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
how quickly would I subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes!
What we haven’t been able to accomplish in Five years, God could do in five weeks.
In our desire to serve God we have this need to DO SOMETHING for God. We want to
please Him, so we are a busy people. We want to see results, we want to see progress, we
want to see growth, don’t we? So we plan, we scheme, we decide on this and that, and
we stay very busy.
The truth is God wants us to adjust our lives to Him so He can do through us what He
wants to do.
I had a horrible thought as I was preparing this message, What if I’m so busy
planning and working for God, that God can’t even use me. What if I’m so busy with
ministry, that I don’t have time to minister to the ones right around me that God wants me
to minister too?
You see, our human perspective has to stay out of the way in the Church. We
need to see what God see’s. Too many times we dive in to fix what we think needs to be
fixed, and then all we have is more damage than when we started.
Living this God centered Life is necessary if we will accomplish God’s will in our
own personal lives, and if we will accomplish His Will for New Hope Church of the
Nazarene.
We need to know what God is about to do. When God called to prophets, He always had
a two fold message. The first desire of God was: “Call the people to return to Me.” If
the people failed to respond, they needed to hear the second message: “Let them know
that they are closer to the moment of judgment than they have ever been.”
Don’t you know it was important that the Prophets understood what God was
about to Do?
Let me ask you, What good would Abraham have done by telling God how he was
planning to take a survey of Sodom and Gomorrah and go door to door witnessing the
day before God was going to destroy the cities?
As a church what good would it do us to make 10 year plans if before we ever got to
implement them, God brings judgment on our nation? We need to know what God has on
His agenda for our church, for our community, for our nation. Then we can adjust our
lives to God, so that He can move us into the mainstream of His activity before it’s too
late. Obviously, God will not give us a detailed shedule, but He will let us know one step
at a time how we need to respond to what He is doing?
In Clarksville, AR. there are some things that are about to happen in the lives of people.
God wants to intercept those lives. Suppose He wants to do it through you. He comes to
you and talks to you. But you are so self centered, you respond, “I don’t think I am
trained. I don’t think I am able to do it. And I.....I......I......I.....”
Can you see what happens? The focus is on yourself. The moment you sense God is
moving in your life, you give Him a whole list of reasons why He has got the wrong
person or why the time is not right. Moses tried doing that too, look what God did
through Him. We need desperately to seek God’s perspective. God already knows You
Can’t Do it!!! But He wants to do it Himself Through You.
All the way through Scripture, God take the initiative. When he comes to a
person, He always reveals Himself and His activity. When God does this, it’s always an
invitation for you to adjust your life to God. If you want to be involved in God’s activity,
you need to be ready to make changes in your life. None of the people God ever
encountered could remain the same after the encounter. They had to make major
adjustments in their lives in order to walk obediently with God.
I try to keep my life God centered because He is the One who is the pacesetter.
When you are God centered, even the desires to do the things that please God come from
God’s initiative in your life because “it is God who works in you both to will and to do
for His good pleasure.” Phil. 2:13
Pastor, How do I live this God Centered Life, and How do I know what it is God wants
me to be involved in?
That’s a good question. In every situation God demands that you depend on Him, not on
a method. The key is not a method but a relationship to God.
George Mueller was a pastor in England during the 19 Century. He was concerned that
God’s people had become very discouraged. They no longer looked to God to do
anything unusual. They no longer trusted God to answer prayers. They had so little faith.
God began to lead George to pray. George’s prayers were for God to lead him to
a work that could only be explained by the people as an act of God. George wanted the
people to learn that their God was faithful, prayer-answering God. He came upon the
verse in Psalm 81:10 that we read earlier: “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.”
George began to seek God’s provisions for His work in a way that God would be pleased
to provide. God began to lead George in a walk of faith that became an outstanding
testimony to all who hear of his story.
When George felt led by God to so some work, he prayed for the resources
needed, but told no one of the need. he wanted everyone to know that God had provided
for the need only in answer to prayer and faith. During his ministry in Bristol, George
started the Scriptural Knowledge Institute for distribution of Scripture and for religious
education. He also began an orphanage. By the time of his death, George Mueller had
been used by God to build four orphan houses that cared for 2,000 children at a time.
Over ten thousand children had been provided for through the orphanages. He distributed
over 8 million dollars that had been given to him in answer to prayer. When he died at 93,
his worldly possessions were valued at 800 dollars.
How did he know and do the will of God? The following is George Mueller’s
description of his approach:
“I have always been directed rightly as I sincerely and patiently sought to know the
will of God by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, through the instrument of God’s Word.
But if honesty of heart and uprightness before God were lacking, or if I did not patiently
wait upon God for instruction, or if I preferred the counsel of my fellow men to the
declarations of the Word of the living God, I made great mistakes.”
What did he do?
1. He sincerely sought God’s direction
2. He waited patiently on God until he had a word from God in Scriptures.
3. He looked to the Holy Spirit to teach him through God’s Word.
He mentioned some things that led to his making mistakes, here they are:
1. lacking honesty of heart
2. lacking uprightness before God
3. Impatience to wait for God
4. Preferring the counsel of men over the declaration of Scriptures.
Will we live God centered Lives? Will we be willing to see what God is doing around us
and join Him, even if means making changes in our lives? Close.
(Material used from book "Experiencing God" by Henry Blackaby, the church was reading through the book together.)
