Steps to maturity – learn God’s will- the challenge Part 3
It seems like a difficult one until you realize
- God designed you for a purpose
- He placed in your heart a joy that comes when you are fulfilling your purpose
- He is constantly providing opportunities for you to fulfill your purpose
It would seem that God’s will is always right in front of us….but what is it?
It is the way God created you, so you can live a fulfilled life, show the love of God to others and change the world!
Two weeks ago we talked about how being faithful even in the smallest of things is part of God beginning to reveal his will to you….
Last week….God will present situations for you. All you need to do is do them
Both Abraham and David kind of fell into God’s will from a human point of view but from God’s everything was designed and they accepted the design, they could have chosen to not save Lot or to not fight Goliath but instead they chose to follow God’s chosen path for them and use their skills, passions, and understanding to follow the Lord.
Finding God’s will doesn’t stop there. We will always go through a cycle of growth to keep changing the world around us and to make us more like Jesus.
God brought both Abraham and David to a point after their great victories to reveal their hearts…this is what I call training to follow God’s will part two
Let’s take a look – stretching so we might be more fulfilled
God’s revealed will to us is rarely the end the immediate open door is our learning to walk by faith. Then the Lord often places us in positions to mold and shape us into understanding who we are so we can completely fulfill our purpose
The Lord (either Christ or God the Father) appeared with two angels to Abraham. This is the fourth or fifth time the Lord had appeared to Abraham (depending on your belief as to whom Melchizedek is)
Genesis 18:22-25
Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. 23 And Abraham came near and said, “Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? 24 Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city; would You also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it? 25 Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
Abraham was a warrior, a leader, a shepherd, a businessman, a traveler but the Lord wanted to make sure he was not selfish, God wanted to help him see he had to have a heart of intercession for the people.
God starts out, “50 righteous” and Abraham convinces him if only 10, righteous are in the city, will he save it…he had a heart for the people. God’s will for Abraham was that he become the Father of nations which required him to have a heart for nations…Sodom and Gomorrah were separate nations for Abraham so God wanted Abraham to see that he was ready to be the real Father of nations God had called him too
Abraham knew he was a leader because people followed him but he didn’t understand that God had chosen him beyond his natural ability to be an intercessor so he might always know the Father’s heart
An intercessor is a person who stands in the gap for others through prayer. In the process an intercessor learns the Father’s heart better than any other. A true intercessor is so in tune with God that they can have a tendency to be prophetic God may give them just a word or a vision as God did with Anna and Simeon regarding the birth of Jesus
Abraham would need this heart to stand against all the enemies and understand how to build a nation based on faith in God
God will challenge you but the challenge is to help you understand who you really are pushing you to get everything else out of the way so you can see the real you…. made to do and fulfill your calling
– When we first begin to move in the things of God and we are discovering our way of understanding His plan and purpose for us we need to remember that is just the beginning….as we trust God he begins to show us things about ourselves that are important to who we are called to be but may not know until placed in a position to have them revealed to us
Last week we saw David presented with an opportunity that he naturally grasped, the taking out of Goliath. The people sang his praises, praising him above Saul, his King. God had lifted the anointing to be King, off of Saul and gave it to David but as long as Saul was alive (even after his death) David honored that anointing…why? He was simply God’s man…BUT
For this honoring, David seemed to receive punishment rather than being in the Palace Saul tried to kill him so David had to run from Saul.
1 Samuel 22: 1,2
David therefore departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. So when his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. 2 And everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him. So he became captain over them. And there were about four hundred men with him.
David had learned to lead men into battle but leading the broken, the hurting, the grumblers, whiners, and complainers, giving people hope even when you feel hopeless is part of the gift of a good leader. Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were all great leaders who like David in the midst of utter hopelessness and their own dark night of the soul brought hope to others and all were able to change a nation because of it
When you begin to understand part of God’s will for your life, he will open doors, present challenges and opportunities for you to embrace all of His will for you…he does it to open our eyes to all the possibilities. He is interested in you fulfilling your full potential and that only happens when he presents you with challengesafter you feel secure in where you are and you choose to live up to those seeing them not as challenges but as opportunities.
John Maxwell in his book “the 15 laws of Growth” states
“God’s gift to us is our potential, our gift to God is developing it.”
Embrace the challenge accept it as God calling us to a higher calling that will only bless us.
Sad part is most people reach this place and choose against pressing on we make comfort and relaxation our God rather than believing God has designed us for something greater
It is always our free will to reject it but as we see with Abraham and David as they embraced it they had great success in everything they did
How do we find God’s will and fulfill it?
- Be faithful
God is always looking for people who will be faithful. What are you doing right now? Be faithful to it, do your best no matter how mundane, God places things in our lives to see if He can trust us so He might open doors for us
“Be faithful in little and he will give you much!” based on Luke 16:10
2) Look for the opportunities– God has called you to fulfill His will, He created you to fulfill His will so he will provide
“Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin” Zechariah 4:10
3) The Lord will challenge you further to grow, once you feel comfortable where you are. There are gifts and callings inside of most of us that go unrealized until we are challenged. If we choose to rise to the challenge we see and feel God’s will revealed then it fits like it was made for us…sadly some today will come to this place and fear losing the comfort, control, relaxation they have found and will accept 2ndbest and will wonder, why they are not truly joy-filled, at peace, seeing the victory, overcoming as they should and as God has planned…
-You were designed to fulfill your destiny, God’s plan,
– God will provide opportunities that you can just fall into so you may fulfill your destiny and His plan and
– You can grow into changing the world and fulfilling your destiny, if you are willing to accept the challenge the Lord places before you