Sermon given on Sunday, July 31 at Generation For Christ 2011 at Camp Balandra, Trinidad.

Generation For Christ, Trinidad, 2011 "Be Ye Transformed"

<p>Sermon given on Sunday, July 31 at Generation For Christ 2011 at Camp Balandra, Trinidad.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

AudioVerse

Eric Walsh

How to Know God’s Will For Your Life

All right, good Sunday morning to you all.

We're gonna do a different kind of talk this morning because I love our, obviously I love our doctrines and our truths, but I also understand that as a young person, you have to be able to live in a very difficult world.

And so I like to give advice about life and how to face life and how you use God to really get you through life.

So the talk this morning is How to Know God's Will for Your Life.

It's based on a book by Morris Van Den Boeck, I've used myself to actually guide me into making decisions and knowing where it is that God wants me to go.

And I'll give you some examples of how I've used this in my own life.

If you have a pen and paper, this is a talk you definitely wanna take some notes on.

Because these are principles that 1 day you'll be able to use again.

And it's important because for many of us, you know, we get to a fork in the road in life and we have to ask God which way, which way am I supposed to go now?

Which direction am I supposed to head in?

And 1 of the people that I use for this is a pastor named Mueller who was a British pastor and actually for the first 20 years of his life he was a reprobate.

And then Morris Vendon actually adds 1 to the 7 steps.

He was against God the first 20 years of his life.

But when he found the Lord, he changed his life and he started orphanages once he was converted.

The powerful thing about his story is that he never advertised his need for his orphanages.

All he would do is go into his closet and pray and everything his orphanages needed were supplied.

So he didn't go up in front of churches and say, hey, you know, I got this orphanage, we're broke, we need money, never did he do that.

All this man did, his prayer life was so profound and powerful that all he did was pray and Whatever his orphanages needed, he got it.

And there's stories how cash would come and other things.

But there's an interesting story of when they were crossing the, you can't really see the picture well here, but they were crossing the English Channel and He needed to get to a port in England, and it was slow going across, and it was about to rain, it was really foggy, they couldn't see much.

So he goes to the captain of the vessel, and he says, look, I need you to cross this channel faster, I need you to go faster, send the boat faster.

The captain said, look around you, I can't go any faster.

So he says to the captain, let's go under the ship and pray about it.

But the captain, he could tell the captain really didn't believe so.

He sent the captain back on top of the deck.

And by the time he gets back upstairs, the fog is gone.

And the captain himself is actually convinced that this man serves the true and living God.

It's the kind of prayer life that Mueller had.

And so, just some interesting statistics on Mueller.

In the course of his life, Mueller received, from the pious and charitable, no less than 1.5 million pounds.

I mean, it's probably today maybe 30 or 40 million pounds.

He educated and sent into the world no fewer than 123, 000 pupils.

He circulated 275, 000 Bibles in different languages with nearly as many small portions of scripture.

He aided missions to the extent of 255, 000 pounds.

He supported 189 missionaries and he employed 112 assistants.

And remember, he never asked anyone for anything.

So he comes up with these points, and using Mueller and the scripture, we find 8 points to help us know God's will in our life.

And remember that all the steps are to be considered before making a decision.

So you don't do 1 step, think you get an answer, and then run into making a decision.

You gotta go through the whole process, and then it will lead you and help you in making a decision.

The first and most important step, in my opinion, or 1 of the most important steps is, have no will of your own on the matter.

In other words, you must submit your will to who?

So you start off with having no will of your own.

The problem for a lot of us is we've already made up our minds about what we want when we go to God.

And the problem with that is that that can backfire terribly.

For example, let's say you think, you know, you find a young man or a young lady and you think this is the right young man or the right young lady, if you don't empty yourself of your will, if you have no will of your own, all of a sudden all of the arrows, because this is what you want is that person, all of the arrows will point in the direction of that individual.

So every sign that you ask for, everything will happen.

It'll seem as if God is pointing you in that direction.

When in fact, your desire for the person is what's driving everything to point to that person.

Same thing when you choose a career or when you're gonna choose where you're gonna go to school.

You have to say, Lord, not my will, but your will be done.

That's how you have to start the process.

So Matthew 26, 29, Jesus says, not my will, but thy will be done.

And so while ministering to the woman at the well, Jesus went without food.

He says, my will is to do the work of him, my meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work.

You have to, you cannot have any will of your own if you're gonna do this.

So the first step is to say, you know what, Lord?

I know what I want, but Lord, take what I want away.

Lord, you show me what I'm supposed to do.

Step number 2, don't go simply by feeling.

A lot of us say, you know, it feels right, it feels good.

And I'm going to tell you, sin feels good.

And the problem with that is if you go by what feels good, you'll walk into hell with your running shoes on.

So you have to say, you don't go by feeling, you go by principle.

Second Timothy 1 in verse 7 says, for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a what?

So 1 of the things that the Christian does not function out of is the feeling of fear.

So you have people come and talk about the health message.

They try and scare you into living right.

I mean, I tell you how bad stuff, it's fear doesn't motivate you long term.

You have to have a good reason to want to do right or it just doesn't work.

I know this because I've worked with cigarette smokers and you could show them black lungs and all kinds of stuff in it.

I mean, it helps, they want to quit, but it isn't long term gonna motivate them.

You know what I learned motivate people better?

Do you wanna be alive to see your grandchild get married?

The fact that they definitely wanna be alive to see that happen.

How to Know God’s Will For Your Life

Transcript

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