Ps 40:8-10
8 I delight to do Thy will, O my God; Thy Law is within my heart.”
9 I have proclaimed glad tidings of righteousness in the great congregation; behold, I will not restrain my lips, O LORD, Thou knowest.
10 I have not hidden Thy righteousness within my heart; I have spoken of Thy faithfulness and Thy salvation; I have not concealed Thy lovingkindness and Thy truth from the great congregation.
I am amazed at the things we will put into our body to try and stay vitalized and young. But what’s worse than taking those things ourselves is making others take them as a result of our sheer joy in how it works for us. We all have friends or family that are into some diet, some excercise, some pill that will supposedly make us feel younger and healthier. Now I am not saying that is a bad thing, but do you not see the extremes and the passion that we share about things that may keep us alive for a few more years but in the end will loose to death? Now imagine how our sheer delight in doing God’s will, our passion for living for Him, could impact the lives of countless people who would otherwise die without hope. It seems the Psalmist knew that part of what it meant to live according to the will of God was to proclaim the greatness of our God, His faithfulness and His salvation for all who would respond to Him. He couldn’t keep His joy for the Lord to himself. He had to give it away. Don’t let it escape your attention that part of what it means to do the will of God is to express your exuberance and Joy for the things of God to others! But you can’t do that if it’s not in your heart to begin with. “Thy Law (word) is within my heart” the Psalmist wrote. No wonder he delighted to do the will of God!
Eph 5:15-21
15 Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise,
16 making the most of your time, because the days are evil.
17 So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit,
19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord;
20 always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father;
21 and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
“Understand what the will of the Lord is!” Okay, so what is the will of the Lord? Do you notice Paul doesn’t really go into it. Instead of telling us what the will of the Lord is, he demonstrates how it is we get to that will. It is not by trying to figure it out on our own. It is, quite simply, to keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit each and every day or our lives. The verb tense tells us it is a daily, on going endeavor to walk in the Spirit. It is not something that happens once and then is always there for you. It is a minute by minute event. The actual translation could read, “keep on keeping being filled!” It is in the context of being filled by the Spirit that we are guaranteed to walk in the will of God. As a matter of fact, being filled in the Spirit is the starting point and the assurance that we are living according to the will of God. Yesterday we discovered the will of God is not learned but placed into our lives by God who is at work in us. Today we discover it is lived out in our lives, not by our own efforts, but accomplished by the Spirit of God as we allow Him to fill us each and every day. Do you want to live according to the will of God, then choose to walk in the Spirit and not the flesh. You will do just fine!
Rom 12:2
2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
Ps 143:10
10 Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God; let Thy good Spirit lead me on level ground.
‘God’s will’ is brought up in 38 different instances in the Scriptures. Some of those are merely statements of affirmation like Paul saying, “an Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God”. Some of these statements were repeated in prayers like Jesus saying “Thy will be done” while he taught His disciples to pray or in the garden before Golgotha. My point is this; there are not all that many references to the will of God in the scriptures given the amount of Scriptures we have before us. But these statements have had great impact on our thinking and our acting. Who amongst us would not say the most important thing in life is to do God’s will for our lives? So given the importance of these references to the will of God, how do we learn what the will of God is for our lives. The answer is “it cannot be learned!” That may seem to be contrary to what we read, but bare with me as I point out the importance of these verses. We are told by Paul that we are not “to be conformed to this world.” The actual meaning is to be pressed or squeezed into a mold that does not fit who we are. Instead, we are called to be “transformed” or changed in our thinking in order to arrive at what the will of God is! The question is, where does this change come from and by whom? The answer is, God does the work in us! We do not implement the change by forcing ourselves to behave differently, but as Jeremiah teaches, God writes His will into our hearts. The second verse from the Psalms may seem problematic if we take its statement at face value. “Teach me!”. However, the root word behind this word is a request to be “goaded” and directed by the hand of the Lord. Thus the Psalmist ends his request with the words, “let thy good Spirit lead me on level ground.” We don’t learn what it is we have to learn to do the will of God. What we do is let God direct us daily to accomplish His will. We let Him change the way we think from the inside out. We let Him “goad” us into the right place. So then, we do not learn God’s will, we submit to it and let Him lead. Have a great day!
I Jn 2:17
17 And the world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God abides forever.
(NAS)
I’m guessing you really would like it if you lived an eternal life. I’m also guessing that you would do pretty much anything that could guarantee you this reality. So then, why is it so difficult to follow through with the main thesis of this verse. “The one who does the will of God abides forever.” It can’t be any clearer than this, can it? So the problem isn’t really not knowing what it is we have to do to abide forever. However, it does come down to defining what the “will of God” is! Unfortunately, what people do with this concept is much the same as Bill Clinton did with redefining what sex is or isn’t based on the understanding of what “is” is! People arrive at God’s will pretty much according to what they feel it would be if they where God. My hope this week is to wade through some attempts to look at what the Scriptures have to say about “the will of God”. There is not much mind you. That is what makes it so easy for people to sluff it off. So let’s start with the simple truth’s of this passage. Everything we know about this world will one day be lost along with everything we lusted after in this life. Obviously, it’s not God’s will to put much stock in life as we know it! So, whether we can or cannot define what God’s will is for our lives, we can settle on this one thought: If we live it, we live it forever!
Rev 1:10-17
10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet,
11 saying, “Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.”
12 And I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands;
13 and in the middle of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed in a robe reaching to the feet, and girded across His breast with a golden girdle.
14 And His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire;
15 and His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been caused to glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters.
16 And in His right hand He held seven stars; and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength.
17 And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as a dead man.
I get the feeling from a lot of christians that I know that if Jesus showed up in their presence they would run up to Him and throw their arms around Him like He was a long lost uncle or an old friend they hadn’t seen for a number of years. I realize Jesus told us He was our friend but we must remember He is the glorified Lord. Over 500 saw Jesus before He ascended into heaven, but none saw Him in His glorified state where all things are subjected under His sovereign Lordship. John had a vision of the glorified Lord in Revelation. I want you to notice that he did not run up to Jesus and celebrate His arrival. Instead, He was overcome with the glory and the perfection of His being and John fell down as if he were a dead man. When we see Jesus coming in glory the scripture tells us “every knee will bow and every tongue will confess…..” He is Lord. Don’t become so informal with your Savior that you forget He is the risen, glorified Lord and when we see Jesus, we like John will fall before Him, overwhelmed by His perfection and His holiness!
Luke 20:24-26
24 ”Show Me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?” And they said, “Caesar’s.”
25 And He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
26 And they were unable to catch Him in a saying in the presence of the people; and marveling at His answer, they became silent.
(NAS)
I have been working on my taxes so I thought it appropriate to comment on this task. The Pharisees were trying to put Jesus in a spot where He could not wiggle his way out with a wise answer. The people hated Roman rule and so they asked this question to get him caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. But instead of getting caught, He nailed them with an answer that you may not understand. It was not an answer that supported paying taxes. It was an answer that supported living our lives for God. It was an answer that reminded them all things come from God and everything we have is a result of God’s blessings on our lives. Therefore, if caesar lays claim on anything, give it to him, but what is God’s, that being our lives (Psalm 139), make sure we give that to Him. My taxes are done. The US government has laid claim on a portion of all the money I have made in 2006. I am not happy I have to give it to them, but I do have to give it to them. But my life, my adoration, my appreciation and what God has given to me, I gladly give back to Him. Have a great day and don’t forget to do your taxes!
2 Cor 4:8-12
8 we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing;
9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
10 always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.
Can you believe this guy Paul? He takes lifes inequalities and makes them about living for Jesus so that the life of Jesus can be seen in everything we do. He doesn’t allow discouragements and persecutions to get him down. He doesn’t let the perplexing problems of suffering as a Christian destroy the hope he has in Jesus Christ. In short, he allows whatever he suffers to be for Christ’s sake. We all get hit by life and difficulties that can swallow us up. But there is no need to let those events trigger a loss of faith or hope in the One who died for us. At the same time, Paul doesn’t act as if he somehow manages to avoid pain or suffering altogether. He is not some super human that gives the impression he slides through everything with no problems. He says “Afflicted”. That means he gets hurt! But he doesn’t let it crush his will to continue. He says, “Struck down”. That means literally beaten but not to the point having his will to live for Jesus destroyed. “Perplexed….forsaken…” words that conjure up issues of being abandoned by freinds and questions about why things are happening to him. So he does have feelings and he does feel pain. He, unlike most of us though, takes the opportunity to turn the pain and questions into an opportunity to be a witness for Jesus. What we do with life when it goes wrong can be the difference of pointing people to Jesus or leaving them stuck in the middle of a meaningless life with not way out. Don’t we no better than that?
2 Cor 5:14-15
14 For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died;
15 and He died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.
(NAS)
“It’s amazing” the little girl says as beams of light shatter the night sky. It’s a commercial for a TV that you can buy. The light is astounding and the picture is truly amazing! But what makes this TV pale in comparison is the number of times we are reminded in the scripture that we died with Christ on that cross. That’s truly amazing! Amazing that someone like you and me with all that history of doing things are own way could be so fortunate as to escape the brutality of the death we deserve and yet be declared as having experienced it to our advantage. It is, after all, in that cross that the old me, so eager to run my own life, so eager to avoid righteousness for the sake of experiencing the things I wanted, so unable to live for God, died! Now, we no longer live as the old man, but as the new, so eager to live for Him, so eager to pursue righteousness, so eager to reflect the glory of His life. That’s what is truly amazing! Once I was blind while thinking I was alive! Now I can see while knowing I have truly died! Think about it!
