Sermon Tone Analysis

Do any of you feel paralyzed by the number of choices available to you?

Maybe its at school, there are so many possible classes you could take, or so many possible service projects, that you just have no idea what you should choose?

Or maybe you’re starting to think about life after high school, and the number of possible colleges, trade schools, or missions opportunities seems almost threatening.

Do any of you feel paralyzed by the number of choices available to you?

Maybe its at school, there are so many possible classes you could take, or so many possible service projects, that you just have no idea what you should choose?

Or maybe you’re starting to think about life after high school, and the number of possible colleges, trade schools, or missions opportunities seems almost threatening.

Have you ever noticed in your grocery store that, let’s say you’re trying to buy a bottle of Ranch dressing, it’s not as simple as just buying the dressing?

Once you make it to the dressing aisle, and you get to the section for Ranch, you have to navigate the 12 different brands, all with great marketing that are trying to convince you they’re the “true” or “original” ranch dressing?

On top of that, you look a little bit to your right and you look down a whole aisle of different kinds of dressings.

What if I don’t actually want Ranch dressing?

What if I’d be more satisfied with a different kind of dressing on my salad tonight?

How can I choose!?

You know, they’ve actually done studies on this and they’ve shown that when you present people with only two options, people tend to be very satisfied with their choice.

But the more possible options you present in front of people, the more anxiety they have about making a choice, and the less satisfied they are in the choice they made.

What if I actually wanted something else?

What if I actually wanted to go to this other school, take this other job, pursue this other opportunity?

This paralyzing fear of making choices is one of the things that characterizes my generation and your generation.

More and more, we are being forced to try and make life choices at younger ages.

Now there are magnet schools as early as middle school that you have to be in if you want to get into med school when you’re 25.

If you want to play professional sports you have to sacrifice everything else to be on travel teams starting at age 5. It’s crazy.

I think this is one of the reasons why there is so much anxiety amongst our generations.

There’s an immense amount of pressure that we might make the wrong choice.

Does anyone here know what I’m talking about?

Or am I speaking in tongues?

Well, when you cross this fear of choice over into the church, it morphs into this strange, ultra-spiritual phenomenon known as “Finding God’s Will for my life.”

You ever wondered that?

What is God’s will for my life?

For your life?

How do we know?

Is there a way for us to know?

Can we pray that God would speak to us in a dream or a vision?

Can we be like Gideon and lay out a fleece and check for moisture to see what God wants us to do?

What about casting lots, the apostles did that right?

Should we?

Is there a special prayer?

How can I know God’s will for my life?

What if I MESS IT UP by making the wrong choice!?

In our last session together, I want to address this question.

What is God’s will, or his calling on my life?

But I want to make a couple points off the bat before we get into the main part of my message.

1) It is impossible for you to screw up God’s Will.

It’s impossible for you to make a choice that will completely wreck God’s plan for your life.

Because, for starters, you are not the center of God’s world.

He loves you, a whole lot, but you ain’t all that.

says this:

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

God has a perfect plan for you and this world and this universe and you’re not going to be the one to screw it up.

Trust me.

This should give us an incredible amount of confidence in making life choices, because we can trust that no matter what choice we make, God is going to steer us to be in line with his plan.

He’s in control.

Trust him.

2) We need to know that this whole question about God’s call or his will for my life really wasn’t on anyone’s mind until very very recently in history, we’re talking the last 50 years or so.

Before that, it just wasn’t a question many people asked, because there simply weren’t that many choices.

Chances were, whatever line of work your parents had, whatever the family business was, that was most likely what you would do with your life.

If you wanted to go to college, there were only 1 or 2 serious choices that allowed you to stay close enough to home to help your family when they needed you.

For the most part, people lived, worked, and died very close to the area where they were born.

In other words, this whole fear about messing up God’s will is a very modern, middle-class question.

And we just need to see that for what it is.

Before we can properly answer “What is God’s will for my life?” we need to see how the culture has taught us to ask the question with the wrong motivation or goal in mind.

Now that being said, trying to discern God’s will for our lives is a perfectly godly and biblical thing to do.

We just need to make sure we are going about it the right way.

So, for our last session this morning, I want to look at these few texts in order to offer some suggestions about finding and living God’s will for your life.

Your Sanctification ()

Paul is pretty straightforward here about God’s will isn’t here?

There really isn’t any mystical secret to knowing God’s will.

Here he says very clearly, God’s will for your life is your sanctification.

Translation: God wills for you to be holy and more like Jesus.

He gives a few examples in this passage of what this means, note again how important your body is here.

What you do with your body matters.

God’s will for you is to learn what is right for your body.

What does this mean for you?

That means holiness is your goal.

So a really good question to ask ourselves, when there’s a ton of possible options ahead of us is, “What is going to make me most like Jesus?” Or, “Are there any choices that are going to give me great temptations to sin?” Whatever would make you most like Jesus and lead you furthest from sin is God’s will for your life.

So, practical example.

Let’s say you’ve gotten into several different colleges and you’re not sure what to pick.

Here are some great things for you to consider in making this decision:

Which college has the best ministry on campus where I can be with other believers who are trying to be like Jesus?

Which college has a great church nearby where I will be able to get plugged in and serve for my 4 years while I am there?

Do any of these schools have a reputation for being out of control with parties and other temptations?

Maybe you plan to play college sports, so you should be looking for colleges that have a strong Christian presence among their athletes.

I want to suggest to you that questions like these are the very first questions you should be asking in making your decision.

Before you look at academics or the opportunities available to you, ask the question: Which college is going to allow me to become most like Jesus?

Maybe when you plan your college visits, you should also be meeting up with campus ministers and visiting churches near those colleges as well in order to help you make that decision.

The same thing applies to our romantic relationships.

This is so important.

When you’re considering going out with someone, ask the question: will this person help me become more like Jesus?

If they’re not a Christian, the answer is no.

If they’re a Christian but they’re pressuring you to be physical and sexual before marriage, the answer is no.

When you’re thinking about how you spend your time, what you’re looking at on your phones, ask this question, “Is this going to help me be more like Jesus?”

If what we’re doing with our times or on our phones is preventing us from being like Jesus, chances are we shouldn’t be do it.

I could go on and on with examples, but I hope this makes sense to you.

When faced with multiple choices, ask the question, “What will help me become more like Jesus?”

Be Merciful ()

Part of what we’ve talked about this weekend is the call for the church and for individual Christians is to engage our culture and the people around us with mercy and compassion.

For our session this morning we read from , there the prophet asks the question, what does the Lord require of you?

And what is the answer that he gives?

Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.

Again, very straight forward isn’t it?

This should remind us of something Jesus said when he was asked what the greatest commandment was.

What did he say?