Being In the Center of God's Will

Below is a speech that I wrote and gave to some friends and family, that I hope will speak to your heart the way that it did mine.

              Whether you know it or not, God has a plan and a purpose for your life and the lives of everyone around you.  Now when God reveals those plans to us, we are faced with a choice.  We must decide if we are going to sit around and ignore God's will for us, or are we going to fully embrace it with a burning desire to follow God in our hearts.  Five young men were faced with this choice and the decision they made would change the lives of their families and enemies forever.

             I'd like to show you the obedience, courage, and sacrifice that was evident throughout the lifetime of Jim Elliot.  By examining Jim's life, I hope to reveal to you the importance of being in God's will, even if it means that we have to sacrifice everything.

            The problem in today's society is that people don't want anyone telling them how to live their lives.  They are comfortable where they are at and do not want that to change.  In fact, there are not many who are willing to be in the center of God's will and even less who are willing to sacrifice for it.  They do not seem to understand the full impact of what Jim Elliot said, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."  In other words, why worry about our carnal body, when it will indeed pass away, but our soul will live on forever.

               Jim Elliot was born in Portland, Oregon during the year 1927.  When he was just 6 years of age, he asked Christ into his heart and had a burning desire to serve God with his whole being.  At 18, he attended Wheaton College, where he met his future wife, Elizabeth Howard.  A few years later he was called by God to become a missionary to Ecuador.  He made the choice to follow God, and leave his fiance, Elizabeth, behind.  After a long wait Elizabeth joined him in 1953, and became his wife.  He was then assigned the fateful mission of reaching the fierce Auca tribe with the gospel.  After months of persistently dropping gifts to the tribe by plane, in order to prove that they were friends and earn their trust, Jim and four other men, Peter Fleming, Ed Mcully, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian, decided it was time to meet the tribe face-to-face.  When Elizabeth asked him not to go because of danger, Jim simply replied, "I am called".  On January 8, 1956, Jim and his four friends were murdered by a group of Auca Indians, who had no love for outsiders, leaving behind five widows and nine children.  The outcome of these martyred lives you may ask, was that many of the Auca tribe came to believe in Christ and build friendships with the families of those five men.  Also it sparked the coming of missionaries who became determined to reach out to the lost.
             If Jim had not listened to God's call, those Auca Indians may not have come to Christ and their horrible lifestyle would have continued all of their lives.  As Jim said, "There is sheer joy of being in the will of God and the knowledge of His direction".  The Bible says in 1 John 2:17, "And the world is passing away, but he who does the will of God abides forever."  So I ask you this, "Are you in the center of God's will and would you be willing to sacrifice everything, even your very life for it?"

               

Digging Deeper Into Psalm 100

"Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands!

Serve the Lord with gladness;

Come before His presence with singing.

Know that the Lord, He is God;

It is He who has made us;

and not we ourselves;

We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,

And into His courts
with praise.

Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.

For the Lord is good;

His mercy is everlasting,

And His truth endures to all generations."

                                                                  ~Psalm 100~

This is sure one Psalm that cannot be read and forgotten.  It makes me want to stand and shout to God for the whole world to hear.   There is a hymn written by Isaac Watts, a well known writer of hymns, that goes along with Psalm 100:1 that really intrigued me.  The words to 'Before Jehovah's awful throne' are posted below.

Before Jehovah’s awful throne,

Ye nations, bow with sacred joy;

Know that the Lord is God alone;

He can create, and He destroy,

He can create, and He destroy.

His sovereign power, without our aid,

Made us of clay, and formed us men;

And when like wandering sheep we strayed,

He brought us to His fold again,

He brought us to His fold again.

We are His people, we His care,

Our souls, and all our mortal frame;

What lasting honors shall we rear,

Almighty Maker, to Thy Name,

Almighty Maker, to Thy Name?

We’ll crowd Thy gates with thankful songs,

High as the heavens our voices raise;

And earth, with her ten thousand tongues,

Shall fill Thy courts with sounding praise,

Shall fill Thy courts with sounding praise.

Wide as the world is Thy command,

Vast as eternity Thy love;

Firm as a rock Thy truth must stand,

When rolling years shall cease to move,

When rolling years shall cease to move.

In verse 2, it says that we are to, "serve the Lord with gladness."  I know that many times I have failed to do this.  Serving the Lord does not just mean going on  missions trip or feeding the poor. Now do not take me wrong here, because you are serving the Lord when you do these things; but there is so much more to serving.  Here, the hebrew word for serve is, `abad , and means to labor, work, or do work. In Hebrew it looks like עָבַד.  

"And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him."           

~Colossians 3:17 ~    

Hmm... I am pretty sure that every day I have spoken many words and done many deeds (jobs that one undertakes).  Am I saying that when I do my 'boring' chores, I am serving God and should be doing so with gladness? YES!  If you read the verse above maybe you noticed the small but very important word, all.  So, yes that means our chores in addition to the way we treat our family and friends.   Now you may be asking, "Okay so exactly how glad do I have to be?"  The Hebrew word here for gladness is, simchah, which means joy, mirth, gaiety, and yes, pleasure.   In other words  we should be excited to be able to do these things, keeping in mind that we are doing it all for God.  

       

Going to verse 3, it starts off with a command: "Know that the Lord, He is God".   This means that we need to take the time to learn more about who God is, and was, and always will be.  When you want to get to know someone, you do not just assume that you are friends because you know each other's names.  You may know quite a bit about some famous actor, but if I were to ask you if you knew the actor or you mom better, what would you say? I know I would be like, " I spend time with my mom and see her all the time and I have never even met this actor. Now let us take this one step further.  Do you know God like you know your mom?   It takes time, effort and sacrifice to befriend someone.  God created us and knows everything about us; we need to stop being so selfish and take our minds off ourselves and get to know more about the One who holds our lives in the palms of His hands.  Just like the picture below, when we get to know God, we will find that the journey never ends because God is eternal.

Breaking up verse 4, I am going to start with, "Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise."   Notice how it does not say that the first thing we do is ask God for stuff.  I am not saying that we are not to come before God with our prayers and requests.  We are supposed to do this, but we need to put God first. I know that I have been guilty of just going right on ahead and asking Him for things. In our world today, everything is very centered on self and not on others.  God is making a major point here. It's like He's saying, "Umm, hello here! I am God! Not just some person upstairs to give you what you want."  The Hebrew word for thanksgiving is, towdah which means confession and giving praise to God.  We should confess our wrongdoings and purify our hearts before God and praise Him for who He is.  He is, Great I Am, Yeshuah, King of Kings, Healer, Redeemer, Savior, Friend, and so much more!  Then we can truly come before Him with our prayers and requests.

The second part is to, "Be thankful to Him, and bless His name."   We should give thanks to the Lord for all that he has done in our lives, whether in times of trial or in times of blessing.  When I looked up the word bless in Hebrew, I was surprised with what I saw.  Translated into Hebrew, barak , which actually means to be brought to our knees and praise God! Wow! I had always wondered what it meant when it said to bless God, because I could not figure out how this was possible.

Verse 5 says, "For the Lord is good".  Okay I am going to stop right there.  There are those who question how God can be good when there is so much suffering in the world.  The answer to this is: Adam and Eve were deceived by the serpent and chose to disobey God, thus allowing sin to enter the world, making it no longer pure.  God did not create suffering, but rather it came into being because of man's choice to disobey.  

Next it says that, "His mercy is everlasting".   This is so encouraging to me because there are so many times that I have failed in my life.  Now this does not mean we are to go about sinning, saying we are sorry, and then repeating the sin again.  For true repentance means that in our heart we are truly sorry and then running away from the sin and not repeating it.  The great thing is that when we truly repent, God forgives us and makes us clean again.  Because He died for our sins, we have hope through the redeeming blood and forgiveness of Christ. Hallelujah!

Finally it says, "And His truth endures to all generation".  The word truth translates into the Hebrew word, 'emuwnah, which means firmness, fidelity, steadfastness, and steadiness.  To me this is so amazing because it is saying that everything in this world will one day fade away, but the truth of God will always be there because He is eternal!