God's Will for Me and World Evangelism (Urbana 70)
by Paul E. LittleSuppose the Lord Jesus Christ were here at Urbana tonight in person, that he were sitting here in the front row, and that you could ask him one question - any question you wanted to ask. You would know that the answer you got would be from the Creator of the universe. What would that question be?
If you are like other groups in which I have actually conducted this experiment, the vast majority of you would ask a question related in some way to how you could know God's will for your life. Now this figures, because to a committed Christian this is really the only thing that counts. Peace and satisfaction depend on knowing that God is guiding us. And the absence of that certainty leaves us fearful and restless. It may be that some of you are in fear and uncertainty because you are not clear about God's guiding in your life.
Part of the problem lies in the confusion of knowing what the will of God is
in the first place. And unless we are clear about that, we really cannot make
much other progress. When most people speak of God's will, they mean something
you have or don't have. "Have you discovered God's will for your life?"
they ask each other. What they usually mean is, "Have you discovered God's
blueprint for your life?" But the fact is that God seldom reveals an entire
blueprint. Those of you who have come to Urbana looking for that blueprint in
its entirety are likely to be disappointed. What God does reveal most frequently,
however, is the next step in his will for a person. But this leads us into the
fuller question of what exactly God's will is.
It is very important to understand at the outset that God has a plan and purpose
for your life. To me, this is one of the sensational aspects of being a Christian.
To know that your life can be tied into God's plan and purpose not only for
time but for eternity as well. Paul, in writing to the Ephesians, speaks of
God: "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Eph. 2:10).
David, in Psalm 37:23, says, "The steps of a man are from the Lord, and he establishes him in whose way he delights." And in Acts 13:2, we read: "While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them."'
Not only does God have a plan for us, but he has promised to reveal it to us.
In Psalm 73:24, David says of God: "Thou dost guide me with thy counsel,
and afterward thou wilt receive me to glory." In Psalm 32:8, God promises,
"I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel
[or guide] you with my eye upon you."
Finally, those classic verses, Proverbs 3:5-6, two of the most compact verses
on guidance in the whole Bible, say: "Trust in the Lord with all thine
heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge
him, and he shall direct thy paths" (AV).
Just what is God's will in the first place? It is important to realize that there are two aspects to it. The first is that aspect of his will and his plan which has already been revealed in his Word and which applies to every Christian. Has it ever struck you that the vast majority of the will of God for your life has already been revealed in the Bible? That is a remarkable and crucial thing to get hold of.
There are many positive commands. For instance, we are commanded by our Lord to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. We know it is the will of God (from Romans 8:29) that we are to be conformed to the image of Christ. Do you want to know the will of God for your life? Read the book of James and list all the specific commands and you will have a good start on the will of God for your life.
Also, there is a whole series of negative commands in Scripture. God tells us in unmistakable terms in 2 Corinthians 6:14 that we are not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers, which means, among other things, that a Christian is never to marry an unbeliever. Are any of you praying for guidance about whether you should marry a non-Christian? Save your breath.
The late A. W. Tozer pointed out that we should never seek guidance on what is forbidden, where God has said No. Nor should we ever seek guidance in the areas where he has said Yes, where there is a command. He then pointed out that in most other things God has no preference.
God really does not have a great preference whether you have steak or chicken. He is not desperately concerned about whether you wear a green shirt or a blue shirt. In many areas of life, using Tozer's phrase, God invites us to consult our own sanctified preferences. When we are pleased, God is pleased. That is a wonderful thing to know, isn't it?
Then Tozer points out that there are areas in which we need special guidance and that God has promised us special guidance in those areas. The Lord spoke to the prophet Isaiah: "I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go" (Is. 48:17). These are the areas of life where there is no specific statement like, "Thou, John Jones, shalt be an engineer in Cincinnati," or, "Thou, Mary Smith, shalt marry Fred Grottenheimer." There are no specific verses in the Bible that will give you that kind of detail in your life.
When we recognize that there are two aspects to the will of God, namely, what is already specifically revealed in his Word and what is not, we get away from the static concept represented by the blueprint idea.
The will of God is not like a magic package let down out of heaven by a string, a package we grope after in desperation and hope sometime in the future to clasp to our hearts. Rather the will of God is more like a scroll that unrolls every day. In other words, God has a will for you and me today and tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. Now it may well be that a decision you or I make this week or next week will commit us to a certain thing for three months, or two years, or five or ten years, or for a lifetime. But the fact still remains that the will of God is something to be discerned and to be lived out each day of our lives, not something to be grasped as a package once for all. Then also, when we realize that our call is basically not to a plan or blueprint, or even to a place or work, but to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, we will sense something of the dynamic of it as well.
Now, after understanding something of what the will of God is in its two dimensions, we need to understand something of the prerequisites for knowing the will of God in these unspecified areas of our lives.
One prerequisite is to be a child of God. One day some people asked Jesus directly,
"What must we do, to be doing the works of God?" And Jesus answered
specifically and clearly, "This is the work [or the will] of God, that
you believe in him whom he has sent" (Jn. 6:29). We must first come to
Jesus in a commitment of faith to him as Savior and Lord. Then, since we are
God's children, we can be guided by him as our Father. The Lord said in John
10:3, "He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out."
The second prerequisite is to obey, at least in the desire of our hearts, the
will of God in those areas in which we know his will. What is the point of God's
guiding us in areas in which he has not been specific when we are apparently
unconcerned about areas in which he is specific? Mark Twain once wryly observed,
"It's not the parts of the Bible I don't understand that bother me, it's
the parts I do understand." Perhaps this is the problem for some of us
now. We need to begin to obey in those specific areas.
We know, for example, that we ought to be meeting with the Lord every day in prayer. "But," you say, "you don't know my schedule. I've got a heavy course load this year. And yadda, yadda." All of us have twenty-four hours equally. It is merely a matter of setting priorities. If you are going to meet with God every day, it means you decide when you are going to bed, when you will get up and what you are going to study.
You may have vaguely always wanted to witness to that fellow or girl down the hall. Then you must decide when you are going to do it. You must attempt to make some contact with that friend to see if there is any openness to the gospel. What are the areas of the will of God that you know already to be his will? To what extent are you acting on them?
The third prerequisite, and I think the most crucial, is that we must be willing to accept the will of God in these unspecified areas of our lives before knowing what it is, accepting it in advance, in other words. And for most of us, I suspect, this is where the real problem lies. If we are really honest, most of us would have to admit that our attitude is, "Lord show me what your will is so I can decide whether it fits in with what I have in mind."
In essence we are saying, "Just lift the curtain a minute and let me see.
I'd like to see it so I can decide whether I want to do it or not. Show me whether
I'm to be married or not. Show me where in the world you want me to be and what
you want me to do. If it's Palm Beach, or Laguna Beach, or Honolulu or some
wonderful place like that, then maybe I'll consider it a little more seriously."
Now if we stop to reflect and we analyze this attitude, we will be shocked to
realize that what we are, in fact, doing is insulting God. What we are really
saying is, "I think I know better than you, God, what will make me happy.
I don't trust you. If I let you run my life, you're going to short-change me."
Have you ever felt that? It is a solemn thing to realize.
Now the tragic, mistaken idea most of us have is that our choice is between doing what we want to do and being happy, and doing what God wants us to do and being miserable. We think that the will of God is some miserable thing which he sort of shoves under our nose and demands, "All right! Are you willing, are you willing?" And suddenly we must decide there and then whether we are going to be miserable for the rest of our lives, whereas, if we could just get out from under his clammy hands, we could really swing. That is the implication of the attitude which is so common to many of us.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Such notions are a slur on the character of God. So many of us have gotten the idea that God is a kind of celestial Scrooge who peers over the balcony of heaven trying to find anybody who is enjoying life. And when he spots a happy person, he yells, "Now cut that out!" And if he ever got his hands on us, all enjoyment and happiness would be down the tube.
That should make us stagger and shudder because it's blasphemous! We need to have deeply planted in our hearts the tremendous truth of Romans 8:32: "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" If you can get hold of that verse, memorize it, meditate on it and allow it to get hold of you, you will have solved 90% of your problem with desire for the will of God, because you will realize the God who loved us enough to die for us when we did not care that much for him is not about to short-change us in life when we come to him and give him our lives. As Oswald Hoffman of the Lutheran Hour has put it, "Having given us the package, do you think God will deny us the ribbon?"
Think of it in human terms for a moment. Think of a father and his children.
I have two children. A girl Debbie, and a son Paul. (We call him Small Paul,
Small Paul Little. When you realize that in
Greek paulos means small, it is the ultimate in redundancy.) When my children
come to me and say, "Daddy, I love you," do you think I respond by
saying, "Ah, children, that's just what I've been waiting to hear. Into
the closet for three weeks. Bread and water. I've just been waiting for you
to tell me you love me so I can make your life miserable!" Do you think
that is the way I respond? Of course not. They could get anything they wanted
out of me at that point.
And do you think that God is less loving than a human father? Rather, God's love far transcends any love that we as humans express. The Bible is constantly drawing contrasts between human love and activity and our heavenly Father's love. "If you then, who are evil," Jesus says in Luke 11: 13, "know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
When we come to God and say, "I love you, and I'm prepared to do your
will whatever you want me to do," we can be sure that God is not going
to make us miserable. Rather he rejoices and fits our lives into his pattern
for us, into that place where he, in his omniscience and love, knows we will
fit hand in glove. The one who is our Creator, who made us, who knows us better
than we will ever know ourselves, is the one we are talking to. He knows the
end from the beginning.
I love the third verse of the hymn, "Still Will We Trust":
Choose for us, God, nor let our weak preferring
Cheat us of good Thou hast for us designed:
Choose for us, God; Thy wisdom is unerring.
And we are fools and blind.
God's will is not loathsome. It is the greatest thing in all of life to get hold of. There is no greater joy or satisfaction in all of life than to be in the center of the will of God and know it. Jim Elliot, one of the martyrs in Ecuador in 1954, wrote of the sheer joy of doing the will of God, as recorded in his biography, Shadow of the Almighty.
In the light of the character of God and considering the experience of people who have known him, I dislike intensely the phrase, "surrender to the will of God." To me, that implies kicking, struggling, screaming. It is like saying, "There is no other way out. I'm running, but I'm caught. I've got to collapse and surrender. It's all over. I give up."
Instead, I far prefer the term "affirm the will of God." If we had
the sense we were born with, every one of us would affirm God's will with confidence
and with joy and with deep satisfaction.
This is a very crucial prerequisite. It will involve eliminating areas of hold-out
in your life-a relationship, an ambition, a qualification. No more saying, "I'll
go anywhere, Lord, but . . ." or "I'll go and do anything, but it's
got to be with so-and-so." Rather we will say, "Lord, you've created
me and I belong to you by creation. Even when I was a rebel against you, you
loved me enough to die for me. Everything I am and have belongs to you. I'm
not my own, I'm bought with a price - the precious blood of Christ - and I consciously
and joyfully commit myself to you for you to do with me as you choose."
And when we come to that place, we will be able to say with Paul, and mean in
the depths of our hearts, "To me to live is Christ."
We must first, then, understand what the will of God is. Then we must be prepared
to accept the prerequisites for knowing it in those areas about which the Bible
is not specific. And in the third place we need to understand how, in fact,
God guides in the areas where he has not been specific.
First, as we have already seen, God frequently guides through his word, through
specific commands. In addition to these commands there are principles in the
Word of God which may have implications for our situation. And if we can understand
their teaching and apply them to the circumstances of our lives, they can give
us specific, practical guidance in specific situations.
Let me give you a negative example.
Several years ago in the spring a person signed a contract to teach. In August, she received another offer from a school closer to where she wanted to live. So she broke the original contract. Now she was familiar with the biblical principle in Psalm 15:4, where God says that he is pleased with a person who swears to his own hurt and does not change, a person whose word is his bond, who accepts responsibility and can be counted on .The department chairman who told me about the Christian girl's action said her justification was, "I have a peace about it," and he commented rather sardonically, "Isn't that lovely. She's got the peace and I've got the pieces."
You can imagine what it is like to get a teacher in August to teach in September.
I believe that girl missed the will of God because she violated a principle
which, if she had been alert and had applied it to her situation, would have
given her very clear guidance in this specific detail of her life. God guides,
then, through his Word and its principles.
In the second place, God guides us in prayer as we ask him to show us his will.
I can well remember the Urbana Convention in 1948. Dr. Norton Sterrett, who
spoke the last evening, asked, "How many of you who are concerned about
the will of God spend even five minutes a day asking him to show you his will'?"
It was as if somebody had grabbed me by the throat. At that time I was an undergraduate,
concerned about what I should do when I graduated from the university. I was
running around like a chicken with its head cut off, going to this meeting,
reading that book, trying to find somebody's little formula - 1, 2, 3, 4 and
a little bell rings - and I was frustrated out of my mind trying to figure out
what the will of God was. I was doing everything but getting into the presence
of God and asking him to show me.
May I ask you the same question: You who are concerned about the will of God for your life, do you spend even five minutes a day specifically asking God to show you?
As we pray, God often gives us a conviction by the Holy Spirit which deepens, despite new information, to an increasing sense of rightness or oughtness about a course of action. This is quite different from the "gung ho" emotion which prods us today to get on a plane to Hong Kong, and tomorrow to move into Chicago, and the next day to paddle a canoe up the Amazon, and each day after to go in a different direction. When the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer begins to move in our hearts, one conviction deepens and, while we recognize other situations, we have a sense of rightness or oughtness that this is the will of God for us.
Third, he guides and directs us through circumstances. Here, however, we must be particularly on guard. Most of us tend to make circumstances 99% of the guidance. But they are only one of the factors in guidance.
Furthermore, we must view circumstances from God's perspective and values; they may be more of a guide negatively than positively. For instance, if you think that God is leading you to go to graduate school in engineering, but you cannot get into any school in this country or abroad, it may be fairly clear and evident that God does not want you in engineering school. On the other hand, the fact that you are accepted into three engineering schools does not necessarily mean that God wants you to go into engineering. There may be other factors to consider. You may graduate from the university and have fifteen job offers (although with the recession that is not quite as likely as it was a few years ago), but that does not necessarily mean that God wants you to stay in this country.
He may have a prior claim on your life that will involve going into a far corner of the earth. And if you view the circumstances from God's point of view, you may be called of God to do something that the average non-Christian, who sees nothing but the visible world bounded by the cradle and the grave, would consider foolish, a tragic waste of time and talent.
One of the circumstances that God may use to show you your place in the world
in evangelism may be this conference. Here you have a unique opportunity to
get information about situations and circumstances all over the world. I hope
none of you will miss the opportunity to talk personally with the missionaries
here, to get pertinent books and to pursue this information by talking to missionaries
from your church, in addition to asking God to guide you.
God may use a summer trip abroad to show you whether and where he wants you
to go overseas. And it seems to me that in this jet age every one of us as students
ought to consider the possibility of a semester or summer abroad in some other
culture as part of our educational experience - not to speak of our Christian
education and of our allowing ourselves to be open to where God might want us
to be. On the other hand, as a result of study and circumstances, God might
confirm a call to you here in the States to serve his program in some crucial
way.
Familiarize yourself with the needs of the world. While it is quite true that the need in itself is not a call, that there are enormous, overwhelming needs everywhere and we can never meet them all, still needs cannot be ignored. The old illustration of a log carried by nine men on one end and three women on the other end may be trite and corny, but nevertheless it has a profound point. The question is: If you want to help, to which end of the log will you go?
It is a fact that 90% of full-time Christian workers are in parts of the world which have 10% of the world's population and only 10% of them are in population centers comprising 90% of the world's population. Surely this is not the will of God since he has already told us in his Word that his desire is that every person hear the gospel. There are still millions of people who have never heard it for the first time.
David Howard has a real point in his leaflet "Don't Wait for the Macedonians" when he asks, "Why should anyone seek more specific direction to serve the Lord overseas than he does to serve in any other capacity or location? It may well be that we should make every effort to go overseas unless God clearly calls us to stay home, rather than the reverse. And as you make the effort, as you begin to move, God will guide. God can close doors very easily. But, as the old saying goes, you can't steer a parked car; you can't pilot a moored ship."
Another very crucial way you can know God's guidance through circumstances is to get involved in the work of evangelism where you are. It is foolish to think of traveling to some other part of the world if God has not already put his hand on you so that there is spiritual blessing in the people with whom you are already associated on campus.
And please do not overlook the opportunities for personal witness to the hundreds of students who are living on this Urbana campus during this week but are not part of the convention. Be alert to them. Talk to them. They know something is going on although they do not quite understand it. Share what is happening with them.
Look out for international students on your campus, talk to them and see how God might lead you. Trust God to give you a solid friendship with at least one person from overseas. Ask God to enable you to share with that person the greatest thing in all of life - the love of Jesus - and to articulate the gospel to him. If you are able to get through to American, Canadian and international students on your own campus, God may then put a fire in your bones that will move you to some other part of the world.
Fourth, God guides us through the counsel of other Christians who are fully committed to the will of God and who know us well. Personally, I think that this is one of the most neglected dimensions of guidance in the lives of many Christians today. I am always suspicious of a person who implies that he has a personal pipeline to God, even though saying "God led me" sounds very spiritual. And when no one else senses that what the person suggests is, in fact, the will of God, then we had better be very careful.
God has been blamed for the most outlandish things by people who have confused their own inverted pride with God's will. Occasionally I hear of a guy who, in the name of spiritual guidance, rushes up to a girl and says, "Susie, God has told me you're to marry me." I have news for him. If that is the will of God, then Susie is going to get the message, too. And if she does not, somebody's radar is jammed. Are you wondering about marriage?
Do you wonder what your gifts are? Do you wonder whether God might use you in an overseas situation in some capacity? Talk to some of your mature Christian friends, your pastor, elders in your assembly and others who know you and are concerned for the will of God for themselves and you. Their counsel may well be invaluable. Although it is true that sometimes we get mixed counsel from Christian friends, still their advice is frequently helpful.
Remember, Acts 15 records, "It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. . . ." And I believe God usually guides in that way - a personal conviction corroborated by friends' opinions. Do not be afraid to talk to people whom you think might give you advice you do not want to hear. It may be you are too emotionally involved in a situation to see it objectively. Then you need somebody to talk really straight to you so that you can be realistic in your assessments.
Now when all four of these factors - the Word of God, conviction that he gives us in prayer, circumstances and the counsel of mature Christian friends - converge, it is usually a sign that God is leading and guiding us.
Lastly, I want to consider with you some serious mistakes to avoid in our thinking about the will of God for you in the area of world evangelism.
First, we must not think that because we want to do something, it cannot possibly be God's will. Some of you may have wanted very badly to come to Urbana, and you might have thought to yourself, "Boy, this can't be God's will because I want it so badly. I wonder if that means I should give up going to Urbana?"
But when we have that attitude, we display a distorted concept of the character of God. We really think he is a celestial killjoy. We need to recognize and have again ingrained in our being the wonderful truth of Psalm 37:4 where David says, "Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart" (AV). Now David does not mean, "Delight thyself also in the Lord and he shall give thee a Sting Ray, a Cadillac, a Phi Beta Kappa key and the whole business."
What he means is that as we delight ourselves in the Lord, we come, as the hymn says, "to will with him one will." As I delight myself in the Lord, my will and God's will come to coincide. And that is a most wonderful experience. The greatest joy in all of our lives is to do what the Lord wants us to do and to know we are doing it. Then we can say, as our Lord said in those tremendous words in John 4:34, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me."
Now, admittedly, we must be on guard constantly against self-deception, but when we really want to do the will of God and do it, we have deep joy and satisfaction.
Second, we must guard very carefully against the idea that every decision we make must have a subjective confirmation. I have known people who have been paralyzed, can't act at all and don't know what to do because they did not have some kind of electrifying liver shiver about the whole thing. If you are facing an important decision in which God has not given you specific guidance, postpone the decision, if you can, until the way seems clear.
But, on the other hand, if you must decide by next Saturday and next Saturday comes and you still have not gotten any clear guidance about it, as far as you know, then you must make the decision. You must trust that God will guide you in the decision. After assessing all the factors, you launch out in faith, saying, "Lord, as I see it, there are four equally valid possibilities in front of me. I see no particular advantage or disadvantage in any of these options. So I am going to go down route 3 unless you close the door. And I trust that you won't let me make a crucial mistake." And we can go joyfully, believing God did guide us, without spending the next twenty-four years second-guessing ourselves as to whether we are in the will of God.
God does not play the game of mousetrap with us. He does not say, "Ha, ha. You thought that was the right lane, but it wasn't. Back to the start and better luck next time." That is not the way God operates. We must get rid of these distorted concepts of God's character.
Rather, the God who loved you and me enough to die for us is not going to play games with our lives. We mean too much to him. We can come back to those words we have already quoted, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." Third, we must realize that there are often logical implications involved in the will of God. If some things are the will of God, then a whole series of other things are automatically the will of God and we do not have to pray about them. For example, if God leads you to get married, you do not have to spend hours in prayer agonizing over whether or not it is the will of God that you should support your wife. Now I would think that this is painfully self-evident, and yet I have met so many people who do not seem to have grasped it.
I once loaned a guy ten dollars, and he is still praying about whether he ought to pay me back.
Fourth, we must not think that God's will is necessarily some wild and bizarre
thing. There are many people who are afraid of using their reason in determining
God's will. But we must recognize that God is not the author of confusion. When
the Scripture says "Lean not to your own understanding," it does not
mean "Kiss your brains good-bye. If it makes any sense at all, it couldn't
be the will of God." Rather, the Holy Spirit illumines us and then guides
our enlightened reason. It may be that he will lead us to do something that
is contrary to our unenlightened reason, but the idea that his will is frequently
bizarre is a very dangerous assumption.
Fifth, we must guard very carefully against the subtle temptation to decide
what we are going to do for God. This mistake is really critical and I would
like you to consider it carefully. There is a vast difference between saying,
"Lord, I'm going to be a businessman (or missionary or whatever) for you,"
and asking, "Lord, what will you have me to do?" It sounds very spiritual
to say, "I'm going to be a businessman for the Lord and make money and
give it to the Lord's work." Or, "I'll be a missionary for the Lord."
But the Lord has not asked you to decide whether you are going to be a missionary,
or a businessman, or whatever, for him. Rather, he has invited you to be a recruit
and say to the Commander-in-Chief, "Here I am. Where in the battle line
do you want me?"
In this connection, be careful you are not tied too closely to your background
so that you think God can use you only in the context of the training you have.
God may likely, and probably will, lead you in the area of your training, but
as George Cowan says in the booklet Your Training or You?: God wants you more
than he wants your training. I took my training in accounting and business administration,
but God never led me into that field. I have been in student work since I graduated.
Then, too, we must guard against the temptation to take Bible verses out of
context to get God's will. Some people seem to think that the Bible is a magic
book. You have probably heard of the fellow who, trying to get guidance, opened
the Bible and put his finger down on the phrase, "Judas went out and hanged
himself." That did not comfort him very much, so he tried again. And his
finger fell on the verse, "Go thou and do likewise." That shook him
terribly, so he tried it one more time, and the verse he hit on was "And
what thou doest, do quickly."
On rare occasions, God will take a verse which has no specific application to
you and give you a message through it, but this is the exception rather than
the rule. And because of the violation of the basic biblical principle of interpreting
and understanding the Bible in context, God has been blamed for all kinds of
things which were merely human stupidity.
I remember a British girl several years ago working with the organization that I was with at the time. She was sure God was going to give her a visa for the States because a Bible verse (Is. 41:2) said something about God raising up a righteous man from the east. That was guidance. I said, "What about the rest of the verse that says God is going to use him to destroy people with the sword?" The truth of the matter was she didn't get a visa. God didn't fail. She did - because she violated this principle. Be careful not to do this.
Seventh, you must avoid the mistake of thinking that you can be sure you are in the will of God if everything is moonlight and roses, if you have no problems or stress. Frequently it is when we have just taken a step of obedience that the bottom falls out of everything. Then only the confidence that we are in the will of God keeps us going.
Never forget the incident recorded in Mark 4. The disciples, at the Lord's specific command, had gotten into a boat to head across the Sea of Galilee. After they took this step in obedience to the Lord, the storm broke loose and they thought they were going to lose their lives. But Jesus said to them, "Don't be faithless, but believing."
In Mark 5 Jairus came to our Lord saying, "My daughter's sick. Will you come heal her?" The Lord said he would, and Jairus' spirit soared. But on the way to the home, some lady, who had had a medical problem for twelve years and who surely could have waited another two hours, interrupted them. Jesus got involved in talking and working with her. Jairus' servants came and said "Look, don't bother him any longer. Your daughter has died." And Jairus, who had done what was right - had gotten the answer from the Lord, had followed his will and obeyed - must have been crushed in bitter despair as seeming disaster had taken place.
Our Lord's words to him come to us as well in similar circumstances, "Do not fear. Only believe." The test of whether you are in the will of God is not how rosy your circumstances are, but whether you are obeying him.
And then, in the eighth place, it is crucial to avoid the mistake of thinking
that a call to world evangelism or missionary service is any different from
a call to anything else. Dr. Norton Sterrett, in his helpful booklet Called
by God and Sure of It, points out that every Christian, whether a wife, an electrician,
a lawyer, a teacher or a cabinet maker, has both the privilege and the responsibility
to know that he is called by God. And he also has the privilege and
responsibility to know whether he is to serve in Cairo or Chicago.
You don't get three more spiritual points in God's book for going overseas rather than staying in America, for being in "the ministry" rather than in some other form of endeavor. We have a false sense of spiritual hierarchical values which is not biblical at all. There are some people overseas who ought to be home, and there are many people at home who ought to be overseas. The crucial question each of us must ask himself is, "Am I in the will of God and sure of it?"
It is not a question of fastening our spiritual seat belts and hoping we will not be swept by some emotion out of our seats into overseas service. It is not a question of taking our chances with the draft and if by some miracle it misses us, saying, "Phew, it got by me. I survived Urbana, man, 0 man, and now I can do as I please." Each of us has the privilege of discovering what God wants us to do.
Finally, I want to suggest that each of us should avoid the mistake of thinking that if we have ever knowingly and deliberately disobeyed the Lord, we are forever thrown on the ash heap, can never do the Lord's will and are doomed to "second best." God has the most wonderful ways of reweaving the strands of our lives. He takes us where we are when we come to him in confession and repentance and uses us fully again. Our disobedience did not take him by surprise, and his grace reaches right to us.
John Mark is a good example. He seemed to have blown it when he started out on a missionary trip with Paul. At the first stop he left and headed back for Jerusalem. You will remember that Paul and Barnabas had such a hassle over whether John Mark should go with them again on the next trip that Paul and Barnabas separated. But it seems that Mark was redeemed by God and redeemed himself and later had a full and fruitful ministry which Paul commended.
When you are feeling bad and know you have blown it in sin, remember Peter,
too. He denied the Lord. But our Lord took hold of him and restored him to be
a great apostle who has given us a part of the Word of God.
What is God's will for you in world evangelism? Realize, first, that God's will
in most of its aspects is already fully revealed. Be sure you are familiar with
it in the Word of God. In those areas about which he has not been specific,
be assured God will guide you through his Word and its principles as you seek
his face in prayer, as you view the circumstances from his point of view and
as you seek the counsel of other Christians. Then, when you can say, "Lord,
I want to do your will more than anything else in life," and as you avoid
some of the mistakes which are often based on a distortion of the character
of God, you will know where in the world and how in the world God wants you
to serve him. He will show you what his will for you is today, and the next
day, and the day after that.
Have you ever affirmed the will of God in your life personally? Paul, in Romans 12, invites you, "Therefore, my brothers, I implore you by God's mercy to offer your very selves to him: a living sacrifice, dedicated and fit for his acceptance, the worship offered by mind and heart. Adapt yourselves no longer to the pattern of this present world, but let your minds be remade and your whole nature thus transformed. Then you will be able to discern the will of God, and to know what is good, acceptable, and perfect" (NEB).
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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