How to Find, Follow, and Fulfill God's Will
Chapter 1 - God Created You for a Purpose
Recently I was teaching at a Bible college about God’s will and asked the question, “How many of you aren’t sure you’re doing what God created you for?” I said, “You may want it, you may desire it, you may be praying that God will take all of the things you do and use them to further His kingdom, but how many of you aren’t certain that you’re doing what God created you to do?” Over half of the people in the room raised their hands to say they weren’t positive they were doing what God called them to do—and those were fanatics who came out on a Thursday morning just to hear the Gospel!
You are not going to accidentally fulfill God’s will. It doesn’t happen unintentionally or by coincidence. Seeing God’s will realized in your life means, first of all, finding out what unique purpose He created you for. In nature, water always seeks the path of least resistance and our human nature does the same thing if we allow it to. We can end up meandering through life, allowing obstacles we encounter to determine what direction we take. But it doesn’t have to be that way. God intends for us to experience the satisfaction of a life well lived. We can do this if we are willing to do more than just go with the flow—even a dead fish can float downstream.
Accomplishing the things we were created to achieve means making a deliberate effort to find, follow, and fulfill God’s will. When I put forth effort to discover my God-given purpose, it was a critical turning point in my life. I was in high school at the time and until then everything had been decided for me. But as I approached the end of my senior year, I realized I was going to have to start making some decisions on my own. This brought me face to face with the question we all eventually ask:
What is the purpose for my life?
One thing I am grateful that I learned while growing up in church is that God created everyone with a purpose. Your parents may not have known you were coming, but God did. God created you. You didn’t evolve. You aren’t a mistake. God created you, and He created you for a reason.
As I wrestled with what to do about my future, I knew that God had a purpose for my life, so I didn’t want to just randomly pick a direction. I began asking people in my church, “How do you know God’s will for your life? How do you find it?” Unfortunately, nobody could tell me. I didn’t know of any method for discovering God’s will, so I started studying the Word of God. I knew that the Bible contained knowledge about God, so I figured it was a good place to look for God’s will for my life. I began to stay up until two or three o’clock every morning studying the Bible.
I had read the Bible every day of my life since I was a little kid but never really studied it, so I went out and bought a Bible commentary to help me understand everything. I had about five volumes of these big old heavy books, and I would sit there and study every single verse. I remember using a lamp with a flexible goose neck that allowed me to position it in different ways. I used to pull the lamp down over my Bible and read with my head perched above the lamp casing. Whenever I started to fall asleep, my forehead would nod down onto the lamp and it would burn me, jarring me back awake so I would keep on reading. That was how I forced myself to stay up and read the Bible.
Although I read through the entire Bible two or three times that year, I didn’t feel like God had shown me anything special. I didn’t receive any specific revelations. I was just preparing the ground. Before planting a seed, you have to dig out the rocks and prepare the ground so the seed can sink in. That’s what I was doing; I was seeking the Lord. I did that for over a year, and then, all of a sudden, something opened up.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Romans 12:1-2
This passage of scripture came alive to me. It burned in my heart. I spent months reading it and asking God, “What does this mean? How do I do it?” Then some time later, I had a miraculous encounter with the Lord and experienced His love for me. It turned my life upside down, so for more than four months I was caught up in the presence of God. It changed me.
Often when I talk about this miraculous encounter with God, people think that it was a fluke—like lightning or something. They think, “You never know where it’s going to strike.” Actually, I’ve heard that lightning doesn’t come from the sky down. It looks that way, but there is a negative charge in the ground that attracts the lightning—so it really starts
in the ground. You can see this in time-lapse photos of a lightning strike. The reality is that lightning strikes certain places for a reason.
Likewise, there are reasons why God all of a sudden captures one person’s life with a miraculous encounter, while others don’t encounter Him at all. It’s true that you can’t make God reveal something to you by saying, “God, tell me what I want to know, right now.” It doesn’t work like that. But you can prepare your heart.
In my situation, I didn’t really understand what was happening in me. I wasn’t mature enough to know what was going on—I was just hungry for God. I wanted to know God’s purpose for my life. I had been seeking Him in the best way I knew how to for 18 months. It wasn’t an accident that God showed up. I knew He had a purpose for me and my life was turned around when I became hungry to discover it. As a result of my hunger, God touched me. And I’ve never gotten over it. It changed my life!
A popular misconception in the church today is that God winds us up like a doll and then lets us go our own way, leaving us to figure life out on our own. “If I get in a bind,” the thinking goes, “I can call on God and
maybe He’ll help me.” This kind of philosophy leads people to do their own thing in life and then ask God to bless what they are already doing—instead of seeking Him for direction from the beginning.
Since I found God’s will for my life, I don’t ever pray for God to bless what I’m doing. I don’t even pray for the meetings I hold around the country, which shocks some people. I have been asked, “You didn’t spend time praying and interceding before the meeting?” No, because God told me to hold those meetings. He would be unjust to command me to do something and then expect me to do it in my own strength and power. God gives me an anointing to do what He has called me to do. It’s the same for everyone. When you are doing what God called you to do, you don’t have to spend time asking for His blessing or praying for Him to move on your behalf. God has already blessed what He told you to do.
One reason so many people are praying for God to come to their assistance is because they aren’t doing what He told them to do. Others may have stumbled into God’s will for their life, but they don’t have that assurance and joy that comes from knowing they are exactly where He wants them to be.
Is Someone Waiting on You?
I believe there is a supernatural peace that goes along with being in the center of God’s will. It does something in you when you know you are where God wants you to be. I remember an encounter I had in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I have ministered every year since the 1980s. A friend of mine has a business there and invites me to come speak to his employees. One year I spoke at his business and as I was leaving, I saw an Asian woman answering the phones. I had never seen her before, so I stopped and started talking to her.
“Are you new here?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “I just started last week.”
“Oh, okay. Well, how come you weren’t back there with the rest of the employees?”
“I’m the new person, so they had me answer the phone,” she answered. “Who are you?”
I told her who I was, and she said, “What do you do?”
“I’m a minister.”
“For whom?” she asked.
“For Jesus.” I said.
“You must be the one!” she exclaimed.
I asked her what she was talking about and she explained that she was a Buddhist. The night before, she had been performing her Buddhist worship and was suddenly disillusioned with the whole thing and said, “This isn’t it. Buddha is
not it.” She told me how she spoke out, “God I know
Youare real. I know You exist, but I don’t know who You are. Would you reveal Yourself to me?” Then she recounted how a pulsating ball of light appeared and hung right in front of her. She said she knew it was God, but she asked anyway, “Who are You?” A voice replied, “Tomorrow, I’ll send you a man who will tell you who I am.”
“You must be the one,” she exclaimed again.
“I’m the one,” I said.
I went on to tell her about Jesus and she was born again and baptized in the Holy Spirit. It was awesome! I left that place thinking,
God, I was in the right place at the right time! I was exactly where I was supposed to be. God knew He could count on me to be there and to follow His leading, so He told that woman to expect me. I can’t even describe the peace, satisfaction, and joy that comes from knowing you are right where God wants you to be. If that doesn’t make you have a good day, nothing will. Something happens when you know that everything about you is doing what God created you to do.
Many people have never felt the satisfaction of knowing, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that they are doing what God made them for. No believer should live that way. God created you for something better than wandering aimlessly through life. You have a purpose.
A Holy Dissatisfaction
The only way to have perfect peace and joy is to point your life in the direction God wants you to go. Otherwise, you may be praying to get rid of discouragement in your life when, in fact, the lack of peace you are experiencing is a result of not being in God’s perfect will. When you aren’t going in the right direction, He will sometimes turn you around by giving you a sense of unrest, or what I call a “holy dissatisfaction.”
We need to understand that the “holy dissatisfaction” that comes from God is totally different from depression. The depression that comes from the world is a result of giving your attention to the flesh, instead of focusing on the things of God (Romans 8:6). The dissatisfaction that God uses to give direction to believers who are seeking Him is completely different from the turmoil of negative emotions. God doesn’t use depression to guide us.
When my wife, Jamie, and I pastored a church in Seagoville, Texas, there were times when friends tried to talk us into leaving. They would say, “People aren’t receiving the message, nobody wants you, just move on.” It was true, people stayed away from our church by the droves. But we were committed to Seagoville, Texas. We loved the people and were happy; so we stayed there and kept on ministering.
Everything was great until one day when I was in church praying—it was like somebody flipped a switch on the inside of me. All of a sudden, I looked out the window over the town and thought,
God, what am I doing here? If this isn’t the end of the world, you can see it from here. The desires of my heart changed in an instant and suddenly I
hated being in Seagoville.
This change in how I felt was so abrupt that it kind of surprised me. It was only the day before that I was happy and excited about simply having the opportunity to minister there. Then, without any apparent reason, I didn’t want to be in Seagoville anymore. I started praying and seeking God for clarity and within an hour or two I was convinced that God was telling me to leave. In fact, He even gave me a date. He told me that we would be leaving our house by the first of November. I was sure of it, so I started toward home wondering how I was going to tell Jamie that we were moving. When I arrived home, there was already a “For Sale” sign in our front yard!
I walked into the house and asked Jamie, “What is that sign doing in the yard?” She said, “The landlord came by and said we have to be out November first.”
God didn’t give me direction by a booming voice that echoed down from the heavens saying, “
Thus saith the Lord, thou shalt leave Seagoville, Texas.” No, I just lost my desire to be there. This is one of the ways that God speaks to us—through the desires of our heart.
One of the reasons that some people aren’t satisfied with getting up and going to work, coming home, watching television, going to bed, and then getting up and doing the whole thing over again, is because they aren’t doing what God called them to do. It’s a holy dissatisfaction. You are never going to have the sense of joy and peace that I’ve been talking about until you get in line with God’s will for your life. Unless you are doing what God created you to do, you will never have the drive that continually wakes you up in the morning excited about life, knowing that you are on a path that is making a difference and changing others.
It’s sad to say, but a lot of Christians have never known the satisfaction that comes from being in the center of God’s will. One of the reasons for this is because the church has been more
influenced by the world rather than
influencing the world.
Many of us were raised, whether in a Christian home or not, to think that our life is our own and we can do whatever we want with it. Still, others grew up thinking they were a mistake because their parents told them they were the result of an unplanned pregnancy. Some look around and feel like they missed out on the talents and abilities they see in others. In one way or another, many people go through life feeling like they are a mistake—so they just struggle and try to cope the best they can.
The Lord’s plan for your life is far better than that. You aren’t a mistake. You didn’t miss out on the talents you need to accomplish God’s will. You don’t have to struggle through life, bouncing from one crisis to the next. God has a purpose for you. He created you for a reason. You have a specific purpose in life and God wants you to discover that purpose.
Separated from the Womb
I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from You
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
Your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in Your book before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Psalm 139:14-17 NIV
What a tremendous passage of scripture! God saw you before you were ever born. He saw you in your mother’s womb. At the same time you were being physically formed, God wove in your talents, abilities, and purpose. It’s a part of who you are. Before you were even born, God had already written down what your life is supposed to be. He had written down your talents and abilities.
You may think you made yourself an artist, or an accountant, or whatever it is that you are, but
you can’t bring out what God didn’t put in. God gave you a disposition. He gave you a certain inclination. Some people are vivacious and lively, while others are quiet and reserved. God gave you the personality you have. He made you the way you are. You can change to a degree, but you can’t change the
core of who you are.
I used to be a runner but now I’m a walker. In high school, they tried to make me run sprints—50 yard dashes. I did it, but I hated it and was never really good at it. I was good enough to make the track team, but never good enough to win any medals. After I finished school, I started jogging and discovered that I loved to jog. I enjoyed running 15 or 20 miles slowly, but running 50 yards as fast as I could really bothered me.
I eventually learned that muscles are made up of fast-twitch and slow-twitch fibers. Sprinters have a majority of fast-twitch muscle fibers, while distance runners have more slow-twitch muscle fibers. You can change the ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch fibers in your muscles through training, but not by much. The basic balance doesn’t change. Some people are built for speed; others are built for endurance. I didn’t like sprinting because I wasn’t built to run sprints. I was built for long-distance running.
In the same way, your personality can be influenced and changed to a degree, but you have a genetic disposition to be a certain type of person with a certain type of personality. You were designed that way. Before you were formed, God had already planned those things. He had it written out. He wove in your abilities and purpose, but He won’t force His will for your life to come to pass. This is something that keeps people from recognizing and finding God’s will for their lives. They have a fatalistic attitude that whatever is meant to be, will be—like that old song,
“Qué será, será. Whatever will be, will be.”
If you let fate dictate your life, you will make a lot of wrong decisions. You can’t just let circumstances move and control you. God doesn’t move you around like a pawn. Many think God is sovereign and whatever His will is comes to pass, but that isn’t how it works.
God is sovereign, in the sense that He has supreme power and is Master of all things, seen and unseen. But He is not sovereign in the sense that nothing can happen without His permission. God doesn’t control your life. He doesn’t force His will to come to pass. Everything that happens in your life is not God’s will. I know a lot of people teach that nothing can happen unless God wills it to happen, but that isn’t what the Word of God says. For example, the Apostle Peter wrote:
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.2 Peter 3:9
It’s very clear that God doesn’t want anyone to miss out on salvation. He desires for everyone to receive salvation, yet Jesus said there would be more people who perish by entering the broad gate that leads to destruction than those who are saved by entering through the narrow gate that leads to everlasting life (Matthew 7:13-14). God wants every person to be saved, yet not everyone will be saved. Jesus even prophesied that not everyone will be saved.
The reason God’s will does not automatically come to pass in our lives is that we have a part to play. We choose whether or not we will be saved by our response to Jesus. We have a choice in the matter. In the same way, God has a plan for you but you have control over your own life. God is not going to make His will come to pass in your life without your cooperation.
Before you were born, before you were even formed in the womb, God had a plan for your life. You were born a man or a woman, at this time in history, in the nation you were born in for a reason. It isn’t a coincidence. God chose you. He has a purpose for you and He gave you gifts and abilities to accomplish that purpose. God created you for a reason and has a specific plan for what He wants you to do, but ultimately
you are in control.
Steps and Stages
If you feel like a square peg in a round hole, it might be because you have allowed circumstances to move you away from the direction God has planned for you. The reason you aren’t satisfied or fulfilled is that you aren’t moving in the right direction. You will never have the degree of success you could have in life until you find God’s will.
When I first started seeking the Lord, I knew I was called to minister but I didn’t know in what capacity. Over a period of time, I discovered that I was called to teach, as opposed to being an evangelist. My gifting was toward the body of Christ, to help believers learn who they are in Christ. Initially, however, I didn’t know exactly what area of ministry I was called to so I started out by holding Bible studies. This was back before there was such a thing as a Spirit-filled church. People thought that if you spoke in tongues, you were of the devil. I actually made a top 10 list of things that were “of the devil” in my town—I was number one on the list!
All of the people who came to my Bible studies were kicked out of their churches, so they said, “We’re going to start tithing here. This is our church now.”
“Wait a second,” I told them. “This isn’t a church, it’s a Bible study. And I’m not a pastor.”
“Well, you can call it whatever you want to,” they said, “but we don’t have anywhere else to go. This is where we go, so you’re our pastor.”
I became a pastor by default. I didn’t want to be a pastor. I never felt called to be a pastor. But the people in my Bible study started calling me “Pastor,” and I ended up pastoring three churches. God used me in that role: lives were changed, people were born again, and good things happened—but it wasn’t my calling.
After I started on radio, I held my first Gospel meeting when I advertised the event during my broadcast and invited everyone who could make it to come out. It was awesome! After the very first meeting, I knew that I was made to travel and minister in exactly that way. Even though I had been teaching the same things before, I felt a new sense of liberty, satisfaction, and joy when I started ministering in the way God created me to.
I wasn’t out of His will when I was pastoring those three churches; it was a time of training for me. God taught me during that period and I learned a lot, but I wasn’t yet in the
center of His will. You don’t go from
not being in God’s will to instantly being in the center of His will. It’s a process. It takes time; it happens progressively.
I started ministering in 1968. On July 26, 1999, the Lord woke me up in the middle of the night and spoke to me about some things. He told me I was just then beginning to fulfill what He had called me to do and if I had died before then, I would have missed His perfect will for my life. It was both
discouraging and
encouraging at the same time to hear those things.
It was discouraging because I had been ministering for 31 years and saw great things happen, but the Lord was telling me that I was just then getting to the center of His will. But it also encouraged me, because I was already seeing God do wonderful things and felt extremely blessed to be doing what He had called me to do. I thought,
If I’m just now getting closer to doing what God called me to do, then it’s going to get even better! And it has. Our ministry has grown extensively and we’re reaching more people than ever with the Gospel. I have to run to keep up. It’s awesome! But we didn’t get here overnight.
The reason you might find life hard or might not be experiencing satisfaction is because God created you to do something different from what you are doing. He created you for one thing and you are off doing something else. Maybe you just fell into what you are doing; you were recruited at a college career day or got married and took whatever opportunity you could. Life might have just kind of taken a path on its own, which happens. I hope you recognize now that God created you for a unique purpose and you have to intentionally pursue that purpose.
God Is Not Looking at Your Resume
For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: And profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace…Galatians 1:13-15
When the Apostle Paul wrote that God had
separated him, he meant that God had set him apart for a specific purpose. God set Paul apart from his mother’s womb to preach the Gospel. This is a radical thought. We always look at a person’s qualifications when we are trying to fill a position in church or in the workplace. We want to know if the applicant is reliable. We look at their accomplishments and natural abilities, and essentially choose people based on their past performance. But God’s way is different.
This passage of Scripture says that God chose Paul and set him apart from his mother’s womb to preach the Gospel—before he ever did anything good or bad or developed his talents and abilities. God isn’t looking at your resume and saying,
Oh, look at what you’ve accomplished. You would be a great choice. I think I’ll call you to do such and such. No, God doesn’t work like that.
From the very moment of conception, God had a plan, and from your mother’s womb, God already had a purpose designed for you.
Our talents and abilities can be an indication of God’s will, but many of us have hidden talents and gifts that we have never recognized or developed. If we only look at what we
think our talents and abilities are, we will miss God. We won’t see our real potential until we get beyond ourselves and get into a realm of trusting God for something supernatural. We can’t just say,
Well, I’ve always been able to speak in front of people, so maybe God wants me to be a preacher, or something like that. We aren’t going to find God’s will that way.
I used to be someone who couldn’t look other people in the face and speak to them. I remember walking down the street one day when I was a senior in high school and a man walked past me and said, “Good morning.” He was two blocks down the street before I let out my response, “Good morning, sir.”
I got into my car and sat there thinking,
God, what is wrong with me? I was so introverted. Looking at my natural qualifications up to that point, the last thing you would think I would ever end up doing is speaking in front of thousands of people. But God has called me to do something totally
contrary to my nature.
God has changed me, but I still like being alone. I really enjoy it. When I want to have a great time, I’ll go spend some time by myself—that’s my nature. God called me to do something opposite from my natural inclination. Many people are trying to figure out what to do with their lives by looking at their natural abilities or the results of a personality test. A personality test can’t tell you God’s plan for your life; it can only give you a snapshot of where you are at the time you take the test. The results aren’t true forever.
If I would have taken a personality test before God touched me in 1968, I guarantee you I would have tested as an extreme
introvert. But if I took that same test today, I’d test out a maximum
extrovert. A test is just a snapshot of where you are. It may tell you what your personality type is like at that moment, but it can’t tell you God’s real plan and purpose for your life. Some people have been so wounded and beaten into submission by life that the snapshot isn’t going to give them a true indication of their potential.
God didn’t look at Paul when he was 20 or 30 years old and say, “Wow, you’ve spent 20 years studying under Gamaliel and have all of this knowledge under your belt, so I think I’ll use you to preach the Gospel and write half the New Testament.” God doesn’t operate that way. As a matter of fact, most of us would have picked Peter to go to the heathen, believing he was half heathen himself. When Jesus called Peter, he was probably out there in the boat cussing. Peter had an attitude. It seemed like the only time he opened his mouth was to change feet! He was always doing something wrong.
Peter wasn’t polished or religious, so most of us would have thought he would have been a great guy to send to the heathen—and we would have sent Paul to the Jews! Paul was schooled in the Jewish religion; he knew the law frontward and backward. He also had a revelation of grace. Who better to convince a legalistic Jew than Paul? He was the greatest Pharisee of them all. Yet, God sent Paul to preach to the heathen and Peter to preach to the legalistic Jews.
You might be thinking, “God couldn’t use me; I’ve been mediocre my whole life.” But God doesn’t plan His purposes for your life according to your previous achievements. He will always call you to do something that is beyond your natural ability, forcing you to rely on Him. If you only do what you feel you are naturally equipped to do—what you are capable of doing in your own strength and ability—then you will be tempted to give yourself the credit for success. You’ll think, “I’m really good at this; I’m just a natural.” In fact, I would say that if you are simply doing what comes naturally to you then you probably haven’t found God’s will for your life yet.
God separated Paul from his mother’s womb, before he had honed his skills or accomplished anything in life. Likewise, God’s purpose for you may or may not be in accordance with what you perceive as your strengths. I’ve heard it said that the place with the most potential on earth is a graveyard because most people die without reaching their potential; they take it to the grave.
You were separated from the womb and God put abilities in you to fulfill His purposes. But He is not going to make His will come to pass without your cooperation. You have to make an effort to find God’s plan for your life. You can’t judge what His plan is by merely looking at your natural abilities. If you look at your history of successes or failures, you might miss God’s plan and never realize the potential He has placed inside of you.
Not Everything That’s Good, Is God
Major life changes can be unsettling to contemplate, especially if you have a career and things are going well or if you are thinking about retirement and looking forward to coasting for a while. You don’t want any bumps in the road. Yet here I am asking, “Have you really found the purpose God has for you?” No matter how unpleasant the thought of change may seem, it is important to know whether or not you have found your life’s purpose.
I believe that most people have not found God’s will for their lives. Most people are not accomplishing what God created them to do. They may be doing something good. But just because it’s good, doesn’t mean it’s God. Not everything that is good is God’s will. You may be an accomplished professional doing wonderful things, but are you doing what God has called you to do?
We each only have one chance to fulfill God’s will for our lives. God’s intention is not that we do whatever we want to with our lives and then, as long as our heart is pure, everything will be all right. No, you were created by God for a specific purpose that you are not going to fulfill accidentally. You have to get a revelation of what God’s will is and then swim upstream to pursue it. Only with effort and time will you see God’s will for your life come to pass. It isn’t going to happen by fate. You have to take charge of your life and pursue God’s will. You have to take control!
Find out where God wants you to go and steer your life in that direction. Jamie and I are exactly where God wants us to be, doing what He wants us to do, but we wouldn’t be in the center of His will today if we had taken the easy road in the past. “
Qué será, será,” isn’t a philosophy that gets great results in life. We have sought God. We have stood against circumstances and situations that have tried to turn us away from God’s will. We had to persevere. We didn’t get where we are by accident or by our own strength and wisdom. It took effort. Without work and determination, I don’t believe you will be able to reach the center of God’s will either.
Paul said of himself, “…it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace” (Galatians 1:15). Paul recognized that the Lord had a purpose for him in being a representative of God. Yet for 20 or 30 years of his life, Paul thought that being a legalistic Jew was the way he would fulfill God’s will. Paul said he was more zealous than anybody else and profited in the Jew’s religion above many of his equals (Galatians 1:14). Finally, the Lord revealed Himself miraculously and said, “
You’re doing it all wrong,” and Paul had to completely reverse the direction his life was going.
Paul’s life is proof that merely discovering some of your talents, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are using them in the way God intends for you to use them. Maybe you are, but you need to hear from God to be sure. You need to find out. Life is not a dress rehearsal; it’s the real deal. You will never have another today. You have to make every day count. You have to spend every day moving in the direction that God wants your life to go. You don’t have time to meander through life, hoping to stumble into your purpose or praying that in the end God will use you.
It’s so easy to get established in a routine. When we get a little bit of security and the pressure is off, we want to put life on cruise control. It can feel a little threatening to get out of a routine and do something new, especially if we have been doing the same thing for a long time. But we have to be willing to get out of our comfort zone in order to find God’s purpose for our lives. I promise you, knowing the joy of being in the center of God’s will makes it all worthwhile.
God called me to teach and minister to people. I’m doing what God has called me to do. Because of that, I can name tons of people who have been healed, marriages that have been restored, and people who have been born again. It has been awesome! But you don’t have to be a minister to have a God-given purpose. The Lord has a unique purpose for everyone.
I spend millions of dollars on radio and television, yet there are people you know—friends, relatives, neighbors—who will never hear of me. It wouldn’t matter if I spent ten times as much money as I am spending right now because there would still be certain people who would never hear me preach the Gospel. Some of those people might be your friends and neighbors. An ordained minister might never reach them, but you could.
You have miracles that God has appointed for you to carry out. You may never be on radio or television, and God may not use you to speak in front of thousands of people, but you have a sphere of influence that might never receive the full anointing God has for them unless you reach your potential. You don’t have to mature as a Christian before God will love you. God’s love is unconditional and He accepts you right where you are. But you will be happier and a much greater blessing to the people in your life, once you find your purpose and start heading in that direction.
It’s possible that God wants you in the very business you’re in. Not everyone who wants to live for God needs to become a full-time minister. We need believers who are out in the world, functioning in the power of God and His gifts. Becoming a pastor isn’t the only way to serve God. In fact, God calls more people to be businessmen and laborers than He calls into full-time ministry. Regardless of what you are called to do, God wants you to reach people and manifest His power in the world.
You need to know that you are doing what God made you for, not simply hoping that you are doing something that is acceptable to Him. I think it would be terrible to live your whole life and not know for sure that you are doing what God created you to do. I can’t imagine what that would be like. It would terrify me to go to bed and wake up, not having a clue if I am following God’s will.
The only thing worse than not knowing God’s will is knowing His will and choosing not to do it—either because you have talked yourself out of it or have let others talk you out of it. To know that God made you for a purpose and to feel unqualified or incapable of fulfilling it, is worse than not knowing at all.
It motivates me to know that I am doing what God created me to do. I get up in the morning with a purpose. I know I haven’t achieved all that God has planned for me, but I’m progressing in the right direction. A God-given purpose and a life driven by the Holy Spirit motivate me to work through life’s hardships. I don’t know how people who live without a purpose find the incentive to muddle through, other than knowing that the alternative is worse. Going to work because it beats starving to death is a terrible way to live your life. You need to know that you’re doing what God has called you to do. You need to live your life on purpose.
God has a purpose for every person alive. I don’t care if your parents liked you or wanted you. God knew you were coming. God wrote down everything about you in His book and He has a plan for you. Every gift and talent, the time you were born, the country you were born in, and everything else about you was designed by God. You are not an accident. God has a perfect plan for your life and His plan is better than your plan for yourself.
God’s Universal Will
I can tell you emphatically what God’s primary will for your life is: to know Jesus. He is not willing that anyone should perish, but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). God’s will for every person on earth is to know Him. It doesn’t matter what you have done in the past. Paul said he was the greatest sinner of all, yet God chose him to show that anybody who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:13). In order to be saved, or to be in right relationship with God, you must be born again.
Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.John 3:3
You have to be certain that you are born again. A lot of churchgoers in America think that merely believing God exists is enough to be saved, but the Bible says, “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble” (James 2:19). In other words, it’s no great accomplishment to believe in God—even the devil knows that God is real. You have to do more than mentally acknowledge God’s existence; you have to submit yourself to Him. You have to commit your life to Him personally and when you do that, the Bible says you are born again from above. You are changed on the inside.
If you are already born again, great, I’m not trying to talk you out of it. But if you have not committed your life to God personally, you need to. This is the first and most important step in finding God’s will for your life. You need to be certain that you have done it. A lot of people think, “Well, I’m a good person. I go to church,” but that isn’t enough. Sitting in a church isn’t going to make you a Christian, any more than sitting in a garage is going to make you a car. You must be born again.
It doesn’t matter how good a person you are. All of us fall short of God’s standard of perfection. You can’t save yourself and that’s why God became a man—Jesus—and paid the price for sin on your behalf. Nothing you can do will make you worthy of receiving God’s love. No amount of good works will earn you the privilege of being righteous in God’s eyes. The only thing that will restore you to a right relationship with God is putting your faith in Jesus and submitting to Him as Lord of your life.
Imagine standing before God and hearing Him ask, “What makes you worthy to enter into heaven?” How would you answer? If your first thought is to tell God what a good person you are, how you read your Bible, or that your parents used to take you to church, then you aren’t born again. The only correct answer is to say, “I put my faith in Jesus Christ.”
The sacrifice of Jesus Christ is what makes us right with God. In order to receive His free gift of salvation, all you have to do is believe. It’s so simple that people usually think it can’t be that easy. But it really is that simple. Nothing is required aside from believing in the finished work of Jesus. Scripture says,
…if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
Romans 10:9
The words are easy to say, but you also have to believe what you say in your heart. You have to really mean that you are turning your life over to Jesus—which isn’t to say that you’ll never sin again. None of us are perfect and there are times when we fail. You have to be willing to turn the direction of your life over to the Lord and accept salvation solely on the basis of what Jesus has done for you.
Jesus has already paid for your sins, so salvation is simply a matter of receiving what God desires to give you. It’s not a matter of trying to convince God to give you something He really doesn’t want to give. Salvation is simple, but it didn’t come cheap. Jesus paid for our salvation by taking the punishment we deserved in His own body on the cross. He suffered, died, and defeated death by rising again. Jesus earned salvation for us because we couldn’t. So all you have to do to be saved is say this prayer out loud, believe it in your heart, and you will be born again. It’s that simple.
Father, I’m sorry for my sins. I believe Jesus died to forgive my sin, and I receive that forgiveness. Jesus, I make You my Lord. I believe that You are alive, and that You now live in me. I am saved. I am forgiven. Thank You, Jesus!
God Isn’t Keeping His Will a Secret
Salvation through faith in Jesus is God’s universal will for every person on earth. It brings you into a personal relationship with God. It’s the absolute first step in finding God’s will for your life. Once you are in relationship with God, you can move on to find out what His
particular will for your life is. God made you for one specific purpose and your only chance of reaching your full potential is to find that purpose.
Fortunately, God wants you to know and live out His will even more than you do. He desires to reveal His will to you. For the remainder of the first section of this book, we will discuss things that you can do to draw on the power of God and cause Him to reveal His will to you.
The first thing you need to do is refuse to go any further without knowing God’s will for your life. As long as you can live without knowing God’s purpose for your life, you will. After you insist on finding His will and commit to seeking the Lord with your whole heart, He will immediately put everything in motion to reveal Himself to you—but the first step is making a commitment.
For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.
2 Timothy 1:12
God is faithful and just to keep that which we commit. No committing; no keeping. You have to commit to something. Are you going to continue to go through life thinking,
Qué será, será. Whatever will be, will be? Or are you going to make a commitment to find God’s will for your life? If you are willing to make a total commitment to seeking God and finding His perfect will for your life, then I would like to pray with you. This prayer will be a step of faith that is going to start the process of God revealing His will to you:
Father, I love you. I thank You for the knowledge that You desire to reveal Your will to me. I don’t want to do things on my own anymore. Father, I want to know Your will. I want to know what You created me for. I want to take everything that I am and use it to accomplish Your purpose for me.
I know it’s a process, but I am making a commitment to begin seeking and continue seeking, until I find. I’m not going to be content with living my life for myself. I now humble myself to You Lord and ask You to reveal Your will to me. Father, give me supernatural revelation.
Lord, I believe that right now the process has begun. I have made a commitment and I believe You are going to keep that which I commit. I believe You are going to draw me to a place where I will emphatically know what Your purpose and will for my life is. I thank You Father, in advance, knowing that You will reveal Yourself to me in a way that I can see and understand. I thank You for this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Chapter 2 - God of Second Chances
Our lives can get so complicated that it’s hard to figure out how to get from where we are to where God wants us to be. We all make mistakes and it’s easy to start thinking about what might have been if we had done just a few things differently. But I don’t think it’s helpful to regret things you have done and start asking yourself, “What if I would have followed God? What if I hadn’t done this or that?” Satan uses thoughts like that to beat us up. Rather than reliving the past, it’s better to understand that God has ways of getting us from where we are to where we need to be after we surrender our lives to Him. It’s always better for us to focus on the solution instead of the problem.
The Old Testament book of First Samuel tells the story of Saul, Israel’s first king. Saul’s story is miraculous from the beginning. He was anointed king while he was out searching for some lost livestock. Then he stopped by to ask the prophet Samuel for help. He went there thinking that Samuel might be able to tell him where his lost donkeys were, but instead, Samuel told him that he was going to be the first king of Israel (1 Samuel 9:14-10:1). At that time however, Saul had no desire to be king.
Despite Saul’s humble beginnings, he was anointed by God and became a powerful ruler. He led the nation of Israel in battle and won great victories. The people rallied around him. But two years into his reign, the Philistines gathered to fight against him in such large numbers that the men of Israel became afraid and ran off to hide in caves.
Saul regrouped the people to fight against the Philistines, while he waited for Samuel to come offer a sacrifice before leading his men into battle. (The offering was a request for the Lord’s blessing before they fought the enemy). Saul waited the appointed time for Samuel to arrive, but he didn’t come. The people grew restless and began to scatter. It was a crisis situation. So Saul decided to make the burnt offering himself, instead of waiting for Samuel any longer.
And Saul said, Bring hither a burnt offering to me, and peace offerings. And he offered the burnt offering. And it came to pass, that as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came; and Saul went out to meet him, that he might salute him. And Samuel said, What hast thou done? And Saul said, Because I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that thou camest not within the days appointed, and that the Philistines gathered themselves together at Michmash; Therefore said I, The Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made supplication unto the LORD: I forced myself therefore, and offered a burnt offering.
I Samuel 13:9-12
In those days, only priests who were anointed by God to offer sacrifices could make a burnt offering. We don’t know what caused Samuel’s delay, but regardless Saul was wrong in overstepping his bounds and moving into the office of a priest. Saul wasn’t anointed to be
priest; he was anointed to be
king. By assuming the role of priest, he took authority that he knew he didn’t have. Saul said “I forced myself,” which shows that he knew it was wrong. He was admitting that normally he wouldn’t have done such a thing, but the situation compelled him to do it. So he did it even though he knew it was wrong.
Saul’s behavior reveals a character flaw that’s true of many people today—the tendency to do whatever is in their immediate best interest, regardless of whether or not it’s the right thing to do. Christians shouldn’t live like that. We need to be people of integrity. If God tells us to do something, we should do it. God’s will should be non-negotiable for us, regardless of the circumstances or consequences. Unfortunately, not many people live that way.
Anyone who allows an excuse to cause them to deviate from what they know is right will end up getting off course. We need to get to a place where we drive a stake in the ground and say, “This is non-negotiable. If God tells me to do something, I’ll stand here and do it, even if it kills me. I will not change.” We have to be uncompromising about the will of God, because we will veer off track once we start giving in to circumstances. Saul knew he wasn’t supposed to offer that burnt offering, but he forced himself because it was the convenient thing to do. It might have seemed like a good reason at the time, but he knew he was disobeying God. He compromised.
And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the LORD thy God, which he commanded thee: for now would the LORD have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever. But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the LORD hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the LORD hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the LORD commanded thee.
I Samuel 13:13-14
This is amazing. Samuel said that if Saul would have obeyed God that day, he would have ruled over Israel
forever. Instead, God chose David to replace Saul as king. If Saul had obeyed God, there never would have been a King David. We never would have heard of him, because David wasn’t God’s first choice. Saul was
not just a temporary king until David came along. Saul was God’s first choice.
This incident happened in the second year of Saul’s reign (I Samuel 13:1). Then Saul reigned for another 38 years (Acts 13:21). We also know that David was 30 years old when he finally became king at the end of Saul’s reign (2 Samuel 5:4). So that means that Samuel prophesied that “the Lord has sought a man after His own heart,” eight years before David was even born! God said He had sought out a man after His own heart, long before David was even conceived.
David was born to be king—that was his purpose—but he wasn’t God’s first choice. David became king because Saul failed to do what God called him to do. But look what God did with second best! David became a mighty man of God. He was a man after God’s own heart and he accomplished great things.
We can’t second guess about what could have or should have been. If you have wasted time chasing your own dreams or made some bad decisions, don’t get caught up in mulling over the past. Just start seeking God. Submit yourself to God. He can take wherever you are today and make His
Plan B for your life better than you could ever have imagined
Plan Awould be. The fastest route to God’s perfect will for your life is to simply start seeking Him today.
Saul’s life also demonstrates that God doesn’t sovereignly move us around and make everything automatically work out according to His will. Saul didn’t cooperate with God, therefore he missed God’s will for his life. Don’t get worried though—God has never had anybody qualified working for Him yet! We will all make mistakes, but God is so awesome that He can take the little bit we submit to Him and use it to accomplish His will.
Success is the Greatest Temptation
And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem.
2 Samuel 11:1
David was a man after God’s own heart even though he didn’t do everything perfectly. In those days, kings were forced to wage war when the seasons and weather allowed. This scripture says that it was time for kings to go forth to battle. David was king so he should have been leading his troops in battle. But David had become so prosperous that he didn’t need to go; he had generals under him who could lead the troops for him. So David stayed home and got away from what God called him to do.
When David was running for his life from Saul and it looked like he could die at any moment, he sought God with his whole heart. After he became king, he subdued his enemies, extended the borders of the nation of Israel, and prospered greatly. God blessed him and he was more successful than any other king before him. But he stopped seeking after God wholeheartedly.
The awesome truth we need to understand here is that the greatest temptation we face in life is success. Hardship is not the worst situation in our lives. Even someone with a minimal commitment to the Lord will seek Him when the pressure is on. Failure and disaster typically drive us into the arms of God. Success is different; it makes us feel like we can make it all on our own. When everything is going good and the pressure is off, or when we don’t have to seek God because it looks like everything is going our way, the contents of our heart will be revealed. Success, not failure, is the true test of character. The question is:
Are you going to seek God as strongly during the good times as you do when you are struggling?
The majority of people seek the Lord more when they are in trouble. When everything is fine, they forget all about God—they don’t seek Him, they don’t pray, and they don’t study the Word. This is what makes them more vulnerable after a victory than they are during life’s struggles. When things are good, people tend to forget their need for God; this leads to trouble.
And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. And David sent and enquired after the woman. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house. And the woman conceived, and sent and told David, and said, I am with child.
2 Samuel 11:2-5
David was bored. He was sleeping all day, staying up all night, and not doing the things God called him to do as king. If he had been out fighting his battles, this temptation would never have come. David was bored hanging around the palace and ended up getting into trouble. He committed adultery with Bathsheba and she conceived a child. To cover up their adultery, David plotted the murder of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah, who was one of the mighty men off fighting the wars David himself should have been fighting. After Uriah was dead, David took Bathsheba as his wife (2 Samuel 11:6-27).
David got himself into a pretty bad situation, which shows how even a person who has a heart for God can get way off track. The lesson for us is that when things are going well, we should seek God even more than we have been. The moment we achieve our dreams is the time we are most vulnerable to an attack. After a victory, we need to be more dependent on God than we have ever been in our lives.
The Bible says, “But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD” (2 Samuel 11:27). Boy, that’s putting it mildly. God was ticked off! The Lord sent the prophet Nathan to expose what David had done. Nathan went to David and told him a story about a rich man who stole his poor neighbor’s only lamb, killed it, and used it to feed a guest. David said, “Any man who would do such a thing deserves to die!” After David made his pronouncement, Nathan said “You are that man,” and gave a prophecy that the child conceived by Bathsheba in adultery would die (2 Samuel 12:1-14).
I’m reading between the lines here, but I believe the reason Nathan presented the prophecy in parable form is that God was letting David prescribe his own judgment. Scripture says that God will show mercy to those who have shown mercy to others, but to those who haven’t shown mercy, God will have no mercy (see James 2:13 and 2 Samuel 22:26). David knew this principle because he had written about it himself. If David had been merciful,
I believe he would have received mercy in return. But because he showed no mercy to the man in this parable, David passed sentence on himself and received no mercy. As a result, the child died and there was turmoil in his household.
After the death of his baby, it says that David comforted Bathsheba and they conceived another son whom they called Solomon. The Lord loved the child and sent the prophet Nathan to announce that his name was Jedidiah (2 Sam. 12:25), which in Hebrew means “beloved of the Lord.” God anointed Solomon to be David’s replacement as king of Israel (1 Kings 1:17; 1 Chronicles 28:5), and he became so prosperous that he didn’t even take any account of the silver in his kingdom (1 Kings 10:21).
God never wanted David and Bathsheba to have a relationship. But after it was done, they repented. Then God took the child born to them and blessed him. The Bible says that Solomon was the richest man who will ever live—not just the richest man of his day (2 Chronicles 1:12). It says there will never be another man who approaches the wisdom and the riches of Solomon. God knows how to work things out for good!
All of this came to a person who was totally outside of God’s original plan and purpose. Saul was God’s original choice; David was second best. Then David blew it! His relationship with Bathsheba was never God’s will. Yet, after they repented, God blessed their marriage. Bathsheba is the virtuous woman whom Solomon wrote about in the book of Proverbs, and Solomon was greatly blessed by God.
Maybe you think you have blown it because of bad decisions you have made in the past, but you can’t blow it any more than David did. Yet, God took the mess David made of his life and worked it together for good—to the extent that we remember David as a great man. He certainly had faults and problems, but overall, David was used by God in a mighty way. We still sing about “the sure mercies of David,” and recognize him as the “sweet psalmist of Israel.”
God did all of this with a person who wasn’t His original choice. Even when this man messed up, God worked things out for good. Four or five hundred years after David died, God was still blessing the nation of Israel. He wouldn’t take His mercies away from them for the sake of His servant David. God made an everlasting covenant with David, resulting in blessings to his descendants even when they weren’t serving God. And all of this came through someone who missed it big-time.
I hope this encourages you. You may have made some less than perfect choices, but it is pointless to spend your time regretting the past. People have come to me and said, “I’m not sure I married the right person.” It doesn’t do you any good to go there now; you’re married, and just like David and Bathsheba, you are committed. It would be wrong to walk away or try to reverse your life and go back. You are where you are because of the choices you have made. The thing to do is humble yourself, seek God, and realize that God can take where you are right now and work everything together for good.
God Positioning System
Regardless of what you have been through, God can take your life and make it all work out. We know that God doesn’t cause the negative things in our lives, but He can still make everything turn out for good. If you have made some wrong decisions, just repent and move on. The Lord can make your life right again.
David made some serious mistakes that cost him a great deal of agony—decisions that also cost his family a lot of pain. David’s daughter, Tamar, was raped by her brother, Amnon (2 Samuel 13:10-14), then David’s son, Absalom, killed Amnon to avenge Tamar (2 Samuel 13:28). Eventually, Absalom tried to kill David and usurp the throne (2 Samuel 15:10). David had a lot of pain and turmoil in his life as a result of the poor decisions he made. He could have beaten himself up over his mistakes, but instead he trusted God. He chose to be strong in the grace that is in the Lord (2 Timothy 2:1). This is a great lesson for all of us.
I am absolutely convinced that regardless of where you are today or how badly you may have missed God’s will for your life, God still has a plan for you. The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans:
For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.
Romans 11:29
God doesn’t change. Whatever His purpose for your life was when He created you hasn’t changed either. You might be a long way from where God wants you to be right now, but God can get you where you need to be.
Modern technology allows you to have a global positioning system (GPS) in your car to help you find your way around town. GPS devices even speak to you and tell you where to turn. When you are driving somewhere and make a wrong turn, the GPS doesn’t freak out and say,
You missed it. You’ll never get there now. No, if you make a wrong turn, the GPS says,
recalculating. This means that the system is refiguring the directions to tell you where to go next in order to get you to your destination. If you miss a turn, it doesn’t mean you need to give up and go home. God is at least as good as a GPS. It doesn’t matter where you are—God can
recalculate. God can take what you have done and figure a way to get you back on track. You can still get where God planned for you to go.
In the same manner, the gifts and calling of God never change. You may have made some wrong turns in your life, but God’s will for you has not changed. He still has a plan for you. Even if you have made a royal mess of your life, God can take what you have done and cause it to work together for good. It’s sort of like a master chess player who is engaged in a chess match; it doesn’t matter what move his opponent makes, the master player can always use that move to his advantage. Likewise, it doesn’t matter what the devil does or how much you blow it or mess up. God is able to take whatever you have done to ruin your life and turn it around.
Take Heart
I hope these biblical examples have encouraged you to take heart. God’s grace is infinitely bigger than whatever you have done wrong. Your failings are no match for His grace; they aren’t even worthy to mention in the same breath. You just need to humble yourself and submit your life to the Lord. Yield to Him and say, “God, here I am. Do with me what You want to.” God can redeem your situation.
God hasn’t given up on you. The simple fact that you are reading this book shows that God is drawing you and trying to reach out to you. Not a single person alive is beyond hope. No one has messed up their life so badly that God can’t take it and do something supernatural with it. But you can’t do things the way you always have in the past and expect different results. You’re going to have to humble yourself and submit yourself to God.
Chapter 3 - A Living Sacrifice
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
Romans 12:1
God used this passage of scripture to change my life. These are the very first verses that God ever spoke into my heart and made come alive. For almost 18 months leading up to that revelation, I had been seeking God and studying the Bible to find His will. I was preparing the ground. This brings up an important point I can’t over emphasize: God won’t reveal His will for your life until you are ready to receive it.
God doesn’t show us the full scope of His plan all at once. He doesn’t show us the end from the beginning. He will start pointing us in a direction and moving us toward it, but He won’t show us everything all at once because we aren’t ready to embrace what He has to say. Seeing the full scope of God’s will all at once would overwhelm us. We might think we are incapable of doing what He has planned for us, or we might become so impatient that we would never stay the course long enough for God to prepare us to carry out our calling. It isn’t that God is hesitant to show us His will—sometimes it just takes Him a while to bring us to a place where we are ready to receive it.
My preparation was seeking the Lord and being
consumed with finding His will for my life. This hunger to know God’s will led me to the verses in Romans chapter twelve. Then the revelation of what those verses meant led to an encounter with God on March 23, 1968. That encounter totally changed my life, and it all started with simply wanting to find God’s will.
The first stage of finding God’s particular will for your life is to become a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto Him (Romans 12:1). From an eternal perspective, what you do for an occupation is incidental. The Lord doesn’t want your
service as much as He wants
you. He loves you more than He loves what you can do for Him. Now, that’s an important point to make, because in our day and age—especially in the type of church atmosphere that I grew up in—it’s all about service, a push to
do something for God. It’s true that you were created for God’s pleasure and glory, but
God’s acceptance of you is not related to what you do for Him. The Lord sacrificed Himself so He could have
you, not your
service.
When I was seeking God in 1968, I wasn’t even thinking about being a preacher. I was asking God if He wanted me to be a teacher, doctor, or something like that. One of the things the Lord spoke to me was that I was missing it by seeking Him for a vocation. He told me, “I want you; if I get you, then I’ll be able to use you however I want to.” I was praying “Oh, God, use me. Show me what You want me to do. God, should I do this or that?” The Lord finally spoke to me and said, “The reason I haven’t used you is because you aren’t
usable. Quit praying that I’ll use you; pray ‘God, make me usable.’”
Besides, God wants to use you more than you want to be used. If you make yourself a living sacrifice and commit your life to the Lord, I guarantee you He will start developing your talents and directing you. As soon as you get usable, God will use you.
Then saith He unto His disciples, ‘harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.’
Matthew 9:37-38
God is looking for people He can use, but the problem is most of us aren’t usable. Of course, making ourselves usable doesn’t mean that we try to go out and accomplish God’s plan in our own strength and ability. Look how Jesus approached His ministry:
Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.
John 2:23-25
What would we do if this happened today? Let’s say, for instance, a preacher came to your town and suddenly people were being raised from the dead and miracles were happening by the hundreds. What would the average preacher do in that situation? He would probably mobilize the people, put literature in their hands, and send them out to witness to others about the power of God they were seeing. Then he would call the television stations, advertise, and try to take advantage of what was happening.
This scripture describes a multitude of people who were willing to acknowledge that Jesus was the Christ. Yet, Jesus did not commit Himself to them. He didn’t partner with them because He knew what was in man. Jesus didn’t want those people talking about Him because He knew they weren’t ready. For one thing, they weren’t born again. They weren’t filled with the Holy Spirit either. Even after His disciples had spent three and a half years with Him and had seen Him rise from the dead, the last thing Jesus told them was, “Don’t go tell anybody I’m resurrected from the dead until you receive the power of the Holy Spirit. Then you’ll be empowered to be My witnesses.” (see Acts 1:4-5,8)
Jesus is more concerned about the
quality of ministry than He is the
quantity of ministry. We’re almost completely the opposite. Today when someone gets born again, we pat them on the back and immediately send them out to tell everybody. That isn’t the way God wants the church to operate.
You need to be prepared. You need to get to where you aren’t ministering out of your own ability, but through the power of God. It takes a while for that to happen. Jesus wouldn’t commit Himself to those people because He didn’t want anyone to speak out of their own ability. The majority of people today who represent God are just teaching things they have heard someone else say. Their hearts may be good and they may mean well, but their teaching is just the teaching of men. It’s not the power of the Holy Spirit, therefore it causes problems.
This goes right along with the idea that God wants you before He wants your service. If God doesn’t have your heart then why would He want to reveal His purpose to you? You would just go out in your own human ability and make a mess of things, trying to fulfill His will. He loves you too much for that. Sure the Lord is concerned about the witness you present to others, but it is also out of love and concern for you that He doesn’t want you stepping out solely in your own power.
Fight in God’s Strength
Some wonderful things go along with finding God’s will. Earlier, I mentioned a sense of satisfaction, peace, and joy that you will never experience unless you find God’s will. When you find God’s plan and walk in the center of His will, it’s like pinning a huge target on yourself. Satan fights against those who try to advance the kingdom of God. You are going to be met with opposition while fulfilling God’s purpose for your life. You will face challenges. If God doesn’t have your heart so He can mold it to meet your needs and give you faith to overcome obstacles, you’re going to be in trouble. The wiles of the enemy and the darts that come against you would destroy you if you found God’s will and moved out in your own strength to accomplish it.
The reason that some people haven’t bumped into the devil is because they’re going in the same direction! They haven’t had any great problems in life because they aren’t a threat. The good news is that, as far as we can tell in Scripture, demons don’t reproduce. So either there was a bunch of demons per person back in Adam and Eve’s day or there’s a shortage of demons today. Personally, I believe there’s a shortage of demons. I believe Satan is short-handed and I don’t believe, as some claim, that every person has their own personal demon.
Satan taught a lot of us a couple wrong things a long time ago so now we’re doing a wonderful job messing up our own lives. He can leave us alone because we’re doing a bang up job on our own. Some people have probably inspired the devil. I bet the devil sometimes sits down and takes notes and says, “Oh, I never thought of that one.” Seriously though, when you find God’s will and the anointing of God flows through you and people’s lives are impacted, I can guarantee that you are going to face some form of demonic activity.
Satan puts a priority on people who are in the center of God’s will, making an impact, and causing his earthly kingdom damage. It’s just like being in a battle: an army that is attacked on one flank will shift forces to reinforce that area and repel the attack. In the same way, when you start fulfilling God’s will for your life there is going to be opposition. Satan will marshal his forces against you to protect himself. God loves you too much to reveal His will to you and put you on the front lines when you are not prepared to meet the challenge.
I hope you are getting this: One of the main reasons God doesn’t automatically reveal His will to everyone is that He loves us too much to put us at risk. He doesn’t want us out there trying to advance His kingdom in our flesh, unable to deal with the opposition and criticism that comes against us. He doesn’t want us to be destroyed. He’s not willing to sacrifice us. God doesn’t see us as a disposable commodity. He doesn’t use people like you would a straw in a soda cup: suck on it until you hear
sluuurrrp, then throw the cup away, and go get another one. God loves us too much to use us like that. He loves us more than He loves what we can do for Him.
Self-Centeredness Is the Root of All Evil
To become a living sacrifice, you have to die to yourself and your own selfish ambitions. A sacrifice is something you place on the altar. It doesn’t give instructions; it is at the mercy of the person doing the sacrificing. The sacrificer can do anything he wants with the sacrifice. Dying to one’s
self isn’t normal. It isn’t what fallen human beings naturally desire.
In case you haven’t noticed, sweet little babies don’t give a rip about anything but their own needs. They scream and cry to wake mom up in the middle of the night to be fed—oblivious to the fact that mommy just went through labor and is exhausted. Babies will do whatever it takes to get what they want, when they want it, and they don’t care one bit how it affects others. Babies think they are the center of the universe. Every one of us came into the world exactly that way, and sad to say, a majority of us are
still that way.
We might not fall on the floor and suck our thumb or throw a fit, but we still act in selfish ways. Adults have different ways of being self-centered—like turning a shoulder to our spouse that is cold enough to form icicles. The natural tendency of fallen human beings is to think that the world revolves around them. This selfish tendency is Satan’s beachhead into your life. It’s how he gains access to you.
Satan’s temptation against Adam and Eve was to get them to think about themselves. Basically, his temptation was saying to them, “God isn’t thinking about you, He’s keeping something from you. You could be more like God.” In truth however, God had created a perfect world for Adam and Eve and there wasn’t a single reason for them to be upset. The Garden of Eden was perfect. God Almighty walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. He gave them honor and respect. Everything was
absolutely perfect, but Satan made them think that God was holding something back. Adam and Eve rejected God because they didn’t think what they had was good enough—they wanted more.
All human beings start out selfish but we don’t have to stay that way. Prior to my encounter with the Lord in 1968, I was doing all the
right things for all the
wrong reasons. I was an absolute hypocrite and didn’t even realize it. As far as I knew, I was the most religious kid in our church. I led two or three people a week to the Lord, I started a special youth visitation, I went to the adult visitation, I witnessed to people—I did everything I could. I lived at church and I was seeking God with everything I knew, but the Lord showed me that I was doing it all for myself and a little pat on the back.
On March 23, 1968, God pulled back a curtain and showed me that my heart was all wrong. He showed me that I was selfish and had not been seeking Him with pure motives. We had a prayer meeting every Saturday night. Here I was,
an 18-year-old boy meeting every Saturday night to pray with my friends—that should give you an indication of how religious I was! We were in this prayer meeting joking around, when the youth director of our church came in and dropped to his knees on the floor of the pastor’s study. He started praying and crying out to God for about 45 minutes. During his prayer, I was kneeling down across the room, but instead of enjoying his prayer or communing with God, I was caught up in myself.
How rude, I thought.
He just came in here and now he’s praying on and on. What am I going to pray? There won’t be anything left to say by the time he finishes! Everybody is going to think I’m carnal and don’t love God.
I was thinking these things, when I suddenly realized what an absolute hypocrite I was. I saw how self-centered my whole life had been. I don’t know how it happened, it was supernatural, but it was like God just pulled a curtain back. I saw how everything I thought I had been doing for the Lord was actually for my own benefit. I started confessing all of the self-centered things I was seeing about myself; I turned myself inside out in front of my best friends and all the leaders of the church. I thought nobody was ever going to want to be around me again after hearing the things I was revealing—all of the lust and hate that was in my heart—and the way I thought of other people. I ruined my reputation, but I didn’t care. I knew I needed to get right with God.
Before this experience, I had been proud of my performance. Now I saw my self-righteousness from God’s perspective and thought He was about to kill me. I was just trying to confess everything I could think of, so when He killed me I could go to heaven. I thought God was seeing all of that junk for the first time—just like I was. I prayed and confessed for about an hour and a half. It was probably the first time in my life I had prayed more than 15 minutes at a time.
When I was through, there was nothing left to say, nothing more I could give, nothing left to confess. I made myself a living sacrifice that night. I humbled myself. I saw that God was righteous, and I was unrighteous. I expected God to kill me because of how unrighteous I was. But instead of wrath and rejection, the tangible love of God came over me and changed my life. It was so real! I’m not sure what happened during that time, but I never slept more than an hour at a time or sat down to eat a meal. I just ate enough to keep me going. I was excited! I couldn’t sleep knowing how much God loved me! How could I sit down and eat when I could be reading the Bible?
Experiencing God’s love transformed my life. Instead of the rejection and punishment I thought was coming, God showed me that He loved me—and I knew it had nothing to do with me. For the first time in my life, I saw that I was a “zero with the rim knocked off.” I found God’s love and realized it was solely according to His grace. It had nothing to do with my goodness or badness. God just loved me. Learning this truth totally changed me.
Not everybody is going to have the same kind of dramatic encounter that I did, but everybody needs to have a similar experience; a time when you make the decision to quit sitting on the throne of your life, trying to determine your own future. We become a sacrifice when we hand over control, which is primarily what God wants to accomplish in all of us. Until we reach that place, God can’t reveal His perfect will—or He certainly can’t reveal the entirety of it—because we would go out and try to accomplish it in our own strength and would end up getting hurt or hurting others.
God wants your heart more than He wants your service. You need to run up a white flag of surrender and say, “God, I’m yours. I’ll do
anything you want.” I guarantee you that God’s plan for you is better than your plan for yourself. It will take a period of time for you to be able to learn God’s plan and for Him to work some things out in you. The Lord will start you on the most adventurous path you could ever dream. Life will be better than you could ever plan for yourself.
Yielding to the Lord isn’t a one-time decision. The initial resolution begins the process, but God can’t deal with all of your flesh in one moment. You have to keep making the choice to surrender. The only way for you to never have another problem with your flesh is for you to
physically die. As long as you are breathing, you have a self, and that carnal nature is going to seek to reassert its desires.
I haven’t been perfect since March 23, 1968, when I surrendered my life to God. I haven’t always loved God flawlessly and avoided all selfishness. But I made a commitment with all of my heart that night. As soon as I see selfishness rise up in my life, I repent. I’ve had to say, “Whoops, there’s
self coming back up again. Father, I’m not going that way. Thank You for showing me.” I’ve had to get back on track, but I’ve never lost my commitment. I committed myself to God in 1968 and have not been uncommitted since. I haven’t always lived up to my commitment, but I’ve never had to start over again.
Today, most people just commit a little bit, then they do something in absolute rebellion against God and have to come back and recommit. Their lives are up and down like a yo-yo. But we can reach a place where we literally turn everything over to God and that’s all there is to it—a place where no matter what God tells us to do, we will do it without discussion.
When the Lord first called us to go to Pritchett, Colorado, I didn’t have any desire to go there. It was a puny town of 144 people, 30 miles away from the next largest town of 1,000. As a matter of fact, the first time we drove through Pritchett we were with some friends of ours and I started laughing and saying, “Don, I think God’s calling you here.” I said, “Thus saith the Lord…” and I started joking with him about being called to Pritchett. But it wasn’t two months later that
I was living there!
I had some resistance to the idea, but the moment I was sure God wanted me to do it, I did it. I didn’t understand everything. Going to pastor a church of ten people in a town of 144 people wasn’t a stepping stone to anything. The only way you leave a situation like that is feet first. But I knew God wanted me to do it, so I did. Once I committed to following God’s leading to go to Pritchett, God put His desires in my heart and I fell in love with the place. I loved Pritchett and had a great time there.
A few times in my life, I have struggled to know if what I was feeling led to do was really God. But once I knew it was God’s will, it was non-negotiable for me—I just did it. I have discovered that most people aren’t like that, which is one of the reasons God hasn’t revealed His will to them yet. It’s also the reason they are struggling. It solves a lot of problems when you figure out that there’s only one God—and you aren’t Him! As long as you are playing God in your life, picking and choosing what you do, you aren’t a living sacrifice.
The heart of God’s will for you is to be a living sacrifice, committed unto Him. Once you reach that place, you will have to rebel against God to keep from seeing His good, acceptable, and perfect will come to pass in your life (Romans 12:2). God doesn’t need a silver vessel. He’s looking for a surrendered vessel. Commit your life to Him and He will promote you in whatever area He wants you to go. You will prosper and have the favor of God. Things will work better than they ever did when you were the one calling the shots. Believe it or not, God is smarter than you! God knows more than you do. He can direct your life better than you can (Jeremiah 10:23), so don’t lean unto your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5).
Fully submitting to God is the starting place. You can’t get around this step. Most people want to skip this rung and move on up to the top of the ladder; they want to stride right into the center of God’s will and see great things happen. You’re not going to get far that way. The reason we have people in ministry who wind up committing adultery and stealing money is because they didn’t take the time to build a foundation of character and integrity. They didn’t wait on God to promote them, so fame corrupted them. Don’t make that mistake by trying to get around becoming a living sacrifice. Selfishness is Satan’s inroad to your life; it’s how he gains access to you.
Most people don’t trust God to advance them in life because they’re too busy trying to advance themselves. In general, we demand respect and assert our rights in an attempt to make everyone around us realize how important we are. This is pretty much the opposite of being a living sacrifice. Being committed to God doesn’t mean we lie down like a doormat every time we are confronted with a problem. If God tells us to do something to change our circumstances, we need to do it. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t be motivated by selfish desires.
Being a living sacrifice is the first step in finding God’s will. It would really jump start your spiritual life to get off the throne and say, “Jesus, I want
Youto control my life.” Still, it’s a process. If you are living a totally selfish life right now, you have a lot of momentum built up in that direction. You can’t make a complete U-turn instantly. If the Lord suddenly turned you around, it would be a disaster—like trying to flip a U-turn while going 65 mph on the highway. It’s going to take God some time to turn you around and get you moving in the right direction.
The starting point is for you to be willing to allow God to begin the change. Even after you make a commitment with all of your heart, you’re still going to have a “self” to deal with. You don’t get delivered of your “self.” The only way you can get delivered from your carnal self is to die physically.
Making Course Corrections
Jim Erwin was one of the astronauts who walked on the moon. I was in Vietnam when all of that was going on, but I always wanted to know more about it. One day, I was on a television program with Jim and had the opportunity to talk to him about the lunar landing. I thought the technology was so awesome—blasting off for the moon and landing on the exact spot they were aiming for.
But as I talked to Jim, I learned it wasn’t like that at all. He said that NASA basically threw the capsule towards the moon and every ten minutes for four days, they had to adjust their direction in order to stay on course. Sometimes the capsule was 90 degrees off from the direction it needed to be traveling, so they had to fire up the rocket to get back on track. Other times they were just a fraction of an inch off.
The flight path to the moon wasn’t a straight line; it was a jumble of zigzags. Jim said they had a 500-mile-long target area for their landing. When he got out of the lunar module and stepped onto the moon, he was within five feet of being outside the landing zone. They nearly missed a 500 mile landing strip! But they still made it.
As Jim was telling me this, the Lord spoke to me and said, “That’s the way it is when you make a commitment of your life to Me.” It’s not like you commit once and never make another mistake. You make a total commitment, and within five or ten minutes, you are going to have an opportunity for a course correction. Somebody is going to cut in front of you in line at the grocery store, cut you off in traffic, or say something rude. You will have the opportunity to make a course correction every ten minutes for the rest of your life!
The problem with a living sacrifice is that it keeps trying to crawl off the altar. You need to make a total commitment. Don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning thinking, “What about me? What about my desires and ambitions?” It doesn’t mean you weren’t committed to God or that you won’t make it. It just means that you still have “flesh” that needs to be subdued. Just deny your flesh and make a course correction.
You will experience the beginning of God when you come to the end of yourself, which isn’t to say that you can’t encounter God every once in a while or that He can’t touch you. God loves you and He will move in your life as much as you let Him. But you aren’t going to see the miraculous power of God consistently working in your life until you quit trying to do everything yourself and put Him first.
We are totally self-centered when we come out of the womb. If you have never taken the step of putting God first, you are
still self-centered. You might be a 20, 30, 40, or 60 year-old adult brat who still thinks that life is all about
you. You’ve heard the joke about how many people it takes to change a light bulb, right? In most cases, the answer is “just one,” because the person holds the bulb and the world revolves around them—
or at least that’s what they think.
God created us to live for a greater purpose than just satisfying our own needs. We need to humble ourselves and make ourselves a living sacrifice. That’s not all there is to fulfilling God’s will, but you can’t do anything else until you take this first step. Some people make a total commitment to God and then get off course. If you made a total commitment to God in the past, then maybe He is just trying to tell you, “Hey, you’re off track.” No big deal; just make a course correction and get back to the commitment you already made to follow God.
The vast majority of people who are searching for God’s will have probably never turned control of their lives over to the Lord. If you’re thinking, “I’m an adult brat. I’m totally self-centered. My whole life has been about me,” then you need to make a commitment to God. Allow God to give you guidance about the direction to take with your future. If there is any doubt in your mind about whether or not you have made a total commitment to God then you haven’t done it. If you are feeling a tug on your heart to make a commitment, I suggest you respond now while the Holy Spirit is leading you.
Becoming a living sacrifice isn’t only for the “super-saints” or those who
really want to seek God; every born-again believer is supposed to be a living sacrifice. Sadly, a lot of our churches are promoting “self-help” philosophies as the way to happiness. But the Christian life isn’t about having a positive self-image; it’s the Christ-image in us that matters. We need to exalt Christ, not “self.”
If you are willing to say,
I need to become a living sacrifice. If you are willing to start moving in that direction and want to give God the right to start running your life, you can make that commitment right now. Thank God for showing you the next step. Acknowledge that you are not capable of dying to yourself in your own strength. Determine to become a living sacrifice and trust the Lord to start leading you out of selfishness and into His plans for your life. Give God the freedom to show you the way you should go and then resolve to follow His leading.
I believe that as you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, He will lift you up. As you turn your life over to Him, He will begin a process of renewal. This step you are taking is not merely a mental acknowledgement of God’s supremacy; it’s a supernatural restoration process through which Jesus will begin to dominate your focus. The moment you make this decision, you will begin to recognize how God is moving in your life to bless you and give you direction. I believe that as you turn your life over to God, He will touch your heart and you will never be the same.
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