St. John United
Rev. Jeffrey L. Phillips, pastor
October 11, 2009
1 John 4:1-6
Spiritual revival inevitably leads to the questions:
So what?
Filled with God, how do we live?
What is God’s will for our lives?
What does it mean to be faithful – full of faith?
As the bulletin cover asks, “What must I do?”
There are a million things to do with your life. As a person of faith, in love with God, how do you choose which is right for you?
1 John 4
“Test the spirits.”
Not everything in the world is of equal value and worth.
Some pursuits are better than others.
And some are just wrong: “…test the spirits, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
Some activities are “truer” than others – conforming to the way and will of God.
Not every use of your time and talents is in keeping with God’s will.
We worship the notion of choice – doing what we want.
But for a person of faith, there’s more to living than choosing whatever we want to do.
We do not worship a god named Choice. We worship God who is God of our choices.
There’s the matter of carefully and prayerfully sifting through all the possibilities and coming up with one or two things that align with God’s will for our lives.
Read first line together: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.”
Film clip.
People can know God’s will for their lives.
One way we know God’s will is that it’s the thing that gives us deep joy.
Fred Buechner: There are different kinds of voices calling you to different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society… or Self-Interest. …[Here’s] a good rule for finding [this] out…. The kind of work God usually calls you to do is work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world needs most to have done. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
Thomas Merton: Each one of us has some kind of vocation. We are all called by God to share in [God’s] life and…Kingdom. Each…of us is called to a special place in the Kingdom. If we find that place we will be happy. If we do not find it, we can never be completely happy. For each…of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.
Following Jesus
1 John 4:2 (read together?) “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.”
Jesus’ life (and death) is the yardstick of Christian living.
The world is confused about what love looks like, and how people ought to live in the world, but the church knows what love looks like.
Love looks like Jesus – his teachings, miracles, forgiveness of sins, inclusion of outcasts, and his sacrificial death on a cross.
WWJD?
Charles Sheldon, In His Steps
Jesus was obsessed with the idea of God’s Kingdom – where the last, the least, and the lost are put first, restored, and found.
He put this into practice – and then told us to do the same.
Merton quote again.
There is great joy indeed in finding God’s will for your life.
My testimony about vocation.
What about you? What is God’s will is for your life?
Older folks: “I’m still here. God must have a purpose for my life, but I don’t know what it is.” Well, find that purpose!
“Younger” ones. You have a lot of years in front of you.
Paid work, unpaid work (home and hobby), volunteer work.
What is the “place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger?” (Buechner)
Just open the newspaper to discover the “world’s deep hunger.”
Example of youth violence in the
Tempted to say, “This is not my problem.”
WWJD?
Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Did Jesus die just for us, or for all?
If not, then do something!
Jay: Children of the Incarcerated.
Example of world hunger
Hernando DeSoto’s work to empower the world’s poor in
What about you? What is God’s will for your life? How are you going to spend whatever time you have left?
Give it some thought. Give it some prayer. Give it some time. But keep asking the question.
But “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God.”
And remember who you are.
As 1 John reminds us, “We are from God, and… from this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”
And if we’re from God, then we’re to be about God’s business in this world.
And don’t be afraid to tackle whatever it is God might want you to do: “You are from God, and have conquered [the spirits that are not of God]. For the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”
Don’t be afraid to do what God wants you to do. Just do it.
Ask for God to open your eyes so that you can see God and know how God wants to use you in the service of the Kingdom.
[Open the Eyes of the My Heart]
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