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I preached last Sunday night about striving for the perfect will of God in your life and it seems that the waters are troubled in this area in our church right now because I cannot get away from the subject. Our spiritual actions this month are very important because is dealing with us to go deeper and further and to become more precisely in His perfect will for our life. Now is the time to step forward in consecration and prepare yourself so that you will be everything that God needs you to be in the great things that God desires to do for the rest of this year. I have felt such urgencies strongly the past few weeks and I bring it to you again tonight. Young and old, God is calling us to move closer and forward in realizing our full potential in Him.

I want to remind you that you and I are in a very blessed place in living for God. We are in a blessed place because we are regularly in an environment where the Word of God is preached, His greatness is proclaimed and praised, and His Spirit is able to work freely among us. We are in a great place spiritually because we have brothers and sisters in the faith standing with us in our stand for truth and we have a great God on our side! We are in a great place because the vast majority of our church, I believe, are seeking for more of God and that is a cry that the Almighty will always respond to! All the odds are in our favor to make it enduring to the end. If God be for us, who can be against us?

I read a sermon recently where a preacher preached a message entitled, "Why it is difficult to go to hell." It caught my eye because so many people are convinced that it is easy to go to hell and hard to go to heaven, but the preacher pointed out that to go to heaven, means a person must reject the unselfish love of a mighty God who will make every effort to reach them. It means that they must ignore His never ending offers of mercy and forgiveness reaching toward them. It means that they must ignore the powerful preaching of His Word and the mighty moving of His Spirit in their lives, and that they must blind themselves to the truth of His abundant life and be content to live in the mess of their sins. For a person to go to hell it means that they look scornfully at the cross of Calvary, the greatest demonstration of love ever, and deny and refuse the great gifts of a loving Father who only gives good things to His children. When you think of it like that, it is harder to go to hell than most first imagined!

I think that it is more a matter of location and positioning. If you position your life beyond the reaches of the regular moving of the Spirit of God and where you do not regularly hear anointed preaching or are constantly reminded of such a sacrifice of Calvary. If you position yourself in life so that you are distant and removed from such things, then it is easier than not to go to hell. But if you place yourself within an Apostolic church where the Spirit and Word and praise mingle to remind you often of your need for Him and where He regularly deals with your heart, then your positioning has certainly made it harder to go to hell! Why do you think that the devil tries to get so many people to make church going a sporadic event in their lives? Because he knows that whether or not it is easy to win your soul, is a matter of where you are positioned spiritually!

I bring this up because I believe that the same holds true for finding and realizing the perfect will of God in your life. Peter wrote about the born-again, Spirit-filled church:

We have been given everything that we need to be a spiritual success! We have been given very great and precious promises by the One who is faithful and true! We are in a very blessed place indeed. And so I want you to realize that just as by your positioning yourself in the Apostolic church of God, so it is more difficult to go to hell than otherwise, so is it by virtue of your positioning more difficult to not realize your full potential in God. Chances are that you will become everything that God wants you to be because your environment is becoming such development and growth! The spiritual climate of our surroundings has more to do with what we become in God than we often realize. But thank God that we are in a blessed place where we not only can reach the goals of God but where everything is pointing towards us most likely doing so! By placing yourself in an environment where the Word of God is regularly preached and the Spirit of God regularly moves, you have placed yourself in the prime spot for becoming everything that God has planned for you to be in this life and the one to come. We are indeed in a blessed spot!

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Now that my disclaimer is over, I must say that despite such great points in our favor, that if the past history of the Apostolic church means anything at all, then there may be some that despite being in such a favorable spot for spiritual growth, yet do not become everything that God has for them. Some, like Judas Iscariot of Jesus' twelve, may crash and burn, and others may just live their lives far beneath what God intended for them to accomplish. In such an environment where Jesus regularly moves, it is hard for people to do such things, but history and the Bible indicates that it is possible.

I'm here to talk about not so much those that backslide and go completely back on living for God, as much as I am those who have so much potential to do greater things in the kingdom of heaven and yet never seem to realize that potential. Why is it that some people seem to live forever with potential that never turns into reality? Why is it that some people seemingly hunger for the things of God and yet never actually become everything that they could be? There are churches full of people who could be so much more than they are in God but . . . but . . . they are apparently missing something, but what?

I want to give you scriptural answers to that question in tonight's Bible study; I want to point out four main reasons why some people never fully become everything that the could be. I, of course, am preaching from the standpoint of wanting you to become everything that you can be in God, so I am bringing these four points up hoping that you will identify if any or all are present in your life and then do differently! I preached last weekend about not believing the lie that says "you cannot be all that God wants you to be." Now that we have that out of the way, let's look at why some people never realize their full potential in God:

This is the first area that trips up some folks. They are born again of the water and the Spirit and it never fully clicks that they are now to live according to the rules of a different kingdom and a different purpose. The book of Psalms were songs sung in the Old Testament church of Israel, by people who were "living for the Lord" in that time. Notice what the 24th Psalm says:

If you want to ascend the hill of God and grow upwards toward your potential in His kingdom, then you must have the four things of verse 4 present in your everyday life. Let's take them quickly one by one:

Clean hands - Your hands become unclean in the natural by placing them or coming in contact with what is dirty. Spiritually "clean hands" refers to a daily lifestyle that does not return constantly to the mud pit of sin. It means a separation from sinful acts and from partaking of sinful things in your life. It means changing your lifestyle habits to match the Word of God. We should always have a repentant attitude toward God and ask for His grace and mercy everyday, but if you have to repent of the same things every time you come into the presence of God because you returned to it again, then you living for God without clean hands. And you should know that such a lifestyle of repeated sinfulness keeps you from "ascending the hill of God!"

A pure heart - meaning "with right motives." Your agenda for serving God must be to obey Him and please Him and help His kingdom. We must not serve God for only what we can get out of it. We must not serve God for any other motive. We must come to Him with a "pure heart." Not to seek Him only to get us out of our current jam or situation. Not to seek Him only so that we will bless Him. Not to serve Him only to keep from going to hell. Those are impure motives. But rather we should serve Him because we love Him and want to please Him and be apart of His kingdom.

Does not worship idols - That's what the phrase, "who does not life up his soul to what is false" is referring to. It means Jesus Christ must be priority in our life over anything else. We must not bow down either physically or mentally to anything else but Jesus Christ. His kingdom and His goals must become and remain in first place in our life.

Does not lie - That's what is meant by the phrase, "does not swear deceitfully." You can lie with your mouth or you can lie with your actions by living one thing around the church folks and living another around your family or friends. Either way, such things will keep you from "ascending the hill" of God's perfect will in your life.

A moment's thought will reveal that all four areas of this scripture were present in Judas Iscariot. He had dirty hands because he was constantly dipping his hands in the sin of stealing from the money bag. He had an impure heart because obviously he was serving Jesus hoping that with this "promised kingdom" would come riches and fame. We know this because when Jesus began to talk about surrendering to the Romans and dying and going away, Judas Iscariot jumped ship taking whatever loot he could get, in this case thirty pieces of silver or about the modern day $21. In choosing wealth over Christ, money became Judas' idol and it forced him to live for at least a few months, a lie -- one thing at the table with Christ and another meeting secretly with the Pharisees. Judas Iscariot did not realize the full potential that should have because he did not strive to keep his day to day life holy separated from sinfulness.

Further reflection will bring the realization that Ananias and Sapphira also failed in these areas of their life. Ananias and Sapphira were the two members of the early Apostolic church that God toasted in the 5th chapter of Acts. For those of you who know the story, you can realize that their hands were tainted with greed and deception when they entered the service. Their motives were impure in that they intended to act out a lie. The reason for the entire scene was that they idolized praise from others that they had seen people like Barnabas receive. And the final straw was the lie from their lips and actions that fateful day. Ananias and Sapphira did not achieve God's full plan in their life because of their failure to separate from such sinful things and be holy before God day in and day out.

A failure in these four areas is present in almost every person in the Bible that "crashed and burned" in trying to live for God. It is clear that if you want to ascend to hill of God's perfect will for your life, that you must have clean hands, a pure heart, shun idols, and speak truth!

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For those who push beyond the everyday lifestyle of sin and move on into striving for complete obedience to God's Word in their day-to-day life, there is yet another reason why some of them do not become everything in God's perfect will for their life despite a pure life of holiness, and that is:

Let me read the first part of that verse of our text again, this time in the NIV:

I firmly believe that this verse of scripture is the key to realizing the full will of God in your life. Too many people are trying to find the will of God of what it is that God wants them to do and in the meantime, they are not doing anything! And most often, the will of God is never revealed to them because the future will of God will never be completely revealed until you do the present and general will of God for your life. What is the present and general will of God, you ask? I'm glad you asked that, because the answer is Ecclesiastes 9:10: "whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might."

I know people who live pure and separated lifestyles and who are a part of the Spirit-filled, Apostolic church and are waiting until God gives them a pulpit or a church or a precise blueprint of His ultimate and complete will of God before they lift a finger and, unfortunately, such people will never realize that perfect will of God, because they are unknowingly disobeying Ecclesiastes 9:10. You can have a ministry now, because there is something that you can do right now! The immediate will of God may not be the ultimate will of God in your life, but there is something that you can do to help the church at this very moment. And people who never realize the full will of God in their life, either do nothing with the mundane and the immediate or they do so half-hearted because "after all, this is not my ultimate calling." To which I ask "what is your ultimate calling" and usually I hear "I don't know," and the reason that you don't know is because of your half-hearted effort in what God has given you to do now. Whatever your hands finds to do, do it with all your might!

Jesus said this:

God sees how you treat and how you approach the little things that are available to do now before He entrusts you with big things in His kingdom! Because He knows that if you give a half-hearted effort to the little everyday things, then with the big things, you will be careless also. So if you want to realize and learn and fulfill the big and great and ultimate will of God in your life, then whatever little things you can do now, do it with all your might! It's a test to see if God can trust with the other!

Forgive me for using my personal life as an example, but I have never been in a place where I did not know that I was in the perfect will of God. And that is because I have many faults but disobeying Ecclesiastes 9:10 is not one of them! Starting with the end of my freshman year in Bible college, I knew that God had something ministerial for me beyond just music. But I was already committed to the musical degree and so instead of leaving that undone, I did what my hands found to do -- working on a musical degree -- and did it with all my might making straight A's after my freshman year (we won't talk about those two C's in the 7:50 am classes my freshman year!). When I came to Bro. Wallace's to be a music minister, I knew then that I would one day have a preaching ministry, but in all my years there, I preached in a normal church service a whopping one time! There wasn't a lot of preaching time available but there were plenty of people who needed Bible studies and since whatever your hands find to do, . . . I began putting every ounce of energy beyond my music into Bible Studies. Bro. Vickers invited me to preach at his home mission church one or two Wednesdays a month on my only off day. At the time it was about 7 or 8 people including his family, but whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might, so we went and gave it all we had. And most of you know how that the Bible study in Castroville happened with about 8 people that I had to drive about forty minutes one way to get to every Thursday night. But whatever your hands find to do . . .

Before I stepped out of music ministry I knew that I was called to one day pastor a church. If I had been like a lot of people and sat around twiddling my spiritual thumbs waiting for a church to come open, then I wouldn't be here today. If you want to realize the perfect will of God for your life, then the best thing that you can do is forget about it in the near and now and whatever your hands find to do now, do it with all your might. As you are pouring yourself into the little things, you will one day look up and realize the door to the big thing that God wants you to do has opened and you didn't even realize it! Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might! It may not be the ultimate calling of your life, but it rather the path way to that ultimate calling!

And areas such as faithfulness and sacrifice all stem from whether or not you are doing what you are doing with all your might! If you are giving everything for whatever you are currently doing, then you are faithful to it. If you are putting everything into what you are currently doing, then you are sacrificing for it! All of that could be summed up and become a non-issue in our life if we would just obey the commandment of Ecclesiastes 9:10 with all of our heart:

Stop worrying about what God wants you to do one day and start doing what God has given you opportunity to do right now!

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And so we come to our other text about what scholars commonly call the story of "the rich, young ruler." In our text in Matthew we find:

This story is also recorded in the Gospels of Mark and Luke and each passage adds a little extra information to the story. Matthew tells us that he was a young man. Mark tells us that he came running up to Jesus to ask these questions. Luke tells us that he was "a ruler" in some great position of authority. Thus, "the rich, young ruler."

I don't mind telling you that about six or seven years ago that if you would have asked me what story in the Bible bothers me most, I would have pointed to this one. I even prayed about it and asked God, "why would you require him to sell everything that he had?" To me it seemed unfair to ask this man for something that God does not require of everybody. And when you read the narrative it is obvious that this young man has clean hands and a pure heart because he says that he has kept all the commandments and Jesus does not call him a liar. In fact, the Gospel of Mark says that after this exchange, "looking upon him, Jesus loved him." Furthermore, the fact that the young ruler ran to Jesus with his question indicates that he was eager to do what he was doing with all of his might! So the first two areas we have discussed are not the reason for the failure of the young man's commitment here.

I was bugged by this story until one Sunday morning, Bro. Wallace was preaching from this text and stopped in the middle of his sermon and said, "I feel like some of you are bothered by this story, but let me point out what you are missing." He then went on to point out that this was before the days of extensive colleges and internet companies going public with their stock and making millionaires out of young people. In Bible days, the only way that a young man could become rich or a ruler was to have the power and money handed to him through an inheritance. Jesus was not asking the young man to give up everything because He had any thing against money, but rather seeing if the young man would be willing to give up things that he never worked for and would trust in God and actually work for spiritual riches.

And so our final two reasons why some people never realize their full potential in God comes from this story and is the same reasons why the rich young ruler turned his back on the perfect will of God in Jesus Christ. First,

I'm not speaking so much of physically inherited things as I am of spiritually inherited things. People inherit traits and habits from their parents and grandparents that -- when God begins to deal with -- they say, "well, that's just the way that I am." Or, "that's just how I was made," and so instead of allowing God to change those things and take some of those things away from them, they use their excuses to refuse to give up the inherited traits that God is saying must go and so -- like the rich, young ruler -- they end up selling themselves short of the perfect will of God in their lives!

"I'll always have a problem with anger because my daddy did." "I don't save money and I'm in debt over my head because of the spending habits learned from my folks." "I'm habitually late to everything because that's the way my mother was." "My family, (insert whatever name here) has always had trouble with (pick one) depression, lying, lust, unfaithfulness, violence, mouthiness, gossip, doubt, tenacity, alcohol, whatever. . . and that's just the way I am and God has to accept me like that." Maybe so , but that doesn't mean that He wants you to stay like that! If you want to become everything that God wants you to be, you've got to be willing to give up the inherited things that God says must go! You've got to be willing to give up your old identity of what you've always been to become the new identity of what God says you can be!

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Getting back to the story of the rich, young ruler, the point of the story is that we don't know what great plans Jesus had for this guy, but obviously it was so great that it required the great sacrifice of giving away his riches in order to obtain it. We'll never know what it was that God wanted this young man to do because the young man walked away and never achieved all that God desired. And this brings us to our fourth and final point of why some people never realize their full potential in God:

I've preached on this before, but you can tell by the foundation how grand the building is going to be. If they are drilling down hundreds of feet into the earth into the bedrock, then you know that the building has the potential to reach hundreds of feet into the air. If the foundation stretches for acres and acres, then you know that it will be "humdinger" of a gargantuan building! On the other hand, if you come up and there is a little thin slab of 8 x 10 feet of concrete, then you know that whatever is going up on this baby is not going to be anything worth coming back to see. Probably it is going to be a makeshift tool shed or something. The strength and size of the foundation ultimately determines the limits of what can be built upon it.

Most Christians underestimate the importance of a firm and large spiritual foundation. For God to require something so large as was asked of the rich, young ruler, must have meant that God was going to erect a humongous and great work in his life. But instead of seeing it that way, the young man viewed it as asking too much and walked away.

Over the last few years, I have had several Bible College students that are not associated with our church in any way call me and ask me what they thought about them leaving Bible college early to begin their ministries. Usually they say something like "the classes here are impractical and stuff that I'll never use and I want to do something for God and not just study, study, study." And many of them who think such ways leave and very few of them ever become great in the kingdom of God because the size of their foundation indicates that they will not accomplish much in the kingdom of God. Foundational work is hard work and frustrating work and nobody ever comes up to you and says "that is a great looking foundation you have there." But it is very important! They probably never wanted to hear what I had to tell them but I would remind them that wherever they stop in their foundational size, has effectively determined the limits to what God can do in their lives!

To the saints in the local church, we do the same thing sometimes. If we don't see the immediate practical need or use of a particular sermon or Bible Study, then we don't tune in and really learn it. If the service is not going particularly how we think it should or if life gives us unexpected time, instead of taking advantage of the situation to increase our foundation, we sometimes veg out and stay pat. Too many Christians like the candy of the preaching but don't want to digest the meat and potatoes of slower-paced teaching. We need both, but don't mistake it: the teaching is what extends and strengthens your foundation!

I've never heard a preacher say "I wish that I hadn't stayed in Bible college and that I hadn't finish" but I have heard many say "I wish that I would have applied myself while I was young, because it turns out that I did need that stuff!" I've never heard a saint say years down the road, "I wish that I hadn't studied so much, and that I hadn't gone to church as much as I did, and that I hadn't memorized those scriptures like I did." But I have heard a zillion times, "I wish that I had studied more, and I wish that I would have been more faithful to the house of the Lord, and that I wish I had memorized and learned more of the Bible back then." How many time I have heard, "I wished that I would have given myself more to prayer and fasting and the Word of God." Because there is nothing so frustrating as finally seeing what God intended for you to do and realizing that your foundation and preparation cannot hold it!

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And so we stand in a blessed place, today, and God wants you to know that you can realize your full potential in Him! You can become everything that He wants you to be. All things are possible and in fact, if you will position yourself in His house in His kingdom. And if you will keep clean hands and pure heart and love for truth. And if you will combine that with obeying Ecclesiastes 10:9 with all your heart in that "whatever your hands find to do, you do it with all your might!" And if you will allow the inherited things that God points to and says, "that must go" to be taken away and removed from your life. And you will not sell your self short on your foundation, then you cannot but help but reach God's perfect will of God in your life. Somebody decide to realize your full potential in God's kingdom!