Your Plans: God's Plans – Timothy Keller [Sermon]

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In this season of life, I decided I should finally put some solid effort into understanding this verse that has come to me repeatedly - Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God (Matt 6:33). You would think that after all this time I would understand it, but I have often wondered what it should look like in day to day practice. The truth is, while inundated with my medical workload (over the past decade), I have found it difficult to have the emotional bandwidth to be as kind or as patient as I would have liked. I have felt very unlike the Lord Jesus Christ, essentially, like some failed version of a Christian. Hopefully this year, with more time on my hands, I will finally have time to tend to my spiritual life.

I came across this sermon by Tim Keller. It is full of biblical wisdom, as usual. 

1) God is always working
2) You will not be able to figure out, for a long time, what He's up to.
3) God works non-obviously, but God works
4) God's guidance is more something God does, than something God gives.
5) You are standing in the midst of God's guidance. You are in the middle of the current. You are being navigated. So if you want to live a wise life, if you want to be calm in storms, understand and trust that you are standing in the midst of God's guidance.
6) Unconditionally, radically trust God with everything in your life and you will slowly make decisions in accordance with God's word.

"To ask for the guidance of God requires abandonment. We no longer say 'If I trust you, you will give me such and such.'. Instead we must say 'I trust you. Give me or withhold from me whatever you choose.' 

Elizabeth Elliot

"What you will, when you will, how you will." 

John Newton 


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