Hey podcast listeners, thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory and Dr. Robert Jeffers. We're dedicated to bringing you bold biblical teaching that transforms your life and strengthens your walk with God. And you can study God's Word alongside Dr. Jeffress in person on the 2026 Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska.
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Now, here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Hi, this is Robert Jefferson. I'm glad to study God's Word with you every day on this Bible teaching program. On today's edition of Pathway to Victory, If God speaks to you audibly and tells you to do something, and you're not off your medication if God speaks to you audibly and tells you to do something, do it. But Very happy.
If that doesn't happen, usually God is going to lead you in things that make sense. Desires should be checked by common sense. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. Scripture promises that God indeed has a plan for each of us.
But he never reveals a step-by-step guide to accomplishing these goals.
So how can you know what God has in store for you? Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffers reminds us that discerning God's plan requires coming to terms with our own desires. But first, let's take a minute to hear some important ministry updates. Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory.
Well, it's September fifteenth. Has your busy fall season kicked in yet? You know, sometimes we get so entrenched in our daily responsibilities that we forget to step outside and simply touch the grass. Let me strongly suggest, even guarantee, that our Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska will allow you to feel the sweet soil of God's majestic creation. The dates are June 13th through 20th, so join me and fellow Christians as we explore pristine wilderness, witness towering glaciers, and breathe in the fresh mountain air.
And all the details are found at ptv.org.
Well, at Pathway to Victory, we love receiving your emails, phone calls, and letters. And already this month we're hearing from so many friends who are resonating with our topic. Because finding God's will is a universal challenge. For instance, when a job opportunity comes your way and it requires relocating to another state. How do you calculate what God truly wants for your family?
Or when your son or daughter is trying to choose a life partner. How do we help him or her make a sound decision? For that reason, I've written a helpful book for you. It's called How to Make Wise Decisions, and it's yours. when you give a generous gift to support the Ministry of Pathway to Victory today.
I'll say more about my book and other resources later. Right now, let's address our next topic in this teaching series. Today we're talking about knowing God's will. by knowing yours. A few years ago, A friend of mine asked me perhaps the most penetrating question I have ever heard.
He said, What would you choose to do with the rest of your life? If you had all of the time, money, and education necessary. and you knew you would not fail. I want you to think about that in terms of your own life for a moment. What would you choose to do with the rest of your life?
If you had all of the time, money, and education necessary, and you knew whatever you did. you would not fail. Your answer to that question perhaps more than anything else. Could be the best way to know God's will for your life. In our series on discovering God's will for our life, we've been talking about the various ways that God communicates His plan to us.
Certainly, God speaks through the scripture. Much of what we need to know about God's will is already revealed. We talk about the way that God speaks to us through prayer. Prayer is not just talking to God, it's listening to God as well. And sometimes, in some mysterious ways, He speaks to us through prayer.
We saw that occasionally God will use circumstances, even supernatural revelation, to speak to us about His plan for us. Last time we looked at the role that other people play in communicating God's will for our lives, authority figures, counselors. But today we're going to look at perhaps the most overlooked method by which God speaks to us. And that is through our desires. Today, we're going to discover that perhaps the best way to discovering God's will.
is by discovering your well.
Now, I know a lot of you already have some raised eyebrows about that. Wait a minute, Pastor, can you really rely on your desires to know God's will for your life? For example, how does a young man know if his desire to marry a certain young woman? is rooted in sacrificial love. or in insatiable lust.
How can a teenager know if his call to the ministry is really a result of his desire to follow God's will or to make up for some deficient self-esteem he has? How can a pastor know if his desire to build a new building Is really rooted in a desire to expand the kingdom of God, or simply comes out of an ego trip he's on? How do you separate your desires and know which ones come from God and which ones are generated in ourselves? We're going to talk about some biblical principles about using desires to discover God's will. But I think at the outset, we need to look and see what the Bible says about our desires.
Now, somebody would say, well, Robert, aren't our desires evil?
Well, that's true. The Bible says, first of all, our desires have been corrupted by sin. Our desires have been corrupted by sin. It was the comedian Woody Allen who in one of his more somber moments said, For all of my education, accomplishments, and so-called wisdom. I can't fathom my own heart.
It was Jeremiah the prophet who said, The heart is wicked and deceitful. Who can possibly know it? Perhaps the best diagnosis of the condition of your heart. And my heart came from a man who lived 2,000 years ago. His name was the Apostle Paul.
And turn over to Romans chapter 3 as he gives us an x-ray of the condition of the human heart. And by the way, the results are not encouraging. In Romans chapter 3, verses 10 through 12, Paul is quoting Psalm 14 and Psalm 53. And look at what he says. Paul writes, For there is none righteous, not even one.
There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good.
There is not even one. Pretty depressing, isn't it? Six times in three verses, Paul says there is not one good person who roams the planet. There is not one person who does anything good. You have to think, wait a minute, Paul, aren't you exaggerating just a little bit?
I mean, what about all of the people who volunteer at hospice? Or what about the people who give to United Way? What about the people who work in the church? How can you say no one does anything that is good? These verses are used to support what we call the doctrine of.
of total depravity. We say that human beings are totally depraved apart from Christ. A lot of people misunderstand that doctrine. When we say that humanity is totally depraved, we're not saying everybody is as bad as they possibly can be. I mean, we could all morph into a Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson or an Adolf Hitler, I suppose.
We could all be worse than we are right now. But that's not what total depravity says. Total depravity is simply saying that sin has contaminated every part of our life. There is no part of our life that has been left untouched by sin. Sin has contaminated our thoughts, it's contaminated our motives, it's contaminated even our desires.
No, it doesn't mean we're as bad as we could be, but it means we're all bad off. We have been left in a desperate state, and therefore our desires have been corrupted by sin. When I was growing up, I remember. One of our family rituals, especially during the summertime, was making homemade ice cream. And we would make homemade ice cream several times a week.
And how many of you have made homemade ice cream before? You know what you do, you mix up that. Wonderful mixture of eggs and cream and sugar, and you put it in that steel container, and you place it into that container, and you fill it with ice, and you either crank the container, or if you were upper-middle class, you had an electric motor that would turn the container for you. But you would watch that whiz around in the packed ice, but there was one ingredient you had to add. You had to add the salt, the rock salt, in order to make the ice melt more quickly and freeze the ice cream.
Now every maker of homemade ice cream knows that the one danger you have to be on guard against is allowing any of that salt into that container. Because it would just take a little bit of salt, just perhaps one grain of that rock salt, to contaminate the entire batch of ice cream. I doubt Paul ever made any homemade ice cream. But what he did use was this image. He said it takes just a little bit of leaven to leaven the whole lump of dough.
It only takes a little bit of sin in our lives to contaminate every part of our lives. And that's what he's talking about here in Romans 3. He says, every part of our life, including our desires, have been corrupted by sin.
Now that's the bad news. Here's the good news. Our desires can be transformed by the power of God. Our desires can be transformed by the power of God. Simply put, Corrupt desires don't have to remain corrupt.
Turn over to Romans chapter 8 for just a moment. Romans 8, beginning with verse 6. Paul says, for the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind that is set on the spirit is is life and peace. But the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God. It does not subject itself to the law of God.
It's not even able to do so. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God. The flesh represents that part of our life. that is opposed to the will of God. And the Bible says we have the flesh.
We had these evil desires we're born with. But when we become a Christian, God places a new set of desires in our life. The spiritual desires. And there's this constant battle going on between the flesh and the spirit, the spirit and the flesh.
Now look at verse 9.
However, you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the spirit of God dwells in you, but if anyone doesn't have the spirit, he does not belong to him. What Paul is saying is, before you became a Christian, you had no choice but to obey the desires of the flesh. But those desires have been transformed when you became a Christian. There is a new set of desires, spiritual desires, inside of you. Your desires can be transformed.
Every time I read that verse, I think about the old joke about the two guys standing out in the hot July sun in West Texas. And one of them, wiping the sweat away, said to his friend, How hot do you think it is? And his friend said, Well, I heard on the news today, it's 110 degrees in the shade. And the first friend said, Then whatever we do, we better stay out of the shade.
Well, you know, that's what Paul is saying here. He's saying, whatever you do, stay out of the flesh. If you're a Christian, you don't have to follow those old desires. You have a new set of desires that have been transformed by the Spirit of God.
Now, here's where it gets interesting. Number three, God can direct our lives through our transformed desires. When we say that God directs us through our desires, we're talking about those new desires that he places in our heart. Why can we rely on desires? Because they are transformed by the Spirit of God.
I want you to turn over to Philippians chapter 2 for a moment. Philippians 2 verse 12. Paul writes, so then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation. with fear and trembling. And remember we said Paul used the word workout.
He didn't say work for your salvation. There's nothing we can do to earn salvation. It is a gift of God. He doesn't say work for your salvation, but He does say work out your salvation. That word workout refers to the working of a field so that it can yield the greatest possible result for a farmer.
It takes hard work. to work a field. And Paul says in the same way, it takes effort. Effort, hard work to live as a Christian. Not to become a Christian, that's free, it's a gift of God.
But living as a Christian requires a lot of discipline. It means setting your alarm clock early in the morning so you can get out of bed and read God's Word. It means staying up a little bit later than you would choose to so you can spend time praying. It means say no to that desire to do something you know is absolutely against God's will for your life. He says, work it out.
Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. But if that exhausts you to even think about, here's some good news: verse 13: For it is God who is at work in you. both to will and to work for his good pleasure. That is, while you're working out your spiritual maturity, God is working in your life. And he's doing two things.
I like the way the Phillips paraphrase says it. It says, For God is at work within you, giving you both the desire and the power to accomplish his purpose. What is God's Holy Spirit in your life doing? First of all, He's giving you a desire to please God. Any desire you have right now to obey God is a desire that comes from God Himself.
God is putting His desire into your heart. He's giving you the desire, but. He's also giving you the supernatural power. to fulfill that desire. God is working in you to give you the desire and the power to accomplish His purpose.
And what I'm simply saying is When your desire is one with God's desires, He can actually place His desires in your life as a way of knowing His plan for your life.
Now Again, there are all kind of warnings we need to give about this.
So how can I know if my desires are really coming from God? I want to share with you today five practical, but more importantly, biblical principles for using our desires to discern the will of God. First of all, if you're going to use your desires to discover God's will for your life, first of all, we need to discover. what our desires are. If we're going to use desires to discover God's will, we need to discover.
what our desires are. Now, I'm not talking about spending hours contemplating your navel, okay? I'm not talking about that kind of introspection. But I am saying there is something healthy about understanding who you are and the way God made you, and specifically about discovering what you really want in life.
Now turn over to Romans chapter 12, verse 3. Paul is getting ready to talk about spiritual gifts to the Roman Christians. But notice how he prefaces his remarks about spiritual gifts. In Romans 12, verse 3, he says, For through the grace given to me, I say to every man among you, Don't think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but think so as to have sound judgment as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. And then, right after that, Paul begins discussing spiritual gifts.
Did you know that when you became a Christian? God gave you a unique gift. A certain desire and a certain power to minister in His name. And He talks about the different gifts: prophecy, service, giving, teaching, and so forth. You'll never find real fulfillment in your life.
Until you discover what your gift is and you start using it in the body of Christ. But Paul says in verse 3, before you know what your gift is, you need to think of yourself so as to have sound judgment. He says, in other words, evaluate yourself properly. Don't think more highly of yourself than you think. should think, but he says, do understand yourself.
And I would say it's the same thing when it comes to using our desires to determine God's will. We need to do a little bit of introspection and see exactly what desires God has placed in our hearts. Let me suggest to you five questions that came from my friend Bob Beale of Master Planning International. To help you discover what your true desires in life are. Question number one.
It's kind of a play on the first one I asked. If you could do anything you wanted. If God told you you were free to choose and you had all the time, money, education you needed, and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would you do? If you could choose to do anything you wanted, knew you had all the time, money, education necessary, and God promised you you wouldn't fail at it. What would you do?
Number two. Where do you see yourself? 10 years from now. As you dream about the future, As you think about where you would be 10 years from now, where would you like to be 10 years from now in your vocation? What would you want to be doing for a job?
Where would you like to be? Living. What would you like your relationship to your family to look like? What would you like your relationship with God to be like? Again, I'm not into this positive thinking mumbo-jumbo, whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.
But what I am saying is, God does place His desires into our life, and we need to understand what those desires are. Where do you see yourself 10 years from now? Question number three: If you could only accomplish three measurable things before you die, What would those three things be? If you could accomplish only three measurable things before you died, what would those three things be? Number four.
What three changes in me would most please God? What three changes could I make in my life that would most please God? And number five. What is my single greatest strength? We've got to discover what our desires are.
Secondly, our desires must be consistent with Scripture. If we're going to use desires to determine God's will for our life, they always must be consistent with Scripture. God is never going to give you a desire. To engage in an extramarital or premarital relationship. He's never going to give you a desire to disobey God-ordained authority.
He's never going to plant a desire in your heart to engage in an illegal activity. All of our desires have to be checked against Scripture. Number three. Our desires should be checked by common sense. Our desires need to be checked or measured against common sense.
Proverbs 4, verse 5 says, Acquire wisdom, acquire understanding. Let's suppose for a moment that You have a desire to start a new business, a new computer software business. And you search through the Bible, and there's nothing against starting a computer software business in there, so you check that off. How can you know if this desire is really coming from God?
Well, you need to get wisdom, the Bible says. You need to get understanding. For example, you need to ask yourself: if I start this business, how will I provide financially for my family during the startup phase? After all, God wants me to take care of my family. What are my chances of success in this business?
Do I have the temperament necessary to be a successful business person? As I talk to other people who are in this business, what do they say are my chances of success? What is it that will make my business unique among all the other software businesses out there? You say, well, Robert, why would you ask those kinds of questions if you feel God is leading you to do something? Very simple.
Usually, God will not ask you to do something that violates common sense. Most of the time, God is not going to lead you to do something that violates common sense. That's why Proverbs says: acquire wisdom, acquire understanding.
Sometimes God does ask us to do things that don't make sense. For example, look in the Bible. God spoke to Noah and said, Noah, I want you to build an ark. Did that make sense? In the middle of a desert?
When it had never rained before in the history of the earth, did that make sense? Of course it didn't, but God said to do it. God said to Abraham, I want you to take that son you prayed for for decades. I want you to take him, place him on an altar, and offer him as a sacrifice. That violated common sense.
But Abraham obeyed anyway. And here's a great rule. Again. If God speaks to you audibly and tells you to do something, and you're not off your medication if God speaks to you audibly and tells you to do something, do it. Follow after it.
But she If that doesn't happen, usually God is going to lead you in things that make sense. Desires should be checked by common sense. Today's message comes from my teaching series called How to Make Wise Decisions. And by now, I hope you realize that making good choices begins with understanding the will of God. That being said, God doesn't eliminate our desires in this process.
In fact, I believe the best way to discover God's will is by understanding your transformed desires. You see, when we become Christians, God places new spiritual desires within us that can guide our decisions.
However, we've got to make certain that these desires align with Scripture, make common sense, and flow from a spiritually healthy heart. In my book, How to Make Wise Decisions, I explore these principles further to help you navigate life's important choices with biblical wisdom. Let me send you my book, How to Make Wise Decisions. A copy is yours. when you give a generous gift to support Pathway to Victory.
Behind the scenes at Pathway to Victory, we've been asking God to bring 50 new Pathway partners into our supporter family. Is the Lord stirring your heart to join this mission-minded community? You've been part of Pathway to Victory for a long time, and now you're ready to provide these programs for someone else.
Well, as a pathway partner, you become a diplomat. an ambassador. who carries the gospel message to your city, your state, and the nation we love. If God is leading you to take this meaningful step, we encourage you to follow the simple process that David will describe. Thank you so much.
Here's David to tell you more. If you're ready to answer that call and become one of our 50 new pathway partners, Call 866-999-2965 or it's even easier to sign up online at ptv.org.
Now, when you give your first Pathway Partner gift, or when you give a generous one-time gift, You're invited to request your copy of the book, How to Make Wise Decisions. In an age when people are facing more choices in life than ever before, this book provides clear, encouraging guidance for knowing, understanding, and acting upon God's will. And when your gift is $75 or more, you'll also receive the complete audio series for how to make wise decisions on CD and DVD. This would be a great resource to use in your small group Bible study or for your own personal time in God's Word. Again, call 866-999-2965.
or go online to ptv.org. You could send your request by mail if you'd like. Write to PO Box 223-609-Dallas, Texas, 75222. That's P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222.
I'm David J. Mullins. Join us again next time for part two of the message, Knowing God's Will by Knowing Yours, right here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.
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