God's Way or No Way

Romans 6:15–23 ESV

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Galatians 5:1–6 ESV

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

Galatians 5:13–15 ESV

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

Titus 2:11–14 ESV

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Scripture Readings: Romans 6:15-23; Galatians 5:1-6, 13-15; Titus 2:11-14

Heidelberg Catechism: Lord’s Day 48-49

Sermon Title: God’s Way or No Way?

           Brothers and sisters in Christ, three weeks ago when I introduced myself I mentioned that my undergraduate degree was in Criminal Justice, not exactly what you might expect out of someone immediately following that to be in seminary. Let me back that story up a few years to when I was freshman in high school. I have grown up in a Christian home, gone to church and a Christian school, I was a pretty good kid to most everyone except how I treated my parents, maybe there’s a few of you that know that feeling, but in response to one of my stunts, my parents had stiff punishment of forcing me to go on the service trip that my youth group does each summer in hopes that being away from my friends and a little manual labor might help change my attitude.  Well, what was meant to be a punishment I ended up enjoying the experience from the service we did to the worship times, and I ended up doing these trips the following 2 summers. I came back after the first summer and those that followed, and while I maintained my friendships at home, something had changed for me. I stepped up in my youth group, I would give a report to my church about what was going on, and this comfort with being in front of a church led to people asking me eventually to lead a congregational prayer, and from that and my school work, people started suggesting I do something in ministry, even go to seminary and become a pastor. 

At that point I don’t think I really knew what my plan for the future was; I’ve always been smart academically and planned to go to college. I had considered doing something with finances because I enjoyed numbers, but that never really sat right. I liked biblical studies but around age 17 most pastors were boring to me and the youngest pastors were around 30, which then seemed quite a ways off. Right before my last year in high school, my church had just hired a youth pastor and he told me about this pre-seminary program that Calvin does called Facing Your Future, which some of you know about. It’s a program that you had to get nominated, apply to, and get accepted; “seminary program” I thought probably was not my thing but I guess I’ll humor him. Well, I got accepted and it meant getting out of Indiana for 3 weeks, so I went. There I was at Calvin Seminary with about 30 or so others who have just finished their junior or senior years, and we spent 2 weeks in classrooms discussing theology, the church, and several books we had to read ahead of time, and we spent a week at an excursion site which for me was Calgary seeing church plants and the campus ministry at the University. It was on this trip that I met some of the type of people I expected, people who knew more than I do then and maybe still now, but there were also many who didn’t know everything yet, had gotten into their trouble, but who had a vision of faith being much greater than just how they live in their local congregation, and this all gave me hope and what I felt to be a clear calling from God leading me into ministry. 

           I headed to Dordt that fall, at first planning to do the pre-seminary track, but I didn’t want to go to school for any more than four years of college. Youth ministry was attractive then because you don’t need the MDiv., and it’s just hanging out with kids right? So that’s the route I began, and after earning the trust of the youth pastor back home, I was allowed to go on the youth group’s summer trip after my freshman year with this ministry called Confrontation Point serving in Kentucky and Tennessee.  Fantastic experience, but when I came back to Dordt, I quickly got fed up with my theology classes because training youth pastors at Dordt is not just about hanging out with kids and being a babysitter from 7-9 on a Sunday night and a week during the summer. The course track was hard, a lot of concepts from a variety of fields, big ideas that I hadn’t heard about and didn’t make much sense to me as to how they connected with the average church-goer. During this time I was somehow in an intro class for Criminal Justice, and it was fun and easy. I had always been attracted to public service, and I did well on the academics. I decided to change majors and planned to work in Juvenile Corrections, but my mom convinced me to at least minor in biblical education. I had told Confrontation Point to plan on me, now that I didn’t need the practical credits anymore I asked if I could back out. They told me to pray about it, so I did, and I found myself unable to say no, though I think I told most people I was doing it because I couldn’t pass up camping and white water rafting all summer.

           Well that summer, 2009, after my second year in college wrecked my life, and I say that after spending the final week leading a group in beautiful Panama City Beach, FL. This summer taught me about the human will that I believe our Catechism addresses. It became clear to me that you can read the Bible, speak God’s truth to others, and say you trust him, but not actually receive any spiritual nourishment and that’s scared me. I worked the most trips out of anyone on staff that summer, and I was dead tired physically. The ministry had become my family, and to leave and go back to Indiana and then Iowa was emotionally draining. I knew something had to change. I went back to Dordt for my junior year, got right back into the old routines, and it hit me in the spring that I needed to go back, I needed another shot to see what I had missed the first time. There were great things happening in the world with the church but outside of the walls that I had been confined in all my life, and even though I wasn’t planning for ministry, I needed to go back and experience it again. That summer God became real as living and breathing and reigning as sovereign in the messiness of our universe and its complexity; I hadn’t seen this in the church and I wasn’t sure it could be in the church, so I expressed my passion to our groups.

That summer after putting church ministry leadership out of my mind for a year and a half, my co-workers began encouraging me to consider seminary, and then they convinced a youth leader from Arkansas to tell me upon his group’s arrival that I needed to go. I broke that week; I had put it off for so long expecting some grand vision, I realized my prayers for direction and clarity of God’s will were responded to by God using others to tell me. I realized that week the beauty of Scripture and how God works through some truly broken people. I went back to school, had a professor who was passionate about Scripture and he made us work, reading large books of the Bible and making outlines, reading a commentary on the Old Testament bigger than an entire pew Bible…and I loved it. I said, “Well God, alright, I think you’ve shown me the big picture, now get me into a seminary.” I applied to three, and got accepted to all three… “Well God, now where do I go?” I chose Western because it fit me, but still I was a little unsure, “God, three years ago I got out of full-time theology study, I’m going to need the grades to stay in and to keep my scholarships…” His answer: while getting A’s and B’s don’t matter when you’re applying to a church, they showed me I had the ability to learn and to think through things well. And my internship experience has helped me to think pastorally, confirmed some of my gifts, and taught me about weaknesses. 

           I tell you part of my story tonight because to me that’s what stands out when I hear language of obeying your own will instead of God’s. I know I’m not the first person to have a drastic career change, and I know that this isn’t the only type of thing that God’s will has precedent over, but it’s a pretty clear picture of how we can pray and request “your will be done…,” and often have no desire for it to actually happen.  We want God’s will to take effect on earth, just not on the piece of real estate we call our lives, or at the very least that his will would conform to our will. When Jesus teaches this prayer, I believe heartily that he intended it to me that God’s will would take hold of the world and would be seen throughout all of creation, but we need this prompting which the Catechism authors give us that when we pray “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” that we’re also reminded of the way Jesus prayed elsewhere while facing death, “Not my will, but yours be done.” 

We want what’s convenient and fun for us though, what’s going to get us the quickest promotion or make for a really good story without us having to learn or grow. “Not your will, but mine be done,” do my will is so often not the prayer of our lips but the prayer of lives. The opposite of what Jesus teaches us, but it’s the request heard all the way back to the beginning of time.  Moses, saying “I don’t know if I can speak, send someone else, Lord.” Gideon saying, “If it’s you Lord, reveal a sign and then one more sign.” James and John asking Jesus, “Would you do us a favor of sitting us next to you in heaven.” This request set deep in the prayer addresses the origin of our needing to pray: our parents, Adam and Eve, after receiving the will of God in the garden of Eden take the fruit and commit themselves to “Not your will, but ours be done.” 

 “Whatever happens, happens; I’m sure God has a reason.” Isn’t that how we often make sense of our lives, and then when all of a sudden something surprisingly good happens, we say give an extra praise to God? But this prayer request all of a sudden is no longer a casual statement; it’s a request taught here that digs to the deepest pain of humanity, the hole which following our will leads into, a hole where the original intent was for our wills to obey and to praise and glorify God in a multitude of ways, but which also gave way to the pain of our desire. “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”   We pray now that he would counteract what we have done, that the destruction we’ve caused with our will, thinking we know what’s best without any consultation. We request that God would so fully enact his being and his will on earth as it is already and always has been in heaven, our brokenness does not break our God. 

What about my freedom though we say, my choices, my opinions, doesn’t this just make us puppets? Does this mean we pray before the simplest of tasks and wait for a sign or a vision? Does this mean there’s always only one right way and any other option is wrong? Do all of life’s choices have to be looked at as God’s way or no way? Well, yes…and no. On the one hand there are two choices, and as we read in Titus 2:11-14, which Paul writes in the context of how various household members including slaves were to treat each other, and he says, “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” 

When we’re praying that God’s will be done, and we have this rejection of our wills, Scripture from what God commands the Israelites regarding how to live among the pagan neighbors all the way through the New Testament epistles to the early church teaches that there is godliness and ungodliness, in which because of the grace of God already appeared to men calls for us to deny ourselves to certain worldly things. I’m not going to give a list tonight of things which might be categorized as “no way”  but we need to recognize those desires and practices which can get in the way of our relationship to God and his eternal will, and mark them as “no.” 

But the dichotomy of God’s way or no way is also not the way to look at it, and I think it’s this side that is so connected to our prayers. If we draw a hard line that when we obey our wills completely rather than God’s, then that should mean we have to make up the ground and figure out how to get back on track, and if we do, we go back on where we left.  That’s not the image of the Catechism nor of Scripture I don’t think. Surely God does have a purpose in all things, which are being working to the fullness of his kingdom coming. There will be things that don’t happen according to our desire, things that might hurt—a physical injuries, emotional breakdowns, employment is hard to find, our kids don’t act the way we’ve raised them; all things in life that we desire to control, we want things to go our way and we even cry out to God in prayer asking that they be done, adding “Lord willing.”  We’re so quick to divide ourselves from him though.

A spirit of prayer, however, I believe, bring us into a Romans 12:2 mindset, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will.” Is it God’s way or no way, well no, because in us there is to be a transformation that’s taking place, which goes back to what we covered before, “If prayer is not filled with the recognition of God’s glory and his complete otherness, then it becomes just a list of things we can do on our own and are asking God to bless.” We don’t pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” meaning just cut off our wills to obey yours like robots, rather we request God’s help, that the Lord to do the renewing of our minds, to submit ourselves again to him, so that we have a will but it is in line with God’s.

           It is not intended to become a burden on our lives, though it may very well feel costly in this life, but if anything it gives us freedom to do what needs to be done more than anything else, give joy and glory to God and to love our neighbors. God’s way is to influence all aspects of our life, not just a compartment that we create and call our faith. When we receive that influence, we carry out kingdom work. May it be a blessing when we get into the groove of finding, trusting, and being worked over by God’s will, but as he continues to bring his kingdom, may we continue to request that his will is made known and at work in the world and in our lives.  Amen.