Present Your Bodies

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

My name is Daniel Oster and I am a deacon here and a pastor in training, which means I get the opportunity to preach and I thank you for people who have come to me and been praying for me this week. So I'm looking forward to this. Also, just a side note, I absolutely enjoy worshiping with you guys. I look around, it's so encouraging. So I'm ready to go. Today we're continuing our walk through Romans and we just finished up a sermon series called Right Together. We're in chapters 9 through 11 of Romans and we were making sure that we looked at all those verses together because it's easy to adopt a portion of them and kind of develop our own theological camp there. But when we look at those three chapters together, it really stretches maybe our understanding of God beyond our own comprehension. And today we're going to finish up the last five chapters of Romans.

Not today, we're not going to finish up five, but we're going to start the series of five, the last five, and we're going to call this series Right to Life. And so chapter 12 is a shift in Romans where in the first 11 chapters, Paul was laying out really what God has done, who it was for, and the impact of all of those who believe and don't believe. So now we see this shift in chapter 12 through 16 where we're going to be looking at, walking through how we see ourselves in that. Our church body, our community, based on what God has done for us. And so what you'll notice in these last four chapters, last five chapters of Romans, is more application of the Christian life. How we respond to these truths when we put our faith in Jesus. What does that look like when we live a life changed by God? And so as we begin Right to Life, we're going to understand our role in God's will for our

life. And so we're going to be in chapter 12 of Romans today, and we're going to be in the first two verses. And so I thought we'd just go ahead and read those and then jump right in. So Romans chapter 12, verses 1 through 2 says, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by the testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. If you're like me, there's a lot of times where I have verses kind of semi memorized. I just remember pieces out of them and I hear them and I'm like, oh yeah, I kind of know that. And so this is one of those verses. And the portion of that, the verse that's common to me that is the do not be conformed

to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. I got that. The part that is, I don't know, surprising maybe overstatement, is kind of this, the last part that talks about that you may discern the will of God. And that's what we're going to kind of focus on today. And it reminds me, we had a family that we went to church with and they were from Madagascar and they were here for, he was going to seminary to get his doctorate degree and they're here for a number of years. They had kids in the state and we went to, he was graduating seminary and we went to a party to celebrate that and they were getting ready to leave, take their family to Madagascar to live and start a seminary. And I sat down with him and I'm like, how are you doing? I mean, all of your belongings are packed up in shipping crates that may get to Madagascar in four to six months.

You've got kids who've never been there. You're pulling your family out. You're going to go start a seminary that right now is a patch of dirt. And I'm, you must be freaking out. How are you doing? And he looks at me and I wish I could do a really good Malagasy accent and he says, Daniel, there's no better place to be than God's will. And I'm like, wow, okay. I'm like, that just, I think he said other stuff to me, but that was like a resounding in my head. And then I go out and I put the directions in the car on how to get home and it gives me two routes. And I'm like, oh boy, which one of these is God's will for my life? How do I decide? What if it's the wrong one? Like it's going to drive me off a cliff or something. But I think Christians, as Christians, we struggle with that. Like how do we know what God wants me to do? What parts of my life am I to consult him on?

And what parts am I not to get his side off on? And so that's what we're going to look at today. And sometimes it feels like as a Christian, maybe God's given you this blank map and we're just to fumble through. And he's just said kind of good luck. And you don't really know the correct path. And so our verses today is going to lay out how we discern the will of God in our life. And so we're going to look at those together. So let's go ahead and start in the first part of one. It says, again, it says, I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God. So Paul's using the word appeal or urging or beseeching. And that's not like a command, like a military command, but it's more of a longing. It's a tender logging for them to begin with God's mercies. And therefore, it refers back not only to just the previous chapter, but his entire letter talking about who God is.

And so where chapters one and 11 primarily deal with God's actions for humanity, the last chapters deal with God's response, deals with our actions in response to that. So when we talk about mercies of God, Paul is transitioning to the plan of action based on what he wrote there. So when we talk about mercies, what God's mercies, and we're supposed to begin there, what does that look like? In the first three and a half chapters of Romans, Paul lays out our penalty of sin. He's walking through what we deserve because of our sin to God. And in chapter three verse nine, he says, he's quoting Old Testament. He says, no one is righteous, no not one. And then the letter begins to lay out mercies of God. And so I pulled out some of these. And the mercies of God's things that God has done for us, and there's a lot here. So I'm just going to hit a few of them. And purposely a lot because I want the readers of Romans know these because these are all

fresh and I think it's a good point for us to just kind of see these. So I'm just going to hit some real quick. Justified by grace, propitiation, which means atonement, payment for your sin. And joys with hope, reconciled, set free, righteousness, sanctification, adopted, heirs, or saved, we have mercy, all these things, these are mercies of God. So Paul is saying that this is where we start. Before we look forward, before we're discerning God's will, we must first look back and remember, remember these things. Things that you started every day of your life, not remembering any of the past. So every morning you woke up, you had no knowledge of lessons that you've learned, how you met your future spouse, how you all accomplished, all the things that you've learned both the tough way and the good way. Imagine you kind of fumbled through your day not having that context.

What would it look like? It reminds me of a movie that I don't think won any awards called Encino Man. And it involved Brandon Frazier as a frozen caveman. I don't know how this didn't win awards, by the way. He somehow thaws out, I don't remember how scientifically that could happen, but he wakes up in the 20th century, in the 90s, and has to walk through life with only the context of what a caveman would know. And Paulie Shore, and the guy who played Rudy, I can't remember his name off the head, helped him through this. And it's a movie about just Brandon Frazier, just this dumb caveman, and everything is just like surprising him, and he has, you know, he's just this fumbling fool trying to learn how to go through high school and all these things. And I feel like that's probably what we look like when we're trying to walk our Christian life without having any context of what God has done for us.

We look like this fumbling fool just being surprised by things, because we haven't started with remembering all that God has done for us. So we must remind ourselves of who we were before the mercies of God, and now what we are because of those mercies through Jesus Christ. So we begin by looking back. By looking back, it does three things for us. I want to hit it real quickly. The first one is, it eliminates fear and anxiety, okay? So when you know what God has done for you to this point, when you just stop and even think in your own personal life how God has worked in your life, in times when you thought the sky is falling and God is there, when we remember those times, it helps us to go, okay, this future may not be, I shouldn't really fear or have any anxiety towards it. If you journal, which I wish I did, if you journal, you go back and you look how God

has just dipped in your life and just answered prayer and done things for you, yet we get to points and we act like those things have never happened. We're freaking out. And so by starting with remembering, by looking back at those things, it really gives us the context we need to walk forward. And so Romans 8:32 says, he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how would he not also with him graciously give all things? So we have a God that's wanting to give us good things. So the first one's looking back eliminates fear and anxiety. The second one is it reminds us of a promised future. So when we look back, it reminds us of a promised future. Ephesians 1:13-14 says, in him you have also, in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, you were sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit who is guaranteed our inheritance until we acquire the

possession of it to the praise of his glory. So God's word is clear that through Christ we are heirs to the family of God and a relationship with him. And so when we can step back in our day and kind of have that eternal perspective, and I think about Monday mornings, that morning when you wake up and you kind of get rushed with all that you have to do for that week, when we can just kind of step back and think about eternally what our Monday morning looks like, it's very minute. And we shouldn't be freaking out, we do it every Monday morning if you're like me and it makes no sense. But when we can start with God's word, when we can start remembering, when we look back and remember these things, it gives us this eternal perspective. The third thing is, so it eliminates our fear and anxiety, it reminds us of a promised future. The third thing is it puts us in our place.

God's will is not all about you. And I think we lose that perspective a lot of times. Revelation 4, 11 says, Worthy are you, Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things and by your will they exist and were created. And we see it in Job where he's going through it and in chapter 38 God just kind of just lays down his resume in front of Job of who he is and that's the answer. So that powerful all-knowing God is inviting us into his work around him. So we must continue to look back at the mercies that he's graciously showered before we even take one step forward. So this helps us align our perspective of what God is asking to align ourselves with his desires and helps motivate us to just be in line with what he wants us to do. So looking back is the first step. Let's look at Romans, the second part of verse 1. It says, To present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable God, which

is your spiritual worship. So this wording immediately drew comparisons for the folks in the Romans of sacrifice. I mean literal killing, animal killings. Do know that Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. So we're not doing anything when Paul's laying this be a living sacrifice. We're not doing anything to try to win back our salvation or something we need to do daily. Jesus has done that. But this is really referencing the other sacrifices we see in the Old Testament. This was where they were sacrificing animals without blemish. Bringing their first fruits as a burn offering and thanksgiving to God. And so Paul's really drawn this same comparison in our daily life that we start with the mercies of God, but then we continually respond to him. How do we respond to him after doing that? So the word living here means that the sacrifice is a constant thing.

So a living sacrifice. So sound contradictory, right? Because if you sacrifice something, it's dead. So what does it mean to be a living sacrifice? Well living means it's a constant thing. Sacrifice literally means to kill. So after we look back at the mercies of God, the next thing we do is we look to kill our selfishness. And those are strong words, kill our selfishness. And so this gruesome picture that Paul's laying out from the Old Testament with lambs and young goats and birds is the same way we're supposed to offer our bodies. I doubt that any of those animals volunteered to be an animal sacrifice. I don't know that they were asked. But that's something that we're volunteering doing is to sacrifice ourself, our selfishness. Jesus says something that's very similar that sounds just as odd, I think, to most people. It says, he was telling the people, deny yourself and take up your cross and follow

me. And he says, whoever loses his life will save it. And so most religions get this backwards. They think that you need to do these things to earn your salvation. But Paul's clearly saying that this is the reaction that we have to what God has done in our lives. When I was growing up as a teenager, my parents, who aren't here, so this is a lot easier to tell, they would try to give me advice. And you're like 16, 17, you're making your own money and all this. I used to say, I used to think my parents were the dumbest people in the world. That's not true. I just thought they were outdated. Every advice they gave me, you don't even know. You have no idea. I mean, I'm sure you were a teenager 100 years ago, but there's no way you understand what I'm going through now. And so I really was dismissive about everything that they told me, that I was going to figure it out.

I was going to be on my own. I'm going to be independent. And side note, I lived with my parents since I was married, so obviously I wasn't very independent. But in my 20s, I started realizing, wow, what they're saying actually kind of works. You're in a relationship, you're married, you have kids. And it got to the point, it's like, man, they made this look easy. This isn't easy at all. How did y'all do this? You're right, and I just, this flood of like, man, I can't believe I doubted you. So if you're 16 to 22-ish, that will probably happen, okay? Maybe you're there. But in response to that, I wanted to show my parents appreciation and thankfulness, going, man, I was a complete idiot for those years. And you could say that I could have done that out of obligation. And you could have made that argument. But the truth was, it was the only logical response that I was blessed to have parents

that were still pouring into me and instructing me and loving me when I was just a complete idiot, right? And that is what Paul is saying here. He's saying that this is your spiritual worship. This is true and proper. The King James says, reasonable service. So what Paul's saying is, when you look back at the mercies of God, the only logical response to that is to kill our own selfishness, to kill our own wants and desires, and more try to align those with God. God the Father, the creator of the universe, holy and perfect, has done so much. In Romans 5:8, it kind of lays out this. He says, but God shows his love for us that while we were yet sinners, still sinners, Christ died for us. So if I had to translate that to my life, when the New Daniel version would be that God loved us even when we thought we knew better, even when we were disrespectful, even when we thought

that his truths were outdated, and he does not understand, even when we totally ignored him, even when we were complete idiots, he sent his son Jesus to die for us. And so the only logical response is just to say, God, here is my life. Help me kill my own selfishness, my own desires. So the question then says, okay, what does this have to do with trying to understand God's will for my life? And what I would say is when you're asking God what to do, the prayer has to be, your will be done, not mine. That's what killing your selfishness looks like. Your will be done, not mine. And so, and that's a daily, this killing our selfishness is a daily act for us. It has to be. To kill our desire for people's approval, to kill our worldly dreams for our kids and academics and sports and just to be set up, have financial success, to kill our idea of what maybe retirement means.

To kill, and the word kill is just like jarring. When we talk about killing, that's not something we would think, especially when we're applying it to ourselves. But the parallel here is the sacrifice that Jesus made. His killing was a jarring thing too. Jesus Christ was killed for our sins. He was the sacrifice for us. So when we're looking to align ourselves with God's will, we must seek that which is holy and acceptable to God. That is his will for us. So when discerning this, we must be aware of our own selfish tendencies and allow those things not to become an obstacle. And things that may bubble up that kind of shows us that would be like how we respond in situations where when God has asked you to give sacrificially out of maybe what you've saved, your finances. When your child tells you that they're going to a remote part of the world to be a missionary

and spread the gospel, think about what initially kind of bubbles to the top. Is it your will or God's will? When you feel like God has you in a job where you're unable to advance in your career, maybe you feel stuck. When God is pulling you out of a situation that you're very comfortable in and you're thinking how could he, this can't be his will. Why? Because it's me. I'm getting in the way. So when you look back and remember God's mercies and then allow the Holy Spirit to help you kill this selfishness that bubbles up, that's how we walk in the will of God. All right. So let's look at Romans. We got a whole other verse to cover. Let's look at Romans 12 to... Let's look at the first part of that. It says, do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. So we just talked about an opposing force to God's will be in ourselves, our own selfishness.

Now we see another opposing force to God's will and we see it here in the world. Do not be conformed. And conformed means to allow change. So don't let the world allow change. If you are a transformed person by God, if you're changed by God, you should not look worldly. Those two are opposites. And then the word for transformed that he used here is the same word they use when Jesus in the transfiguration in Matthew 17 where it says, his face shone like the sun and his garments were white as light. Think about that change that they saw in Jesus at that point. And that's the same change that he's talking about us in the renewal of our mind. And so when Jesus transformed around them and it was a stark difference, that's the same difference we're supposed to have around worldly things. We should look different. Here Ephesians 4, 22 through 24 describes it as, to put off your old self which belongs

to the former manor of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. So how do we do this? How do we as Christians recognize between worldly influence and God influence? What's the right thing? And the answer is the Holy Spirit. So when we put our faith in Jesus and commit to following him, we're immediately changed. Because when we are discerning God's will, we need to allow the Holy Spirit, we need to allow Holy Spirit renovation. And we've talked about this before. We talked about the obsession with home makeover shows. And I think the draw to him is you see this structure, this home that looks like it should just be burned to the ground rather than trying to make it new. And what happens is these people go in and they start bringing sledgehammers and they're

throwing debris and they're throwing all this kind of rotten stuff out and dust flying everywhere and fast forward 20 minutes and this house looks amazing. If only it worked that easy, right? Beckwiths? So but this is a change that's, this is a similar change that's helping, that's happening in us. Listen to what Jesus says in John 14, 26. He says, but the advocate, capital A, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name will teach you all things and will remind you of everything that I've said to you. So there's this idea that when you become a Christian, you immediately recognize everything that you shouldn't be doing, the transform happens, presto, you're this mature wise Christian, go take on the world and don't screw it up. And that's not the process that happens. The Holy Spirit has given us to begin this work, to begin this renovation work inside of

us. And it's as if he's taken a sledgehammer to our, what we've kind of built in our own lives and he's finding things, he's having to identify things and hopefully just throwing them out like we see in those home shows. In this walk that we call, you can hear it called the Christian Walk, sanctification, we talk about it a lot in our church, our journey as believers and we must understand that that's a process that we're all on and we're all under holy, as a believer, we're all under Holy Spirit renovation. So this journey involves sin conviction, wisdom and discerning situation, prompting conversations, stepping up to serve and lead. And so examples would be things like when people, when the Holy Spirit's at work with people for either the first time or again, here's some scenarios it looks like. In a decision to come Christ, Donnie for the first time is convicted of having a sexual

relationship with his girlfriend. And it's never happened before because it's never been frowned upon. And as he starts exploring the gospel, he realizes that God's called him to something bigger and newer. And so he's convicted to stop that and to wait until marriage. And then just after accepting Christ, Leo is reading scripture about the Sabbath and God's designed to be part of a body of believers and feels that he needs to approach his boss about maybe getting off Sundays or maybe even find another job that allows him to be part of a church. These are the kind of work that the Holy Spirit is doing in people around us. April's been a believer for many years and has developed a consistent spiritual disciplines. But during a sermon and talking about investing in people's lives, she feels convicted that she's not involved with anybody else. That all her walks really been internal focused so she feels that she needs to invest time

in other people and she begins to pray what that even looks like and where to start. This is the Holy Spirit work. For example, Heath told me a few weeks ago, he's like, dad, at school, sorry I forgot to prompt you about this Heath, at school, some of my friends just do these things that I know is wrong and they have no speed bump. They just do it. Why do I feel hesitation? Why do I not want to do that? And I'm like, that's called the Holy Spirit. That's conviction. In a 13 year old boy's life, right, that's the difference. That's the transforming change that's happening. And so the one thing that is true is that we're as believers, we're constantly being renovated and Paul's warning is that renovation be from the Holy Spirit and not of the world. 2nd Corinthians 3, 18 says, and we all with unveiled faces beholden 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. So again we see transformation coming from the Lord to be like God's image. Colossians 3, 10 says we've put on the new self and we're being renewed in knowledge after the image of the Creator. So the remodel work that's happening in our lives is to look more like God, is to be more like God. And so this challenge is to reflect on what is changing me, what is influencing me on a day to day. Are these things that God desires or am I allowing outside things to change me? And so it's a natural response for us to think, okay, if I want to do this change, I must just do some more Christian things, I must do some more churchy things. And I think this begins, this process begins, this renovation to know, to discern begins with scripture reading and prayer. I mean just, I wished, I honestly I felt like in preparing this I felt like I need to come

up with something catchy because every Sunday that's what you hear. And actually as a kid growing up in Sunday school I had four main answers. It was Jesus, God, Bible, and church and prayer, five. And that usually answers 80% kids if you're all there in the kids care. But it usually gets like 80% of the questions answered. And so the idea is like, okay, we know we're supposed to pray, we're supposed to read our Bible. I would just challenge you to focus on the motivation, not the action, like why? Why are we, why are we supposed to do that? Why do we kind of resist it? Why do we maybe treat it like broccoli, like I treat broccoli, like I know it's good for me but I really don't want it, you know. Why do we see it that way? And the answer then in reading our Bible and communicating with God that we must focus on God's direction in our life. And we're only going to know that by spending time with Him.

We're only going to know that. Because Paul's warning us against worldly change. And that's because we are in the world. We can't, we're not, that's what most of our time is. We all have different parts of the world that we're in, professions and the way that we see that. But we all have access to the same truths, the same changing truths in our life through the word and through prayer. And so here's a few scriptures that I think are just encouraging in that, that hopefully makes you look at it less like broccoli and more like a 10 ounce filet with some lump crab on top. I'm just kidding. It's almost lunch time. All right. Psalm 119 says, talking about scripture, a lamp to my feet, a light to my path. Jesus in Matthew 4 is quoting Deuteronomy, he says, a mansion outlived by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. In prayer, 1 Thessalonians we see in chapter 5, 16 through 18 says, rejoice always, pray

without cease, and give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God and Jesus Christ for you. In 1 John 5, 14, 15 says, this is the confidence that we may have in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we ask of Him. So when we are outside of these things, when we're not spending time with God and His word and His prayer, we're only going to be influenced by something else. And it reminds me the story of the Israelites after they rescued from Egypt and they walk on dry land and Moses goes up on the mountain to go get the commandments. I mean, that's not why he went up, but he's talking to God. He's gone for several days and the Israelites are like, Moses is gone. We need something to worship. And then, how about we make a golden calf?

And okay, that sounds good. And they make a golden calf. Within days of just seeing God do all this stuff. And you go, gosh, those Israelites are dummies. But yet, that's reflective of how we are in our own lives. God will do these awesome things. And then we're so distracted. Maybe we want somebody's approval or something else. And we're like that. We're building these golden calves. And so the only way we can keep from that and stay focused and allow the Holy Spirit to have change in our life is to continually go to His word. And so we've talked about looking back. And we've talked, we just recently talked about just the Holy Spirit renovations in our life. But when we're approaching and we're asking the question, okay, what's God's will for our lives? I feel like there's three main, I think there's three things that can kind of trip us up some pitfalls that I think are important.

And the first one is when we're viewing God's will, that it's some form of a tight rope. Okay? That somehow we need to walk hill-toe and be very slow in the way that we do God, because we don't want to miss, we don't want to miss step. Like somehow we're going to plummet to some spiritual death. He plays this game where you run up in the, you're kind of going up in the sky and you run on these really tight lines and you jump on these small little things and one missed step and you fall all the way back to the bottom and you get a start all over. And I feel like we might feel like that in our walk with Christ, that if we just make one wrong step, we're going to have to start all back over. And so what it does is it's debilitating. God's will for us is not a tight rope, it's more like a highway. God has laid out his foundation for us and his lives, has given us a lot of road to

walk on, and it's here for us to see. If you feel like you're having to walk hill and toe in spiritual journey and afraid you may fall and have to start over, I'll just encourage you with a few scriptures. Listen to David talk about this. He says, show me your ways, Lord. Teach me your paths, guide me in truth and teach me for you are my God and Savior and my hope is in you all day long. Proverbs 3, 5 through 6, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In your way submit to him and he'll make your path straight. So it's rejecting this idea that somehow we just gotta, we gotta say on this really fine line that God has allowed us to make choices and he's given us a way to make those choices and we only know that by spending time in his word and prayer. The second one is, so viewing God's, so one pitfall is viewing God's will as a tight rope.

The second one is that the will of God must encompass the call, okay? We use this a lot and I'm not trying to villainize it because the Lord does call us to do different things. But I feel like there can be two ditches that we fall in when we talk about the Lord's call. The first one is waiting on God's call, okay? So when you're thinking about what does God want me to do, I'm talking about a pitfall is the call. And one area that is waiting on the call. You're waiting on God to tell you to do something. So examples, why are you not serving in church? I'm waiting on God to call me to do it. Should I, have you, hey, do you know your neighbors? Have you had any dinner with them or, nope, God hasn't given me the green light yet, still waiting. Are you a member at a church anywhere? No, no, I've been visiting but I just, I haven't felt God's call to any of them.

Okay, I feel like we can use that as a crutch. And what happens is it paralyzes us and we're not doing anything because we're waiting on this epic call from God, which I don't even know how we would describe like a blinking sign or something. And the truth is that God has called us to do plenty. We have a lot of guidance the way He's called us to do. Love others, all these things. So to wait on some sort of verbal call or something like that from God, that doesn't have to happen on everything. So we have waiting on the call but I think you can also have call abuse, okay. This is where you baptize everything in God's call, right.

The Lord is calling me to break up with you, okay. I'm not saying these things can't happen. I'm just saying check your motives, okay. The Lord is calling me to be a missionary in Hawaii, okay. I'm sure missionaries go to Hawaii, right. But I'm just saying, let's just, yeah, at the start table we'll have a missionary to Hawaii. I'll just tell you personal experience on how I have abused the call, okay. When my dad was preaching at a church here in Texas, we shared a church with an old Methodist church and they would pay a girl to do nursery and then our church would send a volunteer to do nursery. And so it was my turn to go to nursery and I walk in and I see this dark-haired beautiful Candace Cannon at the time, working nursery. That day I went to my dad and I said, Dad, I'm being called in children's ministry. I just, it's the call of the Lord. I'm gonna volunteer every Sunday.

You see where that got me? So, but we can't leverage God's call for our own selfish gain and just kind of baptize everything going. It's called the Lord. We really must make sure it's something that He is wanting us to do. And so God's will for our life is not always some specific request that we're sitting and waiting on and we don't have to just make everything God's call. Okay, so we have tight rope, we have the call. The third thing is if things get bad, it must be out of God's will. If things aren't going well, this can't be God's will.

When we came to Texas, the short story is, driving from Virginia and the way here, our van broke down. We had to push it up on a trailer in the middle of rain. The only place that we could stay when we came to Texas, and my dad was coming to Texas to go to seminary to be a preacher, okay. We get to Texas, the only place we can stay is a place called the Hojo Inn on Berry. If any of y'all been around Fort Worth for a while, I think that place closed down because they had a lot of murders. We were there for like four or five days. We finally got a house that we could rent. The first night we turn on the back porch light, we see about 20 sets of eyes looking at us. That house has been referred to as the rat house. And the first week we're there, a helicopter's hovering over our house and there's a police shootout in the park in front of us. And this is God's will, okay.

I like, one of my favorite stories about Paul, I love this story, is Paul, who's writing this letter to Rome, okay. He's told to go and to spread the gospel, and we see in Acts 27, as a prisoner, and Paul's getting beaten, he's getting imprisoned, all these bad things are happening to him. My favorite story is where he gets on a boat as a prisoner, and they're supposed to go to Rome, but like this hurricane wind comes and wrecks the boat, and they all swim to shore to Malta, which is an island. And then Paul goes to get brush wood, and what happens? A viper comes out and bites him, okay. God's told him, go spread my gospel. And then he's beaten, imprisoned, in a shipwreck, swam to an island, and I love how the Bible, I love how Bible puts it, chapter 28, four says, when the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand.

He's just holding his hand out like this. I'm sure Paul's going like, come on, really? A snake, I'm doing everything you told me to, and now I have a viper hanging off of my arm. And then, you know what happened? He didn't die, and islanders came to know Christ because they wanted to know his God, because his God doesn't allow him to die from vipers. And so I feel like there's times where we feel like we're just standing here with a snake on our arm, going, really, God? Like this circumstance I'm in, I'm doing everything you told me to do, and I thought this is what you wanted. And so we have to put aside this idea that if we're in God's will, he's just kind of laying down this really smooth path for us. And then anytime it gets rocky, this must not be God's will. And so the pitfalls being that we view his will as a tight rope, that it must be some sort of call,

or that if things get bad, it must not be in God's will. So let's be real clear, when we talk about God's will for our lives, it can sound mysterious or elusive. However, I want you to have confidence that the vast majority of what God wants you to do has already been laid out. It's not a secret. And he has graciously given it to us. And we can refer to this, when you think about God's will for my life, we can call this obedient living, okay? God's will, he's laid out for us in his scripture. It's given us a lot of instruction in how to live our life. This is not outdated. It never will be outdated. It's God's word. And so majority of the will for your life involves you just being obedient in how we live our lives. How do you follow the will of your life? How do you obey his word and actively live out his instructions? And so this is something I think comforting

to know that God's will for our lives are all very similar, okay? And this is obedient living. So as we continue to look back at the mercies of God to motivate us to obedience, not out of obligation, that the, which is our logical response is to kill our selfishness and allow the Holy Spirit to do work. And not outwardly influence. And the other side of this, so you have obedient living, and then we call the other side discernment living. And discernment living is where we may not fully understand what God wants us to do. Remember at the end of verse two it says that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. And so we're gonna face decisions where we're unclear on what God wants us to do. And I think it's good to note that when we're living discernment, it's not you're either living by discernment or you're living by obedience.

They're happening together at the same time because the obedience feeds the discernment. But when we're faced with a decision, it really should draw us to just double down on our efforts in God's word and prayer. And what I would encourage you to do, if you're faced with decisions that you're not really sure what God's doing, we've talked about scripturing and prayer, and I'd say invite people in to that.

God's given a lot of people wisdom and uses people to speak into your lives. I think we can all attest to that. And then they're praying for you through it. And that way you don't feel like you're going at it alone. And so just know that obedient living and discernment living are interwoven and not separated. An example of this would be, Candace and I, we live in Burleson and we were going to church in South Fort Worth and we felt, we really felt like God was wanting us to be in church in Burleson. The odd thing about that was, we also felt he was telling us to wait, which made zeros into us. Now what we didn't know, or kind of what God was aligning was the Caperton family being called to go lead a church somewhere, didn't know it was Burleson yet, and happened to be Burleson, and God had aligned those timings of that. So we started coming to church at the same time the Capertons,

and God had that planned. I didn't see it. I don't know what I'd do if God just showed me, because I want to know everything God. I don't know if y'all are like me. I sure would like to know, just tell me. But that's where faith comes in, because he has been true and has responded in ways that he doesn't have to tell us. We don't have to know. Even if we did, I think we would probably go, nah, nah, not that. Plan B, what's your plan B?

We have to trust that his will for our life is good and perfect for him. And so to see him work in different areas. So I imagine we have people today here who are in different parts of where this isn't God's will. So maybe you feel lost, like God doesn't have a plan in your life. Like nothing's really going on. Everything is just kind of spinning. You're in neutral.

I would just encourage you to not grow weary or tired, to just remember back at the mercies God have done in your life and what we see in scripture. And I would lay down your frustrations and your doubts at his feet, vulnerable. He calls us to do that. Ask him to help you with that. Ask him to help you to see what it is he may be asking you to do. And it may be just wait. No one likes that. But God may be calling you to wait. Maybe you're faced with a tough decision in life and not sure if God wants you to do something. I would first just make sure, I would encourage you to be honest with yourself and make sure that your selfishness is not becoming a hurdle to what you probably already know what he's calling you to do. Things like selflessness would look like doubt. This is probably not the right time. Like if you're pushing back. I would just say to just selflessly give yourself

over to the Lord. Selflessly give yourself over to the Lord, knowing that he has his best interest in you and he's not gonna leave you or forsake you. And then I would imagine that some of you all might feel like Paul on the island of Malta with a snake hanging from your arm and going how can God be calling me into anything with my life so upside down? This is crazy. I obviously have fallen out of God's will. And I would just say just like Paul and just like a lot of us can attest God has not left you and just because times are crazy doesn't mean you've done something wrong. I would just encourage you to continue to go back to him in prayer and to just have conversations with God about what your doubts are and how tough it is and ask him to help you along and bring other people along with that too. Because God is the same God of Paul on the island of Malta that delivered people

because a snake was hanging his arm as he is gonna help with whatever situation you're in. So the challenge for us is to look back and remind ourselves of the mercies of God. So we start by looking back. We have to start with reminding ourselves what is the motivation? Is to remember all that he's done for you. The second one is to continuously kill our selfishness daily. That's the only way to align our own desires. It's your will not mine. And that's really tough because our instinct is to want to do what's convenient for us. So to just pray to help you live sacrificiously every day. And the last one is to seek the Holy Spirit and renovation in your life. There may be some parts of your life riddled with sin that you need to address with God and it starts with repentance, to be vulnerable in front of him. And so my prayer for us this morning is that we can agree with Mama Tina

when he said that there's no better place to be than the will of God. Okay, so let's go ahead and pray. God, we thank you for, we just thank you for your truths. We thank you that you did not give us an empty playbook, that you didn't leave us alone. Lord, help us to remember all the things that you have done for us. Help us to just understand, honestly, just to understand the weight of those things. We hear them a lot in church. We hear them a lot in different places, Lord, but just make them real and personal for us. Remind us who we were before you. And just help us to seek your will. Help us to want to do your things to align with your desires and to really put to death the things that we want to do, Lord. And we just thank you for loving us. I thank you for a body of church to help us walk through this together. And I just pray that we can do that well. That's your name, I pray.

Amen.