Discerning God’s Will Through God’s Actions

Typical welcome stuff…

Intro to the series we have been in…four legged stool…discerning God’s will.

Brings us to the last message before a little break and before we get into a new series next month.

Title of the message: Discerning God’s Will Through God’s Actions

Now, there are hundreds of scriptures that we could go to, to point out God’s actions as part of his will and how to discern his will through him…but before we do any of that…I wanted, once again, lay a solid foundation.

In previous messages…we’ve essentially had a systematic study of our topic..the church, God’s spirit, God’s word.

But today, I want to remind us not of a multi faceted systematic study…but of a simple reality that all this stems from. And it’s a three part reality. Here it is…

God is a real God.

With real actions.

And real motivations.

Understanding that God actually has motivation helps us to understand his actions in our lives better…because actions can be misinterpreted without understanding the motivation.

Let me give you a few examples…

A small girl, 6 years old is walking across the street. All the sudden, without warning, a strange man runs up to her and full body tackles her to the curb, and laughs about it.

What are your thoughts, just evaluating the actions that you see?

Let me tell you the man’s motivation…

A man walks into his house to see his wife standing in the kitchen with a plate of food in her hand…she takes her fork, wraps some noodles around it, and begins to raise it to her mouth to eat…the man shouts No! and slaps the fork out of her hand.

Thoughts?

Here’s his real motivation…

The point is…it’s easy to see an action and assume motivation. It’s easy to look at what God is doing…and if we aren’t careful to remember his motivations, we can easily misinterpret his actions.

So here’s what I want to do…I want to spend some time, before we get into a really practical way to discerning God’s will through his actions…remembering…or maybe understanding God’s motivation. Many scriptures I could choose…but here’s the one I chose for tonight…turn to Jude.

Tell them how I ended up with Jude for the message.

We are going to just be in the first verse.

Jude 1 ESV

1 Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:

Jude is addressing Christians….and he has three key identities for these Christians as we read. And these three identities are rooted in what they are doing and how they are acting, but they are rooted in God’s actions and motivations…so I thought, this is perfect for us. Let’s look at each one.

There’s three words he hones in on here…and the first one is called.

If you are a Christian you are called.

If you are called, you are beloved.

If you are beloved, you are being kept.

So God, is working in your life…his actions in your life are for a specific motivation. He’s motivated by his calling of you, by his love for you, and by his promise to keep you for Jesus.

His actions towards us are dictated by his motivation. And his motivation is that he has intentionally and decisively entered into a certain relationship with us…as his chosen, his children.

Just like my actions towards my son are colored differently because I’m more than just a 34 year old man and he’s a 8 year old boy…I’m his father. And that motivation colors the actions I have towards him.

And so, just like in our illustrations…if we keep the correct motivations in mind, we can better understand and interpret the actions.

So what are some of the actions that God takes in our lives?

Well, honestly….they can be ANYTHING that happens to us. Because God is sovereign…in control of all things and can do as he pleases.

So it can be hard, right? To know what things you should be paying attention to and what things you shouldn’t? Like…is me running out of toothpaste God’s will in my life? In one way yes…but the question we are actually asking is…should I pay attention to this as something spiritual? Or should I just go buy more toothpaste?

Many times…we understand that something in our life can be God’s will…but we have a hard time understanding how to DISCERN that will. How to interpret it.

Well, keeping God’s motivations in sight is a start. And I believe, that if you keep God’s motivations in sight, while asking the right questions…it becomes a lot easier to discern God’s will.

ESPECIALLY if you take that and mix it with the other three ways that we are able to discern God’s will.

So, I wanted to help you out tonight…and give you some questions to ask that help you discern God’s will when you are seeing God’s actions in your life.

The idea is that when things come up in your life….I want you to do the diligence of asking what God’s purpose is in it…and do your absolute best to respond accordingly. And here are three questions to help you do just that.

When something happens ask…

Is this out of my control?

Many things in life that can be out of our control. Losing things, and even gaining things. Having something taken away, and being given an opportunity.

In Christianese we call them, open doors and closed doors.

These things are almost always the easiest things for people to think about when they are trying to think about ways God has worked in our life, and if we should lean into it.

They can be the loss of a job or an opportunity of one, relationship…being forced to move or be presented one…and one that is quite certain…the death of a loved one.

We have so many examples in scripture. Here’s just a couple.

Job.

Paul’s Shipwreck.

Is this a consequence?

This word often has a negative connotation to it. But it’s actually not suppose to. It’s just meant to be…did this happen because of something else? Was it an effect of a cause in my life? Consequences can be both positive and negative.

The reason they so often have a negative connotation is mostly because of my first example for you tonight…

The first example is obvious…

Sin. Most of us have heard the saying “sin as consequences”…don’t do the crime unless you’re willing to do the time. I like to say, play stupid games win stupid prizes.

Was this a consequence of sin? Did this relationship end because of sin…did it end because of my own sin or the sin of the other person? Did I lose my job because of sin…

A couple examples, David’s Son…Jonah.

But, there are also positive consequences that should be evaluated…

Like relationships/friendships. Like God’ people like we talked about last time.

A great example.

John 1:40–42 ESV

40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41 He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). 42 He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).

Next and last…

Is this fighting my sin nature?

I’m essentially asking…is this an opportunity to be sanctified? Remember…God’s motivation is to keep you. Which means him actively working to sanctify you…prepare you for Christ.

I wanted to ask it this way because it’s often the last thing we turn to…it’s one of the slowest questions we ask but it shouldn’t be.

Is my sin to fear? If it is…maybe this is coming in my life so that I have more opportunity to place faith in Christ.

Is my sin lust? If it is…maybe the Lord is allowing me to struggle so that I can learn to overcome.

Is my sin anger? If so…maybe God allowed this person to alienate me so i can learn to love them, and pray for them, rather than hate them.

Guys….I’m not joking when I say that almost all of my counseling that I do is helping people reshape what’s happening to them to better understand why they are going through it.