Where is God when we make decisions?       10.30 am Sunday 26 Mar 2006

Readings: Proverbs 3:5-8;

Jonah 1:1-3a, 2:1-2, 2:10-3.3

A man was out jogging one day and as he passed a cliff, he got too close and fell. Grabbing hold of a branch he was stranded. No way up and certainly no way down. He began to scream, “Help, help, is there anyone up there who can hear me.” He yelled for hours and was about to give up when he heard a voice.

God: “Can you hear me?”
Man: “Yes, Yes, I can hear you I’m down here.”

God: “I can see you, are you alright?”

Man: “Yes, but...who are you and where are you?”
God: “I am the Lord, I am everywhere.”

Man: “The Lord? You mean God?”
God: “That’s me.”

Man: “God, help me, I promise that if you get me down from here, I’ll go to church every Sunday. I’ll read the Bible every day. I’ll be a really good person and serve you for the rest of my life.”

God: “Easy on the promises. First let’s get you down, then we can discuss those.”
Man: “I’ll do anything, Lord, just tell me what to do, okay?”

God: “Okay, let go of the branch.”
Man: “What?”

God: “I said, let go of the branch. Just trust me, let go.”
PAUSE

Man: “Help, Help, is there anybody else up there?”

“Where is God when WE make decisions” was the theme of our Lent Course on Wednesday night. A title that sounds almost like, “Where were you God when I NEEDED you?” The answer being, “Right here beside you.” The question is do we ASK him for help and do we TRUST him when he answers?

 

Where do you go for Advice?

If you have an important decision to make, how do you go about making it?

• Spending time thinking about it, weighing up the options.
• Finding out as much as you can about the topic. May be consulting an expert, and/or a trusted friend. Asking those who are already involved, for their opinion.
• Thinking through a decision, in the light of, what you have learned from Bible reading and prayer.
• Through gently pushing doors God seems to be opening, and seeing what God as to say.

Where did Jesus turn when he had decisions to make?

When Jesus was about to start his ministry he first went into the desert, to think and pray. He was tempted to do things that someone, who didn’t know the Bible, as well as he did, and wasn’t as close to his Father as he was, would consider OK for him.

For example, he rejected the temptation of turning a stone into bread, when he was very hungry. He had learned to recognise God’s voice and guidance.

Later in His ministry, Jesus knew that God could guide him out of any potentially dangerous situation. For instance when an angry mob drove him out of town; to the top of a cliff. They were going to throw him off.

But says Luke 4.30 “He walked right through the crowd and went on his way.”

Yet, when Jesus knows his Father God wants him to face the humiliation and pain of crucifixion he says,

"Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will, not mine." (Luke 22:42 NLT)

Jesus decided he wanted God’s will and not his own.

Is God interested in our small decisions?

Yes, but he has given us choice, freewill as a gift. So don’t become eccentric. Can you imagine someone in an ice-cream shop standing in front of coffee, rum and raisin, mocha, peach melba, and vanilla ice cream praying, “God I really want peach melba ice-cream but I’ll have mocha if that is your will”.

If you have already made a major wrong decision, may be you wonder whether, or if God can help you to recover from that choice? God wants your repentance, your love. May be you know you don’t follow God’s advice as you once did. Mistakes of few years are nothing compared to eternity. With God’s guidance those mistakes can work for good. Nothing is impossible for God.

In the story of Jonah, part of which was read to us today, Jonah didn’t want to go to Ninevah. Modern day Mosal, faces where Ninevah once was, on the opposite bank of the river Tigris, in Iraq.

It isn’t surprising that Jonah didn’t want to go.

Imagine God saying today, to one of us here, “Joe, go to Iraq and tell the terrorists, and all people that they have forty days to repent.”

So, Joe goes in the opposite direction. He had always dreamt of, and prayed for, the opportunity of helping street children in South America.

People ignore God’s and one another’s requests all the time. Imagine a child playing in the garden with her next door neighbour. Mum calls “It’s time to come in for now Shelly, bedtime”. Then when mum looks through the window the second time, Shelley is gone.

Shelly had heard, and she has decided to go deaf, and continue playing with her friend in the garden next door. That way they might be able to get an extra  fifteen minutes of playtime together.

Does that seem a familiar story to you?

But don’t look smug adults, because we can do the same thing. How many of you have bought a new appliance and seen a booklet which advises, “IMPORTANT. Please read the instruction book before operating this appliance”, and attempted to completely ignore the instructions?

We choose to, not listen, and act on what family say, and other advice. We choose to ignore God’s advice and requests.

It is Mothering Sunday today.

The day when we can tell mum we love her. Give her a gift, as a symbol of our love, and to say sorry for those times when we have, disobeyed her wishes or hurt her in any other way.

When Jonah disobeyed God, it looked as though he had ended up as fish food, but he prays, “I called to you from the world of the dead, and LORD, you heard me!”  “But you, O LORD my God, have snatched me from the yawning jaws of death!”

Jonah was a believer. A disobedient believer, but he loved God, and was loved by God never-the-less. What’s more, Jonah knew God loved him, so he prayed his presumptuous prayer, knowing God loved him and would rescue him.

The second time God asked Jonah to go to Nineveh, he went. If you want to know more, read the whole story in the book of Jonah.

Jonah could have avoided the suffering of disobeying God. God had called him to speak to the people. When he obeyed God he discovered -

That God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. (Romans 8:28 NLT)

But, I have come across people who have married because they were told by others that it was God’s will. They weren’t so sure, and the marriage went disastrously wrong. Sometimes people can be wrong in what they think God has said to them personally or through other Christians. Seek his will not yours.

Which means God will guide us in unexpected or unwanted directions at times. But be really, really sure of God’s will before making a really serious decision that changes the direction of your life.

When God ‘called’ Duncan into full time ministry, it was a CALL to the whole family to move; to leave our dream home. Duncan was enjoying his position of manager of an Open Learning Centre; I had a full time interesting job developing commercial computer systems, Clara was popular and happy at school studying for ‘O’ levels, and Jonathan was in primary school.

One evening I attended an evening conference with other members of the church. We sat in the middle of the main auditorium. I saw Duncan later arriving and going onto the balcony, but couldn’t attract his attention. He was unmistakable in the well lit hall, wearing a bold red and white checked shirt. (That’s not like Duncan is it!)

During the meeting the speaker asked those who felt called to full time Christian ministry to stand up. I had this awful feeling that Duncan was standing. I turned around. There he was, unmistakable. I was livid!

For the first time in our married lives we had friends outside our family, in our new church. Both of us enjoyed our jobs and we had stopped being actually, worried about money. Just careful.

God interrupted my angry thought with, “I thought you said you were WHOLLY AVAILABLE to me?”

I responded with excuses like, “What about the church finances. Now we tithe, it will cost the church thousands if our income is reduced to a third?”

God: “Are you wholly available?”

Me: “What about leaving friends?”

I am sure you can imagine my objections and how I might feel. By the end of the meeting I had agreed to go along with the idea.

But after going home, Duncan never mentioned full time ministry.

Eventually I asked, “Did you stand up when the speaker asked for people to stand, who felt called to full time Christian ministry?” “No” he said looking puzzled and carried on with what he was doing. I said nothing.

The immediate relief I felt was short lived. If Duncan had not stood, I was either going mad or having a vision!  Either way I would keep it to myself for now.

A few months later I got the answer when Duncan gingerly said he thought God was calling him to be a full time minister.

London! The one place I said I would never live. That’s where we were advised to apply for Duncan’s training, because we could live together on the Oakhill college campus.

I looked at the photograph of semi-detached houses under construction in the prospectus. I thought, “I suppose I don’t mind the look of those little houses.” “OK God if I have to go I’ll have that one.” I said to God jokingly.

On the morning of the visit and interview to Oakhill, I got into the car grudgingly, expecting to get stuck in the early morning traffic from Staffordshire Morelands towards Stoke and then on the M6. I said to God, “I don’t want to go to London. At least you can do something about the traffic.” Where did the traffic all go? We soon arrived at Oakhill, London.

We made a second visit with the children at half term. We had been unable to find a school that offered Clara’s choice of ‘A’ levels, but had decided to show the children the nearest secondary and primary schools. New school buildings were under-construction, and a builder asked if we would like to look around, inside the sixth form building.

On the way out, we met the head of the sixth form who had called in to collect the post. He said he had been trying to phone us as he’d found a way of Clara studying her preferred subjects. After a short chat he offered Clara a place.

When we went into the theological college, we were told that the partly built house on the college prospectus, which I had suggested to God that I would take, was the finished house the college had decided to reserve for us.

God wanted me to know, he really wanted us, as a family to spend two years at Oakhill college whilst Duncan trained for full time ministry. So he gave me signs including -: The vision of Duncan offering himself; removing the traffic in rush hour; arranging Clara’s informal interview; and the house I chose.

Everyone, unlike Jonah, and myself at the time of Duncan’s calling, isn’t asked to do something by God, that at the time they FEAR, and really don’t want. But everyone does come face to face with significant decisions for their life.

For instance which GCSE’s to take, whether to get a job or go to University. What career path to attempt; whether to marry; if or when to have children, and most importantly whether to follow Jesus.

Alice in the book, “Alice in Wonderland” comes to a fork in the road and doesn’t know which way to turn. She sees a grinning Cheshire Cat, and asks which direction she should take. The cat replies, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

I can think of times when I believed I had acted within God’s will when things seemed to go wrong. Now I can see they were God’s way of directing me down another road.

For instance, when we first came to Burntwood, I had already got a full time position as a computer systems developer for a company. I believed God had directed me there, and yet I hated it.

Now I know it was God’s way of requesting me to quit paid work, and work full time in the parish for Him.

The greatest peace is being able to say, “I know this is God’s will for me.”

Yet like Alice at that fork in the road, we’ve all been in the unpleasant place of indecision, with no assurance of which way to turn; frustrated and worried.

Have you seen that advertisement on the television where a woman is using a mobile phone, and accidents are about to happen if front of her, but she “always knows what is coming”? She saves herself and others without breaking her conversation!

God always knows what is coming for us.

When we’re struggling with indecision, we need to realize that God knows us better than we know ourselves; He knows everything about us, even things we’ll never understand. And He is in control of our lives, our “circumstances”. He wants to help us and He will provide all we need for this life and the life to come.

Where is God when we make decisions?

He is right here besides us.