How To Miss God

How To Miss God

Proverbs 19:2

In the sport of archery the objective is to score as many points as you possibly can, and you do that by hitting rings on a target a distance away. Now the target that is used in archery of course has rings that get smaller as the point totals get higher. The ultimate shot is to hit the center of the target which of course is called a bullseye. The way that archery experts aim for the bullseye is that they figure the distance, take into consideration the weather elements.... And always aim high to do gravity. The only way to hit what you want to hit is to aim high. Aim anywhere else and you will miss.

The word of God points out that we can miss the way.

how many of you know that you can miss God. One of

the worst things that we can do is miss God in a

situation. No one who wants to please God wants to be

outside of his will. I have never heard anyone say I sure am glad that I missed God on this one, I have never been happy knowing that I am outside of his will. We always say thiings like, man I can’t believe that I missed God, I hate to be out of his will, becasue it feels real lonely. I guarantee, that is the feeling of anyone who has missed God. And if you are breathing this morning, at some point you have missed God. Some Christians make it a regular habit and live miserable lives because of it.

We don’t have to miss God!

Four Ways to Miss God

1. Don’t listen to the Word

Ezra 7:6

The hand of the Lord was on him: This is important

here. Three times in this chapter it says that the hand of the Lord was on Ezra. The reason?

Look at verse 10 - What a model for us today. If you

want the hand of God, ie. the blessing, the will of God in your life then you have to be devoted to the word of God.

Imagine, if you will, that you work for a company whose president found it necessary to travel out of the country and spend an extended period of time abroad. So he says to you and the other trusted employees, "Look, I’m going to leave. And while I’m gone, I want you to pay close attention to the business. You manage things while I’m away. I will write you regularly. When I do, I will instruct you in what you should do from now until I return from this trip." Everyone agrees. He leaves and stays gone for a

couple of years. During that time he writes often, communicating his desires and concerns. Finally he returns. He walks up to the front door of the company and immediately discovers everything is in a mess--weeds flourishing in the flower beds, windows

broken across the front of the building, the gal at the front desk dozing, loud music roaring from several offices, two or three people engaged in horseplay in the back room. Instead of making a profit, the business has suffered a great loss. Without hesitation

he calls everyone together and with a frown asks, "What

happened? Didn’t you get my letters?" You say, "Oh, yeah, sure. We got all your letters. We’ve even bound them in a book. And some of us have memorized them. In fact, we have ’letter study’ every Sunday. You know, those were really great letters." I think the president would then ask, "But what did you do about my

instructions?" And, no doubt the employees would respond, "Do? Well, nothing. But we read every one!"

We have to do more than just read the word of God we

must listen to it, in other words obey it.

Ezra didn’t just read it, it says in verse 10.....

Sometimes we might not like what we see in God’s word.

There might be something in our life that we are doing

and never thought anything about it and all of the

sudden we are reading the bible and there it is. We see it with our own eyes. Now it might takes us back

moment but now we know, guess what the Holy Spirit is

going to start doing? We have a choice to make.

Are we going to listen to the word or not?

2. Listen to everyone else’s opinion

Luke 9:34-35

Prov. 18:2

It has been said that opinions are like noses everyone

has one. Too often when we are facing something

important in our lives instead going to God with it, we

turn to everyone around us.

I knew a young man at the church where we were