A message from Romans 12:1-3 by Don Heatley from Vision Community Church 1/18/09
How many of you are facing a
decision in your life right now?
How are you progressing in making that decision? Have you moved on it and acted on it? Or are you caught in a permanent
holding pattern of leaving your options open? In the coming weeks we will be
exploring how to move past indecision and what criteria we use to make good
decisions. We will examine what
factors should and should not play a role in that process.
Where does that process
begin? When we face a decision,
what is the first question we should ask?
For those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus, the basis of making
all our decisions is supposed to be doing God’s will. In Romans 12 Paul
instructs us that our minds must be renewed so that we can discern God’s will.
Many of you shut me out the minute you heard me say that we are going to talk
about basing our decisions on doing God’s will.
We shut out that message
because we have a lot of misconceptions about the will of God. That phrase “God’s will” scares us a
little bit. We know it is supposed
to be a source of peace for many Christians, but for some of us it has always
had the connotation of a wet blanket. It is as if the life offers all these exciting
possibilities and choices and then along comes someone talking about God’s
will. Much like that opening
scene in Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories,” we often believe doing God’s will
is like being trapped on a bleak dull train ride, while the rest of the world
carouses along on the party express.
When we hear Paul tell us to
renew our minds to discern God’s we may think, “Why would I want to that? Why would I want to bring God into my
decisions? You know he’s only
going to take all the fun and excitement out of my life.”
Think of how we commonly use
the phrase God’s will. It is right
up there with “acts of God.” Just
as “acts of God” is reserved to describe hurricanes and earthquakes, “God’s
will” usually describes equally undesirable outcomes. With depressing regularity, the will of God is presented to
us as something that is limited to the disappointments and tragedies of
life. When we struggle with the
doubt of unanswered prayer for job, or for a loved one to be healed from illness,
or when an inexplicable tragedy like the death of a child occurs, a well-meaning friend might tell us,
“Well, it’s all God’s will.”
Although we know that is somehow supposed to make us feel better, it does
not. So then we feel guilty and
shameful for not reveling in the comfort of all the bad things God supposedly
sends our way as part of “His Divine Will.” If we imagine God’s will to be about all suffering and
unhappiness, why in the world would we want to get aligned with it?
God’s will is a good thing,
despite the many ways we distort it in order to make the mysteries of life
easily explainable. In order to
live out that will, we need to move past our suspicions and distrust. The Good News is that God’s will is not
all pain and Puritanism. God’s
will is that you and I live abundant lives, lives that abound in love,
compassion, justice, and peace.
God’s will is for you and I to grow in deeper relationship with God and
to become more like God.
Think about that for a
moment. God wants us to grow to be
more like God. Jesus even prayed
that for his disciples and for us in the Gospel of John. In his letters, Paul encourages
us to become more Christ-like. For
Paul, to become like Christ is to become more like God that in truth is to
become more authentically human.
In a later Christian writing, 2 Peter 1:4 describes us as partaking in
God’s divine nature. This is what
theologians and Eastern Orthodox Christians refer to as “theosis.” It is very different than the New Age
concept of each of us being God.
God is still God and we are not.
However, rather willing disaster and calamity for us God’s will is that
we be like God or as God puts it, “Be holy as I am holy.”
Tha sounds great but how do
begin to align ourselves with that will?
How do we let God’s will shape us?
One of the main formative elements of our character is the decisions we
make. When you stop and think
about it, much of who we are and how our lives have turned out is the sum of
the decisions we have made along the way.
Think of the decisions we face everyday about things like families,
relationships, careers, school.
Are you having difficulty in those areas? Do you look at a decision you have to make and not even know
where to begin? If we reframe
those decisions as seeking God’s will or God’s purposes in our lives, we will
inevitably begin to see a clearer path ahead and make some very different choices in life. Little by little those choices enable
the Spirit to work on us to become more Christ-like.
In Romans 12 Paul invites us to
have our minds transformed, or as he wrote in Philippians “let the same mind be
in you that was in Christ Jesus.” Right here some of us may object and say, “I
want my own mind. I don’t
want to lose my identity.” This is
not an invitation to lose our identities and live the life of an
automaton. As we discovered last
week, our true identity is that of children of God and children of God have
tremendous freedom. The reason we
need the mind of Christ is so that we make good decisions in our lives,
decisions that lead to more love and justice, decisions that form us to be more
Christ-like, decisions that put us on track with God’s will. We need the a new mind because when we
face difficult decisions, God’s will may lead us to more than one right
answer.
That may come as a surprise to
us since many of have the misconception that God’s will for us is binary
proposition. We think that in
every situation there are only two choices, the one particular choice that God
wants us to make, and everything else that is the path to Hell. That seems too restrictive to us. We fear that if we were to submit to
God’s will, God will pigeonhole us into a role in life that we would
despise. Perhaps that has happened
in your dealings with other people or even family members.
Once I met with a man who
played the piano. When he was
growing up, more than anything else, he wanted to become a professional
musician. For years he practiced,
and even won some competitions. It
seemed he was on his way to becoming a concert pianist, but his father had
other plans for him. His father
was doctor and was determined that his son be one too. So he forced this man to abandon his
dream of music and go to medical school.
Eventually, he did indeed became a doctor, a bitter, angry doctor who
always resented the choice his father forced him to make.
Many of us secretly worry that
God is that kind of Father. If we
were to welcome God’s will into our lives, our dreams would be crushed and we
would be forced into a life of joyless mediocrity. To be sure, following God’s will may lead us outside
our comfort zones. It may cause us
to change our plans. We may even
have our world turned upside down by it.
Despite all that, God’s will always leads us to a more expansive life,
not a constricted one and to more possibilities, not less.
When we face a decision, God’s will may open us up to the possibility of more than one right answer. DeWitt Jones is a world-renowned photographer who writes and speaks about the creative process. He has learned over the years that when given a photo assignment from clients by the likes of National Geographic, that there is never just one right picture that needs to be taken. In the creative process, there are many right answers. You and I are co-creating our lives with God. That creative process involves decisions, decisions for which God may provide more than one right answer.
Peter Kreeft is a popular and
well-respected Roman Catholic author and professor. Although it may not seem like we have anything in common, we
do. Peter and I were raised, not
only in the same Calvinist denomination, but in the very same congregation in
Paterson, NJ. He preceded me by a
couple of decades, so I do not know him.
He left the church of our youth and converted to Roman Catholicism. Both of us had similar questions and
struggles with our theological upbringing and both of us decided to leave for
very different places on the ecclesial map. Yet I believe that neither he nor I, nor the church from
which we came are wrong. All three
of us are doing God’s will in our lives, it is just that God gave us three
different right answers.
He writes, “many
diverse things are good… good is plural. Even for the same person, there are
often two or more choices that are both good. Good is kaleidoscopic. Many roads
are right. The road to the beach is right and the road to the mountains is
right, for God awaits us in both places. Goodness is multicolored. Only pure
evil lacks color and variety. In hell there is no color, no individuality.
Souls are melted down like lead, or chewed up together in Satan's mouth. The
two most uniform places on earth are prisons and armies, not the church.”
Certainly, there are decisions
and choices that we can make that are outside the will of God. However, within that will we find the
freedom to be who God created us to be.
All of our fears about aligning ourselves with the will of
God are groundless. God’s will is
not an instrument of disappointment and tragedy, but a life-affirming force
that molds us into the image of Christ.
God’s will does not repress or squash us. It challenges us to make right, compassionate and just
choices. It is not two choice proposition, but a continuum of God’s love.
In the coming weeks, we will
explore some of the ways in which we can confidently discern that will. When we have that confidence, God can
do amazing things through us.
Renewed minds make powerful decisions in the world.
This week, we inaugurate a new
President. Even those Americans
who did not vote for Barack Obama are expressing a sense of pride in his
election. That pride stems from a sense of amazement of how far this country
has come in just half a century.
The fact that someone who, when he was born, would have been required to
use a different rest room in some states, will be President is nothing short of
a miracle. It is so appropriate
that President Obama’s inauguration take place the day after Martin Luther King
Day.
A few years ago, my daughter was learning about him in
history class. One night, as she
was studying for a test on the Civil Rights Movement, I told her that I wished
I could be the kind of pastor that Dr. King was. She was surprised to learn he was a pastor since her history
book never explicitly mentioned it.
Our culture too easily forgets that Martin Luther King took the risks
that he did, made the decisions that he did and paid the price that he did,
because he was a follower of Jesus Christ. The ministry of Martin Luther King certainly made possible
the election of Barack Obama.
However, let us not forget that the ghost writer of this chapter of
American history may just be Jesus.
Dr. King’s strength was
submitting to God’s will. He was
able to discern God’s will for his life and time and then take decisive
action. His mind was renewed. Renewed minds make powerful decisions.
“I say to you, this morning,
that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you
will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.
You may be 38 years old, as
I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls
upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause.
And you refuse to do it because you are afraid. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re
afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be
criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that
somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.
Well, you may go on and live
until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.
And the cessation of
breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of
the spirit.
You died when you refused to
stand up for right.
You died when you refused to
stand up for truth.
You died when you refused to
stand up for justice.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the sermon “But, If
Not” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church on November 5, 1967.
The Bible is based on God supernatural wisdom that is not only true but it stands the test of time. http://dating.sout.co.uk/love-proposition-let-s-do-it-part-3/
Posted by: Shyanne Fun | January 19, 2009 at 02:28 PM