[0:00] started out in this series having a big sort of theological big picture view of what God's will is and what I kind of said was that the will of God is a really confusing concept for us and one of the reasons that it's really confusing is that we use that term or that phrase the will of God in different ways so and and in addition to us using in different ways the Bible kind of does as well so the Bible speaks mainly of two wills of God two different wills of God that are both called the will of God but mean different things so the first will of God is his will of decree and we saw from passages like Ephesians chapter 1 verse 11 that say that God's will encompasses all things that all things happen according to God's will and if God will something to happen it will happen that extends right through things to do with nature things to do with suffering right through to the death of
[1:02] God's own son all of that happened according to God's will and everything that happens happens according to God's will that's his will of decree but in the Bible and in our nomenclature as well there is also this will of desire now this is God's God's will of desire is his will of command so his commandments in the Bible the way that we ought to live the things that teach us how to be obedient that's his will of desire and that can be thwarted that can be disobeyed God says do not murder do not commit adultery on your mother and father we can disobey those commands can't we we can disobey his will Jesus says your kingdom come let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven that assumes that it's not being done on earth as it is in heaven his will of desire is not being obeyed perfectly and so we saw that that was a sign of God's will as well will of decree all things happen according to God's will within that God's will of desire we can thwart we can disobey but really the will that all of us are super keen to find out about even if we accept that which not everyone does but even if we do the will that we really want is God's will of direction who should I marry what job should I take those kind of questions am I right they're the questions that really matter to us day to day should I do this or that should I take this path or that path and what I wanted to say which what I did say and hinted on what I'll flesh out a lot more tonight was that I don't think that that is a biblical way of thinking about God's will that is I don't think we should expect God to reveal his will for our lives ahead of time
[2:57] I want to affirm that God has a will for your life God has a purpose for your life God knows what is going to happen to you during your life he knows who you're going to marry he knows what job you're going to take he knows if you're not going to get married he knows all of these things he works all things according to his purpose for your life but for us to ask him to reveal that will to us ahead of time that's not biblical and it's not part of God's the way that God set up the world for us to ask God to reveal his specific will for our lives is not biblical God doesn't want you to know ahead of time what's going to happen to you he doesn't want you to know ahead of time who you're going to marry what job you're going to take because I think partly because it would take away our dependence on him in a big way and also it would take away a huge element of the Christian life an essential element of the Christian life and that is risk-taking and we're going to talk about that a little bit later on as well God wants us to be risk-takers he wants us to be courageous in the decisions we make I remember as a kid um tell you a story my my parents were great on birthdays and Christmases great with gifts and and one thing they did for us um was on our birthday when we wake up there'd be a bit of string attached to our the doorknob of our bedroom and so I'd wake up and I'm seven and there's a bit of string on my door and I knew it was going to happen but it's still exciting and and I I get my brothers and my sister together and we follow this string and it leads us to gifts like there's a bike there and you know there's a book there and and it's the most exciting thing because I get to follow this string and I know sooner or later there's going to be a gift there that I can open it's amazing um I loved it and that's why it carried on until I was about 25
[4:52] I'm kidding but I wish it did uh but this is what we what this is what we want from God isn't it we want a bit of string that we can follow along through life that's going to lead us to all the amazing gifts that he's got for us and it's going to cut out all of the risks it's going to cut out all of the pain and the suffering that's what we want from God that's what we want when we ask God for his will of direction but that's not the way God works that's not the way the Christian life works and we're going to look at that um I thought initially uh if you looked at last week's notes I said that this week we're going to talk about attitude and decision making the title of the sermon was cowards and cowboys and we're going to talk about what attitude you should have when you make decisions but since last week I've changed it just a little bit in response to your question you really the people I spoke to really wanted to know more about God's will of direction his specific will for your life so I really feel like we need to talk about that a little bit more and give me more of a chance just to snuff out your hopes and dreams of ever finding that will um and also just generally my conversations with you guys and in my own life completely as well um I just sense a lot of uncertainty a lot of regret and a lot of self-preservation and a real lack of courage in decision making so I want to talk about courage and decision making that's how we're going to round it out tonight and as promised I'm going to speak just a little bit to what Andrew said a couple of weeks ago about full-time gospel proclamation and whether that's for you so let's pray we need God's help um so I'll pray and then we'll get into it
[6:33] Lord God we thank you so much that your will of decree encompasses all things that all things happen according to your will and that means we can trust you that you are good that you are powerful it means that we can pray to you and you're actually able to do something about it we also thank you for your will of desire your good and perfect law we read in Psalm 119 about your law that is precious to us your word your commandments I pray that we'd be obedient to those as we walk through life with you and our Lord I pray that you'd be with us even here even now that we would get real clarity about what it is that you would expect of us in this life I pray for Jesus sake amen all right so I want to kick off just by talking about this will of direction this this follow the string kind of will that all of us want and that I don't think exists and I want to talk about four reasons why I think we really want to know that will four reasons just looking at the culture around me and engaging with you guys and and in my own heart revealing things about the way that we think about God we will see four reasons why we want to know
[7:50] God's will the first first one I want to talk about is the fact that we want to please God which is a good thing one of the reasons that we want to know God's specific will for our life is because we want to do what he wants us to do we want to please God but there's another side to that it's not just that we want to please God it's that we're afraid of what might come our way we lack courage I remember one of my first girlfriends I think I was about 13 or 14 this this one girl that I was going out with she was from the church and I really liked her and I had no idea what I was doing and I didn't know anything about girls at all and so what I did was because I wanted to please her so much I just pretty much said whatever I thought she wanted me to say so I just like the music that she liked and do the things that she did and and and she was a vegetarian and this was just the most ridiculous like I said I didn't like meat and
[8:54] I'm surprised I could even get the words out I mean it's just it's a ridiculous notion and um that's probably why we broke up in the end but this is what this is what I was doing that in my eagerness to please her I would kind of uh forget my real desires and the other thing that happened which is really the point of what I'm saying is that I started to acquiesce on my responsibilities and I started to stand back and be passive and I whenever you know what movie do you want to say I don't know what movie do you want to see what do you want to get for dinner easy please I didn't want to step out and say I really want to go to the steakhouse because that might have disappointed her and this is what we do with God sometimes we want to please him so much so so much and we want to be in his will so much whatever that means exactly that we start acquiescing on our responsibilities we don't take the job because it might not be the right job we don't marry the woman because we think maybe that's not the one that God wants us to marry the whole notion of the one woman set aside for you is ridiculous I reckon um we'll talk about another time maybe no I'll talk about now here's what I said to Renee
[10:10] I love Renee with all my heart I believe that God had reserved her for me brought us together that it was God's will for me to marry her but I've said to her looking here in the eyes these beautiful eyes and said uh Renee I could have married someone else I could have married someone else and been happy I could have married someone else and been in God's will right as far as God is concerned he wants me to marry a godly woman who loves him and he wants me to treat her as I ought as a Christian husband that's God's will it's not a five foot tall strawberry blonded hair girl from Diamond Creek not necessarily we get so fixed on this choose your own adventure novel tightrope walking bullseye kind of notion of God's will that paralyzes us and we don't make any decisions that's that's number one even though we want to please God it paralyzes us number two we want perfect fulfillment this is something that's really um probably peculiar to the last 50 years my generation we have been taught from day one that we can be anything we can do anything uh the world is our oyster and so we start to believe that this life should be perfect we should have perfect fulfillment it should be heaven on earth everything ought to be good we should be able to avoid suffering and if if we've been taught that then that's obviously what
[11:52] God wants for us as well that's what we project onto him we start to think well God's will for me must be prosperity and it must be good things that's not the biblical view either much much less than a string that leads us through life and gives us presence along the way much less than that in fact in opposition to that the bible speaks of our christian walk as one of constant suffering and persecution one of constant challenges and obstacles so in the reading tonight first thessalonians chapter 5 paul was admonishing the weak and the uh let's read it uh first thessalonians 5 uh let's just go to verse 14 he says we urge you beloved uh page 961 we urge you beloved to admonish the idlers encourage the faint-hearted help the weak be patient with all of them and the situation there is that some of them just in a couple of verses before i think it's verse 9 uh some of them didn't want to work with their hands someone didn't want to earn their own living they wanted to rely on non-christians supporting them they just didn't want they were lazy they didn't want to work and so he says admonish those guys tell them to get a job uh others um i think it's chapter 3 verse 3 to 6 says um that some of them were were shirking away from sharing their faith from being public christians because they're afraid of persecution they're afraid of getting locked up afraid of getting killed afraid of getting uh put down for being christians and paul says listen you were destined from this from the time you became a christian if you're a christian you're destined for suffering and pain persecution that's the kind of life we live if you've ever read the pilgrim's progress it's a great book written a few hundred years ago by a guy named bunyan and i think it's the best-selling or at least the most circulated book novel of all time and it speaks of the christian life in beautifully picturesque terms but the point of the book is to show that the christian life though it is on a path it's not on a particular string path that leads you to presence it's on a path to heaven that walks in jesus footsteps through suffering through despair through despond through persecution that's the christian life it's a pilgrimage it's a pilgrimage so we need to understand that get that view forget the view that your life is meant to be perfect forget the view that you're ever going to have perfect fulfillment christian life is a pilgrimage and so we ought to be able to within that context be courageous see if we believe that that our life should be perfect and all the decisions we make should lead to perfection then we won't make any decisions we'll be too scared what if it's the wrong decision what if it leads me to suffering what if i lose money what if i lose job opportunities but if you understand that the christian life is a pilgrimage where all that is expected of you is obedience and love for god and one another you can take risks you can make mistakes you can lose money god's will for you is not to have perfect fulfillment not on this side of heaven it's a pilgrimage uh third reason so we've looked at we want to please god we want perfect fulfillment third we have too many
[15:57] choices and this is a major one for anyone my age and younger or even probably in the last 50 years this has been a major major issue for us we've just got too many choices this is probably the major reason i think that we lack courage in making decisions there's too much to choose from there's a really good book that i haven't got but i've read a little bit of it i think it's um barry schwartz um the paradox of choice i think it's called google search you'll find it um and and he just he's got a whole book on how uh choice proliferation of choice rather than being freedom of choice is actually a prison for us it's bondage it locks us into being fearful about making any decision at all i wanted to test this out this generational thing so i spoke to my nan on thursday she's turning 100 in september and um she's a great christian lady sharp as a tack so i just sat down with her i need to preach this sermon on god's will and we're talking about choice and i said my feeling is that we've got way more choice than you ever had i said for instance uh how did you know um who you're going to marry and she said well there's this young guy he was a christian he had a job got married i said did you really did you stew over the decision did you have to you know did you do interviews um it was a completely foreign concept to her i said what about job what we're going to do as a job how did you know what options did you have she didn't go to university she couldn't she go to school past 16 i think she's never driven a car in her life and her mum was a mum so she was a mum that's what she did 100 years ago 70 years ago you your dad's a baker you'll become a baker you live in a village travel isn't uh common so your options are there then they're narrowed down needs to be a christian they're narrowed down mainly to tradition back in that day you're not going to marry a catholic if you're a protestant uh you're probably not going to marry a methodist if you're an anglican so that you know you've got your five people there and you make your you make your decision who's got a secure job who can put food on the table what have we got man we've got as many uni degrees as you want to do to your 40 50 60 job offers coming from everywhere websites devoted to offering you whatever job you want the ability to chop and change there's no depression forcing us into making money so that we can eat the next day comes to relationships you've got online websites that you can put you in contact with everyone like you've got three billion women that you can marry thereabouts i mean and the choices cripple us have you ever been to coal supermarket of course you have uh coal supermarket right cripples me it cripples me it might not cripple you and here's why because you were once like me and you had the five brands that you got day in day out you knew cereal you knew your you know your your milk you knew what cheese you're going to buy and then what happens is you get married and you marry someone who's really keen to figure out how much of that color is in that product and so suddenly everything's up for grabs and you realize just how much choice there is like a thousand different kinds of pickles it's ridiculous i was trading to a missionary couple recently who came
[19:59] back from a long time overseas and they were just crippled by the supermarket how do you make your choice there's 15 types of cornflakes it's crazy i tell you the best supermarket in the world the man's supermarket is aldi there's like one aisle you can't move anywhere and there's one choice of everything it's awesome anyway what this does to us it was when we have this much choice it does a few things it cripples us because um we're not sure which choice we should make there's so many we're afraid if we have the wrong view of god's will that if we make the wrong choice we'll be out of his will we won't find perfect fulfillment and we won't uh be blessed by him because of that and we also get buyer's remorse once we do make a decision you know buyer's remorse like you don't know if you should have you know the chili um chips or the chicken chips this is my big decision each week and um just get both but if you make a decision as soon as you make the decision you feel remorse what should i have got the chicken i'm not sure would it be that could and this is what happens with the big decisions in our life you take that job oh that was probably a better job you marry that woman oh there's that other it's true we get buyer's remorse the grass is always greener because there's so many paddocks for us to choose from it cripples us it prevents us from taking risks for jesus you know the uh i read this in the book uh just do something the latin word the shulis can mark me on this charlie kate can probably mark me on this uh i think the latin word for decide is desiderate something like that and it means to cut off it means to cut off and that's what we're doing that's why it hurts that's why we're paralyzed that's why we don't make decisions because it means cutting off other options which what which is what makes it so hard we've got too many choices so many of us could benefit from just simplifying our lives honoring our parents honoring our church by saying i'm going to be here 20 years that's who that's what we need in this church people who are around for a lifetime people who are committed last one i will look at um is the fact that we're cowards and this is the big one this is the big one i want to to dwell on for just a minute the fact that we are at heart cowards and i include myself here entirely you notice that a lot of prayers we pray go like this god please make this thing happen so that nobody will get hurt so that everything will be good and so that all my loved ones will be okay that's the kind of prayers we pray we're cowards we're we're we're afraid of pain we're afraid of suffering even if in the end it's going to glorify god more we are afraid to make those decisions we're cowards i want to look at the example of esther we heard uh the book of esther chapter four read for us just before and just give you a little bit of background um esther the reason i want to use esther is that she is a great example of courageous faith in god she's a wonderful woman for you to study uh and the situation is uh that um the babylonians have have come in they've captured israel they've exiled its people and this is a bit further down the track now the babylonians aren't in charge it's the persians who've come into into power and there's some of the the jews have gone back to jerusalem but there are others who are living in persia under the rule of the persians and the king at the time is king xerxes great ruler
[24:01] powerful man and uh he's just getting gotten rid of one of his wives or his wife um she didn't do what he told him to i told her to so she got the boot um that's chapter one and then chapter two he holds kind of a beauty contest to find the woman of his dreams and and esther wins the contest she's beautiful i think the text says she's got a beautiful figure she's very pleasing to the eye and she is a jew a jewish girl she wins the contest she becomes the queen but it's not like she gets to rule on the throne next to him she's still very much subordinate to him to the point as we'll see that he can have her killed just for walking in the room without getting prior consent so what happens and the real crutch of the story is that haman is the king xerxes chief advisor he's his right-hand man and for whatever reason he doesn't like the jews there's been a few of these guys over the years and uh he wants to kill them all so he gets into xerxes ear and he kind of tricks him into agreeing to kill all the jews so now you've got these jewish people of exile that live they've been exiled they're living in persia and elsewhere and the the and and and and uh haman has just tricked xerxes into killing them all now there's a man named mordecai he's a jew also and he's actually like the cousin and the the guardian of esther and he overhears haman's plan to destroy the jews so he sends word to esther and says listen you're the queen you're also a jew you need to fix this situation you need to go to the king and get him to change his mind otherwise we're we're finished and her word back to him is no that's crazy that's crazy talk if i just go in there and approach the king he'll kill me unless he points the golden scepter at me i'm dead there's no way not doing it then mordecai comes back to her let's read his words he says to her this is verse 13 mordecai told them that the queen's emissaries to reply to esther do not think that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other jews for if you keep silence at such a time as this relief and deliverance will rise for the jews from another quarter but you and your father's family will perish who knows perhaps you have come to the royal dignity for such a time as this what would you do just imagining for a moment that you're a young beautiful woman and uh you're the new queen of queen of persia the king has been deceived you and all your people are going to be killed you got this decision in front of you you can take the risk you can risk your own life for the sake of the people of god esther makes a very courageous move listen to this verse 15 esther said in reply to mordecai go gather all the jews to be found in susa and hold a fast on my behalf and neither eat nor drink for three days night and day i and my maids will also fast as you do after that i will go to the king though it is against the law and if i perish i perish she didn't sit on her hands and wait she didn't ask god to lead her in one direction or the other she didn't ask for a divine word of revelation or
[28:02] a dream or an angel or anything like that she did hold a fast we're going to talk about fasting next week she held a fast as a as a way to cry out to god for help that that they would be delivered from this situation some other some other way but when that deliverance didn't come she said i'm going to do it and if i perish i perish that's courage right there that's trust in god's will of decree right there if i perish i perish she knew what the right thing to do was the right thing to do was to save her people she knew that it was risky but she put her head down she did it she made the decision and in the end haman is hanged and the jewish people are saved and god honors her courage but god would still be god if she had been killed and god would still be glorious and loving if she had been killed and she knew it she had courage to make the decision that book that i've been spruiking is called just do something and it's very appropriate title just do something guys make a decision have courage trust in god's will of decree be obedient to his will of desire and then just do something think up until our time christianity has been characterized by courage a lot more than it is right now men and women who have taken courageous stands think of william wilberforce and the abolition of slavery he just got hammered for doing that but he kept going he was convicted all throughout christian history there have been great men and women who you would do well to read about and imitate they knew what was right they trusted in god and then they made the decision esther was one of those people and so should we be i pray that we would be i just want to do a couple of minutes on full-time gospel proclamation and we'll take q a okay so if you're new if you're visiting first time here a couple of weeks ago andrew reed our senior pastor preached a great sermon and finished the sermon by saying that every one of us should consider full-time gospel proclamation right as a lifelong commitment to ministry and in the community groups that we had in the week after a lot of us were really wrestling with this what does that mean for us what does that mean for our current situation and so there are a lot of questions that came up about that and i just want to say as a connection to this call to be courageous i think a lot of our discernment process is made a whole lot more clearer and a whole lot more easier when we start thinking about what our priorities are right this is why big companies and churches have mission statements and and vision documents it gives you a sense of priority we're going to be a church that teaches the bible and does evangelism and everything else is optional right it's the same in your own life you need priorities which will clear and give clarity to the path for your life so here's what i want to say if we rightly understand god's word and we rightly understand the situation that everyone is in on earth that all of us are by nature and by choice sinners that all of us are destined to spend eternity
[32:02] in hell under god's judgment but for the grace of jesus but from embracing the gospel then the number one priority that we ought to have is to tell people about jesus i know it's a like a youth group thing but it means a lot to me someone once said to me you know if you discovered the cure for cancer would you not tell everyone about it and it's exactly the same in the gospel only the stakes are so much higher it's heaven and hell and if we have the gospel we've got to tell people about it therefore that must be your number one priority if you're a bible believing christian so then if that's your number one priority that should really shape the way that you live and what you do that should really shape the decisions you make suddenly life is not all about making the most amount of money it's about the gospel suddenly life's not about climbing the corporate ladder it's about the gospel now what does that mean practically i'll just give my 20 cents and if i'm wrong andrew can fire me and then correct me this is what i think i think when we hear the words full-time gospel proclamation we think about this running a church preaching at the front of a church that kind of thing i don't think that's what andrew meant and i don't think that's that's what god wills for everybody i think the office of pastor is actually something that not everyone should get into at all start reading first timothy chapter 2 and 3 and you see the kind of requirements there are to be a pastor of a church that knocks out a lot of people and it should not everyone should be a pastor but everyone should be involved in full-time gospel proclamation i'll tell you what i mean by that some of you should be missionaries some of you should just write your life off and go to sierra leone or something and get killed for being a missionary that'd be a good thing to do that'd be in god's will for sure some of you have really good business minds and you're just great at playing the market and you can make a lot of money your life should be given to giving away i don't know how much you need to live 60 grand you'd be one of the richest men in the world all right everything over that you give away to gospel ministry that'd be a lifetime committed to gospel proclamation you need to work it out for yourself but things would become a whole lot clearer for you if you had that as your number one goal people hearing about jesus unsaved unreached people hearing about jesus the problem is that we hear something like that and we want the string that leads us to the finish line and god's not going to give that to you you need to figure that out for yourself what does it look like to be obedient and have that as your number one priority i think that's all i'm going to say we'll take some q a and last week we had a lot of big difficult theological questions this week's a little more light on but i do want to hear your questions and if you've got a question and you're not prepared to say it out loud please see me or andrew or someone else afterwards or shoot me an email that's cool too but if you've got something that's going to benefit other people far away not promising i can answer it but we'll give a shot yeah a couple
[36:14] of things they might just be being soft because again generationally we're pretty soft we're very much interested in self-preservation as we've seen so god don't let anything happen to me that kind of prayer is the kind of prayer we pray and i think it's really good to be aware of burnout and that's a real possibility that that person could be burning out and we want to avoid that but it could also be that we just talk about burnout so much that we start diagnosing ourselves too much and really we just need to grow up a bit and harden up a bit and do more like 100 years ago people just seem to be doing more than we are people charles spurgeon great preacher he died at 50 something he had some some you know medical problems but the guy just worked for the gospel flip side of that is though that there can be a tendency for us to see to see those superstar whatever ministers and want to replicate them when we haven't got the experience we haven't got the gifts and so we burn ourselves out it might just be that that person is doing the wrong thing not exercising their gifts in the right way another thing too with burnout burnout is some guy a guy once said to me you need to determine the size of your plate and then fill it everyone's got a plate some of us have a big dinner platter some people have a tea saucer right and that could be for a bunch of reasons maybe you've got a spouse who's unwell kids are unwell that kind of thing shrinks your plate but as long as you fill your plate you'll be honouring
[38:00] God determine the size of your plate and then fill it with ministry stuff determine your gifts get counsel speak to pastors and then fill your plate that's what I'd say oh I forgot to repeat the question again thanks sweetie I was right to marry you alright yeah yeah absolutely yeah I've probably overplayed the case here next week we're going to talk how I say this next week we're going to talk about that let's make a note no we're definitely going to talk about that I'm going to talk about scripture I'm going to talk about counsel prayer fasting and then supernatural means God can speak to you in a dream God can speak to you in a vision he can speak to you audibly he can write something on the wall like
[39:07] God absolutely God can do those things and we need to be obedient where it doesn't contradict scripture and we're going to look at that next week we're going to look at discernment and God's major means of telling us what to do which is in his word but yeah I think I want to overplay the case because our tendency is to sit on hands yeah yep okay okay yeah it yeah so so Thank you.
[40:24] We'll actually repeat that question. Just the fact that some of us struggle more with making decisions. Maybe we're more laid back. Does God offer more guidance to us than, say, someone who's a bit more entrepreneurial, a bit more go-getter?
[40:41] Dude, I don't know, to be honest. I think God certainly can. Certainly see your situation or your personality or the things you're struggling with and give you more of a nudge.
[40:52] I don't think God ever promises to do that. And sometimes I think, along with the burnout excuse, we sometimes have the personality excuse.
[41:04] You know, I'm just not that kind of guy. I'm just not that entrepreneurial type. But I think God's expectation of us to live bold, courageous lives for him is for all of us.
[41:18] And to have the priority of his gospel and that ministry and then to act on it, that's what he expects of us. And I'm the same, man. I'm pretty laid back.
[41:28] And quite often I don't have an opinion. But we can't let that give us an excuse to sit on our hands and do nothing or to just be so laid back that we never do anything. Because the stakes are way higher than that.
[41:40] It's heaven and hell. It's that kind of thing. So I think we've got time for a couple more. Yeah, Jenny. Yeah. So this person agrees that the gospel should be first, but they just don't have that desire within them to do that.
[42:06] Yeah. Yeah, wow. That's a great question. Maybe I can speak autobiographically. Because for me, in the last 10 years or 10 years ago, that certainly wasn't my desire to be involved in full-time ministry.
[42:27] And I really don't think that the gospel itself was my desire. I can say what helped me to be standing here and not watching TV at home.
[42:37] And that was... I really had a strong desire to... Just to get a job and get working and follow my kind of young Australian male dreams of collecting toys and stuff like that.
[42:55] Big toys. And so... Really, I feel that what happened with me was that I got around a few guys that I respected highly and they spoke into my life in a really significant way.
[43:17] And that changed my thinking about that. So, for me, I've got to be honest, while I could see the reality of the situation from the scriptures was that people need to know Jesus and that's our biggest priority, it wasn't the Bible itself that convinced me to get involved in full-time ministry.
[43:33] It was the council of biblically informed older guys. So, I would say if you know it's the highest priority and you're just struggling to feel it, absolutely read the word.
[43:49] Absolutely pray and ask for a heart that would be in tune with God's priorities. But I would also say get a couple of coaches, just life coaches.
[44:00] So, if you're youth, you can go to your youth leaders. If you're a young adult, you can go to your community group leaders. If you're older, there are older people around. They don't always have to be older, but people who you respect, who are involved in ministry, who can speak from experience, and who can coach you along the way.
[44:20] For me, that's how it worked. For others I know, they picked up the Bible and that was it. They were on board. For others like me, it takes a little more convincing and it was those guys that helped me in that way. Yeah.
[44:32] I'm taking one. Right, no worries. We'll just finish.
[44:42] I know we've gone on for a little while. So, I want to finish, but I do want to finish by praying for us. So, let's bow our heads. Father, if the world is going to be reached for you, if the gospel is going to go out to the unreached peoples of the world, if the gospel is going to go out to our neighbours and our classmates and our workmates, Lord, if we're going to go out to our hearts and our hearts and our hearts and our hearts and our hearts, if we're going to go into full-time ministry, then we're going to need courage and conviction.
[45:32] Lord, if we're going to pick our way through the thousands upon thousands of choices that are before us, we're going to need courage. So, Lord, I pray that you would give it to us in abundance. For the faint-hearted and the weak, I pray that you would make them bold as a lion.
[45:49] For those of us who are impetuous and self-determining, I pray that you'd give us humility. But to all of us, Lord, give us a great sense of purpose and priority for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
[46:06] I pray this in your name. Amen.