message (that little blurb seemed out of the blue, and I'm not sure how to connect the two parts of the message) and talking about God's will. The passage that he preached out of was 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18. He then talked about God's will in a three part approach a) God's will for ALL his people, b) God's will in specific situations within the umbrella of his will for all his people, and c) God's will for you within those specific situations. I'm going to have to ask him about some specifics in terms of Biblical backup, but he then went on to say that even though it is not necessarily wrong for us to ask what God's will is for us in terms of the future career that we should hold, or the program that we should go into, etc. but that we need to think of the bigger picture and that God has an overarching will for ALL his people. And not ALL of God's people (i.e. children in the slums of Latin America, Christians in Sudan in fear of the government) have even the choice of going to university, or of having a decent career. We must not allow our little "needs" overshadow the greater will that God has for us, and then he began into the sermon.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 reads as follows:

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

Chang broke this verse up into four parts, a) be joyful always, b) pray continually, c) give thanks in all circumstances, d) for this is God's will for you.

a) This is a command in the present iterative, where G0d is commanding us to be joyful now and to continue to be joyful until the end of eternity. I know I definately have problems with this one... and to put things in perspective, Chang gave a story about a girl that had been kidnapped and been put in a brothel where she was raped daily. When a rescue agency finally came to save her, they noticed sticky notes all over her wall. When the workers that raided the house took a closer look, they realized that they were Bible verses that she was memorizing. Despite the horrible conditions, and the most likely constant questioning of where God's will could be in her condition, she refused to turn back on her faith. One of the verses that was on the wall was Psalm 27:1-6.

b) To emphasize the continuous prayer, Chang talked about how difficult that it was to maintain long distance relationships without constant communication with each other. Relationships deteriorate if there is no constant communication, and this is why he said that we must pray continually. If we do not communicate with God and often, then we are letting that relationship deteriorate and we do not tap into the full potential of the power that one could get from such a relation.

c) Chang was quick to point out that God did not command us to give thanks for all circumstances, just in all circumstances. He will provide us the strength to endure through any circumstances we find in, and as an add on of my own, it reminds me of the verse in Romans 5:3-5 where he says that enduring in our sufferings eventually builds hope.

d) This brings us back to the bit that Chang was sharing about God's overarching will for all his people.

I really enjoyed that sermon today, and I feeled that it would be good to remunate about this and share it with y'all.

Although i'm wondering who reads this anymore... nobody comments and it makes me sad :(