"Can We Ever Know God’s Will?"


Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler – May 20, 2012

Centenary United Methodist Church

Psalm 1; Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

    If there is one aspect of our faith journey that has given many of us pause, it has been our wanting to know what the will of God is for our personal lives as well as for the destiny of humankind.  We Christians talk about the will of God quite often, but most of us would be challenged to define what we are talking about.

    Do we believe, for example, that God has a plan for each of our lives?  In other words, did God create us with the predisposition to be plumbers, carpenters, electricians, artists, musicians, doctors and scientists?   If so, what was God’s will centuries before those vocations existed? 

    Recently, a prayer request came to my attention from my former church.  A woman is carrying a baby that has various genetic deficiencies.  There is a high probability that she will have a miscarriage. The e-mail read, “The couple is asking for your prayer support, that they will be able to accept God’s will whatever that may be.”

    Many people find it comforting to define whatever happens to them as being God’s will.  Throughout my ministry people have found initial peace by saying, “The only way I can accept what has happened to our family is my belief that God must have needed Jimmy in Heaven more than we needed him in our lives.” 

    Even though trying to understand the will of God is filled with lots of unknowns, more than likely what we think about the nature of God hinges on the beliefs that we were taught. 

    Why would God’s will be any different from the love of human parents?  Most parents do not want their children to remain dependent on them. Nor do children want their parents to make demands and requirements that must be followed in order to retain mom and dad’s loving support.  Parents want their off-springs to live the adventure responsibly while also reaching for their grandest dreams.  They want them to experience the joys that come from enlightened decisions and learn from the consequences that come from their impulsive and more uninformed decisions.

    With all this being said, many Christians still want to know what God wants for them in specific terms.  In our lesson this morning, the disciples of Jesus had a decision to make.  Judas Iscariot was deceased and the disciples needed to fill his position to keep the number of their inner circle at twelve. What is interesting is how they arrived at that decision.  First, the candidate had to be a witness to Jesus’ resurrection.  Secondly, he had to be among those that had been with the disciples from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. 

    The group found two candidates that met these requirements -- Joseph and Matthias.  They prayed, “Lord you know everyone’s thoughts. Show us the one you have chosen.” (Acts 1:24f)  Then, they rolled the dice, as was a custom in those days for making decisions when alternatives had equal value. Matthias was chosen to replace Judas.

    Did God really have anything to do with the choice of Matthias over Joseph?  Probably not. What we know is that Joseph and Matthias were never mentioned again in the Scriptures.  We are using poor judgment when we want God to be a micro-manager of our decisions.

    There was a time when the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, was involved romantically with Sophie Hopkey.  They were clearly a good match for each other.  The plans for their marriage were in place until John suddenly wanted God’s approval.  Wesley placed white and black marbles into a hat.  He was throwing the dice.  He withdrew from that hat the marble that cancelled everything -- John and Sophie never married. This experience completely changed Wesley’s life and not in a positive way, 

    Perhaps a clearer understanding of how God’s will works in our lives comes from Socrates.  He was married to Xantippe, a woman that possessed a toxic personality and an extremely acid tongue.  She had a negative opinion about everything and everyone.

    One day she engaged in a public display of verbal abuse toward her husband, bringing laughter from the crowd of onlookers.  These one-sided emotional outbursts by Xantippe were quite common between the two.

    After the drama near the central square in Athens, Socrates wandered over to a bench near a bridge, a place where he and his disciples often gathered.  One of them said, “Master, why do you put up with Xantippe?  She is constantly berating you publically.  Everyone is embarrassed for you.”  Socrates pondered on his disciple’s thoughts and then said, “If I can learn to live with Xantippe and remain content, I could live with any woman.” 

    Why is this closer to how God’s will works in our lives?  The answer is that Socrates had already learned that his inner peace and wisdom had nothing to do with his external environment or the people who live in it.  Both Socrates and Jesus had mastered their inner world where their responses to life had their origin.  Since this was Jesus’ message, understanding God’s will, may be easier.

    With today being Heritage Sunday on the United Methodist Program Calendar, what are our thoughts regarding God’s will revealing itself in the material world?  Last week, Lois and I took our son, Steven, to see the mural depicting Bermuda’s history in the Commissioner’s House at Dockyard.  Prior to this experience, Al and Claire Perry had loaned us their copy of the book, Hall of History, Bermuda’s Story in Art by Graham Foster, the artist, and Rosemary Jones, the storyteller. 

    After reviewing our island’s history, we might ask ourselves, “Is the will of God being revealed in Bermuda?”  The answer is unequivocally, yes.  When we read the story of Bermuda from the chapters, The Isle of Devils to The Modern Era, viewers and readers are struck by the steady advances from near barbarism to becoming a highly civilized society.  

    Humankind is discovering what can be done to enhance people’s material lives by working together, by serving one another and by abandoning the idea of the survival of the fittest. Advancements in every sector have been evolving for thousands of years.

    We could go further in our thinking and ask ourselves, Is Democracy the will of God?”   Think about your answer.  Most of us cherish our freedoms.   We enjoy the fact that the power for governance rests with the people and the ballot box.  Most of us are extremely grateful for the flow of goods and services to which we have access.  However, the more we examine our circumstances, the more we realize that we have thousands of years of evolution still ahead of us.  The fly in the ointment is not God’s will, but rather the spiritual immaturity of people. 

    Perhaps no one has articulated any better the flaws inherent in a Democracy than Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh.  In 1887, Dr. Tyler had this to say about the fall of a democracy – the Athenian Greek Republic thousands of years ago:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  A democracy will continue to exist up until the time when voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.  From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates that promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy and revert back to where the cycle started – a dictatorship. Democracies have progressed through the following stages of development and decline:

From bondage to spiritual faith

from spiritual faith to great courage;

from great courage to liberty;

from liberty to abundance;

from abundance to complacency;

from complacency to apathy;

from apathy to dependence;

and from dependence to bondage.

    
In other words, humankind cannot fix societies when only a minority of people have enlightened points of view based on love thy neighbor. We cannot legislate that all people must radiate loving energy patterns toward others.  We cannot orchestrate a utopia where everyone works together for the common good.  

    What we have today is a world where some of us have devised laws to govern wisely while other people dismiss these constraints as not applying to them.  What we have today are people that donate their wealth to end diseases in many of the world’s poorer nations while other people become suicide bombers that enter marketplaces populated by women and children.  What we have today are people who create computer software packages to make it easier to organize and manage our lives and we have others who create viruses that destroy such products.  But there is hope.  We are still evolving as a species.     

    The 7th century prophet Jeremiah wrote some insightful words about God’s will for the future of humankind, “A day will come when no one on earth will need to teach a neighbor about me.  From the least to the greatest, all of them will know me because I have placed my laws of spirit within them.”  (Jeremiah 31:33f)   

    To communicate this understanding to his followers, Jesus used a symbol his listeners would understand.  He told them that they would only live life fully by discovering and then choosing to live in the Kingdom of God, a consciousness where love directs our decisions and responses.    

    Near the end of his life, Jesus indicated that his kingdom was not of this world. (John 18:36)  Jesus also taught, “The entrance to the Kingdom is narrow and the challenge to stay on the path is great and there are only a few people who can find it.” (Matthew 7:14)   From these two teachings, Jesus provided more insight into God’s will.

    God knows each of us and has given us the ability to create anything our desires can imagine. What we create, however, communicates who we are.   Some of us strive to acquire all the creature-comforts our world has available.  There is nothing wrong with that.  We are communicating where our priorities lie.  Others of us produce music that could only come from an imagination that knows the world of spirit. No judgment needs to be made about either choice.  This is the way many people live their lives.  Jesus knew this when he said, “The first will be last and the last will be first.” (Matthew 19:30)  What this teaching means is that all of us, whether we are first or last, will experience the destiny God has designed for us. 

    In our current stage of our evolution as spirit-beings, most of us still walk in darkness.  A day is coming, however, when we will understand why our material lives were necessary.  (Psalm 139:11-12)  We have much to learn about who we are, where we came from and where we are going.  Can we ever know God’s will?  No!   What we can do, however, is learn to participate in it. 

    What should fill our hearts, minds and spirits with peace is that nothing can prevent God’s will from being done in all of our lives.  What makes our confidence more secure is our understanding that God is infinitely patient with our spiritual immaturities.  In time, all of us will know the truth about why living in our solid forms was a necessary stage in our spiritual evolution.  Everyone can be at peace, knowing that our evolution of spirit does not depend on our beliefs but rather on God’s will.