The Goal is God

A person who has the attitude of Christ Jesus cares about the other. So today as we talk about the planning for the future, would you pray for the person to the right and to the left of you, to help them to focus on the Lord now, to hear from Christ, right in their unique way.

Prayer

There was a guy who was supposed to be a lawyer

We have been challenged to plan for the coming decade but plans can fall a part. God has a lot to say about how to plan and live in such a way to prevent our plans from falling apart

Proverbs 19:21 CSB

21 Many plans are in a person’s heart, but the Lord’s decree will prevail.

You and I probably wouldn’t say heart here. It’s not a good American understanding. But in Hebrew

Leb is a person’s heart which is the place of a person’s intent or desires.

which is the seed of a person’s intent or desires.

We have all kinds of plans and desires but not all of our plans are going to happen.

but not all of our plans are going to happen.

These are plans, nothing more and nothing less. You may have many good desires and those are ok but God’s plans will happen. It’s not fair to explain but the simple and most honest answer is,

God’s will is what happened.Circular Logic.

God either allowed it, arranged it, or brought it to pass himself.

Theological Reflection on Providence

"A big help to Dr. McCune's Systematic Theology" to help give you some understanding about who God is and how he works

The big word here is Providence. Which means God's power over all, over time, over minds, nature, everything. How he provides. How he works.

The temptation can be that if God plans it all than we are just robots or characters in a movie mindlessly working out what God has already set up. Yet nothing about this life appears to be that way and God doesn’t reveal Himself in that way in scripture.

Why would Joshua say " Choose this day" if there is no choice? Or Jesus "Come follow Me" if there was no opportunity not to follow?

First we must understand that only a cult will say they fully understand God.

only a cult will say they fully understand God.

That this is exactly how God works.

We on the other hand embrace a big word "antinomic" There are paradoxes that we can't explain.

I can better explain to you the fictional time travel in Avengers End Game than I can understand all that there is to God's control, his Providence.

Here is the first bit of paradox. You have free will and God is in control. You can reject God, can only follow God if He calls you to himself, and you are fully responsible for your actions.

This matters because if you go through life, looking for God's plan for you, as if you have to find an instruction manual for your life and you won't move until you find it. Than like me you can live times of your life just paralyzed because no light will shine down and say, do step A, then step B, then step C

There is no exact, detailed, laid out, specific plan that God is going to show you.

If you start to think you found God's instruction manual but it looks more like an IKEA instruction manual and if you have NO IDEA what to do next except try to color in the pictures.

Instead understand that God's providence acts is compatible with Human Freedom. God will act and control but we have a lot of freedom.

This week I had my students draw a Turkey.

Some drew it well, some did horribly, a few just pushed a crayon across a paper, and one staff tried to do the assignment and some tried to leave.

My providence

- Everyone was going to do the assignment. They would color a Turkey using only four colors.

God is also determinitive, Sometimes He determines exactly the way something will happen

He limits what Satan can do

God allows humans to do what they want

- They could color as they wanted

at times, God prevents human sinning

Abimelech over Sarah

- No one could color for them

God directs actions through over-ruling providence

Joshua and the battle of Jericho

- One student, whose aide was at break, I used hand over hand coloring to make sure she did it

God sometimes uses people’s sins to bring about His purpose.

- One student, completely smashed his blue crayon, just destroyed it as he colored but He colored his picture.

Joseph became second to Pharoah.

This leads to our problems with plans. Most people plan for a life of leisure, wealth, or fame.

We sometimes can get so stuck on trying to find God’s plans for our lives thinking that our life will get those things. That we will be immediately gratified and forgetting that God is so much bigger and ways so much more eternal than all of us.

Illustration - A woman who worked hard to go on a mission trip was furious because I didn’t say it was God’s will.

If we put God to the test of, if we have enough prayer than our plans have to come to pass. Not true.

Romans 8:28 CSB

28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

Remember the guy who wrote that had his head cut off.

Jeremiah 29:11 CSB

11 For I know the plans I have for you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

The guy who wrote this died in forced exile in Egypt.

Is God’s will than for me to be miserable? No. God’s will is for us to be a part of his amazing story of bring Hope and Healing into this dark world.

Yet in Hebrew culture to remember someone makes them last. And also in Hebrew and all of what Christ shows us, those that follow Christ dwell with him forever.

You know these men’s names thousands of years later only because they followed God. You know Christ through these people because they followed Christ.

Stop looking for immediately feeling good Christ’s plans that will immediately benefit you now. If you do you may miss out

God’s plans will bless you forever.

Christ’s plans that will immediately benefit you now. If you do you may miss out on the eternal blessing God wants to do through you.

This is Thanksgiving. And I recall with gratitude the places where many of you have come from. Yet for some, all along the way wondering why it is so Hard. God’s plan is about Faith in God.

Faith is not on what is known, but unknown. Acted on without any guarantee will function as planned. Faith in plans of humanity may not prosper but God prospers.

Men planned a great ship. An unsinkable ship that had many safety compartments. It was brillantly made and would carry a huge amount of people back and forth across the Atlantic. Of course it was the Titanic.

“Sixteen members of the church in Belfast, Ireland. all skilled mechanics, went down with her. The mayor said that Belfast had never been in such grief as that which came over this terrible tragedy. When the news finally was verified that the gallant ship was certainly lost, so deep was the grief that it is said strong men met upon the streets, grasped each other’s hands, burst into tears, and parted without a word.

The visiting American preached the Sunday after the tragedy in the church to which the sixteen members who had been lost belonged. Not only was the building packed with peoples but on the platform were lords, bishops, and ministers of all denominations. In the audience, many newly-made widows were sitting and orphans were sobbing on every side. The great preacher took as his subject “The Unsinkable Ship.” But he did not apply that term to the Titanic which on her first voyage had gone out into the Atlantic and crashed into an iceberg, carrying her precious cargo of human lives down to watery death.

No, the preacher’s message was about that other “unsinkable ship”—the frail boat on the sea of Galilee, unsinkable because Jesus, the Master of land and sea was asleep on a pillow in the back of the vessel. Thank God He still lives and rides the billows and controls the storms, and when the children of men take their only true Pilot back on board, we will ride out the present storms and He will bring the vessel through to the fair harbor of our hopes.”

God’s plans come to pass. God’s plans bring God glory first and than you may encounter amazing glory.

Application -

Tan, Paul Lee. Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations: Signs of the Times. Garland, TX: Bible Communications, Inc., 1996. Print.

Another person who felt called to a mission trip. Got so mad at me because I didn’t say this is the Lord’s will. God hadn’t reveled that to me Your plan doesn’t make it God’s job. Focus on God first. because a focus on self means we look for ease, comfort, a lack of fear, praise or ease.

Everything that comes up in my head doesn’t mean it is God’s job to bring it to pass. Even if it is super cool or Super good.

God actually exists, you see. And is working out His plans. So what do we do than?

Proverbs 16:3 CSB

3 Commit your activities to the Lord, and your plans will be established.

Everything that comes up in my head doesn’t mean it is God’s job to bring it to pass. Even if it is super cool or Super good.

Explanation

Activities comes from the word מַעֲשֶׂה which also means practice or behavior. It is an ongoing way of life.

Commit your activties literally translated would be to roll your ways over to the Lord.

Instead of focusing on what will make me the most Happy, a fleeting thing which can drive people not to eat,

Focus my actions on what would bring God joy

Illustration -

Getting things done.

Every plan comes with multiple steps sometimes thousands of steps that can break down into actual actions that need to get done.

Actually every day is a step towards bringing plans to fruition.

There was a comedian who talked about a brother in law who claimed to have invented stuff after the fact. I thought of that.

I have met other people who claim to be big idea people but really they just talked about big ideas. They were all talk.

The difference between all talk and a visionary is doing the activities that bring about the plans.

Then take a look at those activities, your way of doing things. Do they bring Glory to God.

The most important part of our plan is our way of living. It must bring glory to Jesus.

Very likely you know that many of your ways of the past have not brought glory to God.

Their was a successful man was asked the secret of his accomplishments, His reply was: “Good judgment!”

Th successful man was asked the secret of his accomplishments, His reply was: “Good judgment!”

“Where did you learn good judgment?” he was asked.

“From experience.”

“And from where did you gain your experience?”

“From poor judgment.”

My friends in the next decade the secret to our plans coming about is to commit our next action steps, to commit Christ to our way of life, to commit our hearts to the Lord.

1 John 1:9 CSB

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Tan, Paul Lee. Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations: Signs of the Times. Garland, TX: Bible Communications, Inc., 1996. Print.

Jesus is ready to welcome us into new plans of a new life.

Yet, we have to move beyond talk, beyond acknowledgement to action.

Romans 10:9 CSB

9 If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Baptism

Acts 2:38 CSB

38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.