What's God's Plan

Austin White · Tidal Church Moncton · June 16, 2024 · Here's Your Sign series

Austin White looks at Romans 12:2b and shows that God's plan is understandable, tangible and for each of us. He urges us to choose God's way over our own and offers four questions from the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to help discern His will.

More from Austin White · The Here's Your Sign series

Topics: Faith, Purpose, Discipleship

Transcript

[0:00] It was my grade 11 year of high school, and I made a slight shift in my decision making, just a small pivot. It wasn't like I did a 180 turn. It wasn't like I started rebelling, but I just made a slight shift. In short, I moved from God's way to my way. I moved from God's plan to my plan. I moved from, have you ever heard the statement "my way or the highway"? Not quite that, maybe not quite that brazen, but rather I decided that I knew best. I decided I knew best. And I'll talk more about what that decision led to a little bit later on.

[0:47] But I wanna ask the question, can you remember a memorable, but ultimately a bad decision? I wanna pause on that. Some of you, it's funny, some of you maybe your mind isn't going to something that's funny, but specifically a memorable but ultimately bad decision. Maybe it seemed like a good idea at first. Maybe it was eating that plate of lobster on Christmas Eve or that big huge dinner, and then what happens later? You live to regret it. What's that for you? I'd encourage you to explore that right now. What's a memorable but ultimately bad decision? How many of you have been there before? I don't need a raise of hands. Maybe some of you feel like raising the hand of somebody next to you, right? But we've all been there, a decision that in a moment was good, but ultimately turned out to be wrong down the line.

[1:41] You know, I was thinking through that question, and again, I just thought that maybe there's some, whether it's married couples, maybe some partners, boyfriends, girlfriends who were like, you know, I just wish again that I could raise my significant other's hand or both of their hands with that question just to send a message there. That's true maybe for some of us. But I think we can all, if we're being transparent and honest with ourselves, we can probably think about a memorable but bad decision. So what I wanna talk about today from our title is, how can I know God's plan? What's God's plan? That's our ultimate question for today, and I'll reiterate that through our time together. And I hope that as you walk out of this place, you'll have clarity and you'll be able to say, you know, I feel like I've moved a little bit forward in knowing what God's plan is for my life.

[2:34] Whether that's where you're going to go eat for Father's Day, or maybe something a little bit more important than that. Like, what does university look like? What are some key relationships that I need to shift? Or it feels like things are shaky right now. What about a job or a career? How many of us know that careers used to be a very stable thing, but now over the last 40, 50, 60 years, career changes have become as common as car loans? Are you looking for what God's plan is in a certain area of your life? So two weeks ago we started this series, and what we're doing is we're going through Romans chapter 12.

[3:21] And what I want to do today is I want to go to Romans 12:2b. Now you're saying, well, what, what's Romans 12:2b, what? 2b is? It's the latter half of Romans 12:2. And as we go to God's Word, I want to be very raw for a moment and say that whenever I preach, I'm incredibly nervous. Why do I bring that up? I bring that up because at the end of the day, God's Word is our foundation. And I pray every single time I come up here and I say, God, if it's not You, then let it fail. Lord, if You're not in it, then it's just a speech.

[4:08] I'll have some teens that come up to me, and I love this. They'll come up after a sermon and because they don't have a framework for kind of what I do and what I'm all about, they'll say, Austin, great speech. And while I'll take that and cherish it for a moment, I wanna be very clear that when I open up the Word of God, how I want for us to think about it is that it is the Word of God. It is a foundation that you can build your life on. It's something that doesn't change. It's something that wasn't edited a thousand years ago. But rather, we have the manuscripts, we have the Dead Sea Scrolls that let us know that we can trust God's Word, period. And I just wanna acknowledge the fact that there's skeptics, there's seekers, there's people that kind of got dragged here this morning, and maybe you don't believe that.

[4:59] And I want to give you a thumbs up and say, that's all good. I wanna let you off the hook for a moment and say, I realize that not everybody in this place believes that God's Word is authoritative. But rather, I wanna raise my hand and say, I believe that God's Word is just as relevant in 2024 as it was 2000 years ago, 3000 years ago, and however many hundreds or thousands of years ago. So that being said, let's open up God's Word. But before we do that, let me go ahead and pray for us. Father God, I thank You so much for Your goodness. I thank You for Your grace, Lord, as we go through this series, I ask in Your powerful name that we would know Your will.

[5:50] We would know how to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We'd know how to be a living sacrifice. And Lord, today, help us to be able to understand Your will for our lives. We pray this in Your name, and anybody that wanted to said amen. This is Romans 12:2, I'm reading from the NIV, and this is the Word of the Lord. "Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will." Lemme say it again. For those of you, those of you in the back, "Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will." That is Romans 12:2b. Now, what I'd like to share again from that title is, what is God's plan?

[6:42] The truth is that there's all kinds of plans in this world. There's all kinds of gurus, there's all kinds of TED Talks. More than any other time in history, you can access plans and wisdom and TED Talks and advice and education for your life. It can be free, it can be a hundred thousand dollars. You can join cohorts, you can do all these things to figure out what the plan is. But that's not our question for today. Rather, our question for today is, how can I know God's plan? And I truly believe in our secular culture today that people want to know God's plan. I would argue that our culture is seeking answers more than ever. Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, these religions, people are searching for something, they want to know the capital T Truth.

[7:34] But interestingly enough, as you look at these texts and these ways that people are looking for truth, the leaders of these other religions admit and say, "I don't know the way. I'm just pointing to the way." Buddha said, at the end of his life, or sorry, the religious leaders in Buddhism said towards the end of their lives that "I don't know the truth. I'm just helping people on the journey to it." My friends who are Muslim, in the Quran, they believe that Jesus is a very holy man. They believe that He was sent by God to point to something, but they ultimately believe different things than us. Why do I share all this?

[8:21] I share this because I believe in our culture today in Canada, around the world, people are searching for truth. People are searching for answers. They're searching for divine wisdom. Again, can I contend that the best place to find wisdom, to find a foundation to build your life on is in your Bible, is in God's Word, is in that YouVersion Bible app. So how can I know God's plan? The first thing I wanna share is that God's plan is understandable. God's plan is understandable. Turn to the person next to you and say, "Understandable."

[9:08] All right, y'all did it. Thank you. That's great. Understand. Romans 12:2. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will, is His good, pleasing and perfect will. Let's hear it again. It doesn't say you can guess, you can be confused. You can take a hunch. You can throw a dart at a board and maybe get God's will, but rather you can test and approve what God's will is. I shared this story with one of my friends this past week. Some of you have heard the story that some preachers and teachers have shared before. It's the story of the man who's stuck on an island, and he's praying to God and he's saying, "God, I'm stuck on this island. And Lord, I need You to save me," says, "God, I need a miracle."

[9:55] And in that moment, as he's praying, all of a sudden just like that, a guy in a canoe is waiting by the island and it says, "Hey, sir, the tide's coming up. Do you need help?" He said, "No, I'm waiting for a miracle." He's still praying. He's praying a lot. So a couple hours later, "God, please give me a miracle." All of a sudden a speedboat goes by and the guy cries out and he says, "The waters are rising. Do you need help?" "No. No, I don't. I'm waiting for a miracle." Finally, a helicopter goes overhead and shouts down and says, "Sir, do you need any help?"

[10:42] And he says, "No, I'm waiting for a miracle from on high." Finally, the guy dies and he goes up to heaven, and he gets to the pearly gates and he says, "Jesus, You were supposed to save me. I read these verses, I believe in miracles. God saved me." And God looks at him and says, "I saved you three times. I wasn't gonna do it a fourth." And in that moment, he was searching for God's will. But maybe he was misinterpreting. Maybe the hermeneutic wasn't right. Maybe the way that he was applying God's will for his life wasn't quite at the bullseye. The truth is that we can take comfort in knowing that God's plan is understandable. It's not vague, it's not confusing. Can we sometimes not understand? And sometimes we feel like, "God, why is this happening?"

[11:30] Absolutely. But I wanna be crystal clear that the Word of God is crystal clear. Of course, there's areas that we can debate. Perhaps there's things that are challenging to wrestle through. But make no mistake that the Word of God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It says in the Scriptures that God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But I hope we can know that God's plan is understandable, God's will is good, pleasing, and perfect. Even when it may not match our worldview, it may not match our framework. It may not match our wants. It may not match our desires. We might feel like, "Well, why can't God's Word say something different?"

[12:20] God's will. God's Word, God's will done. God's way is good, pleasing, and perfect. And I hope that we won't get it confused, because I genuinely believe, and if you've heard me preach before, it's possible you've heard me say this, the way of the world, the way of the flesh, the way of sin will try to confuse you and say that the way of the world, sin, following different paths, the world will try to say, "That's good, that's pleasing, that's perfect. You do you." But let me tell you, what does our passage say?

[13:06] Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will. That's truth with a capital T. The second thing that I wanna say, after God's will is understandable, is God's plan is tangible. Say "tangible" with me in 3, 2, 1, tangible. Tangible. Again, what do the Scriptures say? Romans 12:2b, then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will. I think y'all are gonna have this memorized here in about 10 minutes. I'm excited. I'll never forget a mentor talking to me about the importance of God's call in your life. And he said, "Austin, you need to find a cause for Christ that you're willing to give your life away to.

[13:56] You need to find a cause and a call in your life that you're willing to give your life away to." How many of you have ever heard the stories of the old missionaries that they'd get in their boats and they'd go to a far away place and they would pack all of their belongings in a coffin because they served the cause that counts. They had read the Scriptures in the Great Commission and they said, "It's time to do something about this." They had found a cause that they were ready to give their lives away to. God's plan is understandable, it's tangible. I also wanna share that God's plan is for you. God's plan is for you. Do you mind? Can you turn to the person next to you, point at them not too accusingly, like, do it nicely and say, "God's plan is for you."

[14:44] Awesome. Thanks for doing that. Romans 12:2, once again, then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will. Maybe the second word in Romans 12:2 is critical for us to understand. Maybe that second word in our passage for today is the key. And if we miss it, we'll be missing something that God wants to share with each of us. And that word is three letters. And it's "you." You, you can understand, you can hear God's voice. You can read the Scriptures and the verses jump off the page at you because you know that it's for you. Some pastors have described it as God's love letter to humanity, the Scriptures.

[15:34] The truth is that God's will is that we flourish as humans. But knowing God's Word, knowing God, knowing God's will, knowing God's plan doesn't mean that you automatically experience it. But rather, can we talk about habits? It's not an easy thing to talk about sometimes, But the truth is that just because you know God's will doesn't mean you're gonna feel it. It doesn't mean that life's gonna be easy. It doesn't mean that it's gonna be butterflies and rainbows and valleys and easiness, but rather what we know is, we know that God's will is perfect. We know that it doesn't change, and we know that it's for you. My grandfather, he's a preacher, and he's been preaching for about 40 years.

[16:23] And when I was a very young teen, he preached a message called "My Way." And in that moment, what he did is he took a popular song from the 1900s, and it goes like this. Some of you have heard it before. And this was a smash hit. This was the biggest song of the year. It was played in stadiums. So much so that the person who wrote this song said, "Everybody rise for the national anthem." And then he would start singing this, he said, "And now the end is near. And so I face the final curtain, my friends. I'll say it clear, I'll state my case of which I'm certain. I've lived a life that's full.

[17:08] I've traveled each and every highway, and more, much more than this, above all else, I did it my way." That song isn't terribly popular right now. But I wonder if the sentiment and the heart and the spirit behind that song is more alive than ever before, through whatever may, "I did it my way. Sometimes you knew I bit off more than I could chew, but I did it my way." The truth is that song, while many of us don't know it, I read it because I think that we, even if we don't know the song, how often do we live it? Can I speak to the Christians just for a moment and say, I think that we've got a "my way" Christianity.

[17:55] Sometimes we read God's Word and we say, "That doesn't fit my truth. That doesn't fit my struggle, that doesn't fit what I'm going through. So it's time to bend it." Could we have a faith and a Christianity that isn't about my way, but it's about God's way, that's about God's plan? And as we ask, what's God's plan? Are we committed to not my way or the highway, but rather His way, His plan, God's plan? I hope the answer's yes for many of us in the room. I know that maybe the skeptics, the seekers, that's a tough ask. But stick with me here.

[18:43] After 15 years from hearing that sermon preached at a great church in Fredericton, New Brunswick, I still hear his words asking, is it my way or is it God's way? I wanna ask you the same question and say, is it your way or God's way? Can you pause and ask yourself that? Some people would say that we vote with our dollars. What we spend our money on is how we vote. I would argue how you spend your time is where your allegiance is. Worship isn't just the songs we sing, but rather worship is the way we spend our time, our talents, our energy, our focus, what we watch when nobody's looking.

[19:30] So I want to end on this note. And You've heard me say it a couple different ways, but You have a specific plan for your life. How will you discover it? Can I give some practical tools? Sometimes I worry that when I preach, I'll share God's Word, but I hope that we walk out with what I'll call a tool belt. It's Father's Day. So maybe tool belt is a good analogy for, given given the day and the weekend. So here's our tool belt. Here's four questions to ask yourself when it comes to God's will. For those of you that are my theology people, for my YouTubers who watch all of the fun theology stuff and hermeneutics and diving deep, this is called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.

[20:23] Feel free to Google it, but please keep on listening to the sermon. We've still got about one minute left. Number one, what does God's Word say? That's number one. If we stray away from that, boy, are we in trouble? Number two, what do other Christians, pastors, people that are older than me, early church fathers say? If all of a sudden I'm thinking through something, and 2,000 years ago, people that are smarter than me didn't believe it, I'm not sure. Am I saying that I'm smarter than the people that talked and walked with Jesus? That's tricky territory. Number three, what does the Spirit say? I love the words of the prophets that it says in these days, in the end times, the Holy Spirit will be poured out on the men, the women, the old men, the young men, those dream dreams.

[21:20] They'll get visions. The Holy Spirit will come forth like never before. What does the Holy Spirit say? And then four, what is reasonable and wise, buddy? I worry that what we do is we get this out of order. Please look at the screen. And what I worry is we say, well, what's reasonable and wise? What makes sense in 2024? Second, what does the Holy Spirit say? The Holy Spirit says that I need to shift the goalpost. I need to shift things. What do other Christians, pastors, and people older than me say? Well, that's just old news. And then finally, people arrive at this conclusion and they say, God's Word must change. No, that's out of order. What does God's Word say? What do other Christians, pastors, and people other than me say? What does the Spirit say, and what is reasonable and wise?

[22:07] I hope that those four things, they won't overwhelm, but rather they'll be a helpful tool. As you're thinking about university, as you're thinking about graduation, as you're thinking about what's next, as you're thinking about the relationship that you're in, that you're not sure about, as you're thinking about your marriage, as you're thinking about the way that you spend your time, what's God's plan? At the end of the day, it's tangible, it's understandable, and it's for you. At the very beginning of my message, I shared that in grade 11, I made a bad decision, not a necessarily ungodly decision or an unbiblical decision, but when I was in grade 11, I simply decided that my way and my plan was better than God's. I had known for the past five or so years that I was supposed to be a pastor.

[22:54] But somewhere along the line, I got it in my head that as a pastor, I wouldn't be able to meet X, Y, and Z standard. So I remember I said to my parents, I said, "I really think I'm gonna go to business school and I wanna go to business school. And there's a bunch of different options with that. And if one option doesn't work out, then I can go to the next and the next." And I remember my parents, they were so supportive. They didn't shut me down, But they said, "Well, what about..." What you felt God say in your life all those years ago? And I think my response was something about money. But at the end of the day, God's plan is better than ours. And let me tell you, it's tangible. You can find it out. And just like in grade 11, where I got a little bit confused along the way, I wonder if some of you got confused along the way and all of a sudden it shifted from God's plan to your plan.

[23:46] Let me pray, and then we're gonna continue to worship through music. Father God, I pray that as we reflect on Your Word, as we sing these songs, that, Lord, wherever we're at, whether we're a skeptic, seeker, Christian, whether we've been a Christian for one day or decades, help us to discern Your plan. Lord, we love You and we praise You. We pray this in Your name. Amen.