Today I continue our series “Pop Verses.” We are taking a closer look at some of the most popular Bible verses. We are finding out why they are so popular and how they apply to our lives.

Quite often our favorite verses are just that – they’re verses. They’re not read in context. This can lead to a misunderstanding about the meaning of the verse. I believe this series is going to give us a lot of food for thought about these popular verses.

Today our focus is another verse from the prophet Jeremiah. You will remember last week we heard from Jeremiah in Lamentations expressing his hope in God in the midst of devastation. Jerusalem has been destroyed. Jeremiah was in great pain and despair. Yet he dared to hope. He knew if he waited confidently in the Lord, help would be on the way. The humble get the help. 

Today we hear Jeremiah continuing his message of hope. He is speaking on behalf of God as a prophet to the people of God who has been taken captive by Babylon. They missed their homeland. They were in a foreign land. They wondered if God would ever deliver them. And then the prophet Jeremiah speaks these very familiar words to them. It is our pop verse for today:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” –Jeremiah 29:11

It was a comforting word to the people of God. God would make good on that promise. He would eventually bring healing and restore the people of God.

But perhaps you are thinking. Well, that’s great, but what about me? What about God’s plan for me? Three times in this verse is the word, “plan.” What is God’s plan for me? I want a hope. I want a future. I believe this is why we love this verse so much. Individually and collectively we crave that hope that God does have a plan for us, a future for us. We hope that is true. We want to believe that it is true.

But perhaps you struggle with it? “Does God really have a plan for me? What is God’s will for me?”

I remember doing a Bible study on this verse many years ago and a lady in the study said, “Well if God has great plans for me, I wish he would let me in on it!”

Inevitably, when this verse is brought up many people want to know how to discover God’s hopeful plan for them. “If God has these wonderful plans of hope, then what are they? I would like to know!

God’s will is one of the biggest issues I deal with as a pastor. People continually come to me, desperately wanting to know God’s will. They often say, “I have a big decision, and I need to know what God wants me to do!” “I am at a crossroad, and I wonder what God’s will is for my life?” When I ask people what they would like to hear a sermon on, a frequent response is, “Finding God’s will for my life.”

God’s will is not a secret. Discovering God’s will is not some kind of existential game of hide and seek where God hides it and is amused by watching us try to find it. God deeply desires for us to know and do his will.

Unfortunately, many have the notion that discovering God’s will is reserved only for the spiritually elite. They hear friends speak about God as if he was at their breakfast table every morning, and then they wonder why they can’t hear God too.  But being in tune with God’s will for us is not complicated. We just make it complicated.

So in today’s message I am going to tell you how to find God’s will for you and apply it. If you are serious about finding God’s plan for you, God’s future for you, God’s hope for you, then listen up.

So if finding God’s plan and will for us is not complicated then why do we struggle with it? The answer: We have a will, too! Let me tell you a secret. Quite often people know what God’s will is for them; they just don’t want to do it. They hide behind the statement, “Woe is me, I can’t find God’s will.” In reality it is more like, “Woe is me, I don’t want to do what God wants me to do.” 

I have discovered as a pastor that more often than not when people struggle with God’s will in their lives it is a struggle of change or a struggle of pride. This is not always the case, but in most cases, somewhere in our struggles to find God’s will is either the obstacle of change or the obstacle of pride.

There are those who fear change so much that they have a spiritual block to hearing and doing God’s will. Some are like the poem by A.A. Milne, the creator of Winnie the Pooh:

When I was One, I had just begun.
When I was two, I was nearly new.
When I was three, I was hardly me.
When I was four, I was not much more.
When I was five, I was just alive.
But now I am six, I’m as clever as ever.
So I think I’ll be six for ever and ever!

We are creatures of habit and we get comfortable very easily. Therefore, we don’t like change. Sometimes this can be the real cause of our inability to find’s God’s will. 

The unavoidable truth is that there is no growth, Christian or otherwise, there is no wholeness, there is no fulfillment, there is nothing worthwhile that happens in this gift of God called life without change. To refuse to change is to refuse the best God has to offer you and your life. Period.

Pride can also be an obstacle for many who are struggling to find God’s will.  When out of control, pride can strip our spiritual gears and put us in a real mess.  Pride is what started it all in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve thought, “We don’t need God; we can be gods ourselves.” And we all know the pain and misery that followed.

Too much pride can get us into a lot of trouble. We get so filled with it that we are totally oblivious to where it is leading us. This is why it is impossible to live out God’s will when we are filled with pride. Pride makes us stubborn to God’s will or it selfishly attaches conditions to God’s will. It is almost comical. Our pride often causes us to bargain with God: “Yes, Lord I will forgive this person as long as he apologizes.” Or, “Yes, Lord, I will serve in the church as long as I get recognized for my efforts.” Is it any wonder that we have a tough time finding God’s will and living it out when we live our faith in this way?

So are you struggling to find God’s will for you? Ask yourself: “Do I have and issue with change or pride?” You may find the culprit.

However, that may not help you. Perhaps you have prayerfully searched yourself and you know that your struggle with God’s will is not a struggle of change or pride and you are at a loss.

The truth is sometimes when we struggle with knowing God’s will we just have to go back to fundamentals. Ever hear a reporter interview an athlete who has just come out of a slump? Quite often you will hear the athlete tell the report, “I just needed to get back to fundamentals.”

Sometimes when we struggle in our faith journey and have a difficult time discerning God’s will for us, we need to do the same thing – Get back to the fundamentals of our faith. And what are the fundamentals of our faith? Well, would you believe that the answer to that can be found in the verses just after our pop verse today?

Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. –Jeremiah 29:12-13

In order for us to truly know God’s plan and hope for us we must seek God with all of our hearts. “All of your heart” does not mean you are trying really hard to find God; it means you are seeking a relationship with God. In that relationship you will discover the hope and future you need and desire. Here is today’s message:

If you want to know the will of God, you must first seek the heart of God.

That’s the problem. Many people are after God’s will without being after God’s heart. And you will never find God’s desire for you that way.

Jesus would repeat the same message many years:

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” –Matthew 22

Jesus’ answer was revolutionary. He quoted from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. He said if someone follows these two commands he or she will keep the essence of the Law. Jesus was saying, “You want the Cliff Notes version of the living out the faith? You want me to sum it up for you?  You don’t have to memorize all these little rules and laws and worry yourself sick. All you have to do is do two things and you got it. Here it is: Love God with all your being and love other people like you would love yourself. You do that you got the Law down!”

You can see the Pharisees’ jaws drop. They had dedicated their lives to poring over 613 laws. They interpreted them and debating them. And along comes this carpenter from Nazareth and he wraps them all up in one sentence!

The Pharisees were so preoccupied with the details of the law that they failed to see the heart of the law. Jesus was a master at bringing out the heart of the matter. His answer shows us that the purpose of the law is to bring us closer to God and our neighbor. If we love God and our neighbor we are fulfilling what God desires. That’s it! That is the heart to all of it. This is God’s will. God’s will for us is to seek his heart and be in a relationship with him. Out of that you will discover God’s hope and future.

So how do we use this fundamental in our daily lives to discern God’s will? How do we seek the heart of God?  How do we discover God’s will as we go to work and school, deal with deadlines and kids and bills and in laws and annoying neighbors? Well, it is pretty simple. I’ll tell you what I do. I have told you this before but I can’t repeat it enough. Before you speak at a pivotal moment – before you make a decision – before you choose a path – before you respond in the heat of the moment – before you make a business transaction ask yourself, “Will this honor God?  What is the loving thing to do?” 95 percent of the time you will be confident about your decisions and actions if you ask these two questions. 

One of the things I do is ask myself these questions before I begin my day. During my quiet time with God in the morning I ask myself, “How will I honor God today?  How will my words and actions be a reflection of love to those around me? How will I seek you today Lord. Your love…”  Let me tell you those questions have gotten me out of more trouble than you can imagine!

But the days I am rushed and I skip that quiet time and don’t ask myself those questions, my day is off balanced.  I don’t have the clarity I need.  It is not as if God is not with me.  It is that my heart has not been prepared for the day.  And when your heart and my heart are not prepared every day to honor God and love others, then our days can become a trip without a compass. You can’t find and do the will of God if you are not trying to please the heart of God.

Folks the truth is many people make the idea of God’s will too complicated. When you read the Bible you find that God makes his specific will known to particular people on exceptional occasions. In other words, doing what God wants us to do is not complicated. It’s pretty clear. Follow the greatest commandment, be kind to others, follow the golden rule, do not sin. God’s will is pretty straight forward.

Now, are there certain times in our lives when we need a specific direction from God in a special circumstance? Of course! But folks, most of the time, God’s will for us can be found by answering these two questions: Will this honor God and what is the loving thing to do? And, you may say, “Well, there are many options with those questions.” That’s right! You see, so often we think God’s will is confined to one thing. The truth is God’s will is often “all of the above.” God’s will for us is to love him and love others and that means God’s will can be fulfilled in a myriad of ways. Most of the time God’s will is not a pin point but a big expanding circle. We have a big God. Why would his will be so confined?

Now are there limits? Yes, there are lines and boundaries that God does not want us to cross and he will let us know what they are. But God gives us the freedom to live out his will in a variety of ways.

C.S. Lewis once said that “all genuine religious conversions are blessed defeats.” You want to know the secret to finding God’s will?  A surrendered spirit.  This means we must change how we approach God and his will for us. Instead of deciding what we want to do and asking God to bless it, we must decide to surrender all we are to God and ask him what he wants to do with us. We must put ourselves at the disposal of God. “Lord I want to honor you and love others. I want to be a person after your heart.”  Then and only then, will we be clear about our Lord’s will for our lives.

I knew a lady in another church I served who learned the power of a surrendered spirit.  She was caught stealing and sentenced to prison.  After serving time in prison, she sold everything she had, except for a few necessities, and gave it all away to the poor. Then she moved to the mountains and, as time passed, she became an excellent painter. When she reflected on her transformation she said, “When you have been caught, you have nothing to hide.  And when you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.  And when you have nothing to fear, oh my, what you can become.”

Imagine what you could become with a surrendered spirit to God.  Imagine what this church could become with a surrendered spirit. Amen.