Today's Sermon

I was blessed to give the sermon today at Ogden First Baptist Church.  It will be beneficial to read Matthew 26:36-46 before you read the message.  At our church, the Scripture reading immediately proceeds the sermon. 

I hope it's a blessing to you.  

I’m so excited to share with you this message today.  As is the case, it’s not MY message.  In fact, last Sunday at 10:15, right before I got in the shower, I had another message in mind.  I had the supporting Bible verses picked out and everything.   But I got a different direction from the Holy Spirit, and  by 12:15 last Sunday I understood why:  Steve talked about a lot of what I was planning to say.

A few minutes ago, we prayed together, what is commonly known as the “Lord’s Prayer”. We just heard from the Gospel of Matthew, another of the prayers our Lord Jesus prayed, not once but three times:

Father, if it be possible,let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will but as You will.

What if God would have answered Jesus with yes?  What kind of a mess would you and I be in today?  Clearly, Jesus wanted something else.  After all, He was human, and He knew what He was asking for.  He was hoping there was another way.  He prayed it three times.  But at the end, He submitted Himself to God’s will and not His own.

Think about that for a minute.  Not Jesus’ will, but God’s.  Jesus who healed the sick, restored sight to the blind, and raised the dead was asking God to not have to do this thing.  Jesus had been tested by the enemy in the wilderness and refused what Satan had to offer knowing all the time, the moment of the cross was coming, still was in the garden saying to the Father, Thy Will Be Done.

Matthew is pretty clear about the distress our Lord is in at this moment in His earthly life.  He knows the cross is coming.  He asks his friends to stand watch and pray because the sorrow is so great. I can’t even imagine what that’s like. .  In another Gospel account, Jesus is said to be sweating literal droplets of blood.  I’ve been desperate for God to act, I’ve been in tears begging God to act, and I’ve never been in that kind of distress

Think for a minute about the passion Jesus was praying with to God.  He knew He was without sin and didn’t deserve what was about to happen to Him.  And we find the Son of God asking the Father if there was just some other way.  But He chose surrendering to what He knew from before time He was going to endure, because He loved God the Father, and by extension, us, more than what He wanted personally. 

So Jesus pours his heart out to God in prayer, and then goes back to see his friends, who Jesus asked to pray with Him. 

Are they praying? 

No, they’re snoozing.  Jesus told his friends He was feeling sorrow unto death, and the three people He was relying on to pray with Him fell asleep.  And this happened not once, not twice, but three times.  And this was after being admonished by the Lord to keep watch.

Before we’re too hard on Peter, James, and John, let’s look at ourselves.  Ever told someone you’d pray for them and not do it?  I’m guilty of that sin.  Not on purpose, but I forget things.  Even when they’re important to me.   Sometimes, too, we can get off on our own tangent of doing what we think God wants us to do when it’s really not.  I’m also guilty of this.

Have you ever done that?  Got that great idea of what YOU wanted to do and then expected God was going to bless it because surely, He’s on YOUR side?    I mean, after all, you want and know what’s best for: (and you can fill in the blank with church, work, school, family, friends, or whatever) and then have the whole thing come falling apart.

Sometimes, too, we refuse God’s will for our lives and He sends someone else.  Sometimes, though, you have a little Jonah moment in your life where you do what you want instead of what God asked you to do and have it fail so badly, you have no other avenue but to ask God what He wants, only to discover He still wants YOU to do that thing He told you to do and you didn’t do; and now it’s going to be a zillion times harder to do than it would have been had you just surrendered and obeyed in the first place.

Maybe I did this once.  I put a comma where God put a period. 

Don’t do that, by the way.  Anyway,…..

My experiences aren’t uncommon.  Steve prays for us frequently, reminding us and God of these times in our lives, asking forgiveness for us for that, and inviting us to join God where He’s working.  We have today before us, the BEST example of how to do that.

We have Jesus, showing us HOW to submit to that which is really God’s plan.  It starts with freverent, passionate prayer, laying out our plans before God, and at the end, these precious four words:  not my will, but THINE be done.

So how do you know it’s God’s will?  I think there are some easy ways to tell.  First, off God’s will is never going to contradict His word.  Often times, I think God’s word confirms what we sense the Spirit leading us to do.  Other times, God will use circumstances, or the word of a fellow believer to confirm what we’re thinking He’s up to.  We kind of have to look and see what God is doing, and join Him there.  I also would like to suggest that a lot of times, if it’s something we ourselves can do without His help, it’s probably not a God idea.  I think God expects us to do that which we are able to do ourselves..  God ideas I think are big things that cause big changes in us.  I think they tend to be crazy big things that no man can do.  I think God likes to show off and it brings Him much glory to do so!  So, how should we respond?

Beth Moore is a noted Christian author and speaker.  I heard her tell the most wonderful story about meeting a  rather disheveled looking old man, who is sitting  in a wheel chair at an airport and the ensuing  fight she has with the Holy Spirit about brushing the man’s hair.  I’ve told it to you before, but it’s a great example of what I mean about yielding to God’s will.  Because she gave in, she heard a wonderful story about a fellow believer who had fallen on some rough times, who she was able to help out just a little bit, and pass that story on to multitudes of people like me who would take it to heart.  I love this story because it involves her in a person-to-person argument with the Holy Spirit, which I have had many times, and one that she lost, and gives an example of what happens when we yield to God’s will.  (If you google Beth Moore brushing a man's hair in an airport, you can find a video of her telling this story herself online.  It's worth the time, trust me!)

As Christians,  we’re invited into a relationship with the Risen Lord..  When we have a relationship with Jesus, we have direct access through Him to God. where we wouldn’t on our own.   Because we’re indwelled with the Holy Spirit, and because God promised, He directs our footsteps with a variety of means.  Sometimes, it’s a providence that leads us in a new direction.  Sometimes, it’s praying a BIG, BOLD PRAYER and having God answer it in ways that were, before that prayer, just unfathomable.  We have that relationship with our Savior, and when we yield to the Father as He showed us how to do, some great things can happen!

Mark Batterson, as part of his 40 day prayer challenge called “Draw the circle” said on day one of the challenge that “when we pray regularly to God, irregular things begin to happen regularly.  Here’s just a small example of that: I gave up Facebook for Lent.  Well, I gave it up before Lent, because I was seeing a lot of stuff that appeared to be pointing me down a path I didn’t want to go down again..  At that time, I had to make a choice:  Was this really from God?  I  was pretty happy and life was normal and good for a minute and, brothers and sisters, I’m here to tell you today I could get used to having some normalcy in my life.  But normal was just a detour for a minute, one that produced fruit and God found a way for me to know He was up to something else.  The irregular thing that caused the Facebook fast was a meme Jennifer shared:  It was Jesus asking a little girl to give up a small teddy bear, while hiding a bigger one behind His back.  The little girl was telling Jesus:  ‘but I love it”. 

At that moment in my life, I felt like God was asking me to give up a very sure, very good thing, for what was best.  What started me thinking that was something a lady pastor Facebook friend of mine had shared on Facebook during that time.  (Blank) is the Best.  Except the blank had a name, and there was no mistaking what that name, along with everything else meant to me and where God was pointing me.  I didn’t make a hasty decision on it though.

I prayed.  I talked with a mature believer about some of the odd things and asking about his perspective of providence or coincidence.  I applied past experience to the situation, and I decided that the sum total of what I was experiencing was God ‘s way of pointing me in a direction.  I didn’t want to go.  But I spoke those four words from my heart: 

Thy will be done. 

Then I let go of what God was asking me to.  It was very hard, but in the long run, I know it was the best thing to do.

Can you think of a time like that in your own life where you felt God asking you to give up something important to you?  What was your response?  Sometimes I wish the Sunday message was more of a conversation between all of us.  I’m sure many, and chances are, most of you have.  I think it’s a way God helps us to keep that first Commandment Steve talked about last week. 

I have another story I’d like to share with you about these four words and it’s the story about the female vocalist for the country group, Lady Antebellum.  Her name is Hilary Scott.  The tour bus they were traveling in to a concert in Texas caught fire. Everything on the bus was destroyed by the fire except one thing.   The thing that didn’t burn was her Bible.  She says the cover was burned and messed up but not one page was harmed. 

That’s God getting your attention.

Sometime later, she suffered a miscarriage and wrote a song about that painful called, “Thy Will Be Done”. If you haven’t heard it, I would recommend it.  God strengthened her faith, and she in a time of despair that sadly, I know myself,  gave the world a song reminding us that “Thy Will Be Done” is something that makes us more like Jesus because it causes suffering.  She reminded us through that song that God is good, even when things in life are not.

I don’t want to end things here, though Church. Yes, sometimes our suffering is part of God’s plan.  I don’t say that lightly.  It seems like a lot of us have been walking through the valleys of our lives the last few years.  I know that none of us have been alone in those times and God has walked with us through them.  But in case you haven’t noticed it,  God is doing some pretty cool stuff around here.  I think, with a few months hind sight, a lot of  good has come out of this trying time we’re going through as a church.  We’ve had to step up as a congregation and so many have answered the call.  I see so much being done by so many.  I see some of the folks who are newer to the congregation accepting responsibility.  People are doing things someone else used to do.  I see new faces on Sunday morning, and they come back.  As I said the last time I spoke to you, if you’re here, it’s because we have something you need and you have something we need.  People are joining us to worship with us and that’s a marvelous thing. 

We’re growing closer as a community and a family of believers.  Fellowship is happening.  Discipleship is happening. God’s will is being done because people are answering His call, to His glory.  God’s will sometimes leads us to sorrow, but it never leads to abandonment by God.  And lots of times, it leads to great and joyful things that we ourselves could never have caused to happen, let alone even think of!

THY WILL BE DONE.

Those four words, brothers and sisters, are what the Holy Spirit laid on my heart at ten-fifteeen on a Sunday morning, as I was getting ready to shower before coming to worship with you.  I know this because my choice of message was to talk about telling your story, and I think Steve touched on a lot of the same points I wanted to make.  We’re about half-way through Lent, which is a time where we are to examine our lives and our relationship with Christ.  How are you doing with those four words?

A lot of you know that on Wednesday mornings, I help lead a Bible study at the Ogden Rescue Mission and I always end the lessons I teach with a way to apply a core principle during the week. Today, I'm going to ask you to seriously pray these words into your life.