“Why? Making Sense of God’s Will: 3. God’s Will for Your Life”

Passage: Psalm 22:1-11

Passage 2: Luke 23:44-46

Preacher: Dr. Jim Standiford

Series: Why? Making Sense of God's Will

Determining God's will for individual lives is a collaborative effort between God and us.

Come, Lord Jesus, fill our minds with your word, fill our hearts with your love, and fill our lives with your light. Come, Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Cynthia Weems is the pastor of the First United Methodist Church of Miami, Florida. She tells of an experience early in her ministry when she was working with an 11 year-old boy who had been assigned community service hours for shooting another child in the leg with a BB gun. The first task she assigned him was to clean up an unused youth room on the third floor of the church building. She said, “It was hot, dusty, and messy up there—not a particularly congenial setting for someone trying to maintain moussed, spiked hair.” However, he took his task seriously, cleaned the room well, placed a large cross on a table and moved it in front of a window. He told the pastor he had considered several places for it but decided that was the best. His reasoning was, “This is a church, isn’t it? Every church should have a cross in the window so those of us on the outside can see it.”

We are told by some of the so-called experts that in our time churches shouldn’t look like churches and they shouldn’t have crosses visible because that is a turn-off to unchurched people. I guess this 11 year-old didn’t get that memo. He thinks churches should show crosses.

John Wesley, who founded our movement, believed not only should churches have crosses, but pastors should too. He wanted his pastors’ words and actions to reflect the love of Jesus which the cross represents. He developed a set of questions to ask those people who wanted to serve as pastors. One such question was, “Have they fruit?” Did their preaching bring people to faith? Had their teaching enlivened spiritual practices in anyone? Had they fed any hungry person bread? Were they awakening their hearers to the Kingdom of God?  

These were not only good questions in Wesley’s time but are good in our time for pastors, but also for congregations, and for each individual Christian. Does what we say and do help others to experience Jesus’ love? The reason bearing fruit is so important is because I think it is God’s will for our lives. As we say in the sermon prayer in this Epiphany season, God shines his light into our lives so we can follow him each day of our lives and reflect God’s light to others.

I do not believe God’s will is some predetermined, specific script for each person’s life, such as one person has to be a geriatric nurse, the second one a sanitation engineer, and the third person a special education teacher for third grade boys. No questions asked. Do it, or lose God’s love.

What I do believe is that God wants to have a relationship with each and every human being, and that God has provided for all of us some very clear directions on how to live our lives in the teachings of the prophets, the Ten Commandments, and especially in the life and teaching of Jesus. All of that can be summed up in what Jesus himself said, “”Love God and your neighbor.” This is the will of God for all of us.

As we have said before, God gives us responsibility to care for each other and the world, and God also gives us freedom. We can choose how we carry out our responsibility. We can also choose not to be responsible at all. God does not have a script for our lives and God certainly does not make a script, keep it from us, and make us try to guess what it might be. Rather, God invites us to collaborate on the story of our lives. God gives us clear direction in Jesus. God also gives us gifts of personality and talents. As the old saying goes, “Our talents are God’s gifts to us, what we do with them are our gifts back to God.” But the choice is always ours.

Joshua certainly emphasizes our freedom to choose in the Old Testament lesson today. Joshua would have been a very capable courtroom attorney. He makes a strong case. This passage is part of his farewell speech to his people. In the first part of chapter 24 he reminds the people of all that God has done for them: God’s gracious calling of Abraham even though he worshiped other gods, God’s giving to each of the patriarchs, God’s sending of Moses and Aaron, God’s freeing the people from slavery in Egypt, God’s protection during the wilderness trek, and finally God’s gift of the good land they now inhabit. Joshua goes back over all this because as Moses had warned earlier, this land of extravagant abundance can easily seduce the people into amnesia about their relationship with God. (Deuteronomy 6:10-15)

This is also true in the landscape of our own lives today as well. Our abundance and wealth in contrast with the rest of the world can seduce us to the point we are not open to God or aware of those around us.  Joshua stacks the deck by calling the people to look at all God has done, and to remember that it is against the covenant to worship other gods; yet he tells them they are free, “So choose this day whom you will serve.”  Walter Brueggemann points out that one of the aspects of this choice is the contrast between the covenant with Yahweh which stated that God wills care for the weak and vulnerable neighbor, as opposed to the pagan traditions that promoted the accumulation of wealth at the expense of neighbors.  Thus in Joshua’s time to choose God’s will meant having a little less on which to live, but also the possibility of good relations with one’s neighbors.

We have to make those same choices today. Our Christian living includes concern for our neighbor as well.  The vast majority of us are no longer directly related to the agricultural world. We are now in the information age with boundless electronic opportunities for all kinds of ventures that summon us. So, for instance, we have to decide do we spend our time playing fantasy Farmville or giving our time at a real community farm or garden to help our hungry neighbors. Joshua still says to us this day, “Choose whom you will serve.” The will of God is that we live in healthy, health-giving relationship with God and our neighbors, knowing full well there are financial as well as spiritual implications. Yet, it is always our choice to live by God’s will or not.

In the Colossian passage Paul gives thanks for the people because they are already bearing fruit, they are living God’s will by giving compassionate care to others. Paul is all praise at this point, saying he will pray that they are filled with spiritual wisdom and so they can continue to do the good work of bearing fruit.

Each of us with our various personalities and gifts will bear fruit in different ways for the benefit of those in need. Some will give material help. Others will lend physical labor. Those with knowledge and patience can teach. Yet others will share words of encouragement. Those with special connections can advocate, some out of their personal life experience can provide spiritual direction, and all of us can pray. God gives us the gifts, and as we use those gifts for the blessing of those in need we collaborate with God to enact the will of God in our lives. We bear fruit, but we do it in whatever situation we find ourselves with the gifts that are ours.

In 1961, the task of building the Berlin Wall fell on a bright East German Communist named Erich Honecker. He organized the men and material that sealed off the East from the West. In May 1971, Honecker became the head of East Germany’s Communist Party. For eighteen years he corruptly ruled his country and imprisoned Christians for their faith. His wife, Margot, who became the Minister of Education, denied Christians entrance into college because of their refusal to join the Communist Party. In October 1989, the world changed. The Berlin Wall came down and the Honeckers were suddenly stripped of power. Suffering from kidney cancer, Erich was exempted from jail for treason and corruption. Weak and homeless, the Honeckers had only one place to turn. Pastor Uwe Holmer was in charge of a Christian help-center in Berlin when a church leader asked if he would be willing to take in the Honeckers. Pastor Holmer decided it best to take them into his own home. One of the Holmer children, who had been denied a college education, willingly gave up his room. Many East Germans were angered by the Holmers’ hospitality, but Uwe responded, “But Jesus says, ‘Love your enemies.’” We use the talents and resources God has given us to collaborate with God to enact the will of God in our lives, and thus we bear fruit.

Thanks be to God.[i]