Gateway Church's Podcast
Fueled by Purpose
Why don't you go ahead and take out your Bibles and open those up to Daniel chapter one. And today, Pastor Tom Lane and I began a brand new series called "Drive." You know, in all of our lives, from time to time, we go through wilderness seasons. We go through times when our life feels really, really dry, and it feels like we've gotten off track spiritually. Sometimes it feels like we're just sort of going through the motions, playing with this thing. Had a friend who told me that his aunt, he had an aunt who never married, and when she got later in her life, she bought a parrot just to have some company around the house. Well, the thing about my friend's aunt was is that she had a prayer language. And it was her common practice to walk around the house all day long, praying out loud in her prayer language. Well, in the course of time, her parrot learned her prayer language. Now, listen, this is not a preacher's story. I'm telling you the truth here today. This is a true story. The parrot learned that prayer language. But you understand that even though that parrot was saying those words, that that parrot was not really connecting with God, right? All that parrot was doing was giving voice to somebody else's words. I felt like that parrot in my life. I felt like that I was going to church, and I was singing my songs, and I was reading my Bible, and I was saying my prayers, but all I felt like I was doing was giving voice to someone else's words. And when that happens, it feels like there's no real connection with God, and it feels like we're just keeping the motor running as all we're doing here. And a lot of times we feel like that because we're disappointed in God. We're disappointed because God didn't do what we thought God should have done for us in our situation. Maybe, maybe you got sick, and you asked God to heal you. Other people got sick, and God healed them, but not you. What do you do with that? And maybe you lost your job, and you're burning through your retirement savings, being diligent to get your resume out and go to job interviews. Other people lost their job. Got another job quickly, not you. What do you do with that? What do you do when you suffer? Other people suffer, and it seems like God brings them to a quick victory, not you. You prayed? Where's God? I recently came through a very difficult wilderness, one of the hardest things I've ever been through. And at the end of it, I had pressed into God, but at the end of it, I was weary. I was worn out emotionally. I was tired spiritually, and one of the things that God showed me was, is that to God, I had become difficult to manage, because I had begun to live my life by my calendar rather than as Galatians 5 says, "by the Spirit of God." I wasn't in rebellion. There was no blatant sin. I was working hard for God. I just wasn't paying a lot of attention to God. You know, we can learn to accomplish a lot all by ourselves. And one of the problems is, is that we all know how to fake it. We all know how to put on the happy face and not tell anybody. This thing's getting tiring to me. But God does not want us just to go through the motions. And so that's why we want to talk to you about drive. Now, when you hear the word drive, I want to make sure that you understand we don't mean drive as in with a whip. All right? That's not a picture of God, not a biblical picture anyway. When you hear the word drive, here's what is meant by that, that all around us, God has placed vehicles that are already headed towards Him. And if we will get into one of those vehicles, those vehicles will carry us back to a renewed sense of our positions as sons and daughters of God. We really don't have to just go through the motions with this thing. God is intimately involved and connected in your life right now. And we really can live, even in the wilderness seasons, with a sense of being deeply and permanently connected to God. That's what God wants to do. So I want to look at a couple of things out of the life of Daniel today, Daniel chapter 1, if you'll begin reading with me in verse 1. In the third year of the reign of Jehoicim, King of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jehoicim, King of Judah, into His hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These He carried off to the temple of His God in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of His God. Now let me explain a little bit about what's going on here. When Nebuchadnezzar invaded Jerusalem, He said, "I want the best stuff you can find, whatever you find that has any value at all, I want you to gather it up because we're taking it home." And part of what He gathered up were people. He said, "I want you to find the brightest people in all of Jerusalem." And what we're going to do is we're going to take them back to Babylon and we're going to put them in Harvard, Babylon. We're going to put them in a three-year assimilation program. We're going to change their names, we're going to change their worldviews, we're going to change the way they think. You really can do that to somebody in three years. And at the end of those three years, what had been the brightest in Jerusalem will now be the brightest for Babylon. And then at the end of that three-year time, they'd be given cushy jobs for the rest of their lives. Really, I mean, if you're going to live your life out as a slave, there are probably worse ways to do it than that. Well, we have this lofty view of Daniel because he was a prophet and even Jesus spoke well of Daniel. He was a book in the Bible named after him, but be very careful. You need to remember this. You don't get lower on the social ladder than Daniel. He was a slave in a foreign land. His life was not his own. While we may never have been carted off to another country and forced into slavery, every single one of us have suffered some setbacks. And when you suffer, we begin to ask, what's this about? Where's God for me? Why is all this happening to me? And I'm all by myself. Listen, Daniel knew he was fulfilling his purpose, even if it was uncomfortable. But how do you trust God when everything in your life says either that there is no God or that your life has completely stalled out? How do you trust God then? Well, listen, sometimes for God to fulfill his purpose, it puts you and me at a tremendous inconvenience. You'll wear that. I remember when when Lexa and I decided to get married, we've been dating for a couple of years and I'm not a high maintenance guy. I'm pretty simple. I had a singular goal and that was to be happy. It's all I wanted. Not a lot of bells and whistles to me. And I wasn't ashamed just to say it out loud. I just want to be happy. And I think marriage is the next step in that process. Well, God, watching over my life, thought to himself, let's see, my purpose is to conform Marcus into the image of Jesus. How can I best do that? Well, I think I'll give him a wife. So now we have a problem because my purpose and God's purposes are different. So we got married and it was great for about six months and that's when the party started. That was 18 years ago and I sometimes tell people I've been happily married for about 16 years. And my wife has been happily married for about 10. But God has done some really, really good work to get us here. You need to understand something. Right now in your life, God is doing some work, whether you are aware of it or not. God is doing some work in your life right now. And it is likely that his goal is different than your goal. And so look what Daniel did in verse eight, but Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and the wine. And he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. Daniel resolved not to defile himself with any other will than God's will. So here's what he did. He said, you know, for me, no filet menion, no baked potato, no house wine, for me, just vegetables and water. And I'm sure his friends were thinking, you know, you will not win class favorite for this decision. But he said, just test to see if in 10 days, we don't look better than everybody else. And sure enough, in 10 days, they looked better than the people who had partake into the food. Here's what Daniel knew, what you yoke with, you partake of. And if you partake of kingdom food, you become a part of that kingdom. It's often that God does the deepest work in our lives in the most unexpected of ways. And so if you want to know today how God, how to know whether God is doing a good, deep work, here's how you know two ways. Number one is if God seems absent. And number two, if your life seems stalled out, if those things are true of you, that is a true and a sure indication that God is doing a good, deep work in your life. And so today I believe if we were to take a drive with Daniel, that Daniel would tell us at least three things. And here's the first one. Number one is that your life has purpose. And because your life has purpose, the wilderness seasons that you suffer also themselves have purpose. Those things matter to God and they matter to the people around you. It matters the decisions that you make. It matters to God how you respond. And if we don't believe that, we start making friends with the enemies of God. You know, there's two ways that God tests us. One is with trial. The other is with prosperity. Now when you hear the word prosperity, please don't think simply in terms of money. Because when God prospers a person, He often does so through wisdom, through revelation, through understanding of Scripture, through a greater love and capacity to love God, He can prosper us through relationships with other people. Maybe He broadens our influence, so when you hear the word prosperity, don't think simply in terms of money. But when God decides to test somebody, He will do so through trial and through prosperity. And God's goal in this is to bring all of us to a place where we can receive either one in the exact same way. I'm going to receive my prosperity as a blessing from God. I'm not going to give my life to it. My life's already been given to God. I'm not going to give my life to this, but He also wants to bring us to the place where we can receive trial in the exact same way. I'm not going to give my life to my trial. My life's already been given to God. And so I'm going to receive both trial and prosperity in the exact same way, and that's this, as a gift from God. And you say, Marcus, I understand how prosperity can be a gift. But how can trial be a gift? Here's the reason trial is a gift from God. A trial is a gift from God in disguise. Because a trial introduces us to the thing on the inside of us that is not from God. You say, well, why God? What doesn't God just tell me? It's likely He's already done that. And we just wouldn't believe it. And so the courage of God to give us gifts in the form of trials begins to show us our idolatry. Our hearts are idol-making factories, one author said. And a lot of times an idol is not a wicked thing. An idol is a good thing that we exalted to the highest place. And God is willing to do whatever it takes to knock out every false God and every false prop to show us that. God Hebrews 12 says verse 25, "See to it that you do not refuse Him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused Him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn from Him who warns us from heaven, at that time His voice shook the earth, but now He's promised once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens." The words once more indicate the removing of what can be shaken, that is created things, so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful. And so worship God acceptably with reverence and all for our God is a consuming fire. Now let me show you why God shakes our lives. He shakes our lives for two reasons. Verse 27 says, "One, to remove that which can be shaken." But secondly, in order to establish that which cannot be shaken. Verse 28 says, "We are receiving kingdom that cannot be shaken." You don't want to hold on to things that won't last. Daniel said, "In spite of the fact that I don't understand what's going on with my life, I believe my life has purpose and I'm just going to stay with God, even if I don't understand it." Let me tell you something that I've done in the past. We often don't associate God with the source of our difficulties. You realize God is often the source of our difficulties. I have even rebuked the devil for things that God has done. It wasn't the devil at all. Verse 2 says, "The Lord delivered Judah into the hands of Babylon." It was God who did this. But here's what we need to understand is that in every situation you and I face, both God and the devil are at work. God is working to redeem and to restore and to grow and to build us. And the devil is working to utterly destroy us. And so the question is really not, is this God or the devil? The question is, how do I respond to this in a godly way? How do I turn to God even when I can't find him? Friends, regardless of your circumstances today, God is intimately involved in your life. And because that is true, your life is bigger and longer and wider and farther than you have the ability to see right now. And the choices you make, the matter today, they matter for tomorrow and they matter way down the road in your future. Daniel, Daniel understood something very important. Daniel understood that he had an audience of more than just God. Daniel had an audience in the same thing as true of you and me. There are five groups watching everything you do. Number one is God. We know that God had watches. Second is people. The people around you, they watch the way you live and the decisions you make. Third is angels. Hebrews 1 says that angels are ministering spirits sent to those who are the heirs of salvation. They're angels who watch you. Fourth is the great cloud of witnesses. Hebrews 12 talks about those who have gone on and they watch. But fifth, do you realize that there are demon spirits that watch the way you live and the way you respond to trial? Listen to what Paul said in Ephesians 3 verse 10. His intent, this is Jesus he's talking about, his intent was that now through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms according to his eternal purpose for which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now in the book of Ephesians, rulers and authorities in heavenly realms refers to demons. If you broaden that to the whole of scripture, it refers to all angels, both those who have fallen and those who have not fallen. But in the book of Ephesians, it refers only to demons. You aware that there's demons watching you? They throw everything they have at us to try to get us off track and then they watch and they wait and they watch. And today, according to your response of faith, you can testify to them of the wisdom of God. You can send a message today all the way to the courts of hell of the grace of God. Do you realize that? What an honor you've been given today. Today, you can preach a message of Jesus that will be heard in hell and those demons scamper and fume because James 2 says they know that it's true. They just don't know if we know it's true. You can tell them today. Your life has purpose. Here's the second thing that Daniel would tell us is that you have not been forgotten. I want you to turn over just a few pages, three or four pages in your Bible to Daniel chapter 5. You have not been forgotten. It's easy to feel forgotten when we become dry spiritually. We begin to go through a wilderness and it looks like everything and everybody who's important has just moved on without me. The stuff that you've been praying for, other people get. You think, you know, am I just anonymous here? I mean, what's going on? Daniel felt the exact same way. All the cool stuff that he did for that previous king forgotten, written down in some book of history, put up on a shelf and his gathering dust. Now there's a new king, a new administration. Well, one day the new king throws a party for himself and God shows up. And in verse 5, it says this, Daniel 5 verse 5, "Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote, his face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way." So here's what he did. He said, "Somebody call in all the wise men of Babylon and all the wise men of Babylon came in except for Daniel." We don't even know where Daniel is. And he says, "Whoever can read this writing on the wall, I'll make you rich. I'll make you famous and you'll be the third highest in the kingdom." Nobody could read it. But in verse 11, the queen comes in and says, "You know, there is a man." And she said to the king, "Your father, the previous king, said that this guy could interpret dreams and that he could explain all sorts of mysterious things." Why don't you just call Daniel in and see if it's true? And so they brought in Daniel and the king said to Daniel, he said, "If you can read this writing on the wall, I'll make you rich. I'll make you famous and you'll be the third highest in the kingdom." And I love Daniel's response in verse 17. He said, "King, you can keep your promises and you can keep your gifts, but I will read the writing on the wall." Let me tell you something. Daniel had been forgotten by everyone except God. Can I just tell you this? People will forget you. People will forget you. The people that you served, the people you cried with, the people you prayed for, those friends who, when they walked through a wilderness journey, you were there with them every day helping them through it. Now you start to go through a wilderness season and you call them and they don't even return your call. People will forget about you, but God won't. In fact, when people have forgotten about you, here's what I've learned. Most often, it's God who is hiding you. God who is preserving you. And when God hides us, He hides us for two reasons. One is to check our motives. Did you do all those things for people? Or did you do those things for God? The second reason that God hides us is to do a good, deep work. People will forget you, but you have not been forgotten by God. You need to hear this. No man can defeat God's purposes for you. No man. Some of you today are holding on to some old promises from God. You're wondering, you know, has too much time lapsed for this thing to happen? God comes today to say those promises they're still on the table for you. I've not forgotten. I've forgotten my promises, not forgotten your life. And in God's timing, He will promote you. That brings us to the third thing that I believe Daniel would tell us. And that is this, that your time is a gift from God. Now, turn just three or four more pages up in your Bible to Daniel chapter nine. Your time is a gift from God. Genesis 8 verse 22 says this, "As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. Seed, time and harvest." Oh, we love the harvest, don't we? We love the harvest, praying for the harvest. We tolerate the time it takes to seed, but all that time in between. That's where people lose it a lot. I want you to look at the way Daniel spent his time. Daniel chapter nine verse one says this, "In the first year of Darius son of verses, notice there's a new king again. The first year of Darius son of Xerxes, a mead by descent who was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom. In the first year of his reign, I, Daniel now, now watch this very, very carefully, understood from the Scriptures according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet that the desolation of Jerusalem would last 70 years." Now, this is one of the coolest stories in all the Bible. Need to understand what's happening here. Jeremiah prophesied, "Before they ever got carted off to Babylon, he said, 'You'll be there 70 years.'" And so Daniel is here in his quiet time and he's reading the Bible, and this day he happens to be in Jeremiah chapter 25. And he reads through verse 11, and it says, "This time in Babylon lasts for 70 years." And so Daniel, you can almost see him. He leans back in his chair and he starts thinking up, you know, it was 15 when we came. And now I'm 83. Scholars say they're 68 or 69 years into this thing by now. And he says, "Man, we're just a couple of years from going home. I can't believe this." And watch what he did in verse 3. "So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition and fasting and in sackcloth and ashes." You realize the way we spend our time says what we believe about God. And your time is always, always a function of faith because the way we spend our time says what we believe deeply. And if you've read through Daniel 9 and 10, you know Daniel's miracle was on its way three weeks before he ever saw it. But you need to understand something. Right now in your life, God is working on your behalf. And he's getting some things ready for you that you may not see for years. But he's moving the pieces around and he's introducing you to people and he's connecting some dots. And there's no way that he could explain it to you. And so he just begins to move them around. Years ago, I was, I quit a very good job, a job I loved in the marketplace. In fact, I worked for a company here in Fort Worth years ago. And I really felt like God was calling me to ministry. And so I got completely out of debt. I saved up all my money and I went away to seminary for four years. Well, after four years of seminary, I graduated in May of that year. But the problem was is that there wasn't a church that was interested in me. And so here I was, Lexa and I had our first child on the way. I didn't have any money because I spent all my money in seminary. I didn't have a job. I had a graduate degree that apparently I was the only one on the planet interested in. So a friend of mine at church owned a landscaping company and offered me a job pushing a mower to pay the rent. So I pushed a lawn mower to pay the rent. And one day a church calls and they're looking for a new pastor. And so we began talking and my dear wife said, Marcus, are you sure that's God? And I said, well, I'm not sure it's not, which is one reason why I've been happily married longer than she has. That's probably a different sermon than today. Last summer we were on vacation. We were driving through this little town and we passed a motel called the It'll Do Motel. I wanted to pull in and say, are you serious? That's it. That's the best you could come up with. Well, this church that called me as far as I was concerned, it was the It'll Do church. It was the It'll Do church. And we started talking and one day they offered me a job and I said, well, let me pray about it. Yes. So we moved up there and it was a great situation. It was a great experience. We made some great friends there. But in that town, there was a pastor of a different church and he became a very close friend of mine. And one day he introduced me to a man by the name of Robert Morris who years down the line started a little church that some of you may have heard of called Gateway. You need to understand something right now. God is already working on your behalf. This time in between seed and harvest, we think, you know what? I don't think this thing is moving anywhere productive. And meanwhile, God is over here and he's moving the pieces around and he's watching you and he's going, oh, this is going to be so great. And we begin to think, you know what? I don't think that God's in this journey with me at all. And God's over here connecting the dots, getting everything ready. Don't lose hope in the time between seed and harvest. Because God is getting us ready for things that we're not ready for yet. I want you to bow your heads and close your eyes. I want you to open your heart right now and just consider the possibility that maybe because God didn't do what you thought God should have done, maybe you formed a judgment against God. And if you've done that, God says today, let's be friends. All you have to do is come back to him and say, God, you know what I did? I'm my heart so hurt by this. I'm sorry. I know you weren't the bad guy here. Maybe you're one who feels like God is distant and your life is just stalled out and you want more than anything to feel connected to God again. And we want to pray for you. In just a second, I'm going to pray. And after we pray, we're all going to stand up and the Altar Ministry team is going to come forward. And it is a core value here at Gateway Church that if you need prayer for whatever reason, you have a place where you can come get, get prayed for. Listen, you don't have to be a member of Gateway Church to receive prayer. You can come forward for prayer and we're not going to even ask you to place membership at Gateway Church. All we want to do is be a resource to you to serve you and to pray for you. So if you'll let us do that, we'd be honored to do that. God, thank you today for your grace over our lives. Thank you so much for your watchful care. And God, we ask in Jesus' name that all those times that we've been disappointed in you, we just ask that you'd forgive us. And God, right now, whatever needs are in this room, those who have discouraged, those who have lost hope, who are thinking about giving up, God, assure them, give them confidence that you are the friend who sticks closer than a brother. In Jesus' name, amen.