The first word is "good".  God's will is good.  Now when people hear this they automatically think - God's will is good for me.  God's plans will benefit me, it will make me all I want to be and give me all I want in life.  And so God's will is seen as a means for self-gratification.  But that's a myth.

You may have heard preachers say, "God has a wonderful plan for your life." But we must be very careful when we say that.  There is a danger when we talk about God's will for my life or for your life.  It is a danger to be thinking selfishly,, thinking of what God can do for me, of what God can give to me.  And even though we say with our mouths that we want God's will to be done in our lives, we are thinking that His plan will benefit us.  "After all," we think, "God is good and caring and loving - so He will give me all sorts of good stuff that will satisfy my selfish desires."  And we are like spoiled grandchildren in a candy store.  The child asks their grandmother, "Can I have that grandma?  Can I have that candy, and that candy?" "O, sure honey," says the grandmother, "Whatever makes you happy." That's not the way God's will operates.

Paul says here that God's will, His plans are good.  But God's will may not be good in the way that we sometimes think.  We must understand that God's plans and purposes are much bigger than your life or my life.  The truth is this - God has a wonderful plan and you may have a part in that plan.  But it is not designed for your self-gratification.

Imagine remodeling an old house.  You hire the contractors and when they arrive you say to them, "I have a wonderful plan for this old house.  I'm glad you are here to be a part of this.  You have to rip out the old lath and plaster, tear down the ceiling and replace all the wiring, plumbing and heating system."  That contractor may be around for as long as the job lasts, but he probably will never see the finished product of the house, with the wall paper hung, and the furniture in place.  But if you said to that contractor, "I've got a wonderful plan for you in my house," he'd probably say, "Great I'll take the first two floors and you can have the basement." That would be a wonderful plan for him – but it wasn't a wonderful plan for him.  It was a wonderful plan for the house.  You see, God's will is not designed for self-gratification.

If you believe that God has a wonderful plan for your life, you may sometimes feel disillusioned.  God has a wonderful plan.  Period.  And it is wonderful for God.  And it is your privilege, it is my privilege to be a part of that.

Many of you know the story of Jim Elliot and his four colleagues who were murdered in Ecuador some years ago now.  I was reminded of the story when Janet and I were in Amsterdam for a conference on evangelism.

I believe it was in the early 1960's that five men, all missionaries, went down to Ecuador in order to reach a group of natives, the Aca Indians.  The only people who got into that territory before them was the Shell Oil Company because they felt that there might be some oil in that territory.  But they got such a poor reception and got so scared that they left and never went back.  But these men wanted to reach them.  So they flew over them with a man by the name of Nate Saint who was their pilot.  They dropped gifts, developing some kind of relationship with them, and tried to show that they were friendly.  Until the day came when they said, "It's time to go in on foot and meet these men and women." And so they went in on foot.  They left early one morning and they never came back.  All five of them were murdered, left face down in the bed of the river.  It was headline news around the world.  .

It has been suggested that 10,000 people went to the mission field as a result of the martyrdom of those men.  I don't know if that's a true figure, it's a round figure.  But I do know that when that story is mentioned in missionary circles, someone will inevitably say, "Do you know why I'm a missionary?  Because I read the story of Jim Elliot and God called me to the mission field." You can imagine that when Jim Elliot said, "Lord your will be done in my life," if God said, "Well, thank you Jim.  But I have to tell you at age 29 you'll be dead in a riverbed in a remote part of Ecuador.  You'll leave your wife as a widow.  You'll leave your young daughter fatherless.  Your four colleagues will leave widows and fatherless children." That wasn't a very wonderful plan for them.  It wasn't a very wonderful plan for those kids growing up and never knowing their fathers.  It wasn't a very wonderful plan for those young men dying at that stage in life.

But it was a great plan for the church.  Hundreds, thousands of men and women were motivated to go to the mission field.  Sometimes, because of our stubbornness it takes something like that to get us moving.

Now don't misunderstand, I don't believe that God was the architect of that death, it was an evil act.  But God permitted and allowed it.

Please understand - the Christian faith is not a means for you and me to get all we want from this world and in this world.  It is not necessarily a means for self-fulfillment.

You see, I have to couch the words.  Because there is a sense where the Christian life is amazingly self-fulfilling.  Life is self-fulfilling when your focus is Christ, when your focus is God, when your goal in life is to please Him, to glorify Him, to serve Him, and you think, "if I die in the process, I'll die in the process."  Oh, that we would have the words of Paul on our lips, "My life means nothing to me other than that I might fulfill the task to which He has called me." (Acts 20:24) so that at the end of our lives we can look back and say, "I have fought the fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord will award to me on that day." (2 Timothy 4:7,8)

Here is the second word Paul uses to describe God's will - "pleasing." Pleasing to whom?  Is it pleasing to God?  Yes, that is obvious, but it is also pleasing to us.  This must be said - that while God is not in the self-gratification business, He is not up in heaven trying to make life miserable for us.  It is a myth to believe that if you are enjoying what you are doing then you must be out of the will of God.  It is wrong to believe that if it's fun or you like doing it then it must be out of the will of God.

"Surely God doesn't want me to do that because I enjoy it too much!"  If you say that, then you are saying that God doesn't understand you or know you, or even like you.  The truth is He likes you; He loves you.  He planned for you, and gave you likes and dislikes, abilities and talents.  He made you the way you are for a reason - you are not an accident.

So, if you have a talent for music and like it, don't assume that you have to keep on praying for a revelation of God's will.  No, keep on practicing, keep on singing, keep on playing.  If you have an aptitude for business and love to make the deal, then go for it.  If you love to teach and have the ability to communicate with children then do it.

But this is key - we do it all for the glory of God; we work to please Him.  We make it our goal to please Him (2 Corinthians 5:9).  We live our lives with dependence on Him and no one else.  We do not seek to store up treasures here on earth but seek to store up treasures in heaven.  The only desires the Lord wants to frustrate are those He sees will harm and not help His work.  Let us settle it in our minds once and for all that God is not an old grouch who delights in saying no!

This leads us to the last word that Paul uses here to describe God's will.  He says that God's will is good, it is pleasing and it is perfect.  That means that God's will is complete or whole.  There is nothing that God's will lacks.  There is nothing that we can take away or add in order to improve it.  It is perfectly whole.  And He sees the whole of it, while we see only fragments of past and little of the present and very, very little, if any, of the future.  But God sees the past, present and future in its total context as related to eternity.  His will is perfect.

We need to take this in, for sometimes we fall into the trap of believing that what we are doing is so insignificant, it is so small it is so out of the way.  And the devil comes and whispers in your ear, "You're really nothing, you know, and you are worth nothing." But that is a lie.  God's will is perfect.  While we cannot see the whole, God can.  While we cannot understand all the ramifications of what we are doing, God can.

Jesus told his disciples in John 13 when He was washing their feet (but the principle applies beyond that), "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand." (John 13:7) We cannot see full implications of what God calls us to do.  And it is a spiritual truth that often the devil will blind us to the fact that sometimes that which we think is a great failure, is in fact the place and time when God did His greatest work in and through our lives.   I heard Dr. Charles Price tell of a time when he was speaking at a conference and he mentioned the name of Victor Smadzer.  Victor Smadzer is a Christian Jew who lives in Israel.  He runs a printing press in Jerusalem and prints Christian literature.  He organizes conferences to teach the word of God, and has a strong outreach to the youth of Jerusalem.  Dr. Price mentioned this in his address and afterward a woman came up to him and told him this story.   She said, "My husband and I were called by God to be missionaries in Tunisia, in North Africa and we were there for over 30 years.  And in those 30 years we only ever saw one convert.  We did see a number of young people, a number of Arab young people make a decision or a response in the camps that we had every summer but only one that ever stuck.  And one day when he had grown up, in his early 20's and he came to us and he said, 'I'm Jewish,' which we knew, 'and I have the right of return to Israel.  And I'm going back to Israel and settle in Israel.' " She said, "We were so disappointed.  The only convert we are leaving behind is going to leave the country."

"His name is Victor Smadzer."  she said. "We had no idea that God sent us to Tunisia for 30 years to evangelize and nurture one Jewish boy.  God sent us to Tunisia to evangelize Israel." And Dr. Price said, "That must have been very hard at the time."

She said, "It was, we could never write our prayer letters because we had nothing to write really.  When we went home on furlough, we didn't have all sorts of wonderful stories to tell our supporters.  All we could tell them was, 'God put us there, that's all we know.'  People would say to us, "Why don't you move on to somewhere else?' "

Well that lady lived to see the results of her work because she knows the great work that Victor is doing in Israel.

But the truth is, you don't know all the implications of what God has called you to do in life.  You don't know how God is going to use that one life you influenced in your Sunday School class.  You don't know what eternal ramifications your faithfulness to His will has in His perfect plan.  So, never, never believe that what He has called you to do is of little importance, or that your contribution is insignificant.  But know that you are valued by God and that what you do has eternal ramifications in a way that we may never see, but He sees.  Truly we walk by faith, not by sight.  

So, there you have them - three myths and three truths.  Do you understand?  My friends, when you and I really mean business with God and we say, "Lord I present myself to you," it has to be unreservedly not for self-gratification.  Knowing that His will is pleasing, and if in the process of serving God we never see what happens, that's God's business.  One day we will see and we will hear Him say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - February 2002