God'splan - audio

The speaker begins by acknowledging that it has been a while since their last podcast due to various issues. They express hope that their listeners had a good holiday season and are ready to start the new year. The topic of the podcast is about following God's plan, and the speaker poses several questions for listeners to consider. They emphasize the importance of aligning one's plans with God's plan and the impact it can have on others. The speaker references Psalm 139 and highlights the idea that God intimately knows and searches our hearts. They discuss how following God's plan can lead to boldness and positive influence in the lives of others. The speaker concludes by urging listeners to examine their own plans and seek God's will. It's been a long time. I know it's been over a month and I hope you guys have had a good time off with the holidays. We took time off through Thanksgiving and through Christmas and through New Year's. So welcome into the new year. We left 2023 with a little bit of a bang. We had a few issues last year and we're going to break with recording just this podcast. So from audio problems to video problems to just getting everything lined up to where we want to do. We're real people today in real time with real problems trying to apply real biblical solutions. So that's the problem. A lot of times we're trying to apply a real biblical solution to this podcast and we come under attack. So rather a spiritual influence or physical or technical. Here we are. So like I said, I hope you guys had a good time off. I hope you had a good Christmas. Have a happy Thanksgiving and I hope you're willing to go into the new year. So like I said, this is Authentic Life. I'm Josh. I'm glad to see you guys. I hope you're glad to see me back and we're going to dive right into it. So today's podcast lines up with the new year and we're going to talk about following God's plan. So it lines up with a New Year message and here we are. So we have some tough questions to ask and I want you to really think about these questions as we dive into them and then we get into the scripture and what it has to say. So do you know the plans that God has for you? What does God say about our plans? And are we following the plans God has for our lives? Are we following? Am I following God's plans or am I failing at them? Do we recognize the plans God has set before us? That's a very big question. Are we willing to put aside our own wants to fulfill the plans God has placed for us in our lives? Now as we go through these scriptures, we're going to attack these questions and we're going to look at them because they all are congealed into just one question. Do our plans align with God's plan or are we trying to disguise our agenda as a God-ordained plan for our lives? Where do we need to be and how does it line up with scripture and is it led by the Holy Spirit? So what happens when we follow the plans of God? What can we do? And what can we do to know that we are in the will of God? So remember these questions as we dive into the scripture and we're going to go through these scriptures and we're going to have a little context and we're going to think about the people that we're going to be referencing. We know that the Bible is God-ordained. We know it was inspired by God and written through men. We know this because that's what it is. Now as we remember this, it is God-inspired but it is written by men. So we have to remember that these guys are people just like me and you and they had real issues and they had real struggles and they had real problems that they had to try to figure out in their lives. And so as we go through these scriptures, we're going to look at some of the lives of the people that we're going to be quoting and see how we can just get into our mindset that they have struggles just like we are and we're going to read through these scriptures and see what happens. So let's dive into Psalms 139 and that's going to be our main text for today and we're going to go through verses one through four and then we're going to dive into some other scriptures and I'm going to go through a little bit of quoting that maybe may think you just a little bit about where we are in our lives. So what's Psalm 139 say? Verses one through four say this, You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is in my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely. To find out what plans we should follow, we are going to look at these verses little by little with insight from the Word of God and what the Word of God has for us. Now starting with the first verse of Psalm 139, it says, You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. God clearly searches us and knows the intent of our hearts, no matter good or bad. Within this, it is clear that God is an intimate individual that wants to be a part of our lives, my life and your life, and not apart from it. Listen, the psalmist is David. He is King David. He is intimately aware of this as he is thinking, as he is writing these psalms. He knows that God knows him. He says, You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. We have got to remember what David was. David was a king. He wrote the psalms. He was a giant killer at one point, but in the same sense, during his kingly ship, while he reigned as king, he also had bad sides. He was known as a man after God's own heart, but he also, he lusted after a soldier's wife. He wanted that man's wife so bad that he sent him to the front lines to have him killed. But that's not where the psalm is. I mean, that's not how we remember David. We remember David as a giant killer and as a man after God's own heart. David is intimately aware of his issues as he writes these psalms and as he writes, as we read the scripture of what he wrote. We must remember that God wants and desires to be part of our lives, no matter how far we are or we think we are from God. David is proof of this, as he is called a man after God's own heart. Even after having a long stint of problems throughout his entire life, David is still known as a man after God's own heart. As we look at the content of David, he writes the very psalm. We must remember the realities of his life and the content of his heart earlier in his life. He committed all kinds of horrible deeds as king, but in the end, he's not remembered for the wrongs. He's remembered for talking with God and following the plans that God has set for him. God knows us intimately and knows our hearts in the past as well as in the future. See, here, check out what Romans 8, 27 says. It says, He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God. Now, when we begin to follow the will of God, it is under the influence of the Holy Spirit. When we begin to align ourselves with the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, we will begin to see the Spirit work through us more and more. Take a look at what the apostles in the New Testament did. They allowed the Word of God, namely Jesus' teaching, to work through them. When this happened, they became more and more bold within their ministries. They stepped out of their comfort zones more and more. If you begin to closely see the immediate disciples of Jesus, you will notice that their boldness becomes more normal in their lives, and they begin to rely on the ministry of Christ that was instilled in their lives. Once they began to operate in the plan that God had set before them, the abnormal became normal in their lives, and multitudes were affected from this. This is not to say that as long as you follow the plan that God has set before you, that you will affect the multitudes. But it doesn't mean that you won't affect multitudes either. It means that you will influence the lives of the people that are around you. It does not mean that you will reach thousands. But God's plan for you may be different from others. So you could reach thousands, or God could use you to reach one individual that would change the entire destiny of humanity. Or through that one individual that you reach, it could affect thousands of lives. So you might not directly reach thousands, but you could indirectly reach thousands through just the people that you talk to. God's plan for you would not be the same as others, but nonetheless, if you allow God's plan to work in and through you, people's lives are changed, and the world is changed because of it. Psalm 44 21 says this, When not God hath discovered it, since he knows the secret of our heart, in our hearts nothing is hidden from God. Psalm 44 21 testifies that everything is set before God, and notes that nothing escapes God's grasp. We must understand that God is omniscient, and this is just a fancy word for note that saying God is all-knowing. In 1 Samuel 16 7, the Lord does not look at the things that people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks upon the heart. And 1 Chronicles 29 17 says this, I know my God that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. Finally, look at if we go farther in Psalm 139, 23 and 24 says this, Search me God and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's anything offensive in me and lead me in a way everlasting. When we look at our plans for our life, are they what God would have us do? God knows the intent of our heart, and he intimately, intimately knows us. Throughout the Bible, we can see that people are in and out of the will of God continually. It's no different with us. We at times are in the will of God, and sometimes we're not. The difference we can see between the two is that when we are not in the will of God, our plans lead us away from the benefits of God's plan, and there is a never-ending void within us that needs to be filled. So you might think, you might think, well, won't God's will be done anyway? Well, of course it will. Just when we do the will of God that he has called us to do, we begin to saturate the lives around us that may not have been affected in the same way that would have if we followed the will of God in our life. Listen, God has called each of his followers to follow to a plan that is different from another's. The plan is always to fulfill the great commission and to reach out to people, and if we follow this, well, we see the effectiveness of our plan from God to reach, starting with those around us, and it moves down from there. This is why we are not to follow when we are not in the will of God. Let's make this clear. When we are not in the will of God, we may not see those around us affected by the gospel as if we follow the call of God within our life. Moreover, and if we look at verse 2, it says this, You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. Our intimate desires fluctuate from season to season. We've got to remember that. God never changes no matter the season. Not only is God omniscient, but he's omnipresent. He is outside of time and he knows the outcome of every single situation. It is better to place our outcome in the hands of God rather than to try to manipulate the outcome to our immediate desires. Our desires go from here to here in a matter of moments. In one season of our life, we may want to do one thing. Another season, we may want to do another. Listen to what Pastor Tony Evans says. God will meet you where you are in order to take you where he wants you to go. There is a great example of this in the gospel of John. John 4, 7-30. I was going to read this, but we're going to summarize it. We're going to read. There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Therefore the Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman? Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. She said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw and the well is deep. Where to then do you get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are you? Who gave us the well and drank from himself and his sons and his cattle? Jesus answered and said to her, Everyone who drinks of this will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I give him shall never thirst. But the water that I give him will become in him a well springing to eternal life. The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw. He said to her, Go, call your husband and come here. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, You have correctly said I have no husband for you have had five husbands and the one who you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain and you people say that in Jerusalem is a place where men go to worship. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for the salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming and now is when the true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and in truth. For such people, the father seeks to be his worshippers. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know the Messiah is coming. He who is called the Christ. When that one comes, he will declare all things to us. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. At this point, his disciples came and they were amazed that he had been speaking with a woman. Yet no one said, What do you seek? Why do you speak with her? So the woman left her water pot and went into the sea and said to the men, Come see a man who told me all the things I have done. This is not the Christ, is it? They went out of the sea and were coming to him. Listen, there's a few key passages within that entire scripture that we have to begin to notice. There was an aha moment that she had when she was talking with Jesus. He directly looked at her. I who speak to you am he. And then at that point, she realized who she was speaking to. At that point, she realized who she was speaking to. She had an aha moment. When we read through the verses, we could see the will of God, an individual who meets with God in their life. This not only shows where the will of a person meets the will of God, but also the confusion, the struggle that she had with the will of God in the beginning. We can see where she struggles with the concept, but after she is convinced that she has met with the will of God, she completely gives in. She stopped and she went to the city and told everybody what had happened. If we learn from the woman at the well, we must place ourselves in her shoes. This is not such a far stretch of the imagination. If we really take the time to really just think about the process, what had happened and looked at it. Throughout her life, she was always trying to fill her immediate needs, her wants, her desires. This is why she was moving from moment to moment with one man to another. That's why she had five husbands. That's why she had the man that she was with now. We do not know every situation that she was in, but we do know from the scripture that the current man she was living with was a promiscuous one. It was a promiscuous relationship with it not being her husband. Not only can we know from this conversation that it was wrong, but she acknowledged that her decisions were wrong. At that moment, after she had done talking to Jesus, she had an aha moment. She ran back to the town with her new desire and the new fulfillment in her heart. Her plans had changed after she met God. After she met Jesus, she had a new plan to fulfill, one that gave her a new identity in her eyes and a plan that created joy and sorrow, not disgrace. You can imagine that she's talking to Jesus and she's coming to this well by herself. She was disgraced. She was in sorrow. That's why she went from man to man and she went to the well by herself when no one else was there because she was in the wrong and she knew she was in the wrong. She had finally came in contact with the will of God in her life and she had a new plan to fulfill. Her whole outlook on life had changed. It changed so much that she could not contain it within the realization of what just happened. She immediately changed her story. We can assume from her reaction that she chose the living water and then she continued to fulfill the new call in her life and she began this new call and this new life. With that being said, we're going to look at verses three and four. It says, You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways before a word is in my tongue. Lord, you know it completely. This leads me to into a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. God does not give us everything we want, but he does fulfill his promises. Lead us along the best and straightest paths to himself. God knows everything and that also means that he knows everything about us from our best parts to our most innermost trivial thoughts. There is nothing that is hidden from God. We've got to remember this. There's nothing that we can do or we can say or we can think that is hidden from God. This also means that he knows the best possible way for us to move within our lives. We talked about omniscience and omnipresence. This falls right in line with both of those. He's omniscient. He knows everything from our innermost thoughts and he's omnipresent. He knows the outcome of everything. He is outside of time so he can look. Time is not a moving factor for God. He's here. Time is here. He can look at any part of the timeline and know what is happening at all times. There's nothing hidden from God. This also means that this does not necessarily mean that it will be easy for our lives and a lot of times there will be pain and there will be suffering and we will have to endure within our lives to get to the goal that God has set before us. You've got to remember that. Listen, if there's anything we can learn from the gospel is that Jesus had a perfect example of the situation. God had a plan for the entire life of Jesus but in order for it to be fulfilled, Jesus had to endure the worst of all of us from the beatings to the crucifixion but God had a plan and a path for him to take to have a salvation that was available to all mankind. Listen, what would happen if God or if Jesus would not have fulfilled a plan that God had set before that was so perfect to wipe away all the sins of man's life through the crucifixion, through the beatings, through the death and the resurrection of Jesus? What if that plan had gone astray and we wouldn't have the gospel we have today? We wouldn't be talking. I wouldn't be talking to you. You wouldn't have the possibility of eternal life. Listen, we're aware that the example of Jesus is a far example for us in our lives but it's nonetheless an example and if we follow what the plans for God's life are in our lives, it doesn't mean that it's always going to be good. It's going to be bad. It's going to be bad. It's going to be painful sometimes. It's always good, sorry, but it's going to be painful and there's going to be trials. There's going to be tribulations. This leads me into two things I'm thinking of. The first is a quote by Marie Laurie which says this, God's plans are better for you than the plans you have for yourself so don't be afraid of God's will even if it is different from yours. I came across this. This is a quote by Elizabeth Elliot and she wrote, in quest for love, the true stories of passion and purity. Does it make sense to pray for guidance about the future if we are not obeying in the thing that lies before us today? How many momentous events in scripture depend on one person's small act of obedience? Rest assured, do what God tells you to do now and depend upon it and you will be shown what to do next. God knows what is best for us in every area. Hebrews 4.13 says, nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid before the eyes of him whom we must give an account. God knows everything about everything. That's that omniscience again. God knows everything about everything. We must remember that nothing, not one thing, is hidden from the sight of God. From our path that we take to the secrets that are within our hearts, it is when we follow the path of God that he has set before us and not the path that we have set for ourselves that God is most pleased and that the call of God in our life is granted and fulfilled. As we look at the life God has for us and the plans that God has placed within our lives, we will begin to see a life that is fulfilled and meant to help reach people in the lives of others. When we allow the plan that God has placed before us to operate is when we only see our lives begin to change. But not only our lives, but the lives that surround us begin to change as well. God's plan for you, God's plan for me, is not just to operate within our lives but within the lives that are around you and throughout the remainder of your days. I pray that you allow the plans of God to operate throughout your life. God has a plan and has called for you to fulfill. Are you willing to allow the one that knows all and sees all to guide you even in your want, even when your want and your own desires need to be fulfilled? Remember what the psalmist David wrote and let God guide you throughout his will because he has already had a plan for you and desires that you operate in the calling that he has set for you. Guys, I hope that at some point that you enjoyed this. I hope that it has really reached you in some way and some others. Reach out if you have some questions, if you want some answers, if there's something here that you want to ask about, reach out to us. Give us an email, shoot us something on our Facebook. I really hope that with this new year that you start to begin to think about what God's plans are for you, that you dive into the scripture and that you really begin to understand and start to think of the issues that could arise from not following the plans that God has ordained for your life. Now remember, God doesn't always have an audible voice but what we do know is if it lines up with scripture and it is led by the Holy Spirit, you can almost trust assure that it is from God. It's from God if it has to line up with the scripture, the inkling of the Holy Spirit. So remember that and I hope you guys have had a good time off and I look forward to talking with you guys more in the future. God bless and I will see you guys next time.