Aligning Our Lives with God's Divine Purpose

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God has one purpose in the world and in the governments of the world, and that is to prepare for the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, that includes everything that is happening... God is working his will and his purpose. The purpose of the Roman Empire was that you had a thing called Pax Romana, which means the Roman peace. [00:06:00]

God is working out his plan. God is shuffling the pieces on the board, and he is setting things in order for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we work against that will of God, we find ourselves in all sorts of trouble. All right, now let's get to the word and see what does the word say about the will of God. [00:08:32]

Clearly, the first will of God for the world is that the world hear the gospel and go therefore and make disciples of all the nations. Notice that Mark says go and preach the gospel. Matthew says make disciples. Making disciples is more than preaching the gospel. We know that, and so it is God's will according to Timothy. [00:09:06]

God desires all men to be saved. Does God want Trump to be saved? Yes. Does he want Biden to be saved? Yes. Does he want the Chinese to be saved? Yes. Does he want Putin to be saved? Yes. God desires all men to be saved. Now let's look quickly at the context of this verse. [00:10:19]

Praying for those in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. Folk, that's all we can pray for. Remember the context in which Paul is writing. He is writing in the context of a Roman government which is ungodly, which is immoral, which is corrupt at every level. [00:11:49]

Our primary concern is the gospel. Go and make disciples. We need one thing. We need peace so that we can focus on the work that God has called us to do. That is the will of God. So pray for those in authority that we may lead a peaceable life in godliness and reverence. [00:13:16]

God's will is that we are one as a local church, but God's will is also for unity in the universal church. Now the problem is how do we achieve that unity? We cannot achieve that unity at the expense of truth. We cannot achieve that unity by compromise, but Paul is very clear about this in Ephesians chapter 4. [00:20:00]

God's will for the church is unity, and I think that there are many churches who at the beginning of the year are saying, well, what's God's will for us in this new year? I haven't sat down to try and figure that out because I have a sense of what his will is for us. [00:21:22]

There are many verses, but I've chosen Ephesians 3:21 this morning: to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. This is part of one of Paul's prayers incidentally. So Paul is actually praying this, and this is the conclusion of his prayer: to him be glorified. [00:22:55]

God has one will for us, and that is that we be conformed to the image of his son, whom he foreknew. Romans 8:29, you should know this off by heart: for whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. [00:26:19]

All of the will of God comes down to me. We can pray about God's will being done in China, but if it's not happening in me, we can pray about God's will being done in our nation, but if it's not being done in me, and if it's not happening in our church, we're wasting our time. [00:28:05]

Jesus wrestled between his will as a man and the will of God. Remember, he was both man and God, so the struggle was within him, and we have the same struggle within us between what we call the flesh and the spirit. These two things are at enmity. These two things are at war. [00:36:29]

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