Father in heaven, we do come to you with the needs of this church right out in front of us and we lift them up to you. We lift up to you those that we love who are sick, who have been sick for a long time. We lift up Amy Whitaker and pray that you heal her, restore her or our family or restore her full health and enjoy the life. Father, we lift up those who are struggling personally in their marriages. We just are not experiencing the marriage they felt they were getting and they need to know that you're faithful even in times of loneliness and darkness and doubt and fear. We lift up those to you who are struggling with their jobs and just feel every day the burden of trying to provide for their families. I pray that you would make them to know that you are the faithful father who feeds the birds and clothes, the grass and will buy all means to provide for them. Father, we pray mainly for all of us, for every one of us. For one reason or the other feel restless and empty and insecure. I pray, Lord, that you would give us the rest that comes from knowing that you are in Christ and I pray that that would give us rest for our souls. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Several years ago, and I was a campus ministry at Delta State University, it was 10-30. I remember it very clearly because some things didn't happen very often. It was 10-30 at night and there came a knock on the door, a panic knock and I opened the door and there was Mike, eyes red, nose nostrils flaring, so worried about something. I said, come on in. He came in. I said, what's wrong? He said, I just don't think I can go to a Baptist seminary. I'm not sure. I said, to this 10-30 on a Tuesday, and you're a sophomore in college, and you are so worried about this that you would knock on my door. He said, I just don't know and I just don't know if the Lord is going to guide me. I said, let's just think about this for a second. What do we know? What do we know for sure? We know that the Lord of the universe who keeps all things in their systems, who runs all things, controls all things and is the source of all things. We know that he loves you by name. He loves you so much that he has said his love upon you since before he created the world. He loves you so much that he gave his own dear son to die for you. He loves you so much that he has providentially over-governed all of history so that you would be born, so that you would hear his gospel, so that you would come to him. He's loved you so much. You would do all those things, but he probably does not love you enough to tell you whether you should go to seminary or not. Is that what you're saying to me? Any laughs? Well, when you put it that way, that's kind of dumb. Yes, and it's 10.30 and I want to go to bed. Can we talk about this tomorrow? That story really brings out two important things that I think we have to keep in mind. We are doing a series through work and we've been talking about work for the last six weeks and how God has created us to work. He has made us to work and we should seek how we can glorify and enjoy him in our work. And we're coming to the end of that series and today we're going to focus on how do we know where God is calling us to work? How do we know when it's time to leave one job and go to another? How do we know when it's time to take a promotion or turn one down? And it goes way beyond that. It goes to how do we know where we should live? How do we know who we should marry? How do we make the big decisions of life? How do we discern how God is leading us? As we get older, how do we use the extra money that God has given us? How do we use our retirement? How do we hear God's call and discern his will? And as we do that, as we think about that question, what I want you to do is remember two very clear things. One, your father in heaven loves you. He loves you. And that should take away your fear. And the second is your father in heaven doesn't want you to feel lost. He has a great plan, you're part of it. And he's going to use you in it because he delights in you and he enjoys you. He's not mean. He's not withholding. He's not got some kind of secret in his vest and if you miss it, your whole life is going to be ruined. And he loves you and he wants you to be conformed to the image of his son so that you are glorious and beautiful and you can rest in that plan. I hear Lord of the Lord from James 1 verses 2 through 8. James says this, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds where you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. Instead, fastness has its full effect that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing. If you need you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith with no doubting for the one who doubts is like a wave of the seed that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double minded man, unstable in all his ways. Let's follow the reading of God's Word. God's plan for you is that you will be perfect and complete lacking in nothing. And so if you lack wisdom, the first thing you need to do is ask. You need to ask. Ask him for wisdom. Ask him, but with these guidelines that James gives us, ask him trusting his goodness. He is not keeping secrets from you. He does not have some kind of secret will and he is waiting on you to discern his will and if you don't discern his will correctly, your life is ruined. And the fear that we come with to this idea of discerning God's will is on one hand it is humorous. On the other hand it is very sad. I remember very clearly talking to a girl when I was a campus minister she was a senior. She had been in my ministry for several years. I remember seeing her face and she was so worried we were talking about whether or not she should date her best friend, which is my advice by the way. If you remember the opposite sex. I should have gone there. Anyway we were talking about it and she was so fearful. I said why are you afraid? She said we are just so afraid it may not be God's will, we don't want to break God's will. And I started laughing. She was standing right beside a building and I said I want you to do something for me. I want you to run as fast as you can and hurl your body into that brick building. She said why? I said because it would be infinitely easier for you to break that wall down and it would be for you to break God's will. God's will is firm. It is solid. It is a plan that was established millennia ago. You're not going to change it. I mean the idea that if God wanted me to go to the second service today but I wanted to go to the first service and it didn't go into the second the wrong service. I'm not going to meet the man of my dreams and we're not going to have children and George is never going to be born and every man on the transport is going to die because George won't be there to save Harry so Harry won't be there to save them. I'm sorry, wait, not some movie. But that idea that we're going to met something up. That's just not in the Bible. That's actually a pagan concept. It's not in the Bible. The only thing the Bible says to us about finding God's will is very clear. It's in Thessalonians 4. He says this. This is the will of God, your sanctification that you abstain from sexual immorality. So as long as you're not being sexually immoral, you're not breaking God's will. God doesn't have a will that you can break when it comes to choosing a major or a career. That's not even the way we find it. That's not even the way we go about it. God tells us to ask if we lack wisdom, trusting him. He's good. He's good. He's not got some secret plan that we have to manipulate out of him. We have to ask for wisdom though. And that's the rub because we don't want wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to think through life and act wisely. We don't want wisdom. We want answers. We want safety. We want the absolute surety that we're doing the right thing. We're doing the right thing. Nothing bad is going to happen. You don't get that. You don't get that. The only one person has gone through his entire life knowing from all eternity what God had called him to do. His name was Jesus. He knew for sure that he was doing the right thing every day of his life because he knew what God had. He was part of the plan. And bad things happen to him every day in his life ended in tragedy and pain. There's no secret plan out there that's going to get you a life of no pain. So stop thinking that there's a right answer that's going to lead you to not making mistakes. We start asking for wisdom. We don't, like I said, we don't want wisdom. What we want is directions. We want God to give us a step by step GPS system telling us when to turn and where. And God gives us a driving manual. So this is how you drive. Drive safely. Live your life wisely. Live within your means. Disturn your decisions and know that I'm with you. I don't want to make, well, I don't want to make a lie to that. Some of you were to point where you're making very important decisions. And I know the fear that comes with those. But what I want you to do, what I want to do is try to take that fear away by showing you of God's goodness. When my brother was alive, he was faced with the decision of whether or not to buy a business and he did all the due diligence. He did all due diligence. He had accountants telling him if you don't buy this business, I'm going to buy it. It's a great purchase, but he was afraid. He'd never been in the business by himself for himself in his life. He was afraid and he went into his prayer closet. Literally he went into a closet where he prayed. And he decided it was not going to come out until the Lord told him what to do. And I be in a Presbyterian and said, well, that was a bad idea. We don't need to do that kind of thing. I said, being cynical, I said, so did he? And he said, yes, I don't want to know. Okay, how did that go? And he said, well, the Lord told me, if you buy this business, I'll be with you. And if you don't buy this business, I'll be with you. And I said, Tommy, that's exactly what God said. That's right. That's right. I'm going to be with you. The business succeeds. I will be with you. If your business fails, I will be with you. This bankrupt you, I will be with you. Make your decisions. Ask, be wise. Trust me and act. Trust me and ask, act. Trust God's goodness. Ask for wisdom and ask without doubting. If you're wise, you'll gather advice. But if you're wise, you're not going to be the slave of the last person who gave you advice. And if you're wise, you're not going to constantly seek advice and do you find somebody who conforms to all your fears? Well, sometimes what will drive us crazy is people who will constantly be asking, what should I do? What should I do? What should I do until they find somebody who says, well, just don't do anything. That's what I thought. Sometimes it's the right thing to not do anything. And I'll be honest, I want you to know this very clearly. It is not my job to tell you what to do. And if I can possibly avoid it, I never will. I won't tell you who to marry. I won't tell you who not to marry. I won't tell you who to break up with. I won't tell you what job to take. I will tell you not to transfer out of Tulsa, but that's a personal thing that's simple. I'm going to tell you to discern your decisions because I want for you the same thing God wants for you. You see, babies have to be told what to wear. Babies have decisions made for them. God wants you to be perfect and complete. He wants you to look like His Son, conform to His image. His desire for you is that you be wise, that you be strong, that you be like Jesus. And if you're to be wise and strong and like Jesus, you don't need somebody to tell you what to do every day. You're more glorious than that. So you don't need somebody telling you what to do. You need to discern what God is calling you to do. And I'm going to help you learn principles and help you apply those principles, but I won't tell you what to do. That's the bad news. The good news is I'm going to tell you what the principles are right now. So we're going to have this one conversation all of us right now. You ready? Principle number one, discern the needs, discern needs. You're wondering what God is calling you to do. What needs do you see? And I say that because this may come to shock to you, not everybody sees the same needs. Some of you drive past homeless people and your heart is just crushed. And you see a huge need. And some of you drive, some of me drive by homeless people and you think, oh please don't talk to me, please. I know there's a need there, but I can't fix it. And I'm not overwhelmed with that need. There's a great story in the Old Testament of Nehemiah. And this is one of the verses three and four of Nehemiah says this. They said to me, the remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. He had asked people, what's it like in Jerusalem? How are the people in Jerusalem doing? They said, the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are destroyed by fire. As soon as I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days. And I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. Everybody knew that the Jerusalem's walls were down? Everybody. I mean, you can't hide that kind of stuff. But when Nehemiah heard it, he wept and fasted and prayed. He was stricken by it. What needs do you see? Do you see needs for communities to be developed? What needs do you see? God has put that in you. That's something different than what other people see. When the Lord called me to work here, I saw a need in Tulsa suburbs for a church to preach the gospel. Some people heard that and they were just like, are you crazy? You have any idea how many churches are there? I said, yeah, well, I don't think they need another one. There's one lesson there should be. Say that much. That was a need that I saw. Not everybody was seeing it. What needs do you see? That's the first way he calls it. The second thing he calls us by is our gifts. The story what you're good at. What is special about you? Romans 12 says, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If it's prophecy, then in proportion to our faith. Before you start trying to go out and pursue a calling, you need to see what you have the gifts to what gifts you have to use. What are you good at? And I say this as an evangelical. We have done a horrible job at teaching this. Because evangelicals for the last 100 years have taught that there's one kind of person you ought to be. If you're not that kind of person, if you're not extroverted, if you're not a leader, if you're not strong, if you're not vocal about your faith, then you're a bad human. You're an unnecessary Christian. You're just not faithful. We've really taught that. We have not taught that people have different gifts and you need to use your gifts. And we're not taught that being introverted is a gift. It's not a curse. It's a gift. How can you use that? You need to pursue a life where you can use your introversion. I don't like to be alone for hours a day. So where can I work? I would be left alone for hours a day and I can do something productive and good. What ministries can I do where being alone will actually bless that and be helpful with that? We tend to get ideas in our mind when we're kids, the things that we want to be, and we completely neglect whether or not we have the gifts to be that kind of person. For a great illustration of that, watch the TV show Chopped, which you need to be watching anyway. It's a great show. It's a cooking show and they put crazy things in a basket. You have to make a meal out of what's in the basket. It's time for the entree. They'll open up the basket and there will be wheat, beans, cream cheese and the head of a pig. Go make something with this. Inevitably, what happens is you'll have somebody say, well, I wanted to make such and such. And so I just threw the ingredients in there. They always lose. The person who wins is the person who tastes the ingredients and thinks, I could put these flavors together and make this. You need to see what your ingredients are before you decide what you're going to be. And for some of you, you may not have ever even asked that question, what can I do? What am I good at? What is a gift that God has given me? It's not that hard. It's not rocket science. You don't need to go take a spiritual gift inventory to figure this out. I really don't think that. Just look at who you are. You know how I figured out that I need to plan a church in the suburbs of Tulsa? I'm a man. I'm not a woman. I'm not being called to be a wife or a mother. Those are not my callings. I know that. What is rocket science? I'm white. I'm not only white. Physically, I'm white. Culturally, whenever I try to do ministry, inter-cities, it's been an abysmal disaster. Okay. That's fine. That's just who I am. I could spend years learning cultural relevance and be awful at that my whole life or I could just go and do what I'm called to do, right? I'm intent. I don't mean to be intense. People tell me sometimes that I'm scary, which is shocking to me. But that means I'm not easily intimidated. I'm not easily, you know, I don't easily just kind of quit something to run off to the next thing. Actually, I'm doing off the next thing. I'm ADD. So, like having a lot of things that need to be done stimulates me. It doesn't frighten me. And so, that's a good call for church planner. You know, it helps to be ADD because there's lots of needs to get done. Just look at who you are. If you don't know who you are, ask somebody spend time with you. They don't know. And figure out how that's a gift. There's a million jobs I can't do. There's one I can't do because of what God's gifted me to do. Look at the needs, look at your gifts. Third, look at your passions. What do you like to do? That's not a shock. Proverbs 21 says, the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he will. Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. Now, you know how I decided the Lord was calling me to Mary Bianca? I wanted to. If I hadn't have wanted to, I wouldn't have. God's not calling you to go marry somebody you hate. He's a problem. He's not calling you to go do a job that you hate. A career that you hate. Every career will have things in it you don't like. But that's just part of growing up. What do you want to do? Now, that can be a trap. God's not calling you to stay in bed until noon and play video games all day. Okay, that's obvious, I think. And it can't be a bigger trap, right? You know, some people are pretty superficial about these kind of things and. And they need to just kind of have grown up eyes. Just because you love playing golf doesn't mean you're called to be a golf pro. Because honestly, what a golf pro is is somebody's really close to a golf course and gets to play like never. You know, in small country clubs, you're a farmer of grass and big country clubs are a businessman and a manager. But playing golf is a very small part of that job. You need to have grown up eyes about what your job actually requires. But what do you like? What are you? What do you enjoy doing? And just pick into the younger crowd. You need to understand a couple of things. One is this is just kind of things I hear a lot and I don't think you understand the issue a lot of times out here. Well, I don't like sales. I like people. Sales is a way of loving people. It's not retail. I'm not talking about talking somebody into buying something they don't need. True sales is looking at a person saying, I can help you with this. And I'm going to love you by helping you get what you need. That's a people job. One of the funniest situations we have right now is people who love English honestly don't believe there's a job for them outside of teaching English. And so it's like this endless cycle of, well, what are you studying? I'm an English major. What are you going to do? I'm going to teach English. What else can you do? So what's the purpose of teaching English to produce English teachers? I guess because English people can't do anything. That's just crazy. I mean, if you're an English major, you know what you're great at? Communicating. You can put things into words that can be understood. That's kind of all that management is. It's putting your system, your business principles into words that can be understood and communicated. Don't have silly restrictions on what God's calling you to do because you think your desires don't lead to anything. Choose jobs that you hate because you think that things that you love aren't useful. Look at your needs. Look at the gifts. Look at your desires. And finally, look at your opportunities. What do you have the chance to do? What do you have the opportunity to do? You know, I knew Bianca. I knew God was calling me to Mary Bianca because I was 22 years old and wanted to get married and she wanted to marry me. I had the opportunity. You know, I wanted to go plan a church in Chattanooga but they didn't hire me. That wasn't what God was calling me to do. Tulsa did. God's in that too. If there's not an opportunity there, that's not what God's calling you to do. And sometimes, part of the problem in our culture is people will tell you, oh, there's always an opportunity. You just have to want it bad enough. Beware if those people are trying to loan you money. I'm dead serious. There are a lot of people who will get you into a lifetime of debt by telling you, oh, sure, you can go back to school. You know, University of Phoenix is owned by student loan companies? That should bother you, actually. God is going to provide for you to do what he's calling you to do. He's going to provide for you to do what he's calling you to do. Beware is a real opportunity to pursue that. And then once you've discerned your calling, you just have to act. You have to act. Once you find where your gifts, desires, and opportunities meet a need, go for it. And if you're wrong, the Lord is going to direct that. That's okay. But you do need to do something. You need to do something. And I want to say that because of two things. One is you need to know that no decision is a decision to do nothing. And that's usually not helpful. No decision is a decision to stay exactly where you are. And so unless you really love where you are, you need to do something. A decision to not date right now is a decision to not get married in the next year. A decision to not look for a job is a decision to not have a job. And I say that with seriousness and love because some of you, some of us, we just get so discouraged that we don't want to do anything. You have to understand it. You can't let that discouragement force you to stay in discouragement. Every no is a yes and every yes is a no, right? I want the worst no ever seen in my life. I wanted to go out and start an RUF in Arizona. And they, with one voice, you know, vocally told me we don't want you. One of the greatest things that ever happened to me. I forced me to ask myself why not? Because you're a jerk. And the Lord changed me. That change would have never happened if it hadn't been for that no. You can't just stay in discouragement. You have to keep looking because I had to be told no 10 times before I believed that. And the second thing I want you to truly be aware of, because it's something that Shane and I have talked about a lot with, with the younger folks. It's all old folks. Can we talk about the young people? Be aware of what Shane calls Peter Pan Syndrome. You can't just stay a kid your whole life. You can make a living off snowboarding, but you probably won't. And even if you could, it's probably not good for you. Your life is called to be a narrative. I know that, you know how I know that? Because God created the world needing to be refined. He created you needing to be refined. He created you with a goal of being perfect. You're not there. Spin has changed that, made it harder, made it more urgent, but has not changed the need for you to be going somewhere, for you to be growing, for you to be changing. God says in this text, he wants you to be complete, perfect, lacking in nothing. And unless you're willing to stand up in front of us and say, I am complete, perfect, lacking in nothing, then you need to be part of a narrative going somewhere, changing, growing, doing something. One of my favorite stories in front of mine was Campus Minister. He was talking to one of his students who was graduating and the student had been in a relationship for a long time and he asked the guy, are you going to ask this girl to marry you? And the guy said, well, I think I want to marry her, but I just don't think I'm mature enough yet. And the Campus Minister said, well, that's great. What's your plan for getting mature? Because if you think coming home at night and drinking beer and watching ESPN is going to get you there, it won't. You know, what's your plan? What are you doing? And Ken, that kind of gets back to us in our frustration with God sometimes because we just want to ask him to do it for us, right? Make me perfect and complete. That's not the way it works. He's going to have to come out and get into life and fail and hurt people's feelings and get into arguments and find out you're not right all the time. And grow. He's going to give you wisdom. He's going to give you challenges. He's going to give you decisions you need to make and work you need to do. And so we need to ask ourselves, what is it that makes us not part of that narrative? Why don't we afraid of being part of that narrative? Are we afraid to hear that there's something wrong with us? I'm opening the door back to us old folks now. Have you could conjure yourself in a life to where no one can tell you what's wrong with you? Have you stopped growing? Are you afraid? Are there massive areas of your life that you've left untapped because you're afraid to go into them? Is there anybody in your life that you will listen to if they tell you that you're doing something wrong, that you're hurting people around you? Are you growing? Are you moving toward that perfection and completeness? What is it that you're afraid of? Are you afraid that Jesus won't be with you when you go into that area of insecurity? Come to him and let him complete you. I urge you to say the prayer, Lord, I'm afraid to change. I'm afraid to ask for wisdom. I'm afraid you won't be with me. I'm afraid I'll lose people's respect if I announce my weakness and let him meet you there and complete you. Maybe you can't say that you see a need that you need to go and fill because you're just obsessed with yourself. Maybe you can't walk into a room of people and see somebody who needs you to come and talk to them because all you can think of is what are people thinking of me right now? Let Jesus free you of that self-free occupation. Go to him and ask him, Jesus, will you convince me? Will you utterly convince me that you love me so much that you are so proud of me that I will forget myself altogether and be able to see needs rather than feel my needs? Do you not have a calling or are you not going somewhere just because you're so discouraged? Are you just hurt? It's a very real problem. If you get discouraged enough you just don't want to get out of bed in the morning. If your heart is broken enough you just don't want to love anything or anybody and I want to urge you to bring that to the Lord and tell him and beg him to heal you to move towards something so that he can heal you. Instead of just sitting in the discouragement and letting that pile up and crush you. The Lord is calling you and He has got wisdom and goodness. He is the Father in heaven who gives to all generously. Let him complete you. Please pray with me. Father in heaven we pray that you will complete us. I pray that you would be at work and us making us into the very image of your son. I pray that you would cleanse us. Father I pray for those in this room who are just afraid. I pray to try. I pray to have the heart broken again. I pray to fail at another job. I pray that you are giving grace to know that you are with them and they are failures and you will be with them today. I pray for those who are just obsessed with themselves. I can't see needs beyond their own needs. I pray that you give them the grace to forget themselves because of how much love you have shown them. Father I pray for those who are discouraged. I pray that you would meet them and heal them and enable them to move toward the beauty and the completeness that you are calling them to. I pray in Jesus name. Amen.