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What Lies Ahead? Discovering God’s Plan. A couple of weeks ago we saw the results of discovering God’s plan for your life by looking at the outcome of Paul’s response to God’s call. I want to go back to Paul’s Damascus road experience and look at basically one verse.

Paul represents anyone who is in the process of becoming a Christ follower. Paul was an angry persecutor of early Christians. He threw them into jail and even sanctioned and supported the execution of early believers. He hated Christ. He hated Christianity.

The really good news of the gospel is that forgiveness is for anyone who will turn to God and repent of their wayward and sinful ways.

No matter who you are or what you have done with your life up to this point will make no difference in Jesus Christ’s ability and willingness to accept and change you completely.

Paul encountered God on the road to Damascus. His name was Saul then and he was blinded by a light from heaven and the voice of God called out to him.

I doubt if any of us will ever encounter God in such a dramatic fashion but when you encounter God in your life it will be dramatic to say the least. He will cross your path. He will allow someone to cross your path and show you a better way. He will show you the way you were intended to walk and live. The question today is, are you responding to the opportunity?

We all want to know the direction to take with our lives.

“When you come to a fork in the road...take it.” —Yogi Berra

It is Paul’s response to the voice from heaven that I want to look at today.

He said, “Who are you, Lord.” Acts 9:5

Acts 22:10, “Then I said, ‘what do I do now, Master?’”

What Paul was asking in reality is not only who are you but what do you want from me?

We need to ask God, “What is Your plan for my life?” God has a plan for every person and we need to find out what that plan is and begin to walk in it.

Some examples of people who searched for God’s plan in their life:

Abraham, Moses and a host of other Old Testament characters that you can read about in the Bible all found out that God had a plan for their lives.

Act 2:37, “Cut to the quick, those who were listening asked Peter and the other apostles, “Brother! Brothers! So now what do we do?”

Acts 16:29-31 “The jailer got a torch and ran inside. Badly shaken, he collapsed in front of Paul and Silas. He led them out of the jail and asked, “Sirs, what do I have to do to be saved, to really live?” “Put your trust in the Master Jesus. Then you’ll live as you were meant to live.”

1. God has a plan for every person.

It seems almost too good to be true, but it is true. God has a plan for every life. Let me give you three reasons to believe that there is a path for you.

A. It is a reasonable expectation: God is a God of order and method. When you build a house or put something together you follow a plan or a design. Is it unreasonable to think that the God who created this incredible world with all of its intricate designs doesn’t have a plan or a pathway for his human creation to follow?

B. It is a reliable experience: Read the eleventh chapter of Hebrews and you will read the stories of man people and the pathway that God laid out for them individually. Talk to the people who invited you here today and you will find out that all of us have found a pathway to God that has led us to be together here this morning. There would be some incredible testimonies if we had time to hear them.

C. It is repeatedly explained in the Bible: Over and over in the Bible God makes it clear that He has a plan for us. Listen to these verses:

“Your ears will hear a word behind you saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it.’ Whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left.” Isaiah 30:21

“He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.” Eph. 2:10 The Message

“Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.” Ps. 143:8 (NIV)

2. God’s plan always includes three very important principles.

A. It is a personal plan.

Pastor Evans had been unsuccessfully counseling with a very disturbed church member for several weeks. He was getting more and more agitated with the man’s crazy and bizarre stories. The guy was always claiming to be a different, famous person and would share the resulting problems that this famed persona had brought him. On one particular day, he was complaining about all of the problems he was facing as the Invisible Man. As he rambled nonstop for several minutes, Pastor Evans began to gloat. He had the perfect response to shut down this lunatic’s ridiculous story. When the man stopped long enough for the pastor to speak, Reverend Evans quickly shouted, “If you’re the Invisible Man, how come I can see you?” The wild-eyed man calmly replied, “Because it’s my day off.”Adapted from the Houston Chronicle, April 22, 1998, p. 11D

That is a personal plan that didn’t quite work. In the Acts account of the story of Paul on the Damascus road God is quoted as saying, “I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness. . .” It was a personal plan that God had for his life and He has that kind of plan for your life and mine.

B. It is a perfect plan.

There are two verses of scripture that turned my life around when I was in High School. I have told you before but I remember reading Romans 12: 1-2 for the first time. The translation I used said that to live for God and in God’s plan was my reasonable service. For some reason those words resonated in my soul and mind as a great discovery. It was reasonable to expect that people created by God would and should walk in the path that He plans for us through His word. Look at these verses with me:

“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” Rom. 12:1, 2 The Message

C. It is a practical plan.

God’s plan will fit with your everyday life. When you discover God in your life you will begin to view your life God in your view and with God all things are possible.

3. We need to proactively discover our personal plan.

If there is a plan for all of us we should be seeking to find it on a daily basis. Sometimes it is very easy to become sidetracked by the issues of our lives. We have places to go, people to see and things to do. You and I won’t discover God’s plan for our lives unless we proactively seek to discover it.

People will go to all kinds of lengths to discover the plan for their life. Can I just tell you that psychics aren’t going to do it for you. The Bible speaks very clearly about this subject. There have always been people who claim to be able to see the future.

In December of 1995, news broke that the U.S. military and the CIA ran Operation Stargate. It was a two-decade project in which our government hired psychics to give them intelligence information. At the program’s peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s, American tax dollars paid for salaries and perks to six psychics who were referred to as “The Naturals.” Since the project began in the 1970s, the CIA and Defense Department spent $20 million employing at least sixteen psychics. Americans got an early Christmas present in December of 1995 when a recommendation was made to kill the project. This whole thing started “when the CIA concluded that the Soviets were dangerously far ahead of the United States in the use of the paranormal.” (That’s one race we should have let them win). Supporters of this program acknowledged the quality of psychics degenerated over the years. Joe McMoneagle was one of the initial psychics who later noted that by the mid-1980s the military started letting any old “kook” into Stargate. This is confirmed by the fact that one of these government employees left the project when he became convinced there was a Martian colony hidden beneath the New Mexico desert. Defenders of the program admitted that psychics are wrong about 80 percent of the time, but they say the other 20 percent can be really helpful. Newsweek, Dec. 11, 1995, p. 50

You’re not going to find God’s path for your life by paying someone $3.95 a minute over the telephone.

For those of us who are Christ followers all ready we need to always be looking for God’s plan for our lives as well. When we fail to do this our days, weeks, months and often years can be fill with disappointments, defeat, frustration and failure. No matter what you do with your life to pay the bills when you add God and His plan to your life it takes on a whole new meaning.

Are you proactively discovering God’s plan for your life?

4. We must enter God’s plan for our life by accepting Jesus as the Provider of salvation.

None of this works unless you have invited and accepted Christ into your life. Coming to church, showing up at church functions, singing, participating in the service and Bible studies will make no difference if you don’t allow God to come into your life and change you from the inside out.

Jesus was teaching one day and He told a little story about two people who built the houses of their life. Matthew 7 in The Message.

5. We are to live out God’s plan for our life on purpose.

We can do this by some practical actions:

A. Prayer: Spending time with God on a daily basis is critical to finding God’s pathway for your life. If you spend time with Him He will reveal Himself to you. You have to do it on purpose. You have to decide that it is important. You and I make these kinds of decisions everyday. We make room for all kinds of things in our lives. We schedule our lives around television viewing, going out to eat, shopping, pursuing hobbies, exercising or any number of things that we have decided are important.

B. Study the word: Psalm 119:105 “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” You will be amazed at what you can discover about your life if you will read and study the word of God faithfully. We pray and study the Bible because it is our spiritual food. We eat all day long because we are hungry physically but a lot of times I think it's because we have been conditioned to eat all day long. We do it to feed our bodies to sustain life. If we don’t feed our souls they to will not survive but will become unhealthy and lifeless.

C. Practice obedience: Obey God promptly. When you know what you should do don’t drag your feet and put it off. Act on it. Walk in the light that God shines on your path.

D. Learn to trust: Often you will not be able to trace God’s hand in your life until you have obeyed and walked in the path that He has laid out for you. Life is a journey and you don’t experience it unless you walk it and live it out. Remember this. God called Paul His “chosen vessel,” “hand-picked to be a servant and witness,” but God also allowed Paul to experience suffering, imprisonment, torture in the fulfillment of His plan for Paul’s life.

The bottom line is that you and I have the opportunity today to allow God to enter our lives. Someone once said that we could have as much of God as we desired. The question is how much do you desire?

In the film, Dead Poet’s Society, Robin Williams has one of his students read the introduction to the textbook. It is a very academic description of the value of poetry. As the student concludes the reading Williams instructs the students to remove the page from the book, “Tear it out,” he instructs. In fact he asks them to tear out the whole introduction section of the book because in his words it is excrement. He then calls them to gather around him for some real teaching. I want you to hear his words.

There was a church in East Houston years ago that had a large white sign above the choir loft which read, “Let go and let God.” Chuck Swindoll grew up in that church and recalls, “As a teenager I looked at those words every Sunday for several years. They sounded really great, and I’m sure whoever put them up there wanted them to convey that message to everybody.

Since then, I’ve learned the origin of the words on that sign—at least this is what I’ve been told. Back in the nineteenth century, a Christian college student took six postcards and wrote a large letter on each on of the cards: L-E-T G-O-D. “Let God.” And he put them on the mantelpiece in a room in his dormitory at school. One evening a gust of wind blew through the room and the “D” blew away, leaving him with L-E-T G-O. “Let Go.” The student took that as a message from God. Only by letting go can you let God.” From: The Mystery of God’s Will by Chuck Swindoll.

Are you ready to let go of your life and accept God’s plan?
Are you ready to allow Him to show you a better path?

2003/10/12