Brother Gary Wednesday Evening 5/21/14

Brother Gary Wednesday Evening 5/21/14

O Sweet Will of God
(The Bondage of Love)

O sweet will of God!  Thou hast girded me round
Like the deep, moving currents that girdle the sea
With omnipotent love is my poor nature bound,
And this bondage to love sets me perfectly free.

Chorus
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! My soul is now free!
For the precious blood of Jesus cleanseth even me.

For years my soul wrestled with vague discontent
That like a sad angel o’er shadowed my way;
God’s light in my soul with the darkness was blent,
And my heart ever longed for an unclouded day.

And now I have flung myself recklessly out,
Like a chip on the stream of the INFINITE WILL;
I pass the rough rocks with a smile and a shout,
And I just let my God His dear purpose fulfill.

Forever I choose the good will of my God,
Its holy, deep riches to love and to know;
The serfdom of love to so sweeten the rod,
That its touch maketh rivers of honey to flow.

Roll on, checkered seasons, bring smiles or bring tears
My soul sweetly sails on an infinite tide.
I shall soon touch the shores of eternities years,
And near the white throne of my Savior abide.
Brother George Watson

Eph 5:17  Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.

As Church of God people it is important that we know what the will of God is.  It is the will of God that we be saved and it is the will of God that we be sanctified, but it doesn’t end there.  Seeking the will of God is not a once in a lifetime experience. 

When you put new doors on or replace the windows, when you redo the deck, you’d like it to last a lifetime.  It is a rude awakening when you find out that from 1990 to 2014 the new doors now need replaced.  We get things set up and we want them to stay that way.  That is a part of humanity.

There is a much higher goal in life and that is to seek the will of God for that day, every day.  The will of God is not a new subject.  Jesus taught us that it is the will of God that we don’t perish.

Mat 18:10  Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.

Mat 18:11  For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.

Mat 18:12  How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?

Mat 18:13  And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.

Mat 18:14  Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.

It is not the will of the Father in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish.  We need to have an understanding of what it means to perish. 

Perish – waste away.

When you think of precious children, precious young people, precious graduates from high school, when you think that without them seeking the will of God they are immediately going into a position of perishing and soon they will begin to deteriorate and waste away.

You and I know in our personal experience, if we don’t stay close to God, worship, and put forth special effort in praying and seeking after God, we can feel a wasting take place.

We have all probably had occasions in our life where we were faced with circumstances where we did the best we could but we were not able to pray, communicate, and worship as we should and we could feel a lack coming into our spiritual life.

Perish means to mar. 

To mar means to be bruised.  When I think of how people are bruised.  You can start with children, children are bruised.  There is no child that doesn’t suffer a sad effect when the parents don’t serve God.  They get bruised. 

This thought of being marred includes not only bruising but scarring.  As a child my Aunt Lila was scarred on the left side of her body.  She had terrible scars.  Some people’s scars take their life.  It is not God’s will that any perish. 

You like to think, “So in so is a good guy.”  They may be, but if they are not saved then they are in a position of being scarred.  There is an adversary out there that will take the finest of young men or young ladies, and take the one that is ready to distribute and wash the saint’s feet.  If we give up a little bit then it won’t be long and the enemy will scar us.  Sister Powel went to the creek and one scratch gave her lockjaw. 

The highest goal for today is to do the will of God.  The highest goal for me today was to prepare for prayer meeting.  We must make spiritual things our highest goal or there will be many things that will take our day.  We have plenty of choices but we must choose the higher road which is the will of God for the day.

To perish means to be warped. 

The enemy is out to warp us.  You don’t have to take the attitude of looking inward and looking at injustices in your life, if you do then it won’t be long and you will be warped.  There are a lot of takers in this world and people that will take advantage of you.  People are taken advantage of because they don’t open their selves to the will of God and so who knows what will come on their plate.

To perish means ruin. 

People that have ruined their lives with drugs, alcohol, bad attitudes, bad spirits… Sin ruins lives.  Is there no hope for them?  You can sense pain in people’s lives.  Sin, heartache, sorrow, ruined.  That is what perishing does to souls, ruin.  It knows no boundaries.  The only thing that stops the progress and the process is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Every day we have the opportunity of saying, “Dear God I want to do your perfect will today.”  You will have options, there will be people that cross your path.  Not everyone that calls or walks in is from God.  Not every thought that comes to your mind comes out of heaven. 

The last thing is that it is not the father’s will that they wreck.

Pro 18:1  Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom.

Pro 18:2  A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.

Through desire, through desire, Oh God help me to desire the will of God more than anything else, more than the will of anyone else. 

A man having separated himself, through wanting the will of God more than anything else, it causes you to draw yourself away from everything.  It caused you to become saved, it caused you to desire baptism, and it caused you to desire to be sanctified fully. 

That was the highest goal.  Then we still need to desire to separate our self, “I want to do your will.”  The highest ideal that you can present to anyone is to do the will of God.

The toughest thing that any of us has to separate our self from is our own mind, our own thoughts that we have within; that is the greatest battle.  Then we can do good to others that God would have us do.

You will never find the will of God until you separate yourself and say, “I know this is God’s will.  I know that God is leading me today.”

A fool has no delight in understanding.  The only thing that he wants to know is that his heart discover itself:  Self satisfying.

Psa 10:3  For the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the LORD abhorreth.

God hears those wicked men and women boasting.

Psa 10:17  LORD, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear:

What a scripture!  God has heard the desire of the humble.  Isn’t that beautiful?  As humble saints of God we prove our humility by saying, “God I know that I don’t know your will for tomorrow.  I need you to reveal it.”  God will prepare our hearts to do the perfect will of God.

Psa 21:1  To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The king shall joy in thy strength, O LORD; and in thy salvation how greatly shall he rejoice!

Psa 21:2  Thou hast given him his heart's desire, and hast not withholden the request of his lips. Selah.

David the king rejoicing in salvation!  God had given him his heart’s desire. 

The will of God.  The highest goal is salvation.

Psa 145:16  Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.

It breaks my heart: the wonderful things that God is preparing and has prepared for men and women and they miss it.  They try to satisfy their cravings.  God has prepared the best but they are selfish and want their own ways and will not turn to God.

Psa 145:17  The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works.

Psa 145:18  The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth.

Psa 145:19  He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them.

The highest goal that you can have is to do the will of God.  The highest goal that a graduating senior can have is to do the will of God in their life.