Seeking God’s Will Starts with Prayer
Notes
Transcript
Slow down, let the Spirit speak.
Good morning everybody. I would like you all to know that this is much different than what I am used to. More than anything I’d like to thank you all for letting me share a message with you all today, and thank you for being above the age of 12. I have spoken many times before, but mainly to large groups of kids like 4th and 5th graders. And I am hoping you guys pay a little more attention.
Anyway, to tell you all a little about myself. In mid-October this year, I will have been a follower of Christ for four years now. I’d been hanging out with a group of people my sophomore year of high school, and I was never a super popular kid. However, one of the kids in the group took a random interest in me. Long story short, he invited me to his youth group and at the end of the night he explained the Gospel to me in a Dairy Queen parking lot, and I have committed the rest of my life to serving the Kingdom of God.
And now I am in my junior of Bible College. I attend Ozark Christian College, actually I believe the student who preached her last week is someone who use to live right down the hall from me. But I am a junior… and I am engaged to be married this December. My time of studying is coming to an end and a new long new season of my life is about to begin.
And can I share something with you… when you get to this point in Bible college, I assume it is the same for all college students. You get to the end of the road, you can see the finish line, you can feel that piece of paper that is going to make you qualified for a job you’ll actually enjoy working.... people start getting really funny and interesting. And people keep asking me this question. Sometimes it’s the first question they ask me after their name, which in my opinion, is VERY personal. Which is.... “What are you going to do with the rest of your life?” Cause you know those things are related. They go through these logical process of “okay, I know his name. huh, ummm, what should I ask next, How about what are your plans for next 3-10 years.”
Normally, I respond with a “well, I mean, I’m a general ministry major because I’m not quite sure what I want to do yet. I think I’m just going to graduate and see what God does from there.” And the conversation always ends awkwardly. People never know how to respond to a “well, I don’t really have a big plan, let’s just see what God will do.” I wonder if the reason the conversation always ends awkwardly is because there is a better question to ask.
See we live in a culture where we just hate the unknown. To be honest, it is why so many people are struggling with the season of coronavirus right now. They don’t know why this is happening… they just don’t know what to do…, and when this is going to end… And it drives people to anxiety and heartbreak.
I think the problem is in the question. I think people should be asking “What is the Lord doing in your life right now?” I can’t decide on a specific type of ministry I want to do because I don’t know how the Lord is going to be using me in 3 years. Of course, there is wisdom and good behind preparing for the future. But sometimes I think we love a secure future more than one that is just based by faith in God. James 4:13-17 tells us that we can’t even rely on our plans for this vary day that we have before us:
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.
So here is the point. James is trying to tell us that our lives our a mist, a puff of smoke, that is here and front of us one second and then gone the next. So if we spend our whole time planning for the future, we may miss out on what God has intended for it.
So lets seek the Lord’s will this morning. Can I pray for our message?
“Father,
Thank you that you’ve woken us up another day, and that we have the opportunity to have your message stir our hearts. We pray that we can become holy like you, and that your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. We pray all this to the glory of your son Jesus. Amen.”
We pray the Lord’s prayer this morning in an attempt to have His will be done in our lives today.
A prayer or even way of living that Paul exemplifies in the scriptures. A life that seeks God’s will. A few writings concerning Paul state:
But as he left, he promised, “I will come back if it is God’s will.” Then he set sail from Ephesus.
in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.
For I do not want to see you now and make only a passing visit; I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits.
And this is not simply about always saying or adding the phrase “if the Lord wills” to the end. I encourage you to partake in a way of living that the will of God is constantly on your mind. Like we pray in the Lord’s prayer: “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And like Paul lives out: How he decides where he will go. Who he will visit. And most importantly how he allows for God’s will to direct his prayers.
Cause when we don’t its a root of arrogance, what James refers to as evil boasting. An indirect statement to God of “I’ve got this all under control.” My fiancee and I were even talking about how this is applying to out lives right now. Currently in the wonderful season of wedding planning. Talk about a moment when we just need to sit down and say to ourselves “God we trust you can lead us in a Godly way. We trust in you no matter what happens in this season of engagement. We are not in control. You are.”
So what do we do with this text? I have a question and three truths:
Do we allow for God’s will to interrupt our plans?
Does it make you uncomfortable or anxious when you don’t have control of your plans? Maybe that’s God calling you to let him take it control. We follow a God that is holy and sovereign and is worthy of submission to him in all things.
I wonder if we miss a lot of the opportunities to do the will of God because we have already made plans for the times when He could’ve worked through us.
Along with James 4:13-17, our other main text today will be Acts 16:16-35.
As we read through this text, I would like you to think about this truth:
Focus on what God places right in front of us.
Paul, Silas, and the narrator of the Book of Acts who we assume is Luke the writer of the Gospel arrive and Philippi and in verse 16 says they were going to a place of prayer.
Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.
So the three men are seeking a place of prayer and God interrupts their life with this woman who was enslaved for her gift of fortune-telling. Now I want you to picture something. Paul and Silas are making jokes and having good conversation with Luke on one of their many journeys throughout the Roman Empire. And this woman interrupts them to foretell the future but before she can speak Paul says “I’m sorry, we can’t talk right now, we’ve set aside these six hours of the day to prayer. We are devoted to serving the Lord. Shoot us a text, maybe we can meet up sometime.”
We don’t even realize the opportunities we shut out when we only work God into our schedule when it’s His schedule in the first place.
Why Paul made no attempt to address the situation immediately is unclear. The text says that “she followed them and kept it up for many days.” I wonder if the reason it took that long to free her of her bondage was because they were set on the plans they had in mind. It took Paul until he was “greatly annoyed” before he turned and commanding the demon in the name of Jesus to come out of her.
Wouldn’t that be amazing? If you could just ‘IN THE NAME OF JESUS” and snap your fingers and the annoying person in your life would just stop. We would utilize that all the time.
And did you notice why the girl was valued to the point that she was enslaved? She had the ability to foresee the future. Even during the first century AD, we had a problem with an obsession with securing the future. It honestly may not seem like its a bad thing to seek a secure future. And in some ways it’s not. But Proverbs 16:9 says
The heart of man plans his way,
but the Lord establishes his steps.
And we see this in the rest of the passage.
When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”
The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose.
There are no chains that man can put on God’s people that cannot be broken. This is why we can have full confidence in the Lord’s will. Even as we are beaten and humiliated and imprisoned. Or as we are told not to go to church and churches are shut down due to state mandates. Church, I ask you not to be discouraged in this season. God will prevail. Man cannot stop the will of God. As the Pharisees command Jesus to rebuke his disciples for allowing them to praise and worship him, Jesus only replies
He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
The Will of God Prevails Over Men.
We can have complete and utter faith and confidence in his will
This far into this passage we see two truths. The first being that: All it takes to do the Will of God, is to focus on what he puts in front of you. The second: We can have confidence in the fact that at the end of the day, the Will of God prevails over us. With these two truths, we move into the last.
After the men are miraculously freed from the prison, the passage continues as such:
The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”
The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household.
Once you begin waking up everyday with understanding that to do the will of God is to just focus on
Closing Prayer:
Read the last paragraph of the first conversation of The Practice of the Presence of God.
Close in pra