I believe that you and I, as a child of God, our to “Meet people where they are and help them get to where God wants them to be,” Now, if we truly believe that we are to meet people where they are and help them to get to where God wants them to be, then we have to assume God has a place that he wants each of us to be. This morning I want to speak on this simple thought “Getting to the Place God Wants You to be.” Reading from Ezekiel Chapter 20 and verse 6, God’s Word says,
“In the day that I lifted up mine hand unto them, to bring them forth of the land of Egypt into a land that I had espied for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands:”
The words “into a land that I had espied for them,” literally means “a land that was selected by God Himself. A Land that God Himself caught sight of.” I believe God is taking us somewhere, and if He is taking us somewhere, He’s going to help us get there AMEN.
As I think about the children of Israel and what they must have felt when God led them out of bondage from Egypt and led them to the Promised-land, and I couldn’t help this evening but to think that:
- We can rejoice over what God has done to get us where we are today;
- And we can look forward to the place that He is taking us.
And I think what we are really talking here is the Sovereignty of God, the leadership of God. So let me share a few things from this verse that I believe are a challenge to us all in our walk of faith.
And the first thing I want us all to understand is:
GOD HAS A PLACE PICKED OUT FOR YOU.
Long before any of us ever got here, God already picked out a place for you, a place where He wants you to be. God knows where He’s taking you and He knows where He’s taking me.
Now, some of you might be in that place right now. When the children of Israel got to Canaan – they stayed there:
- that was the place God picked for them;
- that was the place God wanted them to be.
For every one of us, God has looked through His telescope of Time and Space and has picked a place where He wanted you to be – a place where He knows He could best use you.
For some of you, praise God, Rally Point Biker Church is the place God picked for you – and God knew how to rightly fit HIS body together.
What I really want you to understand is that everything that has happened – all the Good things, all the Bad things have happened for ONE REASON – and that is to get you to the place that God has picked for you.
And let me tell you some things about the place God has picked for you:
- It is a Successful Place – it is a place of Victory! You might be saying, “Well I’m not experiencing a lot of victory in my life right now.” Well guess what? God’s not finished with you yet, and He is taking you to a place where you will experience some victory.
- It is a Supplied Place – “A land flowing with Milk and Honey.” “God made sure it had everything they would need before they even got there. And that’s what God has done in our lives. He is taking us to a place that is already supplied with everything we need – we just need to be faithful to follow Him to that place.
- It is a Splendid Place – it is a great place to be. It is the “glory of all lands. The most beautiful of all lands.”
God has picked a Place for You. Some of you may be in that place right now. Some of you may still be trying to find your way to that place. But God wants to get you to the place where He can best use you.
Friends, the only way you will ever find real purpose and joy in your Christians life is by getting to the Place God has Picked for You.
GOD KNOWS HOW TO GET YOU TO THAT PLACE
When Kim and I got on our bikes to come here this evening, We pulled out of Drayton, turned left on Pine St, rode down to the Ingles, made a right on Country Club Road, then a left on Union Street, we then got on Cedar Springs (Rt. 56), came all the way down to Miller Town Road, then left onto Dutch Creek Road until we reached 830 Dutch Creek Road. WE KNEW EXACTLY WHERE WE WERE GOING AND HOW TO GET THERE!
Now, you think about Abraham. God tells Abraham “Abraham, I want you to move – but guess what? I’m not gonna tell you where you’re going. Just get up, pack up and get going. When you get there – I will let you know!”
Now, where did God take Abraham? I’ll tell you where took him:
- He took him to a Successful Place
- He took him to a Supplied Place
- He took him to a Splendid Place.
Let me ask you something:
- How many of you knew 5 year ago that we would be in this place today?
- How many of you knew 1 year ago, or even 6 months ago that you’d be in this place?
I don’t think any of us did, but we were all being faithful to follow wherever God was leading.
For some of us, God knew the route He needed to take to get us to the Place where He wanted us to be – to the Place He picked out for us.
Sometimes, that route is not always the most direct route. The children of Israel wandered in the Wilderness for 40 years before God could get them to the Place where He wanted them to be.
What I want you to realize is that what you and I cannot see – God can see! God knows how to get us to the place where He wants us to be and he uses several things to get us there:
- He Uses People.
God used Moses to lead the children of Israel out of Bondage. And when Moses said he didn’t have the ability, God gave him Arron and Hur to help.
Over and over again, God uses people in the Bible to get people to the Place that He wants them to be. Sometimes those people are good people, but sometimes those people are bad. Think about when the early church was formed. God used the Christ rejecting religious leaders and the Roman Empire to get them to the place He wanted them to be.
- He Uses Problems.
Think about their Bondage in Egypt; think about their Red Sea – with mountains on both sides and nowhere else to go; think about the 40 years wandering in the Wilderness.
Folks, going through the wilderness was not the easy thing to do, but God said, “If you’ll just trust Me, I’m taking you somewhere!”
Now I already know what most of us are thinking: “I don’t want any problems.” I know – But God’s taking us somewhere!
Had the Children of Israel not been in Bondage in Egypt, they’d have never had a Promised Land!
- Some of you had to go through your Red Sea to get to the place where God wanted you.
- Some of you had to Wander in the Wilderness to get to the Place where God wanted you.
Not only did God use People to get them where He wanted them to be;
Not only did God use Problems to get them where He wanted them to be, BUT, all along the way:
- He Protected Them on the Journey.
Think about all the obstacles the Children of Israel faced as they were making their Exodus from Bondage.
- They faced the Red Sea – where mountains were on both sides and Pharoah’s Army pursuing from Behind;
- They got to Marah, a place of bitter waters;
- While in the Wilderness, they faced many enemies;
But God never failed them:
- He parted their Red Sea;
- He gave them a tree in Marah to make the bitter waters sweet!
- While in the Wilderness, He guided them as a Pillar of Fire by night and a Cloud by Day!
- When they had no food, God provided Manna from Heaven;
- When they had no water, God gave water out of a Rock!
The truth is folks, I don’t always understanding why we are in the place we get in sometimes and I don’t always understand what God is doing – but what I do know is that God is taking us someplace and He knows what it’s going to take to get us to that place, and He has proven over and over again that He we protect us along the way!
YOU CAN MISS THE PLACE GOD PICKED FOR YOU
And friends, that’s what I would call a pitiful site.
After God had shown Himself MIGHTILY to the Children of Israel by delivering them out of Bondage in Egypt, verse 11 says, “Then I gave them My statutes and explained My ordinances to them—the person who does them will live by them. 12 I also gave them My Sabbaths to serve as a sign between Me and them, so they will know that I am Yahweh who sets them apart as holy.” Verse 13 goes on to say, “But the house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness.”
Just a few verses down from our text verse, there is another verse that ALMOST reads the same – with one exception. Verse 15 says:
“Yet also I lifted up my hand unto them in the wilderness, that I would not bring them into the land which I had given them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands;”(Ezekiel 20:15).
Joshua 5:6 says, “For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the people that were men of war, which came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord: unto whom the Lord sware that he would not shew them the land, which the Lord sware unto their fathers that he would give us, a land that floweth with milk and honey.”
Some of the children of Israel never reached Canaan. They never reached the Promised Land. And the sad truth is, there are some children of God today that are never going to reach the place that God has picked for them.
The Children of Israel missed Canaan by:
- Lacking Faith
Numbers 20:12 says, “And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.”
By a Lack of Faith, they did not believe that God could get them to the place that He had promised them.
Friends, if we are going to get to the place that God has picked for us, we are gonna have to have faith to believe that God CAN get us there.
They missed it because they Lacked Faith: They missed Canaan because they:
- Lost Focus
Israel sends the 12 spies over into Canaan, 10 come back with a negative report saying “it is a land full of Giants and we are mere grasshoppers in their sight.”
2 of the spies come back and say, “They are bread for us . . .”
Numbers 13:33, “And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”
What happened here? Well, they lost their focus. Rather than focusing on God, they focused on the Giants.
And that’s what happens in our Christian lives – we start focusing on our problems rather than focusing on the Problem Solver!
And when we lose our focus, we risk missing the blessings of life that God has for us.
They Lacked Faith, They Lost Focus, but
- They Left the Father
They went their own way and missed out on the land that God had picked for them.
God has a place picked out for us. It is a great place, it is a place that has everything we need. It is a place that represents victory in our Christian lives.
God is leading you and I on this journey of our life to get us to the place He wants us to be. Along that route, we run into people we don’t like, people that mean to do us harm and we tell God, “God, why did you bring that person in my life?” Well, God brought that person in your life to get you where He wants you to be. God then sends some problems into your life that you don’t understand, but I want you to understand that those problems came so God could get you to where He wants you to be. And once you get there, you realize that God was using people and problems all along the way to get you to that place, but while you were traveling there – God always provided for you and protected you along that journey.
But Sadly, too many people have missed the place God picked for them.
- By Lacking Faith – Not believing that God has the ability to take you there.
- By Losing Focus – getting your eyes off of God and getting them on the Giants.
- By Leaving the Father – they’ve decided they know the way better than God does, so before they know it, they have gotten further and further from the place that God has hand-picked for you.
Conclusion: Several years ago, we became involved in Biker Churches. I was a traditional pastor, so Biker churches were a shocked to my system. But for whatever reason, God had me in that place. Looking back now, and seeing the place that I am at, I can clearly see what God was doing along the way. And maybe the things that got Kim and I to Rally Point are the things that got you to where you are. God has picked a place for you, a place where He knew He could best use you. The way we got here may not be the way we would have envisioned; the people and problems we faced along the way might not have been what we were anticipating – but they’re what God used to get us here. Rather than be bitter about the past, be grateful that those were the things God used to get you where He wanted you to be – the Place God Has Picked for
Fighting for My Pea Patch 