Great Sermon

You know how sometimes you hear a message and it is just such good meat? That is what we had this morning. One of the ministers from our church oversight committee spoke today. I of course can't transcribe the message but I would like to share his main thoughts.

He started by asking two questions:
-What were your initial expectations when you got saved and began your christian walk?

-Which is more important to you today; Christ's agenda for your life, or your agenda for you life?

He spoke about the fact that our plans for our life often don't come true and referred to the old song, "I never promised you a rose garden" and how sometimes people get saved with the expectation that from here on out, they will be sitting pretty. Then when this doesn't happen, they take their marbles and go home. Once a man asked him, "what is God's plan for my life?" and he answered him, "He wants to kill you." Of course this is a little extreme, but his point was, God's plan is to get us out of the way so he can use us and work through our lives. Often this involves things that were NOT our expectation when we got saved. We tend to have a very "American Christianity" that involves few trials and lots of prosperity...they may or may not be God's plan for us.

Then he talked about our agenda vs. Christ's agenda. Of course we would all say that of course we want Christ's agenda for our lives! But really... how are we living? Do we seek to avoid pain and hardship or do we seek God's will? He spoke about Paul and how on the way to one journey to Jerusalem it was prophesied to him several times that if he went, he would be bound and jailed. Think about it, we feel God telling us to do something, but we get actual prophesy that if we do, we will be jailed, beat up, lose our health, or our family, or some other catastrophe. Our interpretation of that would of course be, "Oh, I misunderstood God's plan! I must not be supposed to go after all" and in our spirit of self-preservation, we do not go. Paul's response to this was, "Yes, you are undoubtedly correct, but God's will is that I should go, regardless." Well, of course Paul went and not only was he arrested in Jerusalem, but he was shipwrecked on Malta and to add insult to injury, he was bitten by a snake. However, from this came a whole ministry and the beginning of the christian church on the island of Malta.

The minister said one refrain over and over, that we must grow up, learn to "shake it off" (reference to Paul shaking off the poisonous viper) and continue to follow God... without allowing our plans, expectations, or agenda get in the way.

I hope I haven't made it sound like this sermon was in any way dark or depressing, it wasn't at all, but it was really some good meat. I know that I have a great need in my own life to "grow up" and continue to trust God and follow his will, no matter what. I was also greatly challenged by the notion that we shouldn't allow predictions or even occurrences of bad situations deter us. Don't be so sure that negative (in our eyes) situations means that we shouldn't go through with God's plan. I've grown up in church circles that studiously avoided any part of a "prosperity gospel" but I know that I've heard negative situations interpreted to mean that the individual was not supposed to have taken that path or that they were mistaken in determining God's will.