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Would you please take out your Bibles and turn in them to the book of Proverbs in the middle of your Bible and chapter number 3. Proverbs, chapter number 3. You know, I am very much glad that I am alive in this day and era because I am having the opportunity to see the development of all the technology that we have today. There is so much of it out there. And it just keeps emerging and many times it is incredibly amazing, just very amazing stuff.
And one of the most amazing things that has come on our scene in my mind is GPS – the Global Positioning Satellite system. You know, you could buy one of those and you could put it in your car or you could order it from the factory in your car, and when you are unsure of which way you are to go or you need some guidance and direction, well, you can turn on your GPS and the GPS will show you the way that you are to go.
It might tell you that you need to “keep left on High street” but it will also tell you when exactly you will be turning or taking a new direction. It might tell you that you need to “turn right on Switzer road” and exactly how far ahead Switzer road will be.
And you might even ask yourself the question “How does this happen?” I mean, how does GPS do what it does? Well, high up in the sky is a GPS satellite. In fact, there are a number of GPS satellites up there. And see, that satellite that is up there can see what we can’t see. And that satellite that is way up there has a perspective that we do not have and it puts it into a unique position to guide us and direct us.
But, you know what is interesting, God is very similar to GPS. God is in a unique position way up there to guide and direct us. God can see things that we can’t see and God has a perspective that we don’t have. And He is committed to leading us and guiding us.
As we saw last week, He is committed to guide us until death as it says in Psalm 48:14. He is, we saw last week, committed to “instruct us in the way that we should go,” Psalm 32, verse 8. He is committed to “lead me and guide me” as we saw in Psalm 31:3.
He is committed to those things but the question we tend to wrestle with is “How do I know his desired will for my life? What does God want me to do? Where does God want me to go? How do I know the will of God?” And I know there have been times in which I would have loved to have had a GPS little portable unit hanging around my neck where I could just simply turn it around and go, “Oh, this is what I need to do and this is where I need to go.” But the reality is that God hasn’t given us a little portable GPS unit. So, how do we know the will of God?. Because we don’t have something like that, there seems to be this tremendous amount of confusion out there. How are we supposed to determine the will of God? How do I get a grip on the Will of God? Do I go by impressions that He gives me? Do I go by the circumstances that come up in my life? Do I pay attention to what other people have to say? Do I somehow find some sort of a sign that I can read up in the clouds?
Last week we began a short series of messages that we have entitled “Divine GPS: How To Get A Grip On The Will Of God.” And as we started last week, we talked about the idea if we are going to address this issue of how do I get a grip on the will of God, we need to start with the foundation. You always begin with the foundation. Everything else is built on a foundation and that foundation of knowing the will of God has two pillars in it. One pillar is the Living Book and the other pillar is the Living Person. In regards to the Living Book, we get a grip on knowing the will of God by searching the scriptures and we looked at that last week. In regards to the Living Person, we get a grip on knowing the will of God by deepening our relationship with Him.
So, again, last week we took the first pillar of the foundation. If you missed that message, please get a copy of it or go to the website at Wildwoodchurch.org and download it.
Today we want to talk about the second pillar in the foundation and that is the pillar of the Living Person. And then, in the weeks ahead, we are going to look at some other guidelines and principles. [Now next week, I won’t be here. I will be with some 80 men down at Tyler, Texas at the Pine Cove Men’s Retreat. Mark will be with you. But after that, we will continue on our series.]
But, today we are looking at the second part of the foundation of knowing the will of God and getting a grip on the will of God. Here is what is interesting about this and why the foundation is so important. It is because, it is true in my life – I think it is probably true in your life, we have a tendency to lose sight of the foundation and the foundation is critical. We have a tendency to lose sight of the importance of the Living Book and searching the scriptures and we have a tendency to lose sight of the importance of the Living Person and deepening our relationship with Christ.
And so, really what we are doing in these first couple of weeks is going back to the basics, back to the foundation of it all. And we want to talk about the living person and getting a grip on the will of God by deepening our relationship with Him.
Now, I want to begin by saying that the will of God is not so much a location, it is not so much a vocation, it is not really learning a formula or technique. Really, getting a grip on the will of God involves a living relationship with a person – the person of Jesus Christ. And so, we want to just examine that pillar a little more and the plan today as we examine that pillar of the living person and deepening our relationship with Him, we want to look at three passages of scripture. That is where we are going. We are going to look at Proverbs, Chapter 3, verses 5 and 6. We are going to look at Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. And then we are going to look at Philippians chapter 2 and verse 13. So that is the plan. And as we look at these, we are going to get some insights into how our relationship with the living person influences our ability to know and have a grip on the will of God.
So, if you have your Bible open to Proverbs Chapter 3, I want you to look at verses 5 and 6. Now these are familiar verses to many of us. But they are vitally critical verses. Let me read verses 5 and 6. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He”… this is what ends up happening then…. “will make your paths straight.” Now let’s just look at that. Let’s take that couple of verses apart a little bit more. Notice what He says. He says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart.” We need to trust in Him which means to put confidence in Him, to rest our weight on our relationship with Him; to depend on Him fully.
And then it goes on to say, “Do not lean on,” the idea here is something we lean on for support like you would a cane or someone else’s arm. “Don’t lean on” what? “Our own understanding.” He says, “don’t lean on your own ability. Rather trust in the Lord.” In other words, here is what we are not to do. We are not to lean on our own understanding. We are not to lean on handling our own decisions and direction in life. We are not to rely on our own reasoning and our own thought process. We are not to lean on the idea that we want to control all of our decisions and our destiny. We don’t lean on that. The implication that He is trying to make to us, as we look at these verses, is that we need Him. Don’t just lean on yourself, trust in the Lord.
And he goes on to say, “In all your ways, acknowledge Him.” Now the little word that is translated “acknowledge” there, is in the original language one of the basic words “to know.” It basically could be translated this way, “In all your ways, Know Him” In all your ways, understand Him, experience him in relationship, know Him well. Very interesting word. It is the exact same word used in the Old Testament to describe sexual intercourse between a husband and a wife. What is he saying here? In all your ways know Him. See, this is a term for an intimate relationship, an intimate friendship. In other words, we are to be conscious of his presence and his desires in every arena of our life. He is making a call here to you and to me to know God intimately. Have a relationship with Him.
Now, here is what I want you to see, when we do that, what happens? In verse six: “He will make your paths straight.” The New King James Translates it “He will direct your paths.” Now, get what this is saying. It is saying that when we focus on our relationship with Jesus Christ, our relationship with God, when we abide in Christ, when we walk by the Spirit, He will make our path straight. He will put us on the straight path, the upright path, the right path. See what it is saying?
The thrust of all this is that we are not to be leaning on our own decisions and our own direction but rather we are to be cultivating an intimate relationship and friendship with God Himself. And when we do that, He puts us on the path that is straight, on the path that is right-on, on the upright path.
You know that there is really a parallel in the relationship we are being called to have with God, with any human relationship. Particularly a parallel, though, with the relationship between a husband and a wife. You know, my wife Janet and I have been married for 33 years. And when you add in the years that we dated and we were together every single day, that’s about 36 years. It is almost amazing to me to even say that. I mean, I am such a young guy [smile]…. But we have been together and close for 36 years. And you know, when you have been close with someone for 36 years, you know what happens is that you can sense what the other one is thinking. You know, you can sense when they are frustrated. You can sense when they are disappointed. And at times, we even know what the other one is going to say before they say it. Which gives us the unique, wonderful ability to finish sentences for each other, you know. That’s a great relationship building thing to do [sarcasm]. Someone is trying to communicate and you just finish their sentence for them, you know. But we are able to do that because we have spent a lot of time together and I am acquainted with what my wife likes and what she desires.
Now, can you imagine if in the very first year of our relationship, if I just said to her, “Listen, will you… wait a minute here, before we go too much further would you just give me the formula, would you just give me the technique so that I can know your will. I would just like to know it right up front, just give it to me right now.” Well, if I had said that to my wife, what do you think her reaction would have been? She would have said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, you don’t understand this thing. I am not interested in handing out some formula. What I am interested in is a relationship.”
And you know what? So is God. He doesn’t want us to say, “Would you just give me the formula! Come on! Just go ahead and give it to me. I just want to know what your will is right now.” He says, “No, no, no – what I want, you see, is a relationship with you.”
Earlier on I said the will of God is not so much a location or not so much a vocation, it is not so much learning a formula or technique. The will of God really, if we are going to get a grip on it, involves having a relationship with the living person of Jesus Christ. See, basically when we get to know Him better, when we get closer to Him in a relationship, guess what ends up happening? We have more of His perspective. We understand and we sense more of what His will is. We actually become more like Him when we grow closer to Him.
And you know this is so foundational, this is so basic, this is so vital. Isn’t it interesting how we are? And I say “we” because I am right in this boat with the rest of us. Isn’t it interesting how we can go for days without meaningful conversation with God. And I mean by that, you know, we only saying like “Thank you Lord for this food and thank you for this day today.” Isn’t it interesting how we can go for days without truly meaningful conversation with God? How we can be dulled in our consciousness of His presence with us everywhere we are. How we can be really out of touch spiritually. And then we wonder “I wonder why I don’t really know what God’s will is.”
You begin to see the disconnect that works there? I have been there. You see, here’s what we tend to cry to God: “Show me what you want me to do!” And do you know what he says back, “Draw near to me – stay close to me – get to know me.” Isn’t it interesting?…the great disconnect that we all have.
You know Asaph draws the picture of this very relationship that God desires I think from us in Psalm 73, verses 23 and 24. This is what he writes. He writes, “I am continually with you. You hold me by my right hand, with your counsel you will guide me.” Now listen to what that is saying: “I am continually with you, God, I am focusing on my relationship with you. You, God, hold me by my right hand and with your counsel you will guide me.” He is saying that the Living Person, you see, that is the way you get directed and guided in the will of God in our relationship with Him.
Now, I want to turn to another passage in the New Testament so if you would, turn over with me to Romans chapter 12 and verses 1 and 2. As we continue to see that we can get a grip on the will of God by deepening our relationship with Jesus Christ. And when we come to Romans 12, Chapters 1 and 2, we are coming into a fairly familiar passage to many of us but again it is a very vital foundational one.
Now, before we even read this, I just want you to understand something: the way Paul is presenting this information that we are going to read. What he is not doing is saying, “You know, I’m just kinda casually sitting around thinking what I could tell you, and you know, this is a good thing, but it is not really too important. I gotta say something so I will just say this.” That’s NOT what is happening here. I want you to notice the way he is communicating. He says, “I urge you brethren.” I urge you – and this is including brothers and sisters here – just the way the language was structured at the day. I am urging you something. “I want to get your attention because this is vitally critical” is really what he is saying. I am beseeching you, I am begging you, this is of top-flight importance, that “by the mercies of God you present your bodies, yourselves, as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable by God which is your spiritual service of worship. It is what you ought to do in light of what Christ did for you, and do not be conformed to this world system of thought and values, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that”, here we go, “you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
The New Living Translation says, “then, after you do this, you will know what God wants you to do.” God’s Word [a translation] in that translation says,” Then you will be able to determine what God really wants”. You see what Paul is really saying here? He is making an appeal to making our relationship with Jesus Christ top priority. And he says, this is what I am begging you to do. If you want to have a grip on the will of God, I am urging you and begging you to present yourselves to him.
I want to read to you what Richard Strauss wrote about this word here “Present.” He says, “this word ‘present’ means to place at one’s disposal. It was used of a servant who was completely at his master’s disposal. There was no point,” Listen to this, “in the master telling his servant what he wanted him to do, unless he was assured that the servant would do it. Paul is urging us to make ourselves that available to God. And unless God can be assured that we will carry out His directions, there is really no good reason for Him to tell us what those directions are.” What an interesting thought that is.
He goes on to write, “Suppose for a moment you are standing in a recruiting office of the United States Army. While today’s Army gives you some choice before you join, there is a great deal the recruiter is not going to tell you. [yeah] There will be hundreds of directives issued throughout the course of your military career but he isn’t going to stand there and try to explain to you in every detail the Army’s plan for your life, every place that they are going to send you, and everything they are going to ask you to do. That would be absurd. When Uncle Sam says “I want you” he means that he wants an unconditional surrender of your entire being to him and not until you make that commitment and put yourself at the Army’s disposal will the entire plan begin to unfold for you.”
And then he goes on to write these words, He says, “God wants you far more than Uncle Sam does. And God urges you, begs you, beseeches you, pleads with you, to offer yourself to Him. It is like saying, Here’s my life, Lord. There are lots of things I would like to do with it but what you want me to do is more important than all of my wishes. I am putting myself completely at your disposal for the rest of my life.” Paul says, “I am urging you. Present yourself to Him.”
Have you ever done that in your life? I know that many of us have understood the good news of what Jesus Christ came to this planet to do, and we have put our trust and our eternal future in the person of Jesus Christ but I think many of us have run around and we have never done this. One of the reasons why I know that is true is because that was true of my life for many years.
Have you done that in your life where you just have said to him, “Be my leader. I am just presenting myself to you. I want you to be the leader of my life”?
See, a lot of times, this is what we tend to do. We tend to say to God, “Give me answers!” and God says back to us, “Give me your heart.” See, when we deepen our relationship with Him, then he begins to give us the ability to prove what the will of God is.
I mean, why should he show us His will for the future in our life when we are not walking with Him? Why would He do that? If we are not cultivating a deepening relationship with Jesus Christ, why would he send us any of that stuff? He wants to know that we are willing to say, “Here I am. Be the leader of my life.”
Really, what I believe God desires from me and desires from you is pliability. Pliability. You know, when I was growing up, and they still have it today, they had that, you know, colored modeling clay. Do you know what I am talking about? You could buy it and it is pink. And you could buy it and it’s blue, and you could buy it and it’s red, and you could buy it and it’s yellow. And you know, you get that stuff out of the containers and you could just shape that into whatever you want to do. When it is fresh out of the container, it is very bendable and easily shaped.
And I can still remember when I was younger, I would take the red one and I would roll it into like a hot dog form and then take the yellow modeling clay and I would fashion this hot dog bun, you know. Actually I am getting a little hungry even thinking about that right now. But that is an example of what I would do. You can do anything with that stuff. You can shape it into any animal shape that you want.
Another thing I would do when I was younger, I would take it and I would fashion this cannon and then I would roll up all these cannon balls and I would stack the cannon balls around, and in my imagination I would think about how cool it would be to you know shoot those little puppies out of there. It’s a boy’s mind – what can I say?
But, you know, that stuff’s great – when it is pliable. But, you know what is interesting, if you leave it out of the container something happens. It gets hard, it gets brittle. It gets unbendable. It is no longer pliable. And you know what? We can become like that in our spiritual life. We can become hardened in our own plans, in our own agendas, in our own ways. And suddenly we are no longer pliable in the hands of God.
You know there are little flags that can pop up when that is true of us, when we are in a brittle, unbendable state of mind. Let me just give you a few of them. These are all signs that we are the ones who are gripping the steering wheel, you know. The signs include things like irritability – being irritable; being pushy; being driven; being very critical; being overbearing; being extremely worried; being fearing. See, those are all signs that I am the one that wants to be in control. They are signs that we are no longer pliable. Any of those things pretty descriptive of you today? Irritable? Pushy? Driven? We are all these things at times. Critical? Overbearing? Worried? Very fearful? See, if those things become prominent in our life, those little flag waving. Someone’s not pliable anymore.
Let me give you an interesting key to how all of this works. You take Proverbs 3 and you take Romans 12 and you put them into action. I want to show you what happens. I want to show you what happens when we are cultivating a walk with Jesus Christ. When we are presenting ourselves to him as a living sacrifice. When we are committed to deepening our relationship with Him. When we are submitting to His will and scripture as best we understand it to be. When we are pliable before Him. When we are abiding in Christ. When we are walking by the Holy Spirit. I want you to see what happens.
Look at the third passage we want to examine today which is Philippians, Chapter 2, and verse 13. Philippians chapter 2 and verse 13. Chapter 2, verse 13 says this. This is a fascinating verse to me. “For God is at work in you, both to will and to do or work for His good pleasure”. That is what He desires – His good pleasure. He is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure, to do his good pleasure. See, here is the idea. When we are cultivating a walk with Him, when we are presenting ourselves to Him as a living sacrifice, when we are deepening our relationship with Him, when we are submitting to Him, when we are pliable before Him and when we are abiding in him and walking by the spirit, guess what happens? His will becomes reflected in our desires. Do you see what it is saying there? He is at work inside of you, both to will and to do or work for his good pleasure.
It is not only a New Testament concept, it is an Old Testament concept. Psalm 37:4 the Psalmist says “Delight yourself in the Lord.” Have that relationship a priority, be pursuing that relationship and you notice what the rest of the verse says?, “He will give you the desires of your heart.” Why? Because as we are having this relationship with Him, he is at work in us creating desires in our heart that are the same as the desires that He has.
Now, I don’t know if you are catching what I am saying here. This is actually kind of radical thinking. Here is what has happened, I have had people over the years, over the decades, come to me and they say, (whining voice) “I don’t know what the will of God is for me. I don’t know what the will of God about this or what the will of God is about that.”
And some of the times this is the way I have done this, I have said to them, “Wait a minute now, are you ordering your life by scripture? As best as you understand it, are you ordering your life around that? Are you being obedient to what the word of God has to say?” And they often will say, “Yeah, I really am.” I mean, I don’t know, there may be some verses I don’t know about that I haven’t lived up to. If you have something, share it with me, but as best as I can, as consistently as I can, I do order my life around the word of God.
And then, I will say to them, “Well, what is the pattern of your relationship with Jesus Christ? You know, are you seeking to walk by the Spirit? Are you consistently seeking to follow His will in your everyday life? Are you seeking to present yourself? Are you presenting yourself to Him and saying, “You be the leader. You be the one in charge. You lead and direct me.” Are you pliable before God in your relationship with Christ? And then, a lot of times they would say to me, “Yeah, I am. Basically that is true of me.” And then I would say to them, “Well, what it is that you want to do?” I can’t tell you how many times I have had somebody look at me like “Well, you don’t really understand why I am here – I want to know what God wants me to do.”
And I say, wait a second, here is what I am hearing you say. I am hearing you say that I am living in light of the word of God on a consistent basis, and I am making it a priority to have Him be the leader of my life, and I am pliable before Him. Well, what do you want to do then? See, that is really what it is saying here. He is, as we deepen our relationship with Him, at work in us both to will, desire, and to do His good pleasure.
See, this is why we are down to the foundation here. This is why part of the foundation, one of the pillars is that Living Person, deepening our relationship with God. How do you know the will of God? How do you know what God wants us to do? Well, we are focusing on the foundation. The second key pillar is the Living Person. We get a grip on the will of God by deepening our relationship with the Savior. What this really means is when we are walking with Him, when in all our ways we acknowledge Him, when we are presenting ourselves to Him saying, you have my life, when we seek to be conscious of His desires in every arena of our life–He is at work in us both to will and to do His good pleasure. In other words, this is really what I am saying, as we focus on our relationship with Jesus Christ, decisions have a way of taking care of themselves.
Now, as we get ready to close this morning, I want to talk a little bit about some life response that we can have. And I want to talk about some life response in terms of the two different groups of people that we have present this morning in all likelihood. In other words, by that, I believe we probably have some people here who do not know God. Who do not know Jesus Christ. And we have some people here who do know God, and do know Jesus Christ. And so, I want to talk about some action steps, some life response that can be taken despite which group we may be found.
First of all, I want to talk about if you don’t know God, what should you do in light of what we have looked at today? And I think the response that God wants from you, if you do not know God, is He wants you, as he wanted all of us to do, is to repent and to turn to Christ.
Repent means you change your mind about something and it leads to a change of action. What I mean by repenting is that many of us are running around in our life, we are trying to think, if I could just be good enough, if I could be sweet enough, if I could be religious enough, if I could do whatever it is to fill-in-the-blank, somehow God will just accept me. We need to change our mind about that because the Bible says we can never be good enough, we can never do enough stuff the right way for him to say, “Okay, no judgment for you.” We can’t do that. But that is the reason why God sent Jesus Christ to this planet. He came down with a plan and the plan was to die, to die on a cross to take the penalty that I deserve, you deserve, we all deserve, upon Himself.
And so, if you are here today and you don’t know God, I know what God wants you to do. He wants you to repent and He wants you do turn to Christ. He wants you to place your faith and trust not in what you can pull off in some way, but in what Christ did for you. And so, the question is: Will you do that? And I would beg you to do that today. You don’t have to go anywhere special. This is a transaction that happens between you and God. And, you in your own heart could just say, “I can’t do it. I can’t be good enough. I want to lay that behind, and I want to grip onto and embrace what God did for me. I want to repent and I want to turn to Christ. And I want to come to Him as the only deliverer from judgment that I ever could have.” So, if you don’t know Him, do that. Do that today. Do that right where you are.
Now, for those of us who do know God, I have a couple of other life response action steps I would like to suggest that we do. So, if you do know God, here is the first one I think that He wants from you–as he wants from me–and that first step is to present yourself to Him. See, God is saying, even to those of us who know Him, “I want you.” And there are some of us who, yes, we understood that we can’t earn our way into Heaven, we can’t earn our way into the good graces of God, and so we have turned to Christ. We have trusted in Christ. He is our deliverer. He is our rescuer from sin, but basically we have been running our own life. The reason why I know that is true of many of us is because it was true of me for a number of years! And so if you know Him, what He really wants you to do is to present yourself to Him.
Now, I’m always amused at the strategy of the enemy in this regard because once I remember sitting there and hearing very similar appeals to myself and I remember what I thought…it was the little lie that the enemy would whisper in your ear…‘If you present yourself to Him, He will send you into the inner Amazon, you will never see a toilet again the rest of your life.’ And you know we hear that kind of message or other messages and what do we do? We hold back because God can’t be trusted. Oh no! Let me tell you something…you can trust God 100%. I have never regretted for one minute presenting myself to Him and saying You be the leader of my life. Now there have been times I, you know, grabbed the steering wheel again, but I have never, ever regretted that, and you won’t either. Present yourself to Him.
See, what He wants us to do is to seek first His kingdom and these other things will be added in. He wants us to make Him a priority. He wants us to say I’m gonna follow where You’re leading, because until we say that, He’s not that interested in giving us information, you see. He wants us to say, ‘I want the Lord’s prayer to be true of my life. You know, part of the Lord’s prayer is, ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ and guess who is on earth? We are. He wants us to say to Him, ‘I want Your will to be done in my life as it is done in heaven. I want Your will done in my family, I want Your will done in my finances, I want Your will done in my career, I want Your will done in my children, I want Your will done in my dreams for the future, I want Your will done in the words that come out of my mouth, I want Your will done in the friendships that I choose to have on this planet. One of the things He wants us to do, if we know God, is to present ourselves to Him.
And I think there’s also a second thing–in terms of an action point, a life response we can have that He wants us to do–He wants us to ask Him, to ask Him. In James 1:5 it says, ‘If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all men generously and it will be given.’ You know that verse was written to a group of believers in Jesus Christ who were going through incredible suffering, many of them had been driven from their homes, just try to picture what that’s like, if you just had to leave everything that you’ve got. And they were being persecuted and they had questions about the will of God, and they were saying, ‘Where are we going to go, and what are we going to do?’ He said if you lack wisdom let yourselves ask of God, who gives to all men generously, and it will be given. So sometimes we’re in the middle of that kind of a thing, we’re in the middle of a serious illness or we’ve had a loss of a job or we’ve had a relationship conflict…and what God says is., ‘Well, just ask me about it.’
Paul Little tells a great story about his college years, and you know I don’t know what it is about college students, we’re all like this when we’re students, we’re just sort of, you know, fervent about things. And he was, he was very fervent about things and he just wanted to know, ‘How do you know the will of God?’ And he just got after it, and he was going to every seminar he could find on how to know the will of God, he was reading every book he could find on how to know the will of God, and he was asking all the people around him about ‘How do you know the will of God? I gotta know the will of God!’ And then he went to a conference at Urbana [a collegiate missions confernece] and one of the speakers asked this question, ‘How many of you who are concerned about the will of God, have spent 5 minutes a day asking Him to show you His will?’ And Paul Little was just startled, he said, ‘I haven’t been doing that.’ If anyone lacks wisdom let him ask of God who gives to all men generously and it will be given.
See, here’s the idea, as we invest in a relationship with Him and as we ask Him, as we are doing regular prayer, you know what often happens? The fog begins to lift a little bit, thoughts begin to clarify and we have crystallized in our mind what God really wants us to do. Are you willing to present yourself? Are you asking Him?
Let’s pray. Father, we want to take a moment just to pray for both types of people who could be here today. Father, we pray for those who don’t know You. May they realize that You are calling them into a relationship with the living God. May they realize that even as I’m speaking right now, God is wooing [seeking, inviting] them, and calling them to turn from themselves and to turn to a living Savior, who wants to be their rescuer, not only in this life, but for all of eternity. And Lord, we would pray that they would heed that call from You. And that they would trust in Christ even today. Father, for those of us who do know You, we would pray that we would be pliable in Your hands, that we will allow you to be the leader of our life, that we’ll give the reigns of this little buggy that we drive, called our life, and put them back in Your hands. Lord, we would pray for those of us who know You, that our heart commitment would be that Your will be done on earth, in my life. That Your will be done, nothing more, nothing less and nothing else. Amen.