VISION 2024 – REACH UP TO YOUR FULL POTENTIAL
…BECAUSE HE KNOWS THE PLANS HE HAS FOR YOU (PART 2)
OVERVIEW OF OUR VISION FOR 2024
God wants the very best for you. God wants you to reach your full potential – in all that you are, and in all that you do. God loves you so much that He is longing for you to allow Him to be active in helping you become everything that you can be. He is always with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. He is Almighty God, able to do all things for you. He is awesome! He has placed in you Himself – Ruach – the Holy Spirit and calls you this year to walk with the Spirit.
This can be the year of Shanar for you – the year of change. Be bold, and, in the words that I heard spoken by Ruth O’Reilly-Smith on UCB2 this very day, “step into the new” this year.
And when you, like the Apostle Peter before you, look down at the wind and the waves of life that threaten to overwhelm you (see Matthew 14), and when like Gideon you ask “who am I to do great things for God? I am nothing, I am no-one!” (see Judges 6), then remember the promise “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4: 13).
So, our Vision 2024 is this: reach up to your full potential, grasp hold of all that God has for you, and step into the new. How exciting this will be!
In today’s message we continue to look at the reality that if we want to truly reach up to our full potential we must follow God’s plans that He has for our life. But WHAT are these plans? How do we discover them? And what relevance do these plans have for our life in the local church?
WHAT ARE THE PLANS THAT GOD HAS FOR MY LIFE?
Look again at Jeremiah 29: 11. The context is in a call to the exiles to accept where they are NOW – in Babylon, in exile…where they will be for 70 years. The plans that God has for them are plans for NOW – to pray for Babylon, to live right lives, to marry and have children. His plans are for NOW – not just for the hope of eternal life in the future.
And then it is quite right to say “Well Father, YOU know the plans You have for me…but I don’t know what those plans are! Can you let me into the secret?”
Do you rise in the morning with the desire to know what God has planned for you for the new day, what He wants you to do that day in your service to Him as His Talmidim?
Or do you wake up in the morning and simply drift through the day and see what happens?
It is the will of God that we live a certain way. It is His will that should guide us every day. Otherwise, we are saying “I can live without Him. I don’t need His will and His direction”. How foolish!
There are general plans (these are the timeless and eternal plans He has for ALL of us) – they are revealed in Scripture and are so clear that we should never even dare to say that we don’t know the plans that he has for us. His plans are written down for eternity so that we might know them!
· He plans to love us as a Father loves their child. And His plan is to be with us always.
· He tells us His plan as to how we are to live on this earth – we see this in His commands. This is His moral plan for our lives. For example, we are to love one another, we are to not steal, we are to worship Him with all our heart, we are not to worship idols, we are to be faithful to our spouse and to bring up our children well, we are to give to the poor and show hospitality to all etc, etc, etc. We should be asking God in every moment of every day as to His guidance on how we should live, what our speech should be like, what we should do in every circumstance.
· It is the will of God that we should be always rejoicing, always praying and always giving thanks in every circumstance (1 Thess 5: 16-18).
Let’s take what some see as His Great Plan for our lives here on earth:
“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28: 19-20)
This is a very clear plan, will, command for us. Let us therefore never say that we do not know the plans that God has for our lives. However, I want to know the specifics of this: where should I go, what should I say, how should I do this work?
Therefore, there are the specific plans that He has for us – the “what He is calling us to do – who we are to marry, what job we should undertake, which church family we should belong to”. This is the harder one to know – and there is not one of us who does not ask God: “what should I do? Who should I marry?”
Jesus in Luke 22 asks God about His will and whether there was any other way. But, He submitted Himself to the will of His Father in Heaven. Let us therefore, always be asking God for what we should do and what we should not do – in our relationships, our jobs, our kids, our finances etc.
We weren’t made to live on our own, and in our own strength. We were made to live with God and in His strength.
And maybe, working in partnership with God, we are being called to hear what He wants us to do and then get on with it in the way that is best: Jonah was told to go to Ninevah. He wasn’t told how to get there or when to speak or where in the city to give the message of God. He had to use his own giftings in all this – and so do we when we are living in the will and plans of the Father.
Life at its very best comes from discovering and living in the will of God…
HOW DO WE DISCOVER THE WILL OF GOD FOR OUR LIVES?
So, again I say: “Lord, YOU know the plans You have for my life…but I don’t know those specific plans. Please will you reveal them to me!”
In a discussion that we had in our home group we asked this very question.
And as we pondered it we realised that God is calling us to this one thing:
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight (Proverbs 3: 5-6).
Sometimes we just have to trust in His leading – it doesn’t seem too often that God tells us in advance what His plans for us are – a kind of diary entry going forward days, weeks, months and years. He calls us to trust in His leading.
But there are times – Biblically – when He does tell us the plan that He has for us to fulfil. Let’s remind ourselves of Jonah. I don’t know how old he was when God told him to go and take His message to Ninevah. Let’s say he was 30 years old at this time. There is no suggestion that God had directly spoken to him for the previous 30 years and no suggestion that God directly told him His plans in the 30 years after this time. This was (as it was put at the home group this week) a “page” in his life that God wanted to reveal to him in advance.
Be filled with the Spirit: and He will speak to us of what His plans for us are.
Pray continually: and God will reveal to us His will for our lives.
Be guided by the Word of God: and we will hear His purposes declared for all time to all men.
And in order to hear the plan that God has for you, this means that we need to “wait on the Lord” – spend quiet times with Him, alone with Him, walking with Him (in my case), sitting with our eyes shut and meditating on Him. Then we will hear the Spirit talking to us as we pray and as we read His Word.
Remember too that when God revealed His next plan for Elijah it was not in fire, or a mighty wind, but in a “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12).
There have been times in my life when God has revealed His plans for me: when I was a young lad He told me the secondary school I would go to; as a teenager He told me the university I was to attend – I don’t know why He chose these things to reveal. As a young adult He told me the woman I was to marry. Back in 2017 He told me to leave the church where I was totally committed to come to this little place called (at that time) FREC. On none of these occasions did I hear a big booming command “go!”. Each time it was a clear, quiet, gentle impression that was very powerful in its insistence. My job was to listen and hear and obey.
GOD’S PLAN FOR YOU INCLUDES THE LOCAL CHURCH
As we ponder the Vision 2024 we must include this: God has plans to use us in each of our church services:
26 What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. 27 If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. 28 If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God.
29 Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. 30 And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. 31 For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. 32 The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. 33 For God is not
a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people. (1 Corinthians 14: 26-33)
· The relevance for “then”:
Paul was writing at this point to the Corinthian church regarding a problem in their worship services…DISORDER! They were kind-of out of control! Everyone was interrupting everyone else…everybody was trying to get involved all at the same time. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but Paul is here having to shout and say: “Shut up everyone! Let’s get some order into your services!”
· The relevance for “now”:
Although this passage is speaking on the need for order in the church, what it does clearly show is that everyone had something to say, something to bring – all wanted to be involved and play their part. This is what we want – while also recognising that order needs to be maintained so that there is not chaos in our services.
God’s plan for us in the church is that each one of us is hearing from Him and has a word of instruction to bring us, a song to sing, a prophecy to share, a testimony to encourage. God wants His church to be built up – and we are His plan to bring this about. The church in Corinth was struggling to bring this under control as people were so eager to share. Today we seem to have the opposite problem – with few willing to share. Is it that God is not speaking? Is it that we are not listening?
Let us begin to see the Shanar – the change – in the way we approach our services on a Sunday. Let our problem not be that no-one has anything to share. Let our problem be that we don’t have time to fit everyone in!
THE BIG DANGERS TO ALL THIS…
There are a couple of warnings that are worth highlighting:
· “Heavy shepherding” is a risk…I remember, back in the 70’s (!!!) there being a real push in some circles on the “God has plans for every area of your life” tack. This led to some crazy conclusions being made by some individuals – that God wanted to “micro-manage” every area of a person’s life. These people were lying in bed in the morning wondering whether it was God’s will for them to get up straight away or in ½ hours’ time. Then they were in a quandary as to which pair of socks God wanted them to wear! And so the day went on…It’s true! Hard to believe, but it’s true! This also led to some pretty “heavy shepherding” on the part of some leaders – in a church I belonged to, you could not become a member unless you drank no alcohol; other churches insisted you dressed in a certain way – suits for men and modest dresses and head coverings for women; yet others stipulated the newspaper you could read and forbade watching TV or going to the cinema. All this in the name of “God’s plan for your life!
Today I went for a “prayer walk” around the park to meditate on the message I believed God had given me to bring. I didn’t have to ask God if I should or should not go for a walk. He gave me the message to bring and left it in my hands as to how to prepare and deliver it – learn the lesson of Jonah!
· The second danger is not being aware that so many of us (probably all of us to some extent!) in reality read Jeremiah 29:11 like this:
For I know the plans I have for me, plans to prosper me and not to harm me, plans to give me hope and a future.
It is natural (and not necessarily wrong) to spend my life making plans: what I want to do, where I want to go, how rich I want to become, who I want to marry. The problem is not our making plans, the problem is the selfishness of these plans, the problem is the making of these plans without reference to the God whom we say we are following.
It was Woody Allen who declared: “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans”. Well, maybe that’s a bit harsh (or maybe that’s a bit too close to the truth), but the writer of Proverbs 16 (verses 1-3) shows us how important it is to seek God’s in all our plans:
To humans belong the plans of the heart, but from the LORD comes the proper answer of the tongue.
2 All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the LORD.
3 Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.
Let’s just ensure that we are self-aware and that we wisely judge the desires or the plans of our hearts.
LET US CONCLUDE ON A REAL “HIGH”
Let us surrender our will to Him. He has the best plan for our life. We, humanly, want our will to be done. But the true joy, peace and satisfaction in life will only come when we surrender our will to Him – for He knows best.
We are “the poem of God”! Yes we are! A poem has beauty, it has purpose, it has rhythm, it is the creation of the writer, made to express his will. Look at what Paul writes to the Ephesians in chapter 2 and verse 10:
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”
That word “handiwork” can also be translated “masterpiece” and conjures up the best of paintings or the most magnificent of palaces or the most beautiful of woodworking or carving. That is who we are! And the Greek word used here is “poiema” from which comes the word “poem”.
So, yes, you are “the poem of God” created to do what? Good works. What are these “good works”? They are all that God has prepared – or planned – or willed – for us to do.
He knows the plans He has for us. And they are good plans. And we are God’s masterpiece!
APPENDIX: GOD’S WILL FOR OUR LIVES
· He has an “intentional will” for our lives: we are given skills and abilities that are our duty then, through life, to hone – through education and hard work. These skills we can then use in our work. We can live according to His will or we can be lazy and not cultivate them. This tells us that NO-ONE is unimportant in this life – for ALL of us has an intentional plan for our lives.
· He has a “circumstantial will” for our lives: He uses circumstances to bring us into His specific will to our lives. We just have to surrender our will to His will.
· He has an “immediate will” for our lives: this is what He wants us to do NOW. We must trust in the Lord with all our hearts. We can resist the will of God for our lives…which is very foolish! He will put pressure on us to get back into His will (look at Jonah!). Are there consequences for resisting His will? Yes there are! Look at what happened to Jonah when He tried to go in a different direction.