God Centered Lives

God Centered Lives

November 11, 2001

PS 81:10 I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your

mouth and I will fill it. PS 81:11 "But my people would not listen to me; Israel would

not submit to me. PS 81:12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their

own devices. PS 81:13 "If my people would but listen to me, if Israel would follow my

ways, PS 81:14 how quickly would I subdue their enemies and turn my hand against

their foes!

Philippians 2:13 “It is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good

pleasure.”

Last week I challenged you to in essence, take a step back, and look and see where God

might be working in and around you. Do you remember the story of how God was able to

start Bible Study groups in the College Dorms in three days, when the Church had not

been able to get anything started in over 2 years?

God is working around us, working in the lives of others, working in the world,

through circumstances, through people, all to bring about His Will, which is of coarse is to

bring lost people home.

I wonder if anyone has a testimony of How you noticed God working in and

around your life or in the lives of those around you this week?

Today as we think about How to be involved in God’s Work around us, there’s one key

we need to be aware of. In order to be involved by God and doing His work, WE need a

God-centered life.

Let me ask you a question this morning, In the book of Genesis do we read about

Abraham’s walk with God or do we see God accomplishing His purposes through

Abraham?

We always need to remember the focus of the Bible is God. It is God

accomplishing His will through willing, obedient, God centered lives.

The essence of Sin is a shift from a God-centered to a Self-centered life. The

essence of the Holy Life is the dying to our self and returning to being God-centered in

our thinking and our living. When we live God-centered lives God can accomplish

through us the purposes He had before He created the World.

Let me give you a contrast between the God Centered Life and the Self- Centered life,

maybe this will help.

READ Handout

To live a God centered life, you must focus your life on God’s purposes, not your

own plans. We must seek to see from God’s perspective rather than from our own

distorted human perspective. When God starts to do something in the World, he takes the

initiative to come and talk to somebody. For some divine reason, He has chosen to

involve His people, you and me, in accomplishing His purposes.

God was about to destroy the world with a flood when He came to Noah. When

God prepared to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, He came to tell Abraham about it. God

came to Gideon when He was about to deliver the Israelites from the oppression of

Midian. God came to Saul (later called Paul) on the road to Damascus when He was

ready to carry the gospel message to the Gentiles around known world.

Without a doubt, the most important factor in each situation was not what the

individual wanted to do for God. The most important factor was what God was about to

do.

A great example would be Noah. Can you imagine with me, Noah coming to God

with his three and five year plans on how to build a great church. Can you see Noah

telling God how in just five short years he will have his new church, Temple, whatever you

want to call it, but in just five short years it will be built. What if Noah would have been

self centered with all his own plans wanting God to bless his human plans?

You see it didn’t really matter what Noah might have had in mind, God already

had His plan. All of Noah’s plans would not make much sense in light of the coming

destruction, would they?

Noah was not calling God in to help him accomplish what he was dreaming he was

going to do for God.

The pattern in Scripture is that we submit ourselves to God and we wait until God

shows us what He is about to do, or we watch to see what God is doing around us and we

join Him.

We cause ourselves, we cause our church so much harm when we devise our own

plans, and then we ask God to bless it. Ps. 81:13-14

"If my people would but listen to me, if Israel would follow my ways, PS 81:14