It is an honor to serve God and for that I am grateful that He has allowed us this opportunity to worship Him and serve Him.
I WANT TO ASK YOU A QUESTION! Have you ever wondered why the Lord came and lived among us for over thirty years? If He just came to die for our sins, why didn’t He just come to earth and get it over in a matter of hours?
Instead He lived on earth as a man for 33 years!
Why?
I believe besides dying for our sins, He also wanted to teach us HOW WE ARE TO LIVE THE HOLY (CHRISTIAN) LIFE!
Romans 12:1-3
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 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.
MSG… 12:1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Look at Matthew 26
Matthew 26 36 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
40 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. 41 “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
42 He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”
43 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44 So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.
45 Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. 46 Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”
39 again. Jesus prayed, “…not as I will, but as thou wilt.” We can learn much by this short prayer.
There is nothing sadder than watching a person throw their life away. We see it so often!
Life is valuable and any time something is valuable, it should handled thoughtfully.
Today the price of gold is so valuable it is worth over eight hundred dollars an ounce. It is so valuable it is measured in ounces
Diamonds are valuable and because they are valuable, they are measured in carats
Today gasoline is valuable and we measure it out in gallons
But the most valuable thing on this earth is
Life is the most valuable thing on this earth and yet there are people that waste the precious time God gives them. Life is the most valuable thing on this earth and it is sad that many are throwing their lives away.
In this short prayer, Jesus teaches two important things.
1) WE HAVE A WILL FOR OUR LIFE
Notice, in this prayer as He faced going to the cross, Jesus said, “Not my will…”
WHAT IS HE TEACHING US?
He is teaching us that WE HAVE A WILL FOR OUR LIFE!
The Lord lived in a human body just like every one of us here today. Everything in that human body that He lived in cried out, “DO NOT DO IT!” But He prayed, “NOT MY
You and I live in these mortal bodies that are created by God in such a way that we can DO AS WE PLEASE, WE HAVE A WILL OF OUR OWN.
No one is going to make you attend church
No one is going to make you love your neighbor
No one is going to make you tithe
No one is going to make you live a
No one is going to make you use your talents for the Lord
No one is going to make you faithfully serve the Lord
You have a WILL FOR YOUR LIFE, and you can do WHATEVER YOU PLEASE!
Paul says in that opening scripture, I urge you!
Jesus lived in a human body just like ours and He recognized that HE HAD A WILL when He prayed, “Not my will.”
WE HAVE A WILL FOR OUR LIFE and -
2) GOD HAS A WILL FOR YOUR LIFE
Jesus recognized God had a will for Him when He prayed, “
It is true; we can do WHATEVER we please with these bodies! WHY DID GOD MAKE US THIS WAY?
God did not want us to be robots that would serve Him. He gave us a WILL so that we could
The WOG teaches us that God has a WILL FOR YOUR LIFE. We can see that so clearly in the scriptures.
The life of Jesus demonstrates that, when He prayed, “NOT MY WILL, BUT THINE BE DONE.”
The life of the apostle Paul demonstrates that, when He said, in 1 Cor. 4:19, “But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will…”
- 19 But I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have.
James 4:15 teaches us that God has a will for you and was inspired to write, “For that ye ought to say, if the Lord will, we
Boasting About Tomorrow
13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
Matthew 6:9-13
9 “This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” 14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Notice again, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”
Pastors through the ages have thought, “WHAT CAN I DO TO MOTIVATE THIS CONGREGATION?”
That is an excellent question. We would agree that the key to involvement is
But how do we motivate those who aren’t self-starters?
How do we get people involved when it’s their nature to be wallflowers sitting on the sidelines watching others carry the load?
Some think that the problem is laziness.
That might be true for some people.
In most cases I do not believe that laziness is the problem.
I believe that the reason people stand on the sidelines in the church is because they are often involved in other kinds of
- Activities of their own choosing.
It’s not that they won’t do anything; it’s that they don’t understand the
A church sign identifies the problem. The sign reads, “The main thing is to see that the main thing is the main thing.”
- I know people that know God has a plan for their life, but they can not see it as the MAIN THING IN THEIR LIFE. They fail to recognize the importance of doing God’s
A good example of this is the priest in the Old Testament that we read about in Malachi 1:1-6.
Notice that God had a WILL FOR THE LIVES OF THESE PRIESTS, but they did not see it as being
- These priests were dishonoring God because they were not giving the best to Him
- They despised the name of God by offering defiled food on His altar
- They offered up blind, lame, and sick sacrifices while they kept the healthy animals for themselves
- Their approach was to give God what no one else wanted
God’s response was, “I have no pleasure in you.” He refused to accept an
Today we do not offer up animal sacrifices, we offer ourselves as LIVING SACRIFICES.
In Romans 12:1, we read, “ I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
We have to decide what is the most important thing for us to do with our lives… you have to determine if you are going to:
- Do our will or God’s will
God has a will for your life.
- It is not a complicated legal document that it would take a high priced lawyer to explain.
It is not something God hides from us and says, “SEE IF YOU CAN FIND IT!”
How do we discover God’s will?
People have done all kinds of things to find the will of God for their lives, but there are two ways we can know the will of God for our life.
BY USING GOOD COMMON SENSE
A man was on a submarine for the first time. He asked the captain if there were things he should know to do and not do. The captain said, “In a submarine there is only one golden rule: While on aboard a submarine remember to count how many times we dive. Add the number of times we surface, and then divide by two. If there is one left over, don’t open the hatch.”
Many times, God’s will for our lives is
TURN TO THE WORD OF GOD
It is very simple to know God’s Will for our life. God’s Word says, in Ecc. 9:10, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; ….”
Remember when David appeared in the Old Testament and Goliath was defying the God of Israel. When David appeared on the scene:
- He could not help but to see Goliath because he was so HUGE
- He could not help but to hear Goliath because he was so LOUD
And David’s said, “WHY HASN’T SOMEONE SHUT THAT GIANT UP?”
David said that it was something that needed to be done and if no one else would do it, with the help of the LORD, I will…!
If God opens a door for us, then who are we to refuse to walk in?
If God opens a door, it is our
Conclusion:
God has a will for your life.
1 Peter 1:15-17
15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”[a] 17 Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear.
The Lord is looking for people that will honor Him…
Be because He is… Do because He did.
- What the enemy has tried to destroy: your peace, your health, your wealth, your marriage, your careers, your families, your relationships, your opportunities … and more.
God will take those broken people and put their lives back together again and will
Let’s focus the next six months of this year doing HIS Will…