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You know, when somebody asks me to give them three or four essential books for a Christian, my brain melts because there’s a way in which I always think that when I stand up to speak, there are a couple hundred people that stand up behind me who have contributed to everything I have ever understood about my relationship with Jesus. I think of a famous thing that Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones said. Somebody’s commented on the uniqueness of his guitar leads and he said, “l never played a lick I didn’t steal.” That is my ministry. I am the product of the voices of many, many people.

So all I can do is tell you three books that have been formative for me. The first one is a Puritan book. Puritans are hard to read, but you can find renditions of this book that are easier. It’ s John Owen on The Mortification of Sin. That book is a classic. Not only did I see my heart in that book in ways that were devastating, in the good sense of devastation, devastation that would drive me to seek and celebrate grace; but I understood how to handle scripture. There’s a moment where John makes a point from Romans and then, it’s followed with fourteen pages of application. He wanted people to have a street-level understanding of the word of God. I just think it’s a model book and it’s worth the work that you’d have to put into it.

Second book is by John Piper. It’s The Pleasures of God. In that book, I saw the glory of God in ways I’d never seen it before, what pleases God in ways I never saw before; and it has placed me both on a personal and ministry trajectory that I’m very thankful for.

The third book is The Christian Life by Sinclair Ferguson. That little book takes the theology of the Christian life with specific doctrines and talks to you about how to live in light of those truths. It’s enormously helpful because what The Christian Life does is it bridges the gap between your confessional theology and your functional theology because often, we say we believe these things, but we don’t actually live those things at street-level.

Those three books have been very helpful for me, very formative for me. I’ve never been able to keep a copy of The Christian Life in my library because I always end up giving it away. I’m thankful for John Owen. I’m thankful for that people have recaptured Puritans and that they’re still available to us. And sometimes, John Piper is a bit mocked because he’s had one single zeal his entire ministry but I’m thankful for how God has raised up a man to hold the glory of God in front of us. Those three books, I think, are worth your effort and will leave an indelible imprint on your life.

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What does it look like to be a light in your neighborhood? Well, I want to capture what I would like to say to you in a single provocative New Testament word. It’s in 2 Corinthians 5. Paul says, “We are, therefore, Christ’s ambassadors.” Think of that term. What is it that an ambassador does?

An ambassador represents. That’s all an ambassador does. He represents a leader, a king, who is not present with him. You could say that an ambassador’s work is incarnational. He’s putting flesh and blood to the person that he represents. Being an ambassador means this. ”I want to, in my neighborhood, represent the message, the methods and the character of the King of kings.”

Now, think about that. I think those three categories are really helpful. Message, methods and character. I won’t always have an opportunity to represent the message. It may not be appropriate for me to chase my neighbor down the street, grab him by the collar and stick the gospel in his face. That would probably be misunderstood.

In fact, think about this. If I had two people on the street, one knows that I love them because I’ve demonstrated that love; the other doesn’t know me at all and I have a very hard message to communicate to them. Which person do you think would be predisposed to hear the message? Well, it’s not hard to answer. The person who knows I love them.

The gospel is the hardest message ever because the only way you’ll get excited about the good news of the gospel is if you’ll accept the bad news of the gospel. And the bad news of the gospel is you are your biggest problem. Nobody likes to hear that. So maybe, rather than looking for ways to lead with the message, I look for opportunities to reflect the character of the King. I want to be known as a person of love, a person of grace, a person of patience, a person of self-sacrificing service.

Do you have an older widow in your community? Offer to mow her grass, rake her lawn, paint her dining room. Invite her over for dinner or family gatherings. You have a couple that works hard and never gets any time together, babysit their children. Do you have a park in your neighborhood that’s in disrepair? Organize a group of people in the neighborhood to just restore that park. You got a grill in your backyard? Grill for your neighbors. Have summer parties where you invite the whole neighborhood.

Reflect the presence, the love, the faithfulness, the tenderness, the compassion of the Lord. There’s always an opportunity to reflect His character and the more you reflect His character, the more you’ll have opportunities to speak His message. It’s never ever the case that I have no means of being a light. "Let your light so shine before men that they will see your [what?] good works and glorify your Father in heaven. [Matthew 5:16]

Don’t just represent your Lord in what you say. Represent Him in what you do and there are awesome opportunities to reflect His character in your neighborhood.

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You know, if you’re facing the situation that your child is not as interested as they once were in relationship with you, you’re not as prominent in that relational value list that they carry around inside of their brain and they’re spending more time outside of the house or away from you; and you wonder, “What can I do to continue to maintain relationship with my children,” my whole answer to that question would depend on the age of a child.

If you have a 13-year old that’s now cutting you off and finding reasons to not be around the house, I would see that as a very serious thing. That child is not capable of independence. They need several years of very careful parenting still to prepare them for their launch. I would ask the question, “Why does this child not want to be around? Why is this child cutting me off? What do we need to restore and rebuild? This child needs me, needs to be comfortable in relationship to me, needs to know I love him, needs to know I would never do anything  that would hurt him or her.”

Now, it’s very, very different if you’re looking at a 22- or 23-year old. We’ve been through this four times as parents because our children are older. You go through those moments where you’re not the center of your child’s life anymore. They’re not going to come home every night as they once did. They may be living somewhere else or maybe in the midst of their launch and they have new relationships and new responsibilities that take them away. Listen. There’s a way in which the job of the parents is to work yourself out the job. That’s a good thing. That is a person making a responsible launch into adulthood. It’s a natural thing to have happen.

Now, you want to maintain a relationship with your child. You want to be an adviser and a counselor and a mentor. You want to have a community of love with them and so, you have to ask yourself, “Given the natural ways that our lives intersect and they’re not there anymore, how can I continue to have a robust and healthy relationship with my child?”

The distance that you’re experiencing with your child and the way that you respond to it is very much attached to the age of that child. Older children, they’re making their launch, that’s a natural thing. For a younger child, something that should concern you is going on that you need to unpack because that child needs you.

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Well, if you’re a parent and you’re concerned about your children, you know that we live in a world that’s gone sexually insane. There’s no sanity out there anymore. We can barely agree on terms to use anymore for all that we’re dealing with and all of the confusion and the chaos. And it’s almost impossible to look at your phone or Netflix without having your morals assaulted and so, it’s very tempting to present sex to your children as this big, ugly, dark world that you should avoid at any cost.

And I think the place to start is with the understanding that the Bible is not sex-negative. The Bible is sex-positive. The Bible presents the beauty of this gorgeous thing that God has given us, but this is where you have to have the conversation with your children. I want you to think of one thing -- and then, I want to give you a couple of resources to think about – that pleasure of any kind always requires boundaries. Pleasure without boundaries always hurts and harms and destroys.

For example, chocolate cake is pleasurable. You cannot eat as much chocolate cake as you would ever want or you’ll be in ill health. Whatever thing you find pleasurable, that pleasure requires boundaries. The gorgeous pleasure of human sexuality, the uniqueness and sacredness and intimacy of that requires boundaries.

So what you want to do is talk about sex like you talk about anything else. Any good gift God gives us requires boundaries. Let me say it this way. Desire for even a good thing becomes a bad thing when it becomes a ruling thing. When sex rules me, when I get up in the morning and it’s all I can think about, when I get my phone in my hands and it’s all I can think about, when I love those titillating moments in a movie, the good thing that God has given has become a bad thing because it’s become a ruling thing.

Teach your children the importance of boundaries. God’s good, so He not only gives us good things, He gives us good boundaries, so we can enjoy those things as they were meant to be enjoyed. That’s the way to talk about sex with your children.

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If you’re a parent and you’re not concerned about powerful, pervasive, attractive and seductive media in the lives of your children, you’re just not paying attention. We live with more dominant and intrusive media than ever before. Teenagers have cellphones and when they have cellphones, the world is attractive and available to them with Instagram and Snapchat and all those things that are so compelling.

Now, I think it’s important to do a couple [of] things. First of all, don’t ask the law to do what only grace can accomplish in the hearts of your children. I really do think that there are very, very significant heart issues that are exposed in this struggle with social media. Now, it’s right to warn your children of the dangers that are out there and that role of parents to hold good, godly, practical, functional warnings in front of heir children is really very, very important and to prepare your children for the temptations that are available to them because they keep hearing this powerful media with them.

But I think there’s some heart issues that you need to talk with your children about and one of the dominant issues is the issue of identity, where “I attach my worth, my identity, my sense of self to how many clicks I get, how many likes I get, how popular I am in social media.” And that is a very, very significant identity seduction to young people in this generation.

Another is the issue of love of neighbor. I was in Starbucks recently. There were five or six young people together. They all sat next to one another, no conversation going on between them whatsoever, all on their phones. At some point, somebody announced they’re leaving, they all got up and left. They probably thought they were spending time with one another. They had no time with one another.

And so, the fact that I was created for relationship with God and relationship with others, and the temptation to replace that with auto-entertainment, this utterly self-centered world where I can descend into this world that pleases me, not caring who’s next to me, and I can stay in that world literally for hours, it has doorway after doorway after doorway after doorway.

Now, what I want to do, as I want to talk about the deeper heart issues with my children, hoping that in every conversation, I give the Spirit of God a chance to work in the heart of that child, so that growingly, they begin to want what God wants. Listen. Teenagers [who] are doing well are not doing well just because they’ve had the right set of rules around them, but because God’s got a hold of their hearts and God’s given them a desire for something deeper than human affirmation and a self-centered way of working through the world.

Embed social media in the comforts and the warnings of the gospel with your children and have those conversations over and over and over again.

Transcript

So I want to address a question that’s been asked many, many times, not in this brief way, but it comes up in conversations over and over again. And it is, “Is the gospel political?” Before I answer that question, I just want to comment on the angry, aggressive, adversarial, rather despicable political moment that we’re in. It’s a two-party system that cannot work if it’s driven by anger and hatred. It just doesn’t. And you, as a Christian, believe things. You believe them strongly. I would just so encourage you, don’t be caught up in the hate. You do not win your neighbor by screaming at him. You do not win your neighbor by characterizing him with the most hurtful of terms.

We are in a political moment that is sad. We cannot work together. Government is grinding to a halt. We’re in moments now of, not only political, but racial tension because the language has been cranked up. And I have to say I’m sad that the church has been caught up into this. And there are things that are coming out of people who represent the gospel because they’ve been caught up in this moment that are not becoming to what God has called us to be. So I think what we’re going to talk about is particularly important in this cultural moment that we’re in.

So I want to start this way. We should care about government. Government is God’s good gift to us. If you understand, again, a biblical worldview, government is set up by God, meant to represent His authority and is given a particular job description. We’re not anti-government people and that way, we’re not anti-political because it takes politics for the government to form itself.

One of the ways that God makes His invisible authority and restraining mercy visible is through government, through setting up visible human authorities that set laws that are for the common good. We’re all benefits of that. I don’t generally have to be afraid to walk on the streets. I don’t have to be afraid to drive. My life is regulated by a whole set of things that the government controls and regulates. I should be thankful for that and understand that that’s God’s idea, and it’s His good grace to all of us.

So that means a second thing. I should care about elections. I should care about voting to elect, as much as possible, trustworthy, moral leaders. You say, “Paul, there aren’t any.” Well, I’m going to search for the best because I care about my neighbor. I care about life in the here and now.

Listen. You can’t understand God’s call to you and just act like this “now” moment is meaningless coz we’re just sitting around waiting for the Second Coming. That’s not a biblical worldview. We’re called to live in this culture, to make this culture better. I love the direction God gives to His people who are captive in Babylon: to love the surrounding culture, to love the city, to make it better, to plant trees. That’s what we’re supposed to do, so I should care about this moment. I should care about participating in things like elections, so that, to the best of our ability, we can have leaders who would actually care for the welfare of our neighbors.

You should endeavor to be a good citizen. Do things that good citizens should do. Peter, in writing to people who are misunderstood and being persecuted, tells them to pray for their leaders. “Pray for good for your leaders. Pray for wisdom. Pray for moral hearts.” Can I ask you a question? Do you pray for your leaders? In the morning, would you ever think of praying for your senator, praying for your congressman, praying for your mayor, praying for your president? Do you ever pray for these people?

Is it much easier for you to rip them in conversation than pray for them? Have we abandoned the belief in God running the ultimate government, that He can turn the hearts of leaders? The Bible says that God raises up and puts down leaders, that the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water. He can turn it wherever He wills. Pray. Participate in the good of your community. If there’s a community clean-up project, be part of that. If there’s a park that needs refurbishing, how about your church adopting the park? Participate in the citizenry of your community.

Now, let’s get to the issue at hand. We’re not anti-government. We’re not anti-elections. We’re not anti-citizens, but the gospel is not political. What politicians can do is pass laws that promote good and restrain evil. They can help restrain and normalize the way a community operates, but politics is not where we place our hope.

Listen. The hope of the people of God is never in political power. Let me say that again. Our greatest power is not political and the minute you believe that your greatest power political, your greatest power is political influence, you will compromise the gospel. It always happens. You see, our power is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ because the gospel of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ has the power to do what politics could never, ever do; and that is rescue and transform the heart of a person.

Let me say it this way. People are not changed by the passing of laws. People are directed and restrained by the passing of laws. That’s an important critical difference. For example, the passing of laws with regard to race does not end racism. We know that now. There were massive civil rights laws passed in America and we still live with individual, corporate and institutionalized racism in America because racism is an issue of the heart.

Now, I’m thankful for those laws. I’m thankful for those laws that have restrained evil and promoted good in the human community in America, but we’ve seen the inadequacy of political power to do what actually needs to be done. You want prejudice to be robbed of its power in a human being’s life? Well then, you want grace for that person because it’s only the power of God that can change the way I look at and I think about another human being, that can break down lifelong-held hatred.

Grace can turn proud people into humble people. Grace can turn war-makers into peacemakers. Grace can turn haters into lovers. Grace can turn joyless people into joyful people. Grace can remove condemnation from my mouth and place words of love there. Only grace can do that. And so, we don’t want to forsake our mission because we’ve mistakenly thought that we got to get more political power. “The only hope for us is to get more political power.”

Now, what that means is the church of Jesus Christ will never fit comfortably with any political party. Let me say that again coz I think it needs to be repeated. The church of Jesus Christ will never fit comfortably with either political party because if the Conservative worldview is one way and the more Liberal-Progressive worldview is one way, the gospel worldview is a third way. And it isn’t defined comfortably by this side. It’s not defined comfortably by this side.

Let me just give you one example. If you read the social justice calls in the Bible, passages like Micah 6:6-8 or the passages where we’re called to defend the fatherless and widows, that sounds more like the energy that would be in the Democratic Party. If you hear the massive amounts of calls in scripture to personal responsibility, that sounds more like the themes of the Republican Party. But you can’t take the whole of what the gospel says about life and says about how we should live and place that comfortably in the political philosophy of any party. Now, I’m afraid we do that. I’m afraid we too quickly align with a political party because we’re interested in power and whenever you do that, you have to lop off or compromise elements of your message.

I’m going to say something that may get me in trouble, but I’m going to say it anyway. I believe that the church of Jesus Christ is always weakened and its reputation, defamed, when we identify too strongly with one political party; because what happens is we then, because of the strong identification, we get known by whatever that party is known for, instead of being known for what we actually stand for. Our identity gets absorbed into the identity of that party that we so stand for.

So I think that there may be things in the Republican Party that would make me comfortable there, but I think there are ways that those political leaders talk that are reprehensible, that are wrong, that are hateful, that make the discourse dark and aggressive; so I don’t want to be known as too strongly identifying with that thing because it compromises my identity in the gospel and weakens my voice. It never works and it ends up defaming my message because the beauty of the gospel message, the beauty of the awesome generosity of the Lord, as I’ve recently been studying my way through the Old Testament, I’ve just been amazed by this pattern.

God chooses His people, they rebel against Him, He warns them and disciplines them, and guess what He does. He restores them again by His grace and that patient love of God to draw His people back again to Him, our message is the most beautiful message that could ever be told. We have a narrative that is the story of stories. We want to be known for that narrative and we don’t want to associate so strongly with a particular political persuasion that we weaken or defame the thing that is most precious us and that is the source of our power and influence.

I think what is very, very important is to always remember that you’re a citizen of another kingdom. Jesus says very powerfully, again, getting near the end of the Sermon on the Mount, “Seek my kingdom and seek my righteousness.” So here’s the life that you’re called to live right now. You have a dual citizenship. God’s plan is that you would participate in the kingdom of this world in a place where you can. [In] the kingdom of man, you are a human citizen on earth, living under a government by God’s sovereign choice. He’s called you to be a citizen. He’s called you to pray for your leaders. He’s called you to recognize the important function of government.

So it’s not right for the church to withdraw. It’s not right for us to not participate. We’ve been placed here as active participants, rendering unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, rendering unto God what belongs to God. You always have that citizenship in the kingdom of man, the kingdom of this world and that is your moral responsibility.

But you’re also a citizen of the greater eternal kingdom of God. You’ve been called, you’ve been chosen to be a citizen in that kingdom and so, your dominant allegiance is to the greater kingdom. And so, because of your allegiance to the greater kingdom, you don’t withdraw from the kingdom of this world, but you associate with the king of this world through the vehicle of your allegiance to the kingdom of God.

In every way as a citizen, in every election, in every community activity, you are aware of your higher citizenship. You’re called to seek and represent the kingdom of God, God’s will, God’s way, God’# plan, God’s glory, God’s truth, God’s morality, God’s values, His call to relationship, all of those kingdom things. So it’s the kingdom of God that is my direction system for how to relate to the kingdom of man. I always have this dual citizenship. It is because of my allegiance to the kingdom of God, knowing that’s where my power is, that I won’t get snookered into thinking that my power is to be found in some kind of identification with a certain political power and the gaining of political power.

It’s been tried before. There have been movements, even in the last few decades, for the church to vie for political power. And when you look, those movements simply did not bear the fruit that was promised. Those movements over-promised and under-delivered because I think those movements forgot where the power is actually to be found.

Be careful what you put your hope in. Every human being functions by hope. You will attach your identity, your meaning and purpose, your inner security to something. It never works to attach your hope to something horizontal. Lasting hope is only ever found vertically.

Be careful what you’re afraid of. Fear never produces anything good in your life. I think fear of the march of cultural things that we think are wrong, that threaten human identity, massive changes in sexuality, in gender, in morality – that fear can make you run some place and associate with things that you think are speaking your language that may lead to complete compromise on what you actually believe and where you actually find hope.

I think that’s happening. I think we’re running to people who actually may be the enemies of what we actually believe because they are the friends of some of the things we’re concerned about. They carry those concerns and we identify ourselves too closely with those people, and we end up weakening our standing and defaming our message.

Don’t give way to fear. Know that your Lord is sovereign. I can’t entertain this topic without talking about the sovereignty of God. Paul is in Athens. It’s a commuter’s passage of scripture. I love this. It feels like the city. He’s sitting, waiting to make connection with somebody and to go on with his journey. It’s sort of like sitting here in Philadelphia in Dilworth Park outside of city hall. And he’s listening to these Athenian philosophers and their debate about the unknowability of God. And Paul says, “Can I say something here? I think He’s actually knowable because He’s revealed Himself.” And in his brief little talk there, he talks about God being creator and sovereign and savior. If you’re going to believe in God, you’re going to have to believe in those three things.

And I love how he talks about the sovereignty of God. This little talk of Paul is my friend. It’s one of these things that gets me up in the morning. He says, “He determines the exact place where we will live and the exact length of his days.” And then, he says something. This blows my mind. “He does that, so He’s not far from each one of us, so that any moment, we can reach out and touch Him.”

Now, think of the picture of the sovereignty of God. We think of sovereignty of God as one of His huge transcendent qualities. In order to be sovereign, He has to be distant out there, He has to be looking over everything. Sort of makes God feel distant. And He’s seen as the great chess player in the sky and He’s moving the players. Paul says, “No, no, no.” He is in intimate sovereignty over the very details of your life, right down to your address and He’s done that so He’s near.

Paul is actually teaching the theology of imminent sovereignty. “Imminent”, meaning “near”. He’s sovereignly near so that He’s touchable. Isn’t that amazing that God would make Himself reachable to us? Now, that one who is sovereignly near to me rules the affairs of human history and government. There’s a book in the Bible, Daniel, that is meant to demonstrate He is sovereign over nations and rulers and the move of history.

Now, it may look like chaos to you. It often does to me and somehow, I look around at the political culture and I think, “Is anybody in charge?” You have to remember – and this will keep you from compromise and keep you from fear – that your Lord, not only is the Lord of government. He’s near to you in your fear. He’s near to you in your struggle. He’s touchable for you and he’s there as your hope. He’s there as your help. He’s there as your defender. He’s there as your protector.

You don’t need to give away precious things to associate with people, who you think value a few things you value because you’re afraid, but in the end, have led you to compromise things that are at the heart of what God has called you to be. The power of the church is not political power. The power of the church is the existence and presence of the Lord Almighty. He is our hope and no matter what is happening now, He will advance His story.

In the 1400s, in the darkness of Europe, it seemed like there was no hope. It seemed like things were as bad as they could be, but God raised up Wycliffe and Zwingli and Jan Hus [John Huss] and Martin Luther and John Calvin. And the light shone in the world again, and the dominance of the monarchies were broken, and people were given human rights again, and people were lifted out of poverty, and nations were built.

Who would’ve ever thought it wasn’t, first, a political movement? It was a gospel movement in days that seemed incredibly dark and the gospel movement, human culture. That’s who we are. That’s what we believe. And don’t let the darkness of this moment cause you to associate yourselves too closely with things that would make you compromise your message. Carry gospel hope, and believe in the presence and the power of the Lord Almighty.

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There’s an amazing psalm that says the heavens belong to the Lord and the earth; He has given to man. We’ve been placed by God’s governing economy to be the resident managers of earth. We’re meant to steward the creation, to enhance its beauty, to protect it from danger, to nurture it. And I think one of the ways that that gets expressed is if we’re made in God’s image, in His likeness, then there is creative potential in every human being.

I was talking with Luella. My wife, Luella, is a gallery director, an art dealer. She’s been in the art world for many years and we were mourning the fact that the bulk of humanity never realizes their creative potential. And I think a lot of that is just fear. Fear of it not working, fear of my being made fun of, fear that I don’t have any creative potential. Everybody has creative ability of some kind in you. Maybe that just means you’re a mom and you’re going to make a beautiful meal for your family, and you want to be creative as you do that. Maybe it’s the way you decorate your house, maybe it’s music, maybe it’s your garden. There’s just an endless range of how you express that creativity.

I just want to ask the question. “How in my life do I image God as creator? How do I steward the creative gifts that He gives me? How should those reach expression in my life, so that even that becomes a hymn to His presence and His glory?”

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Well, I think everybody hits this wall at some point in their Christian life. If you don’t, you’re just not paying attention. You hit the wall, saying, “Why do I still struggle so? You would think, with the power of God’s grace, I would’ve licked this Christian life by now.” Well, I think the reason we think that is pretty clear. It’s because we seriously underestimate the drama, the power, the depth of sin, how deep it is inside of us, how its fingers go to every aspect of our being, how much that sin is in our thoughts and in our desires, in our deepest unspoken longings, in the way we view ourselves, in the way that we view others, in the way that we want from God.

And so, God’s forgiveness and His acceptance is immediate. It’s a lifelong process of weeding out all the artifacts of iniquity that still remain in me. The long process of sanctification, of personal transformation is an argument for the power and the depth of sin in everyone of my hearts. I kind of think I should’ve been completed a long time ago, but because I don’t think I was that great of a sinner.

It’s humbling to know how long God must work on me in a variety of situations, in a variety of locations, day after day, moment after moment, to get at all of the roots of sin that still live inside of me. Praise Him for His patience. Praise Him for His faithfulness. Praise Him that He would continue to exercise that power. No, we’re not done yet because what God is working on is huge, but we will be.

And there will be a day when we will be invited to a funeral that all of us will be happy to go to (maybe the first funeral we’re happy to go to). It will be the funeral of sin and death because sin and death will die. And we will live forever with a burden lifted, the struggle over, with our Redeemer and like our Redeemer, forever and ever and ever. Until that day, yeah, it’s right, we’re still in a workroom and the hammers and saws and the screwdrivers redemption are on us everyday because the work still needs to be done.

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Wow, the will of God, what a big topic. How to know the will of God, how to discern the will of God. Well, theologically, what the Bible presents is there are two primary forms of the will of God. God’s secret will, those are the planning of His sovereignty that is in His own counsel not known to us; and God’s revealed will, they’re written on the pages of His word.

There is no call in scripture to try to divine or discern the secret will of God. Please hear what I’m about to say. The secret will of God is called the secret will of God because it’s secret. Man, if I tried to figure that out and try to read the tea leaves of the future, who knows where I’m going to go? The safest place to be is “I want to give my life to knowing and understanding and living inside of the boundaries of the revealed will of God”.

Now, here’s how it works. You don’t have to guide yourself. God will guide you. I’m sitting here, answering these questions. I never thought for a moment I would be doing this. I could’ve never written my story. What I tried to do is live in the context of the revealed word of God, along with the community of the people of God, and God continued to write my story. That’s the way it works. You can trust God to do that.

There’s so much anxiety that’s the result of trying to figure out God’s secret will. Let me give you an example. I knew that Luella and I had forged in our engagement a relationship inside of God’s boundaries. I knew that we stimulated good biblical character in one another, but the day before I got married, I didn’t actually know for sure this woman would be my wife. Oh, we had planned the wedding and the whole party was there, but who knows what would’ve happened? It could’ve been that God would’ve taken one of us away at that point.

Our focus was on resting in God’s guidance as we sought to build a healthy relationship as defined by the word of God. Focus yourself on the revealed will of God and watch God guide.