Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Decision Making By the Book, Part 12 of 20
TEXT: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove What is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God" (Romans 12:2).
IDEA: How can I discover God's will for my life?
PURPOSE: We must come to the Scriptures in submission to its teaching, in submission to the moral law of God.
Not only must we make our decisions in submission to the sovereign will of God. We must also make our decisions in submission to the moral will of God. What is the difference?
A good pilot must have a healthy fear of gravity. When a head-strong pilot comes up against gravity, grad it will win - no matter how strongly the pilot opposes it. A pilot Who doesn't respect gravity isn't around to tell us about it.
In a sense this healthy respect of gravity is similar to o'r living in submission to God's sovereign will. Ultimately, whether or not we choose to accept it, God's will wins out.
But a good pilot must do more than merely respect the law of gravity. He/she follows the principles learned that will keep the plane straight and level, flying properly.
The way in which pilots obey these principles of aviation is similar to the way in which all of us must observe the moral will of God and make our decisions in submission to that moral will.
A. God's moral will is the abundant counsel of God given to us in the Scriptures. These Scriptures deal with our motives, our goals, and the appropriate means for meeting those goals.
B. To make good decisions I need to be mighty in the Word of God. All the guidance I need to be all that God wants me to be in all of life's decisions can be found in Scripture. So I need to know the Scriptures.
To make choices while ignoring the Scriptures is to play the fool. Make your decisions in submission to God's moral will.
C. Submission to God's will is a prerequisite of learning all that God's Word has to tell us.
We come to the Bible not for confirmation of what we've already decided, but for insight into each decision in order to make it wisely.
If we don't come in submission to God, the Bible can be a very dangerous book.
A person trying to justify a homosexual lifestyle can make the Bible say that homosexuality is acceptable to God if it is a loving relationship between two people of the same sex.
The Bible becomes an echo and not a revelation: it tells us what we want to hear.
There is hardly a cult or heresy that does not quote the Bible.
We can go to hell with a Bible in our hand.
We can be destroyed with a Bible verse on our lips.
We must come to this book determined to submit to its teachings. Only then does God make His will known.
Example of Ahab in I Kings 22. who went to God for a confirmation of his own beliefs. Ahab, King of Israel, had fonned an alliance with King Jehoshaphat of Judah, and asked him to join in battle against the Arameans. Jehoshaphat went to Samaria for a summit conference at which he reminded Ahab that they needed to seek God's counsel. Ultimately Ahab called in Micaiah who first responded with sarcasm, then with God's truth, then with a strange story whose point was that if Ahab wanted to believe a lie, he'd get a lie. Ahab had already made up his mind. He didn't care about the truth.
We must come to the Scriptures in submission to its teaching, in submission to the moral law of God. That is the second principle we must follow if we want to make choice choices.
