Walk the Walk - Deo Volente
Walk the Walk • Sermon • Submitted
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Deo Volente
Deo Volente
Intro
James 4:
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
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pray
puritanpichere
Do y’all know about the Puritans? They were a branch of the Church of England that looked to purify the faith. To purge it of Catholic traditions and dogma. While they were a bit extreme, so much so, that being labeled as one is even today a pejorative, there was a lot of truth in some of the things that they did. Some of their practices.
Well, sort of.
Some of the biggest truths that we should all take to heart are their views of why we exist. That is a common question in all our lives, and I think that they really get it right. They believed that we exist for God’s glory, that Jesus should be at the heart of all that we do, and that our first concern in life should be to do God’s will.
You see, we were taught a hodgepodge of truth about the early practitioners of faith in America. We were told about pilgrims wanting a pure faith, which is partially true, and were shown pictures of pilgrims when speaking about the puritans. We were young, and they are hard to tell apart, so we just mashed them up.
That’s a high calling, to be sure. And to be honest a difficult one.
Pilgrims and Puritans, for most of us, became the same thing.
They believed in it so much that they reminded each other, and themselves of it every day.
But they are greatly different. Pilgrims, fed up with the perceived corruption of the Church of England, decided to start new churches and a new practice of their faith, whereas Puritans, also fed up with the same perceived corruption, tried to fix it from the inside.
picofletterwritingoldschool
Now this might be a shock to some of us, but people used to write letters. I think some might still do it! So long before phones, and texting, people would write letters. And they would write them quite frequently. If you had, let’s say five friends, you would write to them all, they would get them and write you back, and you would respond and so on. So it was likely that at some point every day you would or could be writing to someone.
That isn’t really all that different now. In fact, if we younger people would put all of our texting into one coherent letter each day, it is probably about the same length as their letters.
The difference is immediacy. If they were writing, they knew it would take some time to get there. Probably more important than that, they knew how fleeting life really is, so they wouldn’t just fill these letters with fluff, they were important!
For the puritans, and later for other religious groups, that meant that their faith needed to be made known, or at the very least, acknowledged. So there in the signature of these Puritan letters you would find two little letters.
DV
picofemoji
I suppose for us now, it is like our favorite emoji. The one we send with every text to certain people. Maybe the smile, or the winky smile. We are always looking to show someone who we are and what we are about, whether in a letter or in a text.
For the puritans, that meant that they were going to sign every letter DV. In fact, they would argue that they lived every part of their life by those letters!
It was sort of like an emoji for them. Two little letters.
......gettingtotextingsigs..emojis…D.V.
But what did they stand for?
Deo Volente
[lesson about puritan faith here]
Deo Volente. Two latin words that shaped not only the faith, but the life of these believers. And not just these believers, but all Christians! At least they should.
Two words which sum up so nicely what our everyday life should look like. Two words that if followed would lead us all to a better relationship with God and with this world. Two words that can ease our pain, and give us peace. A gentle reminder of our life’s goal and aim.
Deo Volente - God Willing
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
James 4:13
But that isn’t the way we live our life, is it? We don’t tend to base our life, or even our ideas about our life, on God’s will. We tend to be exactly the audience that James is addressing here!
All you who say, “today or tomorrow we will go and do something.”
You see, I have plans church! I am going places! I am going to go to college and study, and then to grad school; I will find someone to marry and then have a couple kids, and they will do even better things!
I will invest in my 401k and retire at 60. I’ll buy an RV and drive around America, visiting our grand-kids that we will definitely have, because all our children will want to get married and have kids! And then, when I am in my 90’s and tired of traveling, I will go to sleep on my recliner watching my great-grandson as he wins the Super Bowl as the quarterback of the Browns, and never wake up.
Oh I have plans.
This is what we want to do, right? We all have those plans in our heads. We all have our idea of how our lives, even our moments are going to turn out.
Now to be clear, I am not talking about aspirations, or dreams, or even goals - I am talking about plans that we think we need to stick by like glue. Itineraries. Concretized courses of action that aren’t to be deviated from.
All those who say those things, James says, need to recognize that they aren’t on the right track!
Listen, when we are on the right track, following God’s will, and allowing for His will to change us, we end up being an instrument of God’s design, but when we don’t, church, when we are outside of His will, we become the opposite! A troublemaker, and not a peacemaker..
We add to the stress of this world.
What is more obvious about our tendency to plan things out, is that we don’t even know what tomorrow will bring! If we are honest, we sometimes don’t even know what the next moment will bring!
pictureofsomeonelookingoffindistance???
But we are huge fans of plans, church. I am too. If you have spoken with me at all about my vision for this church, I have naively laid out for you all of Jeff’s biggest ideas about Mount Calvary. From the Youth Pastor, to missions, to the park, to community involvement, to expanding our sanctuary and parking, I have all these plans for this church, and our community!
So is that bad?
Well, no, it isn’t. I just left off something important. I left off the salutation that changes everything. You see, I can envision all that stuff! I can, and need to, have an idea of where we are going, and where I think God is leading us! Likewise, we all need to have some idea of all that God is doing in our lives, and where we think He is taking us! But when we stubbornly hold on to that idea above all else, when we begin to worship that idea more than God, we get off track!
That is why at the end of every idea has to be the same message from those early American Christians either internally or externally. We have to sign every moment of our lives like those Puritans signed those letters. We have to take up the posture of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane and say, “Lord take this cup from me, but NOT MY WILL, BUT YOUR WILL BE DONE!”
DV - Deo Volente. God willing.
yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
James 4:
God willing we will live until tomorrow and be blessed to be able to do more work for God. God willing we can take that next step in our plans. God willing we will live and love more like Jesus. God willing we will have another chance to lay down our plans and take up Gods! God willing we will understand that we exist for His glory and purposes, not our own!
“What is your life?” James asks.
“For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” Our existence is just a breath in the grand scheme of God’s creation church. We are just a heartbeat in the life of this planet. Every move we make needs to be intentional. And not just intentional as we can understand it, but intentional towards God’s plans!
Listen, if everyone who has ever been created lived only for themselves - their own satisfaction and pleasure, their own success, their own goals and aspirations - none of us would even be here! We would have all died out as a people a long time ago! No, we are here for God’s glory and God’s purpose! We are here for every single moment that He has offered to us all as an opportunity to consider Him and His plan more important to our life than our own!
stayinthemomentpic
So stay in the moment.
Don’t rush through what God has offered toward what you think is the best thing. Because honestly, our best for ourselves will never begin to compete with God’s best for us!
Stay in the moment. Whatever that moment looks like.
[storyaboutawkwardmoviemoments?]
Stay in the moment because this moment is all we have. “Our life is like a mist,” James says. We are here for a little while and vanish, so don’t waste the precious moments you have insisting on your reality above God’s! We need to stay in the moment because if we use that moment to God’s glory, He will lead us to another moment, and then another! And as we progress through those moments, lived inside of His will, the absolutely ONLY outcome that we will ever realize is HIS outcome!
HE WILL GET US TO WHERE WE NEED TO BE IF WE JUST STAY IN THE MOMENT! IF WE MAKE THE BEST USE OF THE MOMENTS HE OFFERS US, AND CHASE AFTER HIM, THEN CHURCH, THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT WE WILL END UP SQUARELY IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD!
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
John 14
CHURCH, CHRIST IS THE WAY! CHRIST IS THE TRUTH! CHRIST IS THE LIFE! HE IS OUR LIFE, HE IS WHAT WE ARE MADE FOR, AND HE IS THE BEST THAT GOD HAS TO OFFER US! WE NEED TO STAY IN THE MOMENT! WE NEED TO REALIZE THAT ALL THAT OTHER STUFF, ALL THE THINGS WE THINK WE NEED TO DO, THOSE ARE OUR IDEAS! AND EVEN AS BENEFICIAL AS THEY CAN BE TO US IN GUIDING US TOWARD GOD’S TRUTH TO US, THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY USELESS IF THEY BECOME BIGGER TO US THAN GOD’S GOALS FOR US!
Godwillingpic
God willing, Kate and I will see our children graduate high school, and college should they go. God willing we will see them marry and have children, or adopt children. God willing, I will one day lay down the reigns of this wonderful place, having been remade into a beacon of God’s faithfulness and work for this community and world. And God willing, we will buy an RV, and show our children and Grandchildren this great country of ours.
But hear this clearly. If that is only my will, and not God’s will. I don’t want it. If I were to chase after all those things that I think are so dear, things that God never intended me to have, then I will be chasing after pride, and selfishness, and greed, and let me tell you, even if it were to look like I had everything I wanted, AT THE END OF THAT ROAD LIES ONLY THE BEST I COULD THINK OF AT THAT MOMENT! AND CHURCH, WHEN WE CHASE AFTER THOSE THINGS, WE RUN AWAY FROM GOD! NO THE BEST THING WE CAN DO IS TO STAY IN THE MOMENT! TO LIVE OUT OUR LIVES IN EACH MOMENT WE ARE GIVEN, TRYING OUR BEST TO REMEMBER THE CALL OF CHRIST IN OUR LIVES AND THEN FOLLOWING THAT CALL TO THE NEXT MOMENT WE ARE GIVEN, WHETHER IN THIS LIFE OR THE NEXT!
Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
James 4:
And that all starts with a simple change of attitude. And a simple phrase.
Deo Volente.
Write it in our Bibles, or on your notes. Put it on your refrigerators or your mirrors. Make it so that you don’t forget that little phrase.
If you can change your heart to yearn for God’s will, then you will find yourself in it more often than not. God willing.
Stay in the moment, though, as long as you can. Stay and find God’s will for that moment, and you will be able to live your life knowing that whatever you are able to do, you do it by God’s will. And not only that, but church - at the end of that road - at the end of all those moments that you are able to experience and linger in, at the end of all your patience with your life and with God - at the end of THAT road awaits a Savior running out to meet you and bring you home.
Invitation.