Have you said "yes" to the unique path God has for your life?
Chadron Bible Church Podcast
Taking the Path Less Traveled - Selected Scriptures (The Journey of Life series)
(soft music) - Welcome to Shadron Burian Church, where we wanna have deep roots in Christ and in God's Word so that we will bear fruit for God. Helping others to follow Jesus as well. Find us at Shadron Burian.org or on other platforms under Shadron Burian. Thanks for joining us. (soft music) (soft music) - So Robert Frost once wrote a poem called The Path, Not Taken. And in it, he wrote this. He said, two roads diverged in a wood. And I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference. Taking the path less traveled has made all the difference. Now, Mr. Frost wrote this poem sort of as a joke, actually between him and his friend. They were on a walk together. They came to two paths in the woods and they debated with each other, kind of ribbed each other over which one was gonna be better. And Frost obviously wanted to take the one less traveled. And while he kind of intended this poem as a joke if you read the whole thing, a lot of people really resonated with it and specifically this portion of the poem. I know that myself, I have resonated with it. Maybe like the individual speaking in this poem, you too want to take the path less traveled. You don't just want to take the path that everybody else is taking in life what the world is taking. When you come to a fork in the road, you want to take the one nobody else is taking. The one, the path that's less traveled, the path of mystery, the path of adventure. The path of discovery. Life is not a destination. It's a journey. And part of the journey of life is discovering the path that God has for you in particular. Who did God create me to be? Who am I? Who did God create me to be? What did he create me to do? What is the path that he wants me to take in life? Right here and right now, what decisions does he want me to make? What path does he want me to walk down? What is his will? What is his path for my life? If we're going to live well, we've got to think about that. You got to think about what his will is for us, the path that he has for us. And we're going to do that this morning, starting with Matthew chapter 28. If you want to turn there with me, that'll be the first verse we'll start with today. Matthew 28, 18 through 20. A familiar little portion of Scripture, no doubt. Some of Jesus's last words before he ascended back into heaven. Jesus came up to them and spoke to them. Verse 18 saying, "All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, "baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son "and the Holy Spirit, "teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. "And lo, I am with you always, "even to the end of the age." So again, very familiar passage. Maybe we are too familiar with it, that it doesn't quite grip us like it used to, grip our hearts like it used to. But this is the great commission, isn't it? This is one of the last things Jesus said to the disciples again before he ascended. He said, "Go and make disciples of all nations." And if you get into the Greek, scholars say the emphasis is on making disciples. Make disciples is the primary command here. And this is exactly what the disciples did after Jesus ascended in Acts chapter one, verse eight. He expounded on this commission. He said that he said to wait here, right? And you eventually soon you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you'll be my witnesses to the whole world, starting in Jerusalem and then in Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth. And that's exactly what they did. On the day of Pentecost, the Feast of Pentecost, while they were gathered in an upper room, this Holy Spirit came down upon them in a powerful, unmistakable way and empowered them to fulfill this commission. So he didn't just tell them to go, he actually empowered them to go and to carry it out. And they did that over the course of the next 60 years or so. That's about as long as the disciples lasted after that. The Apostle John being the last, they were faithful to their death for Jesus in the gospel. And many of them lost their lives because of it. And for 2,000 years since then, Saint after, Saint after, Saint believer after, believer after, believer has carried on the gospel message, preaching what they preached that we can have everlasting life in Christ, if we believe in Him, that it's by grace were saved through faith in Christ. 2,000 years and we are part of that movement today. How interesting to think too, by the way, that if the resurrection took place in 33 AD, then we are almost, we are nine years away from the 2,000th anniversary of the resurrection. How neat is that? There's actually a big push today to try to get the gospel and the Bible into every tribe and tongue and nation. Trying to get it done before, 2,033 AD. I'm kind of excited about that. I find that really interesting. That's quite the milestone, 2,000 years. The church has stood strong and passed that baton of faith. Now, I'm sure there's gonna be all sorts of, you know, what do we call them? I don't know, wild hairs out there who are gonna say Christ is coming back in 2033 'cause yeah, don't buy into that. But it is interesting to think about 2,000 years. But I come to this passage related to this topic of finding the path that God has for you because we have a mission. Whatever path God has for us specifically, it's a path that's adding to this greater story and mission. You know, we are not just out, you know, metaphorically out in the woods wandering around, just wandering lost, wandering out there with nothing to do. We are not pinballs in an evolutionary machine. We're not accidents. We are created by God. We are made in His image and He is sovereign over our lives. He created us right here for right here and right now in this day and age. He has a purpose for us. We have a mission to be a part of. We're not wandering aimlessly. You know, I used to think that I grew up in the wrong generation that I could always relate to maybe people in the 50s better or in the Wild West when they had more freedom or, you know, I always thought how neat it would be to, you know, live back in the first century and in the Roman era or you maybe even before that, you know, before taxes and all this paperwork and stuff. You know what's wrong with that thinking? A number of things. Number one, I think life necessarily wasn't better in the 50s, right? Well, they were still segregation in the 50s. That's awful, right? You go back to the Wild West and your lifespan were a lot shorter. You go back to Rome, to the Roman era that I dream of. Hey, they still have wheel taxes back then. Hey, the wheel tax is nothing new. You go back, you know, I was studying what they call the Elephantine Island Papari. It's from the Judean exile in those 400 years, whatever. And before, you know, the New Testament, that timeframe before Christ, when the Jews were forced into exile, well, some of them went to Egypt and some of them started a colony on Elephantine Island right in the middle of the Nile River and we found a lot of their documents. And I'm reading their documents and I'm thinking, man, I am such a knucklehead because these are all just legal documents written on papyrus or clay tablets. You know what I found? The government was just as controlling back then as it is today. If you wanted to build a wall on your own property, the government would tell you how high and how wide you could build it. There's nothing new under the sun. So the problem with that thinking is obviously, it's, I haven't thought it through, but secondly is that it's not accepting of God's sovereignty over my life, that He didn't want me to live back then. He wanted me to live now right here, right now with my personality, my giftings, my talents, my resources, here and now. You know, ex Paul was preaching in Acts 17 and he said that God determines our what and our when. He said God determines our time and the boundaries of our habitation. You know, he's in control of things. And the book of Esther, some of the wisdom is that, you know, God, you know, given to Esther is like, maybe you're here for such a time as this. So we might look around in our world today and think, oh my, like things are out of control. I wish, you know, I had grown, I've been in a different generation, but you're here for such a time as this. We're here for such a time as this. We have a mission, we have a purpose. We have reason for our existence. And that's number one. I think, I think that a lot of Christians really don't think this through. We think that, you know, my job is I'm just, I'm gonna fill the pew until Jesus returns. I'm gonna fill the pew and I'm gonna write a check. You know, but, you know, good luck, pastor, like you do the work of the ministry, that's great, I'll support you. But if you get into Ephesians four, like Ephesians four, chapter 12, it actually says that I'm the equipper and you guys are the ministers. Like Jesus gives pastors to a church to equip the church to do the work of the ministry. So what's my title, equipper? What's your title, minister? You guys are ministers. We not only have a mission, Jesus equips us to accomplish the mission, to carry out the mission. That's what we wanna talk about next. We not only have a mission, we've been uniquely equipped for the mission. Romans, chapter 12, verse three, is where we're gonna go next. There was a lot of verses I thought about turning to, but this one made the most sense. Romans, chapter 12, verse three, he says, "For through the grace given to me, "I say to everyone among you, "not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, "but to think so as to have sound judgment, "as God has allotted to each a measure of faith." So basically, Paul's gonna talk about spiritual gifts that we've been given through the spirit, ways that we were created to serve in the local body, the church body, and to be a part of the mission. And he's just saying here, right off the bat, you know, just remember that these gifts are things that you received, right? You didn't earn them, you didn't obtain them through your own effort. These are just gifts that God has given you through his grace. These are gifts he's given you according to his will. And verse four, he says, "For just as we have many members in one body, "and all the members do not have the same function, "so we who are many are one body in Christ "and individually members of one another. "Since we have gifts that differ, "according to the grace given to us, "each of us is to exercise them accordingly. "If prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith, "if service in his serving, "or he who teaches in his teaching, "or he who exhorts in his exhortation, "he who gives with liberality, "he who leads with diligence, "he who shows mercy with cheerfulness." So Paul really loved this illustration of the human body as a picture of the church family, the church body. Your body is made up of individual members. Is the eye, the ear, the mouth, toes, kneecaps, whatever, right? Each of us, he said, is like a member of a body, and without us operating in our capacity that we're designed to operate, let's say the knee doesn't work like it should, right? The body's gonna limp. If the ears aren't working like they should, it's gonna be really limited. If the mouth isn't there, well, yeah, the body's severely hindered, right? So we each were given different spiritual gifts, talents, resources, personalities, experiences, like the combination of who we are, adds to the overall health and function of the body. And it's important that we operate in that capacity. Whenever you go, whenever you embark on a journey of any kind, we've been looking at backpacking a lot this year, right, different hikes and things like that. Whenever you're gonna take a journey, it doesn't matter if you're hiking it or in a car or something, you prepare for that journey. You make sure that you take the right equipment for that journey. You know, if I'm gonna hike in a hot desert climate, my gear is gonna look different than if I'm gonna hike in a cold northern climate, okay? But each, no matter which journey you're gonna take there, you're gonna take the right equipment for that journey, and I think what Paul is saying is that we all have the right equipment, right? We've all been equipped for the needs that we were made to fulfill, the needs that we were made to meet in the church body with our gifts, our talents, our resources. I've watched a couple documentaries recently on mountain climbing in the Himalayas. So one team was climbing Everest, another team was climbing this face, this wall, that had never been climbed before. So two documentaries, two teams, two different mountains. And it was interesting how, before they went on their climbing experience, they talked about how they built their teams, and they didn't just pick whoever to go on these teams together, they picked people intentionally based on their strengths. They said, this guy's really good at this, let's bring him along, this guy's good at this, let's bring him along. So they built their team based on their strengths, and they relied on one another's strengths, to get to the top. And if one of those individuals, one of those members, got hurt or they ran into health issues halfway up, guess what happened? Came back down. The whole team was hindered by the health of one individual. It just reinforced for me in my mind how important each individual member is to the church body. Everyone is super important to the church body. This week I was on my way back from the brilliant conference. I stopped at a convenience store, and as I was walking out, this guy meets me at the front door, and he's got this black shirt with big, bold white letters, you know what it said? It said, "You're nothing special." And I went, "Gee, thanks, Mr. bearer of good news. "Way to lift my spirits today. "You're nothing special." And I thought that is exactly the message that we tell ourselves. That's exactly the message Satan wants us to hear. His fiery darts that get us down, and make us think that we're nothing special. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are no two humans that are exactly alike. None of us have the exact same fingerprint. None of us have the exact personality and gifts and talents and resources as anybody else. God created every single one of us unique and for a purpose. We're all created in the image of God, and if we're in Christ, we have been given the perfect gifts to serve in his mission. You are something special. You really are. There's no one else like you. Ephesians 2.10 says what? We were created in Christ Jesus for good works that he prepared beforehand that we would walk in them. He prepared works for us to walk in right here, right now in this day and age. He had it planned before the foundation of the world. We have a mission. We have been uniquely equipped for that mission. The only question is, have you accepted the call to that mission? To join the mission? Have you accepted the call? That's what Paul gets into in Romans 12 verses one and two. Before he talks about gifts, he says to answer the call essentially, Romans 12, one and two. Therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. A living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is. That which is good and acceptable and perfect. So if we want God to use us in this mission, we have to say yes. That's why Romans 12, one and two comes before three through eight. So whatever it is. If we expect, we want God to use us to use what he's given us, we have to just, we have to make ourselves available. We've got to put our yes on the table. We have to present ourselves to him. We have to climb up on the altar as a living sacrifice. That's the only way to prove what the will of God is, is to just say yes. And I think sometimes we get that backwards. We want to know what the will of God is. We want to know his specific calling and ministry assignment on our lives. What he's just saying is because we have conditions attached to it, right? I'll say yes, if, but God is just saying, look, are you available? Is your yes on the table? Are you willing to take the path that I have for you? Look, he says, don't take the world's path. Don't be conformed to this world. Everybody's doing that. Anybody can take the path of the world, but the path that he has for you. I'm encouraging you to say yes to that path today. To say, God, I'm in. And I want to talk about this word calling a little bit, just with the rest of our time here. Sometimes I think we don't understand what the word call means. It's kind of a loose term. We have phone calls. There's the call to duty, maybe in the military. You have a referee makes calls as well. I'm sure when football season rolls around, I'll be complaining about the bad calls that the ref makes in the fourth quarter and the Huskers lose the game, kind of thing. But whenever you look at a call, there's generally two things involved. A call includes the transmission of new information and then a new responsibility associated with it or because of it. A call basically means it's your turn to get involved. You get the call to serve, right? There's new information there. You're now called to duty, right? It's your turn to get involved. And there's different types of calls in the Bible. You've got just the call to salvation, the universal call to salvation. This is the invitation of God. God calls out to all men. Come to me and be saved. All the world. Come to me and you'll find rest for your souls. So there's a universal call to all men. Some people would say that there's an effective call to salvation as well. So some people, right, God calls all, but there's this sort of effective call, like Paul says in Romans eight. Those whom he called, he also justified. So there is a sense of God drawing individuals to himself. Many are called fewer chosen kind of thing. It's the individual call on someone's life to come to Christ. And there's a lot of mystery in that that I don't want to get into, right? A lot of people ask me, pastor, right, and where you at on this sovereign to you free will thing, that discussion, I just sometimes I just say yes, like the Bible teaches both. I don't think it's a problem to be solved. I think it's a tension to be maintained. Is God sovereign? Yes, does man have a choice? Yes. But there is a call, there's a drawing. God draws people to himself. There's definitely a call there. But then there's the call to Christian service. Ephesians four one talks about this. It says to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called. So if you are a believer, if you're a Christian, you have been called to Christian service. You've been called to exercise your gifts, talents, resources for the mission, for the calling. That it involves practical service that also involves your conduct, how you live. God calls you to live differently, operate differently, operate with different goals in your life, right? You start to operate with the mission in mind. Beyond that, there's like a vocational call to ministry, like a full time paid ministerial call. So for Peter, one of the books I was reading this week gave the example of Peter in Luke five. It wasn't enough for Jesus to call Peter to just be a Christian fisherman, commercial fisherman. He said, "Peter, I want you to give up fishing. "I want you to follow me. "I want you to be a Christian leader, "vocationally." He had to drop his nats and follow him. Does that mean that some of the people who responded to Jesus, who named state Christian fishermen, does that make them second class Christians? Not at all, not at all. I think God is looking for Christian plumbers. Christian farmers, Christian nurses, Christian teachers, Christian attorneys, Christian politicians, Christian, you name it. And that's your calling. And you can embrace that as much as a pastor or missionary in a vocational ministry. This is what God's calling me to do. You may not teach, you may be a Christian teacher. You don't teach in a Christian institution. You haven't been called to some sort of seminary or something like that, but you can be a Christian teacher anywhere if you'll feel you're calling that way. Don't think you're a second class because you're not a pastor or you're not a missionary. But some people do get that call to leave what they've been doing and enter into full-time ministry, like vocational ministry. We're all full-time, but there's a vocational side of things. The last call would be the call to a specific ministry assignment somewhere. You have the call, but God also clearly calls you to a certain place at a certain time. Maybe a ministry, there's a ministry assignment he's calling you to. And that is something that is between you and the Lord. It's something that it's a deep impression upon your heart from God that only you really are gonna understand. The call from God is really difficult to quantify or explain to people. It just is. It's a deep impression upon the heart that we respond to. The call of God is gonna be a combination of all of your being, your history, your experiences, the gifts, the talents, the resources, all of it. And God's gonna use all of it. For His glory. The year before I accepted the call to come be a pastor here, I knew that I was being called into vocational ministry. I knew I was being called to the pastorate. And I was really anxious about where I was gonna get called and when, and I remember asking my pastor, I said, "Pastor Glen, how do you know "when you're called to a specific ministry assignment? "How do you know when you've got the call to the pastorate? "And you know what he said and infuriated me." Or confused me. I was looking for clarity and he said, "You know what he said?" He said, "You'll know." And I went, "Great, thanks for the help." But it was really wise, what he said. Because the time came and I did know. And you wouldn't believe it, but I had a sense that whole year leading up to it that we would end up here. And when the day came, it was the perfect day. It was all in God's timing. You'll know. But it's between you and the Lord. I've got a quote here from Tim again, Tim bulky. "When the time is right, God will take us places, "give us opportunities and put us around people "who will help bring fulfillment and understanding "to who we are and what we were created to do. "When we live out our calling, we will experience "a deep satisfaction and a rhythm to our life "that is hard to put into words. "But we have to be willing to step into it "and do what it takes to stay there." In your life, if you're in a place where you're feeling restless and unfulfilled, then I'm excited for you. God may be trying to stir things up. He may be moving you towards something special. I like that. If you're restless and unfulfilled, I'm excited for you. If you're wondering what your path is, what you're calling is, you might consider some of these questions in the season of life, what's the passion and mission that drives me? What's so compelling? I can't let it go. What are some common themes and trends in my life? Key turning points, where and why? What makes me come alive? What would I be part of if there were no economic obstacles? What would I do if it did not matter if I failed? I would do it anyway, even if I failed. What would I, what do I just plain love? What do I gravitate towards? What do I find myself doing without even thinking about it? The last one I would add now that I thought about it is, what are your weaknesses? Because sometimes God wants to take your weaknesses and use them, his strength and his grace shine in them. You know what I was always afraid of growing up the most? You know what made me sweat bullets in seventh grade? Public speaking. God is hysterical at times. It's his grace, okay? That does things. His grace that carries us. I want to have the worship music team come up and just this, right now I just want to give you a moment. I want to invite you today just to put your yes on the table and your bulletins, you all have a little piece of paper that says yes on it. Okay, this is your yes. What are you going to do with your yes today? If you don't have one, you can write one on tear it out or you can come grab one of these. What is, this is your yes. Are you going to put this yes on the table or are you going to keep it in your pocket for a while? Say God, you can use me later. Or are you going to throw it in the trash and say, no, he can't use me. What are you going to do with your yes? Because that's where it all starts. We like to attach conditions to our service for God. I'll serve you if you don't take me here or there or whatever. Look, God knows exactly where he wants you. And we just need to be willing to offer ourselves to him. He's way more interested, I think, in our availability than he is in our ability. Are you available today? A lot of people, I think, you know, I heard a quote this last week. They said, "Every cemetery is full of untapped potential." People who lived and died and they never gave their lives to the Lord, and so they don't know what he can accomplish through them. As the worship team plays this last song, I'd invite you to come up, put your yes on the table, put it in the basket or on the table. Maybe it's yes to salvation for the first time. Maybe it's yes to just Christian service, Lord, I'm willing to serve you, show me the way. Or maybe it's actually yes to vocational ministry or a specific ministry assignment. I don't know if that's between you and the Lord. But I'm going to invite you to do that today. This isn't part of the normal culture of our church. We don't do this every Sunday. But sometimes we've got to do something physical to represent the spiritual things that are going on in our heart. Amen. So let's do that as we sing this last song. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) I feel like I should say something. (gentle music) Number one, I'm just thankful for people who've come up with their yes on the table. And I trust that you've made that decision wholeheartedly and didn't take it lightly. The second thing I want to say, I didn't mention this, is that a lot of us have said yes in the past, right? But we got burned somewhere along the way. We got hurt. It was difficult. It was more difficult than we could ever have imagined. And you say yes, it's not easy all the time, is it? It is fulfilling, but good Lord, it is not easy. And I've really wrestled with this this year. I have wanted to take this yes off the table more times than I could count this year. (gentle music) But the calling of God, there is nothing like it. Guys, and there is nothing like knowing that you're in God's will, right? Where he wants you, there's no safer place, there's no better place. And I can't imagine if six years ago, I hadn't put that yes on the table. Now hold that yes back. God's plan for your life is way more important, way better than the plan that you have for your life. If you haven't put your yes on the table yet, you can do it after the service during this last song here later tonight. Get on your knees and give your yes to him. I'm going to keep mine right there.