Roseau Times-Region - Serving Roseau County for over 100 Years - The Official Roseau County Newspaper

Choices! Life is filled with them. Not all of them with as short-lived results as flavors of ice cream. Robert Frost vividly captured the significance of life's choices in this poem.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The choices in life that make "all the difference." For the Christian, life is not up for grabs. God has something to say to us about how we live our lives. We will look at three things from the life of Jesus about the will of God, the Father: 1. The IMPORTANCE of the will of God in Jesus' life. 2. The CLARITY of the will of God in Jesus' life. 3. The EFFECT of the will of God in Jesus' life.

Luke 4:43 But he said, "I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent." The key word is the word "must". The Greek meaning means to bind, or to tie. It was a strong word which Jesus chose to talk about his commitment to the Father's will. Having decided in favor of the Father's will, he played aside all other options, He "bound" himself, so to speak, to God's direction, and lived with a sense of God's constant nearness. In John 8:29 he testified: "The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him." Jesus and God were and still are "one." "Mustness, however, from a strictly human point of view, can be a scary consideration: What will happen to me if I commit my life to someone in such a way that I will allow them to tell me what to do? What if I don't like what they tell me? In our culture we have great difficulty with commitments. We wish to live always with an "escape hatch," a way to "bail out." If the point gets tough, BUT this is not what God has called us to.

E. Stanley Jones, in his little devotional book, The Way, argues that "all life sifts down to two things: the Way and not-the-way." After hearing this statement by Jones, a Hindu in the audience later said: "If what the speaker has said tonight isn't true, it doesn't matter; but if it is true, then nothing else matters." He was right.

For us who believe that Jesus is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life, God's will is a must for us. God's will is ALL important.

The CLARITY of the will of God in Jesus' life. The key word herein our text is SENT: ..."I was sent." This tells us that it was PERSONAL, it was SPECIFIC, it had a POINT IN TIME (a definite call). It required SUBMISSION.

From this we learn that the will of God for us will be MADE CLEAR, although, in most cases, NOT ALL AT ONCE. This is why we need to be (at the least) in daily contact with Him. There will always be those who want to "keep us"; to take care of us. Those who have "a wonderful plan for our lives," BUT we must always ask ourselves: "What has God Revealed?"

The EFFECT of the will of God in Jesus' life. People will receive the blessing of God through our doing the will of God. Being in God's will benefits other people. God's will enables us to be in the right place at the right time.

Until Next Time,

Pastor Joe Elick

1940-2021