"Can We Ever Know God’s Will?" Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler – May 20, 2012 Centenary United 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 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 After
reviewing our island’s history, we might ask ourselves, “Is
the will of God being revealed in 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
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. 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 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. |