Completing God’s Plan for Our Lives

One of the things that has helped me in the 65 years since I've known the Lord, it's nearly going to be 66 in a few months, is what I read in Psalm 139. If you turn with me there, it speaks of how God formed our body inside our mother's womb. That, everybody knows, that part, I mean, they may not believe God did it, but it says in verse 13, God, you formed my inward parts.

You wove me inside my mother's womb, and I thank you that you fearfully and wonderfully made me. When you look at your body and how it functions so perfectly for so many years, I mean, you young people, just think of the miracle. If you study a little bit, I've read a little bit, I'm not a doctor, but I've read a little bit about the functioning of the human body, the heart and the lungs and the liver and so many parts, and I tell you there are a hundred things that can go wrong and that could have gone wrong in you young people's lives that you may not be alive today.

So I've come to see the very fact that you're alive, even for one year, is a miracle. So many things have to work so much perfectly inside, it's like a machinery, you know, one thing goes wrong, the whole thing packs up, and we are alive, and I'm alive to 85 years. How many things could have gone wrong? And even if you're only 10, 15 years old, how many things could have gone wrong that you would not be alive today? We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

And then it says here in verse 16, God's eyes saw our unformed substance. Before you were a proper body inside your mother's womb, while you were being formed, just think of it, think of it seriously. Before you were formed in your mother's womb, God was, his eyes were looking at you.

Make it personal. I like to think of that, and I was in my mother's womb, and I was not even properly formed as a body. God's eyes were on me.

You can make that personal for yourself. God's eyes were on you. And in your book, and your book means in God's mind, God's book is in his mind, were written the days that were ordained for me.

I say, Lord, I'm one among the billions of people that have lived on the earth from the time of Adam. You mean to say that you are so interested in me just being formed inside my mother's womb so small, that in your mind, there was a plan written down for my life, with all the billions of people you're going to take care of? True. I believe it has changed my life, and I tell you, if you believe it, and accept God's word, this is the only book in the world, the only book in the world that is 100% true.

If it is written in any other medical book, I wouldn't believe it. But when it's written in God's word, I believe it. It's 100% true.

I don't care who you are. Before you were formed in your mother's womb, make it personal. God had in his mind a wonderful plan he made for your life.

All the days that were ordained for me, before there was even one of them, that means before I was even born, he had already written down. I believe that. I don't know how long I'm going to live, but I know one thing.

God had it written down before I was born. That's why I'm not in a panic. I'm not afraid.

Oh, I may get cancer or something will happen. I'll have an accident. I don't know how the Lord is going to take me to himself, whether it's by his coming from heaven, maybe that way or some other way.

But one thing I know, the days were written down for me, and my job is to cooperate with him in fulfilling that plan. It's not automatic. It's not like a machine where God just starts it and it's going to automatically fulfill.

No, God's plan for your life will not be fulfilled if you don't cooperate with him. And anywhere along the way, you rebel against him and say, no, no, no, I don't want that. God says, okay, go your way.

And we can mess up God's plan. God forgives us. There can be days that are wasted.

I wasted days in my life when I did not take my Christian life seriously. I think of 19 and a half years when I was born again at 19 and a half as I say, Lord, what happened to those first 19 and a half years wasted? I wish I'd known the Lord when I was three years old. But there again, I'm encouraged by, you know, the Apostle Paul.

He wasted about 30 years of my life. I wasted only 19 and a half. He wasted 30 years of your life and he did such terrible things like killing Christians.

Imagine that. God had his eyes on this guy who's going around killing his own God's children. He said, yeah, I'm going to get a hold of him.

I'm going to turn him around and make him my greatest servant on earth. It's amazing. And when Paul realized that and he got converted, he always thought I'm the greatest sinner whom God called.

What does he think about his years that were wasted? 30 years, Paul, of your life was dead. You know, he died when he was around 68 or so. So 30 years of that 68 is wasted, not only wasted, but going anti-Christian, like an anti-Christian, killing God's children.

What about that? That brought such sorrow in his life. Lord, I have messed up your plan for me. I have hurt your children.

And that repentance was like a fire that made him go full speed, like a rocket. And that's the thing that came to my heart. Many people say, I'm sorry for my sins, but the sorrow doesn't seem to act like a rocket to propel them to do God's will in future.

They say, oh, I'm sorry and God's forgiven me. Think of the wrong things you have done, my brother, sister, older people and younger people. Does it bring such sorrow in your heart that you weep and say, Lord, I've got to make up for that in some way? It does bring in my life, certainly.

That's what made me, Lord, I've got to do something. I can't just sit back and say, I'll just go along to the meetings and attend the meetings and come home and go along next Sunday to the meeting. That's not all for me.

I have to make up for the years that were wasted and I lived for myself and disobeyed God. That's what made Paul into a mighty apostle. And my brother, sister, God could have done a lot more for you.

Let me tell you that I don't want you to feel condemned, but if you take it seriously today, God could have done a lot more for you if you had really felt sorry for the way you dishonored God in all those years. Or even after you became a Christian, you've dishonored God by your foolish conversation and the stupid things you go around doing and saying, does that bring a sorrow in your heart? Lord, I'm messing up my life. I've already messed up so much.

I don't want to mess up anymore. That's what I said. I said, I don't want to mess up anymore.

I want to make the rest of my life useful for you, Lord. And I've told young people, some of you have the privilege of knowing these truths, which I came to know when I was 35 years old. You come to know when you're 15.

So you should be able to go far ahead of me in your Christian life than I have. But I said, I doubt it. Because I'll tell you why, not because I'm better than you, but because the years that I wasted in my life with backsliding and all that has brought such sorrow in my heart that it has made me run full speed.

And I see that some of you young people, you take forgiveness so cheap that you're not running full speed. And that's why I'm going to overtake you, because I'm running full speed because of the regret I have over the times in my life that I wasted. And I don't see that regret in some of you.

You take it so casually. You're so casual in your attitude to Jesus Christ even today. You're not zealous and wholehearted.

That's sad. And I want to tell you, you'll have a lot of regret when Christ comes back. Take it seriously now.

Look what Paul said in Acts chapter 17. He said, I had many years of ignorance in my life, and I did a lot of stupid things. But Acts 17 verse 30 says, God has overlooked all those times of ignorance.

Those 30 years of Paul's life where he wasted, God says, forget it. Forget it, Paul. I overlook it.

But now, live a life of repentance from now onwards. So there was a point in Paul's life where he knew that God's blotted out the past, but I'm going to live in repentance every day. That is the way you run full speed.

If you live in repentance every day. God is my witness. I live in repentance every day.

Brother Zach, what are you repenting of? Are you committing sins every day? Well, not what you would call sin, but I'm unlike Christ. You believe I've become like Christ? I've not become like Christ. There are little, little things which probably, you know, it's like when you're in the second grade, you don't understand what somebody is struggling with in the 10th grade or 11th grade.

And you won't even understand if he talks about it, so I won't talk about it. But there are things that you, as you walk with the Lord, you discover what is un-Christ-like, which I never knew he was un-Christ-like even five years ago. One mark of Christian growth is that you discover new areas of being un-Christ-like.

Like the other day, I said how expecting people to say thank you to you. Do you feel that is un-Christ-like? I've never heard that preached anywhere in my life, but God showed it to me, that expecting people to come and say thank you to you is un-Christ-like. I said how? Because it happened to me once many, many years ago.

I've told a story how there was a young brother whom we helped a lot in Bangalore in the early days of CFC, and he went away as he was so much blessed and he grew up in our midst. He used to stay in our home sometimes, and he went away and he got away. Good job.

And I've never heard from him. And I thought to myself, what an ungrateful guy this is. After all that we did to him, he doesn't even write a thank you note telling us what he's doing.

That's when the Lord spoke to me. Haven't you read my word which says, when you do this to the least of my brothers, you've done it unto me. And the Lord told me, when you help one of my children, he's my younger brother in Christ, you have done it for me.

And if you did it for me, the Lord said, who should thank you, he or me? That day I learned that if I've done something unto man, I must expect thanks from him. But if I had done it as unto the Lord, even though it is a brother I helped, but I did it unto the Lord, then who should thank me? Not him. That day I realized that expecting somebody to say thank you to me is a sin for me.

I mean, we teach our children to say thank you. Of course, we got to say thank you. I would say thank you to others, but I don't expect anybody to say thank you to me.

I was delivered of it many years ago. That's one example. I could give you instances like that, which you don't even think is sin.

That's what I mean when you're in the second grade, you don't understand what 10th grade people are talking about. It's all sort of strange. Well, that's because you're in the second grade, but I hope you will not stay in the second grade.

I hope you'll move on to the third and the fourth and the fifth and the sixth and discover things that you never even thought were unchrist-like. You say, boy, that was unchrist-like in my life all these years. And I believe there are unchrist-like things in me today, which I don't know.

It's like the 10th grade students saying, hey, there are things in the graduate college they're studying that I don't even know. Right. You will discover it when you go to college.

The Christian life is exactly like that. So if you take it seriously, it'll go better and better. And one last verse I'd like to share.

You know, this is the verse as I get older and older, the word that comes to me is this. John 17. Jesus didn't live a very long life.

You would think what a blessing he would have been if he had lived up to 80 or 70, died at 33 and a half. He never went to China or Africa. What a blessing he would have been if he had gone to China and Africa and America and Europe and all that.

No, he didn't even go outside Israel, except one visit to cast out a demon somewhere. All the time he was in that small nation of Israel. The one human being who God became man, who could have been a blessing to millions.

He lived in a small area. And what did he say at the end of that? John 17 and verse four. Father, I have glorified you on earth.

How do we glorify God on earth? By finishing the work you gave me to do. That was his last day. He was just about to go to the cross.

That night he was captured in Gethsemane. This is just a few minutes before that. I have finished the work you gave me to do.

I preached only for three and a half years. I was making stools and benches a lot of the time for 12 years. From 18 to 30, I was making stools and benches.

And before that, I was helping my mother Mary at home and helping my younger brothers and sisters. But one thing, I stayed free from sin all these years. And all the places, people I was supposed to meet, I have met.

And even though I did not travel outside my country, a lot of people like to travel to so many countries. Jesus could have done it. He only wanted to finish the work God wanted him to do.

If he had taken a one-week holiday to Rome, he'd have missed one week that God had. Something for him to do in Israel. That's how strict he was with his own life.

And I say, Lord, I want to be like that. I didn't have this light earlier on when I was converted, when I was 19, 20 years old. But you've shown me more and more the seriousness of life.

And the important thing is not what I do, how many people I witness to, but have I finished the work God gave me to do? And if God's plan for Jesus was 12 years, he got to be a carpenter. If he had gone around preaching, he would have missed the will of God. So preaching can be outside the will of God if God's called you to be a carpenter for 12 years.

He preached for three and a half years. He was a carpenter for 12 years. But he finished the work God gave him to do.

So don't think only those who get up and preach who got a gift of preaching are doing God's work. You may be a mother with many children looking after them. You can finish the work God gave you to do.

I hope you'll be gripped by one thing. God has got a plan for my life, which was formed before I was born. Lord, help me to know that.

Seek with all your heart to know that plan. And I want to tell you something. If you want to know that plan, keep a good conscience.

Keep a good conscience. Don't let any sin stay on your conscience. If you have hurt somebody, go and ask forgiveness.

If you have gossiped, stop gossiping. You're defiling yourself, and you won't be able to know God's plan. Let your past failures bring you to deep repentance and say, Lord, at least the rest of my life, I don't want to mess up anymore.

Be thankful. Be thankful for brothers and sisters who can help you. Seek their help.

Don't be so proud to think you can do everything on your own. You cannot. There's no part of this body that can function on its own.

No, not even the heart. The heart does such a lot of work, but it is dependent. On the hand, picking up food, and the mouth chewing the food, and the stomach digesting the food, and so many things, and converting into blood, and coming into the heart.

The heart is also dependent on others. There's no part of this body that's independent. And you are not independent, no matter how gifted you are.

I know I'm not independent. That's why I've learned to value the body. Dear brothers and sisters, I say to you with all my heart, fulfill God's plan for your life.

It's not going to be automatic. If you don't take it seriously, I give you my word, you will have tremendous regret when Christ comes back and you stand before him. So if you have a year to hear that, I pray you will hear it.

Can we pray for a minute? Let's bow before God. Once again, I have to say what I always say at such times. If you have to forgive anybody, forgive them now.

Whatever wrong they did against you, forgive them, release them. Don't think about it again. And if you have to ask somebody's forgiveness, make a decision right now that at the first opportunity you'll write a letter or call the person and ask forgiveness.

And then from now on, keep this forgiveness area absolutely clear. That you will forgive everyone immediately as soon as this hurt you and that you will ask forgiveness as soon as you've hurt somebody else. This is a very, very important area because we are taught to pray, Father, forgive us exactly as we forgive others.

Heavenly Father, please help everyone here to take the plan you have for their life seriously, especially the young people and the older people. So many of us have wasted so many years. Help us to make the best of what we have left before you come again.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.