Don't Shortcut God's Will, Walk in It | Genesis 27:1-46 | Brian Ng | June 21, 2026

Series in the book of Genesis

Scripture passage: Genesis 27:1-46 (ESV)

Image: Genesis Tree of Life. Copyright The Khronos Group Inc. Used by permission. Free of charge. 

Ethnos Church of Houston, Texas

Welcome to Ethnos Church: A Church for the Nations

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Good morning. Our scripture reading today comes from the book of Genesis 27, verses 1 through 29. If you're using one of the black Bibles available to you from our church that we have over there on the table, you can turn to page 20. Genesis 7, one through 29, please stand for this reading of God's holy and inerrant word. When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau, his older son, and said to him, My son, and he answered, Here I am. He said, Behold, I am old, I do not know the day of my death. Now, then take your weapons, your quiver, and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, and prepare for me delicious food such as I love, and bring it to me, so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die. Now Rebekah, who was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau, so when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, Rebekah said to her son Jacob, I heard your father speak to your brother Esau. Bring me game and prepare for me delicious food, that I may eat it and bless you before the Lord before I die. Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice as I command you. Go to the flock and bring me two good young goats, so that I may prepare from them delicious food for you, your father, such as he loves, and you shall bring it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies. But Jacob said to Rebecca, his mother, Behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. Perhaps my father will feel me, and I I shall seem to be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself and not a blessing. His mother said to him, Let your curse be on me, my son, only obey my voice and go, bring them to me. So he went and he took them and brought them to his mother, and his mother prepared delicious food, such as his father loved. Then Rebekah took the best garment of Esau, her older son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob, her younger son, and the skins of the goats she put on the hands and the smooth part of his neck, and she put the delicious food and bread which she had prepared into the hand of her son Jacob. So he went in to his father and said, My father, and he said, Here I am. Who are you, my son? Jacob said to his father, I am Esau, your firstborn. I have done as you have told me. Now sit up and eat of my game, that your soul may bless me. But Isaac said to his son, How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son? He answered, Because the Lord your God granted me success. Then Isaac said to Jacob, Please come near that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son, Esau, or not. So Jacob went to near to Isaac, his father, who felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy, like his brother Esau's hands. So he blessed him. He said, Are you really my son Esau? He answered, I am. Then he said, Bring it near to me that I may eat of my son's game and bless you. So he brought it near to him, and he ate, and he brought him wine, and he drank. Then his father Isaac said to him, Come near and kiss me, my son. So he came near and kissed him. And Isaac smell smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said, See the smell of my son is the smell of the field that the Lord has blessed. May God give you the of the dew of the heaven and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine. Let people serve you and nations bow down to you, be Lord over your brothers, and may your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone who blesses you. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Well, I want to introduce our guest preacher this morning. He's a good friend of mine named Brian. Uh Brian serves, uh first of all, Brian is here with his wife Joni and their two sons, Ezra and Astra, so they're back there. Make sure to make sure to welcome them when you see them. Uh Brian is a serves as an elder at our sending church, using Chinese church. They planted this church, and so he serves as an elder there currently. And he's he worked as an engineer, but over the past several years, he's been pursuing a path towards becoming a pastor. And so uh pretty soon he's gonna be transitioning out of his engineering work into a full-time uh seminarian role at the Dallas Theological Seminary, uh, which he's already a student of, but he's gonna become full-time. But he's also gonna be joining uh the staff of Houston Chinese Church as a ministry resident. So it's exciting times for Ryan, and we're glad he's here. Give him a warm ethnos welcome.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

All right, good morning, ethnos church, and happy Father's Day to all the dads. Uh, so I was actually sharing with Jonathan the other day that I thought it was both um hilarious and ironic that he gave me Genesis 27 to preach on Father's Day of all days. Uh, because if you think about the story, it's essentially about a dad who shows favoritism towards one of his sons. And so when I first read this passage, I was trying to think like how can I make or how can I really go with this theme of Father's Day? And so sadly, I did come up with some cheesy cliches that are somewhat truthful about dads and guys in general, but I want to start with that to share with you guys with some of the things that I came up with. And so one of it, uh, you guys are probably pretty familiar with, which is the way to a man's heart is through or his stomach, right? And I wanted to try to make that into an imperative, right? And so I I thought like maybe I could entitle it, guys, stop thinking with your stomach. Or uh I actually got another idea from a popular children's book. So if you're familiar with this book, it's entitled If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, which if you're not if you're familiar with the book, it's essentially a mouse that requests for a cookie, but that request then leads to more and increasing demands. And so I was gonna borrow from it and maybe try to say, if you give a man his meat. But don't worry, guys, I did not do any of that. I did not go with any of those ideas. I did do my exegetical due diligence and I did allow God's word to speak for itself. All right, so instead, we're actually gonna be talking about God's will today. So as we learn from the story of Jacob and his family, it will actually help us reflect on how do we respond and how do we re approach God's will. That when we go about our daily lives, are we living, are we living in such a way that testifies my will be done, or are we living in such a way that says God's will be done? Now, would you join me in prayer as I pray over our time today? Father God, we thank you for the fatherly love that you show us every single moment of our day in our lives. Father, forgive us for the times that we overlook it. Forgive us for the times that we try to take things into our own hands. Lord, help us to rely on you, to rely on you for the big things and the small things. And God, we just pray for this time that as we dig into your word right now, help us to have attentive hearts and minds. I pray for those who who maybe came in here with heavy hearts. Oh God, I pray that we will learn that even right now that we can lay that at your feet, knowing that you know us better than we know ourselves. That God, that even before we bring our prayers to you, you already know what we're gonna say, but yet you beckon us to come to you. And so that's what we're doing right now. And Ethnos Church, I want to ask you if you could pray for yourselves for God to speak to you at this moment. And if you could also pray for me, for God to use me to speak to you. Father God, we surrender this time into your hands. And that is to transform hearts, transform lives. And we give this into your hands, Lord Jesus. We pray all of this in your name. Amen. Now, during my last year of Spanish in high school, uh, we had this final assignment, which was to really give a presentation fully in Spanish, of course, but we were only allowed one note card that where we could use to actually just jot down notes to guide us in our presentation, right? So not full-blown transcripts, just notes. Now, as a senior in high school at that time, I felt quite unprepared going into this. And I was also afraid of my Spanish teacher, Mrs. Hill, because she was actually the strictest teacher I knew back then. And you know, she would be the one of those teachers that honestly, if she you would be walking by her room, and if you were chewing gum, for example, she would not even need to step out of the room, she will actually sense it and then call you into her room and then give you a pink pink slip. So she is one of those teachers, but again, I was also actually afraid of letting her down because I also got to know her over the over the years. Now, instead of me putting my time and effort to actually preparing, right, preparing for my presentation, I actually spent the time concocting a plan. Now, before I tell you what my plan was, I'm gonna preface this, and let me preface this to the kids specifically. All right, this is an example of what not to do, okay? So please do not take from this message that cheating is okay, because cheating is not okay. All right. So now, since we got it out of the way, here was my plan. Okay? I created two cards, two note cards actually. So the first card had the brief notes. The second card actually had a full transcript of what I was gonna say in Spanish. And I had to only have it on one side, so I had to write it really, really tiny on the note cards. Now, the second part of that plan was that I was actually gonna be wearing a sweater with a hoodie, right? Where it actually had like, you know, those kangaroo pouch or like the pockets in the middle where you can put your hands in. And so what I did during this the presentation is this is that I was using the second card that had the full transcript. And so I actually presented by just reading the entire card. And so once I got done and I was walking towards Miss Hill's desk, I did the whole switcheroo thing where I put my hands into my pockets, I switched the second card with the first card, which had the brief notes, and it was the one that I actually handed over to Miss Hill. And I remember when uh she looked at my card, and then she looks up at me and she says something along the lines of, you know what, Brian, good job. But I see your notes, but it seemed like when you were up there, you're kind of just reading off from your note card. And I think what I did at that time was that I just shrugged, I didn't say a word, I just sat down, and then later on found out that I got a passing grade for the assignment and also for the class. See, I fully knew the express and the revealed will of Miss Hill, what it was for us, for us as her students, in order to do well and to pass her class. But instead of following it, what did I do? I tried taking things into my own hands. I essentially twisted the rules in order to deceive my teachers and my fellow classmates, in order to get what I want, which was a passing grade. Now that deceptive tendency shows up even in our in our text today. See, while Jacob is known as the deceiver, we see this tendency and this scheming attitude actually running that runs in his family, in his father, Isaac, in his mother Rebekah, and also in his brother Esau. And this act of deception actually reveals a deeper rooted issue, which is a lack of trust in God's will. See, back in Genesis 25, God actually reveals it and tells Rebekah specifically that the older will serve the younger, that Esau will serve Jacob, which was countercultural during that time. But instead of trusting God to fulfill what he promised in his way and in his timing, each member of the family of Jacob decides then to take things into their own hands in order to get what they wanted. What they were essentially saying is that no God, not your will, but my will be done. So when you think about the decisions, the choices that you and I make on a daily basis with our lives, with our work, with our bodies, with our schools, with how we handle our finances, with how we approach our relationships, do we try to bend God's will to match our own, or do we strive to shape our will to align with God's will? So the takeaway that I hope that you guys get to bring with you today is this don't shortcut God's will, walk in it. Don't shortcut God's will, walk in it. And the reasons that we should not shortcut God's will, but instead to walk in it, we're gonna actually break that down as we go through Genesis 27. And so I have three main reasons and three main points that we're gonna go through today. The first is this our propensity is to break away from God's will. The second one is that breaking away from God's will leads to deeper brokenness. And the third and last point is that God's will prevails despite our brokenness. Alright, so let's tackle the first point, which is our propensity is to break away from God's will. Now, when we talk about God's will, we need to keep in mind that there's an aspect of God's will that is revealed, and there's also an aspect of God's will that is concealed and hidden. God's revealed will can be seen in Scripture to guide us to live in such a way that reflects Christ and brings him glory. So, for example, in 1 Timothy 2, 4, we know that God's desire is for all people to come to know him as Lord and Savior. Or 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 16, that we know that God calls us, as people who've been redeemed by Christ, to be to have a joyful, a prayerful, and a thankful heart. Or 1 Peter 4, verse 19, we know that believers are not immune to the suffering that comes with this life. And that true perseverance comes through reliance on God. So we see that God's revealed will can be seen in Scripture. As for God's hidden will, that can be perceived by what he causes to happen and also what he allows to happen according to his sovereign purposes. What he causes to happen, for example, creation, right? Or what he allows to happen, for example, allowing Joseph to be sold by his brothers into slavery. Or let me use my first example. Then my Spanish teacher's revealed will was for us to present in Spanish fully and to use note cards with very brief notes. Her hidden will, in a sense, will be her already knowing which students were going to fail and been those who were actually going to do well in her class. Another way to think about her hidden will is this is that her hidden will could be maybe secretly planning some sort of disruption during the time of the presentation in order to actually test her students to see if her students are thrown off, or could we maintain our composure despite the disruption? See, in Genesis 25, as we already mentioned, God revealed his will to Rebecca, which is for the older son to serve the younger son. But his hidden will was how he was actually gonna bring that about, especially in a culture where it's customary for the firstborn to have the rights to double the portion of the inheritance. But see, knowing and knowing about God's will is one thing. It's another thing when it comes to following God's will. See, we live in an age when information is has become so accessible, so available and accessible to us. So we like to know things, and we get frustrated when we don't. And we even when we know things, we want to know more. But the true value actually lies not in what we know or don't know, but actually in what we choose to do with it. And since we live in a broken world that has been tainted and corrupted by sin, it creates a perpetual internal tug of war where we constantly at torn between pursuing God's will on one hand or pursuing our will or our desire, even when it contradicts God's plans and God's will. And our passage today reveals and shows several ways that we are prone to break away from God's will. So let me highlight five ways specifically. Okay? So one of the first ways that you can see from our passage is that we pridefully think we know better than God. We pridefully think we know better than God. See, it's unclear in scripture as to whether or not Isaac, the father, was aware of God's promise that the older son will serve the younger son, or if Rebecca even told him about it. But regardless of whether he knew about it or not, there was actually something particularly odd and suspicious about the way that Isaac was going about trying to bless Esau. See, customarily, when the father pronounces a blessing, he will actually gather all of his children and not just one. But as we see in the first four verses, Isaac calls only on Esau and he leaves Jacob out of the conversation. Now, if you were to assume that Isaac was well aware of God's promises, then this can be seen as an attempt, as an effort by Isaac to thwart God's will by trying to bless Esau instead of Jacob. Similarly, if you think about even the Apostle Peter, that when at right after he correctly identifies Christ as the Messiah, he allowed his arrogance to get in the way, and he foolishly rebukes Jesus, telling Jesus essentially, Whoa, Jesus, you don't know what you're talking about. Like stop all these talk about you know sacrifice and death and the cross, like that, just just stop. Do you remember what Jesus said to him? Jesus turns, he rebukes Peter, and he says, Get behind me, Satan. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. Closely tied with our pride is our selfishness. That we selfishly want things to happen in our way, and we try then twisting God's hands to do what we want instead. And we can see this in the way that I Isaac selfishly wanted his favorite son, Esau, to get blessed, and Rebekah wanted her favorite son, Jacob, to get blessed. And this favoritism we see actually starting all the way back in Genesis 25, and becomes more evident in our passage. And in Genesis 27, there can be seen that instead of using, I'm going to bring us back to grammar school a little bit, instead of using the third person possessive pronoun, right, instead of saying their child or their son, the author actually uses the second person possessive pronoun, connecting Isaac to Esau by saying his older son, his son Esau. And also connecting Rebekah to Jacob by saying her son Jacob. See, in our selfishness, we tend to prioritize self-interest and self-preservation. So much so that we start not thinking about how it may affect others or even what God is actually calling us to. No, instead, we try to force our plans and then ask God to bless it. We try to force our plans and ask God to bless it. And now, in light of Father's Day, you think about this, kids are experts at this, right? The kids are actually experts at trying to twist the arms of their parents to get their way. Right? How many of us have heard the phrase or the uh remark or maybe even the question? Five more minutes, right? With your puppy dog eyes? Or all my friends are doing it, or maybe they become unusually polite and helpful at home just before they make that big request for something they want. See, I remember when I was actually uh really, really young, my parents would bring my sister and I going out shopping in the mall and the stores, and usually before we go in or as we're going in, they would usually tell me, they was like, you know what, like you already have a lot of toys. And so we're not going in to buy toys. And at this young age, I sadly learned to shut my parents out. Uh, and I pretended during those years to actually not listen or not hear my parents, as if like what they just said flew over my head. And so as we would walk through the store, I would actually very discreetly, uh, if I saw a toy that I wanted, I would actually grab it and put it into the shopping cart, or grab it and hide it right behind me. And I would wait, I would wait till we got far enough from the toy section where we were about to check out, and then be like, whoa, where did this come from? Oh, we're so far from the toy section, I think it's it's it's too far to go back. Wouldn't we wouldn't you like to buy it for your darling son? Well, they of course said no. Um which is ironic because when my oldest son would say, we maybe mentioned that he liked something in passing, you know, being their grandson, my parents would move heaven and earth to get it. But they didn't do it for me, so which is okay. But now, getting back to the main point that we were saying is that instead of asking God to align us to his will and to his purposes, we selfishly try to change God's mind and to strong arm him to do our will. So not only can we be prideful and selfish, we can also be impatient, that we want things to happen based on our timing, based on our schedule. So if you look at verses five all the way to verse 13, even though Rebecca was told directly by God of his promises, of her promise, she allowed her fear, thinking that things are not actually going according to God's plan. And so she tries to help God out by succumbing to acts of deception of her own husband in order to then help shortcut her favorite son Jacob to receive the blessing instead of waiting on God to fulfill his promise and his timing. See, sometimes we interpret God's delay and even God's silence as rejection when maybe it's actually a time of refinement for our lives. So not only can we be prideful and selfish and impatient, there can also be a tendency or a desire in us to justify ourselves, to justify selective obedience, and to even rationalize committing certain sins. So we tell ourselves the lie that the end justifies the mean. So you can look at even Rebecca that may she may have genuinely wanted God's promise to come true, but she acted deceitfully in order to gain it. Or we tell another lie to ourselves, that the situation we're in justifies the means. See, Isaac may have been old, but his age and his health condition was not an excuse to go against what God has specifically expressed as his will. And you think even about our lives, that we tend to find excuses for our sins. That when we are hungry, or when we are angry, or when we are alone, or when we are tired, we are prone in those moments to give in to temptation to sin and to justify committing certain sins to maybe help us feel better. So we can be prideful, we can be selfish, we can be impatient, we can have a desire to justify ourselves, and we can also have a tendency to be control freaks. Where we want to micromanage and control every step and every part of our future. So when you look at verses 14 to 17, you see that Rebecca, the mom, painstakingly takes every precaution she could ever think. She did not spare any expense in order to secure the blessing for Jacob. Right? She uses the best garments of Esau. See that in verse 15. In verse 16, she uses every part of the goat, not only for food, but also for clothes, to cover Jacob's remaining exposed areas of his body. And in verse 17, she showcases her resourcefulness, her expertise as a cook by not only cooking food so delicious, but she dressed and she seasoned that domestic goat so much so that it tasted like hunted meat from the wild. And in verse 25, she adds a bonus appetizer of bake, freshly baked bread, and even drink and you know, and even wine to drink, so that he can wash it all down. See, the more we try to control, the less we trust God with. The more we try to control, the less we trust God with. And so our propensity to break from God's will comes from our pridefulness, our selfishness, our impatience, our need to justify ourselves, and even our desire for control. So if you think about it, in the moments when we choose to carry out our own will, we tend to give very little thought to the aftereffects, to the consequences of trying to break away from God's will. And that consequence is further and deeper brokenness, which leads us then to our second point: that breaking away from God's will leads to deeper brokenness. As we read through chapter 27, that brokenness can manifest in different patterns and also different cycles. One cycle could be a cycle of selfishness that prevents us from loving others selflessly as God calls us to. You see that in the parents, right? In in Isaac and Rebecca, where they show favoritism towards one of their sons. You see it between the brothers, where there's this twin rivalry going on throughout their lives. See, when we are driven by self-interests, we start to view one another not as human beings created in God's image. Instead, we see each other as rivals to be defeated or instruments to be used and exploited for our own gain. That approach, that type of attitude breaks relationships. It breaks trust. When Jacob addresses Isaac with the words, my father, in verse 18, ironically, those were the same words that Isaac used to call his father Abraham on Mount Moriah in Genesis 22. See, while Isaac uttered those words as a son trusting his father, Jacob uttered those words as a son betraying his father's trust. Another cycle that we can fall into is a cycle of guilt, shame, and fear that prevents us then from living in the freedom that God desires for us. And we can see this in Jacob's life, that he hides and he also runs. See, maybe Jacob wished he was like his older brother Esau, that where he had the approval and the acceptance of his father. So Jacob tries to then dress himself up as someone else to hide who he truly was. And then when you look at verses 18 to 25, between the interactions of Jacob and Isaac, that as Jacob talks with Isaac with the intention to deceive him, Jacob realizes something. He realizes that his voice was giving him away, since he wasn't able to mask it or hide his voice. So if you look at verse 19, Jacob says to his father, he lies to his father, he says, I am Esau, your firstborn. I have done as he told me. Now sit up and eat off my game, that your soul may bless me. Then the next verse in verse 20, right, he gives the reason of him being so quick as because the Lord your God granted me success. But then note in verse 24, all he says is two words in English, I am, which actually in Hebrew is just one word. See, Jacob's responses get shorter and shorter and shorter as the conversation goes on, because he fears being found out. He fears being discovered of his deceitfulness. So not only does Jacob hide, he also runs. After Esau finds out that Jacob has deceptively stolen his blessing, it says in verse 41 that Esau hated Jacob and even plots to kill him. So what does Jacob do in response to the threat against his life by his older, big, hairy, hunting wilderness brother? Jacob runs. And even though he got the blessing that he wanted, Jacob was not free to enjoy it. And the sadder part is this that Rachel, his mom, loses her favorite child because she now needs to send him away in order to save his life. And that actually will be the very last time that Rachel sees Jacob. Because the next time Jacob sees his mother is at her funeral. See, Jacob's guilt, his shame, his fear cause him to hide and to run from being who God created and called him to be. Another cycle is this a cycle of sin dulls our senses to God's voice. A cycle of sin dulls our senses to God's voice. Did you notice as you read from Genesis 25 to 27, that in Genesis 27, God speaking is noticeably absent. When you look at Genesis 25, God speaks to Rebecca and he answers her prayer. Genesis 26, God speaks to Isaac and blesses him. And then you get to Genesis 27, God does not even show up, nor does he speak. It's meant to highlight that everyone in the family was out for themselves. And Isaac's physical blindness also is an allude, it also alludes to his spiritual blindness. Not only was he blind to his wife's deception and his younger son's deception, he even turns a blind eye to his older son's sins. Even so, Isaac tries to use all of his senses, plus his common sense, to ensure that it was Esau, his favorite son, that he blesses, even though it was against God's promise. He uses his sense of sight, even though he was blind as a bat. He uses his sense of hearing, where he recognizes Jacob's voice. He uses a sense of touch where he's familiar with Esau's hairiness. He uses his sense of taste where he's able to enjoy good food, but again, thinks too much with his stomach. And he uses his sense of smell because he's a fan of the smell of being out in the wilderness. And he shows that he still has common sense, that his mind is still sharp, because he suspects that something was up, yet he is still deceived. But when Isaac eventually realizes that he has blessed the wrong son in his mind, you see what happens in verse 33. Then Isaac trembled very violently and said, Who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me? And I ate it all before you came, and I have blessed it. Yes, and he shall be blessed. Church, I don't want you to miss this. The fact that he ends this verse in verse 33 by saying, Yes, and he shall be blessed. It shows this that the realization that Isaac had about being deceived was followed by and really pales in comparison to the epiphany that he had. Then not only was he foolish for trying to go against God's will, but that God's will prevails. God's will prevails that the older shall serve the younger. And that leads then into our third and final point. That God's will prevails despite our brokenness. If we are truly so tainted and corrupted by sin, and so much of it in us fights again against God's will, how then can we truly align and really realign our will to follow God's will? We know that there are aspects of God's will that we can comprehend, and there are also aspects of God's will that we can't comprehend, which is why it ultimately comes down to faith. Do we trust in and can we surrender to God even when we don't comprehend everything? So you remember my the main point that I want you guys to take home with you is this don't shortcut God's will, walk in it. And now I'm gonna expand it based on what we just talked about. So don't shortcut God's will, but walk in it by trusting that God's sovereignty overrides our sins and our failures, God's grace outweighs our guilt, our shame, and our fear, and that God's faithfulness reorients our identity and our perspective. God's sovereignty overrides our sins and our failures. When we ourselves or other people around us, or maybe the situation we're in that we find ourselves in seem to be resisting or defying God's will, keep this in mind. No one can mess up, nor can anyone sidetrack God's will. It's both a warning and a hope for us. Think about Joseph. When he finally meets his brothers later in life, he tells them that what you meant for evil, God meant for good. Or think about Jesus being persecuted by the Pharisees, that his life, his death, and his resurrection is what provides us today the hope for eternal life. Think about Moses and Pharaoh. That Pharaoh refuses to let God's people go. And yet Moses lives out and is obedient to God's will, and we see that God eventually frees his people. Or think of Jonah, right? That God calls him to go to Nineveh. What does he do? He goes the very opposite direction, and yet God miraculously calls him back. Kicking and screaming, but still. See, Jacob still receives the blessing that he does not deserve because he went about it in a deceptive and conniving way. But knowing this is not a license for us to continue falling into sin. But rather, it is a reason for us to fall on our knees and surrender to God, who is sovereign over all things. Amen. So God's sovereignty overrides our sins and our failures. God's grace outweighs our guilt, shame, and fear. See, sometimes we think that our sins and our mistakes have disqualified us from God's will. And so we allow ourselves to wallow in the guilt and the shame for far too long to the point that it feels like we're in prison. Church, let us remind ourselves this that God, Jesus paid for our past, our present, our future sins. Nothing surprises him. None of us can ever fall outside of God's will. Think about Peter, the apostle Peter, who messed up big, right? But yet God uses him mightily for his kingdom. And then there's those of us too who may have a fear, a fear of making the wrong decisions that could potentially go against or mess up or ruin God's plan. So then we get paralyzed with indecision, so much so that we don't even take a step. My encouragement is this in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 9 My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Church, keep this in mind. God has already factored yours and my mistakes and our weaknesses into his plan. When we entrust God with our plans and with our decisions, his grace is sufficient. Where God's ability to guide and to direct our path surpasses and is way greater than our ability to mess it up. So God's sovereignty overrides our sins and our failures. God's grace outweighs our guilt, our shame, and our fear. And finally, God's faithfulness reorients our identity and our perspective. Philippians 1 6 says this, and I am sure of this that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Church, he is able and he will accomplish his purposes. Think about the life of Jacob. Fast forward that Jacob will be transformed, that he will be changed, from being a self-interest deceiver to being a humble man of faith who learned to cling to God for dear life. And you think about this for our lives. We tend to spend so much time agonizing over all the many paths we could potentially take that we often overlook what God cares most about, which is the journey, the process of how and why we choose to do what we plan to do. So, yes, keep an eye on the destination, but let us not miss out on what God is doing and growing in us in the present moment. So instead of stressing out of whether to take this teaching job at this school or that school, focus on the type of teacher you are becoming. Instead of fretting over which neighborhood you're going to live in, focus on the way that you are loving on your neighbors. Instead of worrying about your future spouse, focus on how God is growing your character into a person who is ready for a Christ-centered relationship. So let me end with this. Think about this. Sometimes we want to treat God's will as a GPS to tell us every single step to take to our destination. But bad news is, God's will doesn't work like that. More accurately, God's will is more like a compass that doesn't give you every single step, but it establishes our core trajectory and points us in the right direction. And the fun part about a compass is this it is only useful if you choose to take steps and walk. So, church, don't shortcut God's will. Let us walk in it. Amen? Let's pray. Father God, we thank you, Lord, just for your message, Lord. We just thank you that you remind us just how much we need you, that how much in us tries to fight against you. I pray, Father, that you will humble us here and now, Lord. Reveal to us the ways that we tend to break away from you, try to tear ourselves apart from you. And it's just foolishness, Lord. And help us to recognize that. But help us, Lord, to come to you in full reliance and full dependence. Knowing only you can fulfill our every need. That only you know what the past, present, and future holds. So, Father God, we thank you. We thank you for your message, we thank you for your word, and we pray all this in your holy and precious name. Amen.