1465 - “Finding God’s Will for your Life” Psalm 37:4-5; Matthew 7:7-11

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1465. Well, it's Friday already, and it's question and answer time. When I first began to preach the gospel of Jesus, I did many youth revivals. Because you see, when you're young and you have not lived a godly life and the Lord miraculously saves you, and people would say of me, Well, if the Lord could save Tony, save anybody. If the Lord could save Crispy, he could save anybody. And so pastors would ask me to come and preach, and basically what I did is took any text and gave my testimony because that's all I knew about preaching, but I knew that God had called me to preach. And one of the most frequent questions that I was asked for the first twenty-five years of ministry was, how do I know what God's will for my life really is? Because you see, the Lord has a designated will for every believer. And most of that is found in the Word of God. That is, it's just plain, it's for everyone. God's will is that we live in obedience to his word. But there are some things that God specifically speaks to people and says, This is what I want you to do. Many times he'll do that through scripture, he'll do that through friends, loved ones, people that know you well, that have observed you, that uh see you walking with God, see that you are seemingly gifted in a certain area or a particular character trait of humility and godliness. And they may say, Oh my goodness, God is no doubt gifting you to do this, this, and the other. But the reality is all of us have to find the will of God for ourselves. And so I want to talk to you just for a few minutes today about the will of God for your life. Now, first of all, it doesn't matter who you are, God has a perfect will for your life, and the first part of that is to know Him in a personal way. You will never know God's specific will and special will for your life. You will never know God's calling upon you to preach the gospel, to do a particular thing, go a certain place, whatever it is, you will never know that until you make sure that you're saved. And you say, Well, why do you use the terminology being saved? Because that's the terminology that God uses. And we can't improve on what God uses. The scripture says in Romans ten thirteen, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. For God so loved the world that he gave his one of a kind son, that whoever trusts in him, believes in him, has faith in him, would never be lost, would never perish, their life would never be wasted, but they would have in present possession eternal life. You see, there is something to be said about being saved, about being rescued, about being redeemed, about being a slave to sin and being saved from this present evil world and the world system. And so being saved is a good term. It is talked about in many ways. Jesus told Nicodemus, a religious man who had all kinds of credentials. He was wealthy, he was a rabbi, he was on the Sanhedrin, he was a teacher of Israel. That meant he was a rabbi. And so Jesus said to him, You must be born again. Nicodemus, even though he was a Jew, needed to be born again. Why? Because being born a Jew is not enough to get you into heaven. You must be born again, and that's not just for the Jew, that's for the Gentile. The good news is that Jesus has died in your place to pay the penalty for your sins, and if you will come to him in repentance, I mean totally abandoning yourself and any effort that you possibly can to be saved, and you stop going your own way, calling your own shots, and you turn around, that's the word repentance, metanoieo in the New Testament, Greek, in the Old Testament is the word shoe, S U B or S U V, depending upon your pronunciation, shoo. And it means about face. It means to turn and go 180 in a different direction. And so that's what you have to do. And you don't gradually get into that. Oh, you're God incrementally deals with us from the time of our birth onward. God begins to deal with us, but nobody's been a Christian all your life. You must be born again. Being born once in a Christian family, being baptized or sprinkled or dunked when you are a baby doesn't save you. Some uh confirmation doesn't save you. You have to have an experience with Jesus Christ and commit your life by your own volition, your choice, not your parents, not the priest, not someone else. It has to be by your own choice you give your heart and life to Jesus. Now that is the consistent teaching throughout the Word of God. The New Testament makes it very crystal clear for everyone. So you will never know the will of God until you first of all come to know Jesus in a personal way. You must be born again. You must be saved. Because when that happens, the Spirit of God comes to live in your life forever, and he will guide you. Now, I would encourage you if you're looking for God's will for your life, that you look in the Old Testament and the New Testament. I don't have time to go over all the passages, but I do want to ask you to go to the book of Psalms, Psalm 37, where it talks about fretting and worrying about other people. You see, the call of God upon your life is personal. So here's w what God says in the midst of learning to trust the Lord. And David spoke to every one of our hearts who are followers of Jesus. You see, you must be born again, you must be saved, and the Spirit of God living in your heart, and if you're saved, the Spirit of God lives in your heart. Now listen, verse four says, Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you your heart's desire. He will give you the desire of your heart. That doesn't mean that He'll give you whatever you desire. That means He will put the desire in your heart that you need to have. You see, it's not just a gut feeling, it is a desire that will not let you go. And then He says in verse five, Commit everything you do to the Lord, trust Him, commit your way unto Him, and trust Him, have faith in Him, believe Him, and He will help you. He will make your innocence radiate like the dawn, and the justice of your cause will shine like noonday sun. In other words, everything's going to clear up for you. Be still in the presence of the Lord and wait patiently for him to act. Don't worry about other people. You find out what God wants you to do. You say, Well, how in the world do I find out what God wants me to do? Well, the Bible says, again, in the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew, chapter seven, the last part of what we call the Sermon on the Mount, here's what Jesus said. He said, Keep on seeking and you'll find. Keep on knocking and the door will be open. Keep on asking and it'll be given to you. Notice I said keep on, not just ask, seek, and knock, because that's a present tense verb. That means it is linear action, continuous action. Uh it might be dot dot dot dot iterative, or it might be just a straight line. But the reality is you don't just twenty-four hours a day ask, but you ask over and over again, God please, how long do you do it until you are satisfied that he's answered your prayer? You keep on asking if that's what God says to do. And so he may say no. This is not what I've given you to do. He may say yes. He may say you need to be patient, like David said in Psalm 37. You see, God's under no obligation to give you an answer immediately. He may want to build something into your life. God giving you a desire in your heart. If you're a child of God and you've committed your way unto him, you're seeking after him with all your heart. Now that's not halfway doing it. I'm talking about it is a burning desire in your heart that you cannot get away from. The call of God will not let you go. It will not let you go. If it's just a passing fad, you've gone to a conference and you got all emotionally worked up, or you've heard a message and you got all emotionally worked up. If it's just emotion and motivation, it'll go away. But the call of God doesn't go away. The call of God and the gifts of God and the gifting of God are irrevocable. The call of God to salvation is irrevocable. The call of God to service is irrevocable. It'll never be violated. God will not change his call. His call upon your life is to preach the gospel, if that's what it is. The call upon your life is to whatever, the call upon your life to preach the gospel in a certain place, teach the gospel in a certain way, but it's always going to be related to the gospel. You say, Well, I feel like God's called me to help the poor. Well, you can help the poor all you want to. You can feed them, clothe them, you can house them, you can do whatever you want to, and then still die and go to hell. You've got to get the gospel to them. And so what I'm saying is always related to the gospel. The call of God is always related to the gospel. This is what I'm I'm saying to you. You need to make sure you're saved, and the Spirit of God lives in your heart, and God will speak to your heart if you'll get in the Word. Now, uh hitting it a lick every now and then is not going to do it. You've got to get in the Word and search for God with all of your heart. When I was in my teenage years and wild, rebellion, horrible lifestyle, I even, even after I had heard people uh give testimonies of being saved, and I thought, man, that's that's never happened to me. So it it caused me to want to be saved, and and so I sought the Lord and and He saved me. I was under deep conviction. But now listen to this. I was told by every preacher I'd ever heard that you had to run from God. I mean, I would hear preachers say I ran from God and he killed my kid or he gave me cancer and and I was delivered and I answered the call up to preach and it was all this stuff you I thought you had to run and be rebellious for a long time, but that wasn't who I was. I had a deep desire in my heart to preach the gospel. I'd have dreams about preaching to thousands of people and seeing people saved and lives changed and teaching and preaching in small and large churches. I would have dreams about that. And those were not the dreams that I had before I saved. They were of a much more base nature. But after I saved, uh God was doing something in my life, and so I went to a a dear friend in Athens, Tennessee, and I said, You gotta help me. I believe God's calling me to preach, but it can't be because I I want to do that. And he, in great tenderness, uh worked with me, gave me a book from Pastor Colton in Dallas. I think he was at Royal Lane for some time. His name was C. Colton, and it was called The Minister's Mission. And I read that in one night. He's got a chapter in the book. It is on the call of God, and I read that and he talked about that very thing, and oh my goodness, I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that God had called me to preach. I listen, I've doubted my salvation since I've been saved, that is, whether I was saved, yes, but more when I was saved, because I knew the Spirit of God lived in my heart, but I've never doubted my call to preach. I knew God had called me to preach. Now I don't hear much about uh the call to preach anymore or the call to do something. I hear, well, I decided do this, or I felt like this was a good vocation. When guys come to me and say, I believe God's called me to preach, I said, Will you be content doing anything else? Well, yeah, I'd be content doing this. Well, then you need to search some more because the call of God upon your life is such a certain thing that you cannot get away from it. You might try to get away from it, you cannot. You might pull a Jonah and take off and try to run away from it. You move, change locations, you go to the a desert island, God's already there. He made it. And so you can't run from God. If God's dealing with your heart, you're gonna have to answer it. So the call of God upon your life for ministry, and everybody's called to ministry. We all are servants of Jesus. You may not be a pastor, you may not be a deacon, you may not be holding some office in the church, but God has a calling upon your life, and all of us have the call upon our lives to be witnesses for Jesus, to do what every believer ought to be doing. No, I'm talking about a special uh desire that God puts on your heart to do in life that more than likely nobody's going to be able to do it in your area just the way that you do it. And if there's others doing what you're doing, that's wonderful. God has uniquely gifted them as he will you. But you've got to get in the scriptures to hear the word of God because you see, God's word, the Bible is God's word. The words of God are written in the Bible, and that's God's will for your life. If you will get in the book of God and start studying the Word of God, like you're hunting for gold and silver, because it's much more valuable than that, knowing the will of God, and you seek Him with all of your heart, you knock upon every door that God sends you to, you keep on knocking, you keep on asking, and God is not going to disappoint you. And at the end of that passage on seeking and uh asking and knocking, Jesus said, Which one of you, as a father, if your son came to you and asked for bread that you'd give him a snake or you'd give him a rock if he asked for you something. You wouldn't give something bad to your own children. You wouldn't be messing with their mind. No, that's cruelty. And our Father in heaven, if you go to him and you ask him, he's going to tell you if it's his will because he wants you to know it. He's not trying to hide his will from you, but he's not going to reveal truth to you if you're not walking in the truth that you've already been shown. You walk in the light you have, you do the will of God you know to do, and God will give you more to do, because he that's faithful in little be faithful in much. There's all kinds of biblical principles I could talk to you about knowing the will of God. But you've got the the will of God you know to do, you've got to do it. And as you're faithful doing that, God will give you something else or widen your influence. You see, it's not your responsibility if God has even called you to preach or given you a ministry, a particular ministry calling, then do it. Don't worry about the results. Those results are in the hand of God. It's your responsibility and my responsibility to do what we know to do, do it in the power of the Holy Spirit, if it's witnessing or whatever it is, and leave the results to God and you'll be happy. That's way above your pay grade to start dealing with somebody's heart. Only God can do that. You be faithful to get out the word, God will do the rest of it. I hope this helps you some at least, and uh you're free to write me drcrisp at tonycrisp.org, D-Rcrisp, D-R-C-R-I-S P at TonyCrisp.org, and I'll be happy to talk with you more. Or if you want to fuss at me, go ahead and do that. That'll keep me uh walking with God. I can remember as plain as day, I said, Grammy, it just seems like I said to my grandmother, I said, Grammy, it just seems like I'm in hot water all the time. She said, Well, son, that's the way God meant for it to be. That's the way it gets us cleaned up. She said, if you'll stay in hot water, God will keep you clean. Well, that's not a bad way to look at it, and I pray that God speaks to your heart as you seek him with all of your heart. We're on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.