The world's thing of success is popularity and position, but Jesus died as a criminal, so I don't think He was a success there either. The world's concept of success is, you know, people are following you, responding to you, you've got lots of friends, but Jesus' friends all abandoned Him, so it doesn't look like He was much success does it? You notice the world's concepts of what success looks like, are absolutely contrary to God's idea of success, and only God can speak into your heart, and help you discover what success will be for your life. Now motivational teaching will encourage you, and you can read - I've read lots of books. I've got a whole shelf there of books of motivational speakers and motivational teachers of all kinds, and they're all very similar, and they all encourage goal setting, dreaming. They all encourage a whole range of things which are incredibly effective and practical and I can tell you now, if you want to make some movement in life you do want to get a hold of some of those things and get to start to practice the principles. They work.
Here's the problem. You'll notice in all of them, they have one thing in common, apart from how to succeed, and how to set goals, how to manage your time, all that kind of thing. This is what they have in common: it's all about me. There's no cross, there's no Christ, there's no eternal kingdom. It's about me, doing what I want to do with my life, and the Bible says, notice we read that verse in Ephesians 2, that we once walked in that path before we came to Christ, fulfilling the desires of heart, being under the prince of the power of the air. Now we're under the influence of the spirit of God, we go through a transition process of sifting our desires, sorting out our goals, sorting out our motives and priorities. Why? Because now we're citizens of another kingdom, there's another value system, there's another way of doing things, there's another set of priorities, there's an eternal reward. Everything begins to shift, and there is a process in doing that. There's a journey to maturity in doing that, and part of that is discovering the desires of your heart, setting goals, making plans - as we'll see in just a moment. Getting the idea? Alright, you've gone all quiet now about it so [laughs] I must be hitting it very clearly.
I had some dreams inside. You know what I wanted to do, because I was really keen to be a teacher, trained to be a teacher, and did the kind of training that meant I could get a job anywhere I wanted. What I wanted to do was get a job in Warkworth, which I love the boats up there. I love the boating up there, I love the harbour up there, I love the whole area up there. I love the climate up there. I just wanted to live there, get a boat, fish and enjoy my life.
So left to myself, my desire, I would be up there, and I'd be still teaching in one of the schools up there, and I would have a boat, and we'd be out there - and I'd be wasting my precious life. See, but God had something different, and so when the will of God and desires of God came into my world, I had to start to realign my desires and my will, and to not let go what I liked, but to actually yield to God's bigger plan, and within that I'd be able to find the things that God called me to do. Getting the idea? Okay then.
So how are some of the ways you can find the will of God? I'll give you a few. We all want to know the will of God, and it's so hard to find sometimes, and so I'll give you some practical keys. They're pretty simple keys, and it's not all of them. One or two of them will be enough to do it, but you know there are a lot of things that the Bible doesn't tell us, like it doesn't tell you what job to get. It doesn't tell you where to live, it doesn't tell you who to marry. It's got lots of things it doesn't tell you, and those are things you really want to know, and it's - you go and open your Bible, you're looking everywhere and what job, you know? It doesn't say anything about computers in here you know? I can't find an answer to the things I really need, and so there's a confusion lots of people have, over just discovering the will of God. It's not that easy at times, and that's partly because God doesn't just tell you everything. When people say God told me this, God told me that, God told me this, see that's just nonsense. That's immaturity. You're acting like a little baby, who's been told what to do. You go do shopping, make a shopping list. You figure out what you need. You don't wait for God to tell you what to buy, just go figure it out for yourself.