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Plainly Speaking
with Karl J. Forehand
The
Will of God
(James 4:13-17)
by
Karl J. Forehand
Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow, we
shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in
business and make a profit." Yet
you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor
that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, "If the
Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that." But as it is, you boast in your arrogance;
all such boasting is evil. Therefore,
to one who knows the right thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is
sin. (James 4:13-17)
When Reggie White was a free agent, he
made it clear that he would only play for a team if it was God’s will. The ordained minister picked up his messages
one day and found one from coach Holgrem.
The coach said, “This is God – I want you to come play at Green Bay.”
We want that type of clarity in our decision making, yet even
when we do hear God’s directions, we often don’t listen. We are like the man that slid down the
hill and caught a branch on the way down.
Calling out, he said, “Is there anyone up there?” A voice answered, “Yes, what you need to
do is let go.” The man called back,
“Is there anyone else up there?”
What we do with the Will of God
1. We often disregard the
will of God (13-14)
Truth #1 – Life if complex
Because life is complex, we worry. We eventually realize that worry is wrong
– it never changes much and most things we worry about never happen. To make it worse, God’s Word tells us no
to worry. So, instead of worry, WE
PLAN. Planning makes us feel
better.
The planner decides the time. “Today or tomorrow,” he says.
They also determine the location.
“Here or there, or in this city,” she says. Then they determine the duration. They surmise, “we will spend a year or two there.” The last thing a planner decides is the
outcome. “And we will make a profit,”
they assume. The planner James
describes sound like a good modern day goal setter.
I developed into a very good
goal setter when I graduated from college.
By age 30, I had accomplished virtually every goal I had set out to
accomplish. The trouble was that I
had accomplished them all and was still miserable. What was the problem? I
still answered God’s call on my life.
God’s will for my life was not yet apparent.
So what is so wrong with goal
setting? Actually goal setting can be
a very good thing except:
Truth #2 – Life is uncertain:
Because life is uncertain, we often get caught in a paralysis
of analysis. We fail or fall short
and we assume that we need to spend more time planning and goal-setting. The truth is that life is uncertain; so,
we either get stuck in analysis or we become discouraged and bitter because
we haven’t realized our dreams. James
tells us, “(Just to be honest) You don’t know what your life will be
tomorrow.”
The other truth is:
Truth #3 – Life is short
Our life is like a vapor. Men and women often go through mid-life crisis because they
feel they haven’t accomplished the things they set out to do. The crisis we need to have is a “I haven’t
listened to God’s will for my life” crisis.
We are discouraged because we haven’t accomplished our humanistic
goals, but we seem to be unaffected that we haven’t discovered and
implemented God’s plans for us.
Much of our prayer life is “I
want…” Most of our church life is
spent in power struggles. The
majority of public life is wasted striving for popularity. All the while, we disregard God’s
will for us.
First, we disregard, then often:
- We Disagree
with God’s will (16)
We would probably never openly
argue with God, but we often do in our boasting. We think “I know that I am right. In reality, if we ever sin, we might always be wrong in our
assumptions that we are right. As a
pastor, I have to continually ask God, “Is this right?” or “Am I thinking
correctly?”
We can’t afford to distill God’s will into a formula or
box. If we convince ourselves that we
are totally right, we are probably, at least partially wrong. God’s will is perfect – we are not!
One way we disagree with His
will is to deny that it exists.
We don’t deny it verbally, but we say things like “I’m not a theology
guy, I guess I can’t figure this out.”
I have recently been convinced that I need to study my wife. I study her because I love her. We can’t just cop out, we have to be
committed to it.
Another way we disagree with His
will is to deny that it is important.
We deny it by our priorities.
An old recipe for rabbit stew said:
Step 1 – kill a rabbit.
Arrogance really causes a lostness.
The root of the Greek word stress a “wandering about.” Everything else is a priority except
discovering and doing the will of God.
The last way we disagree with
His will is to deny that it is attainable. God says, over and over again in His Word, “If you seek me, you
will find me.” What we mean when we
say that it is not attainable is that we are not in habit of seeking it. It is not a priority and we usually only
SEEK it in crisis. Why does God seem
to speak so clearly in crisis?
Because it is the only time we are listening.
We disregard God’s will, we
disagree with it and ultimately:
3. We disobey God’s will (17)
Someone said, “Knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing.” What DO we know about God’s will?
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We know that He
wants all people to be saved
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We know that He
wants us to be Spirit-filled
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We know that He
wants us to be sanctified
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We know that He
wants us to be submissive
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We know that He
wants us to suffer with Him
Our actual problem is not that
we don’t know, it is that we don’t do.
Often we think we have to know
the complete plan for our life to understand God’s will. However, it is much simpler than
that. The real question is: “Have we
done the last thing God taught us to do.”
Most of us are in holding pattern of analysis, which is really a stall
tactic for disobedience.
What should we do?
4. We should obey God’s will (15)
“If the Lord wills” is not just a suffix to our prayers. It should be a prefix to our actions. We have to acknowledge God’s will, accept
His Lordship, and then access the knowledge of His will. God is not against planning – He just
wants to give you the plan. Proverbs
19:21 says, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but he counsel of the Lord,
it will stand.”
Are you comprehending and obeying the will of God?
Karl
J. Forehand, 2002
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