God Centered Lives

 

I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.  "But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me.  So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices. "If my people would but listen to me, if Israel would follow my ways, how quickly would I subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes!  (PS 81:10 -14)

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

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 to bring lost people home. 

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.  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 life 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.

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.

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.  "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!

We need to know what God is about to do. When God spoke 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.”  The Prophets understood what God was about to Do!

Also, 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 schedule, but He will let us know one step at a time how we need to respond to what He is doing?

All the way through Scripture, God took 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.

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)

~Bits and Pieces of Sermon by Glenn Newton