Knowing the Will of God

Acts 22:1-22 Knowing the Will of God (A Habit Forming Process) Introduction: We are looking at Acts which is the history of the earliest Christians and it is a major tool for our understanding as the Church and for the greater society to know and understand what authentic Christianity actually is; the real vs the watered down, compromised, or nationalized Christianity. At Refuge Christian Fellowship we want the real thing. We want the real Gospel and the real Jesus. We want authentic Christianity. Tonight we’re looking at Paul’s defense before an angry Jewish mob in Jerusalem -From Acts 22-28 Paul will give a defense 4 different times for himself and the christian message. We’ve looked a lot at Paul’s defenses in Acts and as I read over these sections a whole different focus stood out to me. I want to focus on a bigger theme of Acts by looking at what Ananias says to Paul about his new purpose now that he has been apprehended by God. “And Ananias…said to me, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight.’ And at that very hour I received my sight and saw him. And he said, ‘The God of our fathers appointed you to know his will, to see the Righteous One and to hear a voice from his mouth; for you will be a witness for him to everyone of what you have seen and heard.” Is Paul /Luke indirectly giving us direction for our own Christian lives? I believe so. How many of us have wondered or are asking even now - What is the will of God? What does God want for my life? Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing with my life? Am I supposed to be in “full time ministry”, am I supposed to evangelize? Are there things I should or shouldn’t be doing? Paul list out four things that God has apprehended him, and I believe all Christians, for: To Know God’s will To See the righteous one To hear a voice from his mouth And to be a witness to everyone As I studied this passage I kept thinking about our need as believers to cultivate spiritual disciplines - to Know, to See, to Hear from God, in order to be effective witnesses to his salvation and coming Kingdom. As we know and conform to God’s will by beholding the righteous one, and cultivate an ear to hear his voice - we will be witnesses of God’s kingdom. Or another way to put it - "The Gospel must first transform our lives then it moves out through the city and transforms others.” - Tim Keller So how do we do that; how does this happen? Character is transformed by three things: - You have to aim at the right goal. - You have to figure out the steps you need to take to get to the goal. The Strengths or the Path. - Those steps have to become habitual, a matter of second nature. The Process - or Counter Formation - The Goal: is a Renewed Creation - which includes new heavens and the new earth, with human beings resurrected from the dead to be the renewed world’s rulers and priests. -Resurrected, Glorified, New Creation - This goal is achieved through the kingdom-establishing work of Jesus and the Spirit, which we grasp by faith, participate in by baptism, and live out in love. - Christian living in the present consist of anticipating this ultimate reality through the spirit led, habit forming, truly human practice of faith, hope, and love, sustaining Christians in their calling to worship God and reflect his glory into the world. 1. The Habits for Spiritual transformation -Knowing, seeing and hearing the voice of God. 1. The Intentional Habit of living in God’s word - “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly…” The practice of reading scripture, studying scripture, acting scripture, singing scripture - generally soaking oneself in scripture as an individual and as a community has been seen from the earliest days of Christianity as central to the formation of Christian character. 1. N.T. Wright says, “The sheer activity of reading scripture, in the conscious desire to be shaped and formed within the purposes of God, is itself an act of faith, hope, and love, an act of humility and patience. It is a way of saying that we need to hear a fresh word, a word of grace, perhaps even a word of judgment as well as healing, warning as well as welcome.” 2. a few years ago Bob Dylan gave a speech for an award for his musical career. He talked about who some of his greatest influences were and how he came to write some of the great songs that he wrote. He said he never set out to write songs that he thought would be hits. He said, “If you had listened to Robert Johnson sing, “Better come in my kitchen because it’s gonna be raining out doors,” as many times as I listened to it, sometime later you just might write, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.” 3. What Dylan is really saying is that he listened to and sang this song so many times that it really became a part of him. It shaped the way he wrote music. Dylan points out something profoundly true for us - true in all sorts of areas of our lives. What you put into your life consistently is going to work its way through you, and manifest itself in your thinking, speaking and daily actions. 4. Listen to the habits or practice that God gave to ancient Israel: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” - Deuteronomy 6:4-9 5. Scripture must become the number one source of formation and truth for our lives. It must be the counter formation of the influence of the world that we are inundated with on a daily basis, as Paul says in Romans 12:1-2. It must become the greatest influence. It must become the source of truth and life, if we are to be formed, and transformed into people who reflect God’s character, and his salvation, goodness and wholeness into the world. 6. To be formed by the Story of scripture, particularly the story of Jesus, is to be formed as a Christian. To take the thousand and ten thousandth decision to open the Bible today and read more of this Story, even if we don’t see the whole picture yet, is to take the next small step toward being the sort of person who, by second nature, will think, pray, act, and even feel in accordance with God’s character and will. And before you know it you find your story caught up in the Story of God…. You find yourself, thinking acting, and speaking as Jesus did - As Paul says in Philippians 2 -This is to “Have the mind of Christ” 7. As Paul says, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” - 2 corinthians 3:18 8. As we daily and continually set before us the person and work of Jesus - who he is and what he has done transforms us into that same image. (Story of Hudson praying…) 2. The Habit of intentional Worship and Community 1. “Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” - Ephesians 4:15-16 2. Just because you’ve been converted, you attend church, say your prayers, have christian friends doesn’t mean that the qualities of kindness, gentleness, humility and the rest just happen, without effort on our part. - The context is important. But sooner or later, each of us has to make the choice to “put on” the things that genuinely anticipate, in the present, the life we are promised in the future, the life we’ve already been given in Christ. And having made those key choices, each christian must acquire the habit of making them again and again... 3. Community is vital, but all members of Christ must make it their own. According to the scripture when God’s people gather together whether in large or small groups, whether for corporate worship, or home fellowships we have a job to do, we have a part to play, encouragement to give, exhortation to bring, help to offer, we have a goal or Telos to reach and that is that we might be mature in Love. We don’t have time to list them out here but we often refer to them as the “one another’s.” 4. But true community/fellowship can only exist where there is this understanding that we are all sinners in the middle of our sanctification, we are all helping each other along the path to human wholeness. We will never be complete in this life, no one is better than another, each of us has deep issues of sin and bad habits in our life and once we get over this sense of competition and sizing each other up we can get to the real work of helping one another along the path of Virtue… 3. The Habit of Intentional Service 1. This is an outward and visible sign of the virtue of love dating all the way back to the early church. While the great plague struck in ancient Turkey, the rich, the well to do and particularly the doctors packed up their families and belongings and headed for the country. But the Christians, often among the poorest would stay and nurse people, including those who were neither Christians, nor their own family members, nor in any other way obviously connected to them. Why were they doing this? When called upon to explain the habits of heart which made it “natural” to do such things, they would talk about Jesus, and about the God they had discovered through Jesus, the God whose own very nature was and is self-giving love. 2. Precisely because the greatest christian virtue is love, modeled on that of the creating and self-giving God, the individual christian and the Church as a whole must develop the habits of looking out for what’s going on in the surrounding world, rejoicing with it’s joy, weeping with it’s grief, and above all eager for opportunities to bring love, comfort, healing and hope, wherever possible. And with all of these it may bring faith, not necessarily by speaking Jesus though there will be opportunities for that as well, but by living Jesus in public. 2. The Habit of Intentional Prayer 1. Prayer is in fact a work of formation - spiritual formation. When we pray we don’t do so to get our will accomplished but to see God’s will accomplished and how we are to play our part in that. Something I’ve been doing in the mornings is to spend a few minutes simply asking to be in step with God, his will and his kingdom for that day. It might hit me as I’m brushing my teeth or as I’m making breakfast, or driving to work or an appointment. But making a habit of praying into God’s will and God’s kingdom will in turn cause us to think and see things in light of the kingdom and will of God and our part in that. 2. Finally, we must make a habit of praying these things into our lives. One of the great Easter prayers in the old English Common Book of Prayer asks for two things: First, that God’s special grace will put good desires into our minds; and second, that his continual help will enable us to bring those desires to good effect. Conclusion: Scripture is clear Character development through the spiritual disciplines is vital to the Christian life. This scripture tells us the reason is because we are headed somewhere. We, those who are Christ, are headed for the glory and excellence of Jesus Christ. We are headed for human wholeness for New Creation!! The New Testament makes it clear that this work has already begun. It began the moment you placed your trust in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ and were subsequently filled with the power and presence of his Holy Spirit. But following Jesus isn't a quick fix. It's a journey: an invitation to repent and believe; to learn and grow; it is a slow process of being shaped into the image of God. We are now on a life long journey of “working out our salvation…” Working to what we will be one day be when we see Jesus Christ face to face. We are becoming New Creations day by day. Putting off the old ways of thinking, speaking, and living we are putting on the New Behavior of Life in the Holy Spirit. "the new life of strenuous ethical obedience, enabled by the Holy Spirit, to which the believer is committed.” I believe, in these dark times, that the Church needs to hear this call of the Holy Spirit and return to the true calling of the New Covenant - To live out the Life of Jesus. To be parables of Jesus. YOU are the light of the World! YOU are the salt of the earth. But if that light grows dim and if that salt loses it savor what is it good for? It is by our good deeds, by our character, that mission is made possible. Co-workers, employees, and employers, neighbors, friends, family are to see the virtuous life of the Spirit in us and as they do we can give an answer for the reason for the “living hope that is at work in our lives, with meekness and fear. "The Gospel must first transform our lives then it moves out through the city and transforms others.” - Tim Keller May it be so in our church and in our city by God’s grace and strength.