This is Divine.

So excited to be here with you guys today. My name is Nermalis, and I'm the associate pastor here at New Culture. If we haven't had the chance to connect yet, I want to meet you. I'll be at the welcome table after service and I'd love to connect with you.

I also want to reiterate a couple of the announcements we had today because I'm really excited about everything going on right now. Communities start on Tuesday, which are a huge part of our church and what we do. I'm beyond excited for our communities. They're neighborhood-based, so make sure you're signing up for a community today. We've got two different downtown groups, an east side and a west side.

I'm also really excited about Alpha, which starts on Thursday. You just hang out with me every Thursday night. We eat food together, watch different videos about questions of faith, and we get to discuss it. There's lots of room and safe space to ask all the questions you have. It's a really special time, so I hope you're getting ready to sign up for Alpha.

And I also really want to encourage you to sign up to come to fall retreat with us. I'm going, you're going. This is what we're doing. It's going to be a really special time to break our daily rhythms, get in the presence of God, and have some fun. Fun is a spiritual discipline that we don't practice enough.

A New Series: Philippians

We're starting a brand new sermon series today on the book of Philippians. But funnily enough, I will not be preaching out of the book of Philippians today. Instead, I will be preaching out of Acts. Here's why: the story of Philippians actually starts in Acts. In the book of Acts, we get to see from Luke's perspective how the church in Philippi is started and birthed. I think it's a really important bird's eye view of who the people of Philippi are and what God's plan for them is. I think we have a lot to learn from how Philippians starts as much as we do from everything that happens in the book of Philippians.

If you'll join me in Acts chapter 16, verses 6 through 15. This is going to be the test on my ability to say all these different names. I'm going to say it with confidence and we're all just going to believe I said it correctly.

They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. So passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. A vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, come over to Macedonia and help us. When Paul had seen the vision, immediately he sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. So setting sail from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace, and the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in the city some days, and on the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer. We sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. One who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. After that, she was baptized, she and her household as well. She urged us, saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay. And she prevailed upon us.

Acts 16:6-15

My so what for today is this: you will have to choose your plan for your life or God's divine plan for your life, but you cannot have both. You cannot have both. And our now what today is to live with open hands.

I'm going to be using the word divine a lot today, so I did want to define that because it's not a word we use in everyday language. When I say divine, I mean holy or excellent without fault.

The Universal Experience of Younger Siblings

I feel like this might be a universal experience of younger siblings, or maybe it's a universal experience of the more rambunctious sibling. I'm the youngest. I only have one older sibling. She's my big sister, and between the two of us, I was definitely the more rambunctious. I was very bold, I was loud. I wasn't scared of very much. Everything I was scared of didn't stop me from doing what I wanted, with the exception of frogs. Frogs stop me from doing anything, but everything else I could power through being scared of it.

My sister realized when we were little that I wasn't scared of hearing no from our parents. So she would just make me ask for everything she wanted. We'd be in the car and she'd drive by McDonald's and say, Bobby, if we can go to McDonald's. And I was like, that sounds like a great idea. Mommy, can we go to McDonald's? And my mom would give me the answer. There's already food at home.

Every time. There's already food at home. And I would throw a fit and cry and beg and plead, and my mom would get mad and I would get in trouble. And my sister was completely unfazed by the events that occurred.

I eventually grew to actively avoid being told no. We hate being told no. We hate putting ourselves out there at the risk of hearing no. We've been trained to think that no is always negative. No is bad, no is this bad thing. But sometimes in our brains, yes makes more sense.

Divinely Closed Doors

Look at Paul's situation really quick. He's spreading the gospel, doing his thing. By all counts, his ministry has been fruitful and successful. Every place he's gone, a church has come up and bloomed. He's on mission when he heads towards the Asian province. He's on mission doing what God has called him to do. He gets there and he can't get in. They say no. Then he's like, okay, reroute. He tries again from a different way. The answer is no. It doesn't make sense.

In our brain, the logical thing would have been, why in the world would the answer be no? These people haven't heard about Jesus yet. He's a missionary, advancing the gospel, living out the great commission. Why would the answer be no?

Think about that time when you were sure you were going to get a yes. You were absolutely positive. This makes sense. They're going to say yes. It's going to work out. This is my next step. And then you got a rejection letter in the mail or an email that said, we're moving forward with a different candidate. Or you were sure you guys were about to sit down and talk and you were on the pathway to getting a ring on your finger, and instead you broke up. The math isn't math.

When you knew you were going to get a yes and you got a no, you start praying. I grew up around a lot of old church mamas who would start praying in the name of Jesus and start binding and breaking stuff and rebuke everything they could think of. Or maybe this is the part where you start playing the blame game. I got a no because so-and-so doesn't know how to do their job. Or maybe this is the part where you just huddle up in a ball and cry and decide you're never putting yourself out there again. I've done all three. It's okay.

I want to propose to you the idea of divinely closed doors. Do you know what I admire so much about Paul in this situation? If he gets that first no, scripture tells us it was the Holy Spirit that forbid him. That no didn't come from the devil. There was no devil getting in the way of God's plan. The Holy Spirit said no. And then when Paul goes and tries again, it says the Spirit of Jesus prevented them. God said no. This was a divine no.

And Paul stopped long enough to discern that this was God. It wasn't the devil attacking him. He realized that this was the Holy Spirit leading him. He acknowledged the divinity in the no. And only because he was able to discern that the no was God keeping him on track for his plan, he got to Philippi, which is where God actually needed him to go.

Philippi wasn't in Paul's plan. It was in God's plan.

Surrender Your Plan

My first big point I want to talk about today is this: if you want God's divine plan for your life, you have to surrender your plan for your life. If you want God's divine plan for your life, you have to surrender your plan for your life. I know some of you in the room are probably the ten-year plan people. Like, I'm going to do this by the time I'm this old and this will happen next, and like you have it all laid out.

Maybe some of you are like, I'm just taking it one day at a time. We're both ends of the spectrum, somewhere in the middle. I've been both in different seasons of life. I'm probably currently more like a one day at a time, less by choice and more so by circumstance. But today I want to challenge you because whether you're the one day at a time or you're the ten-year plan, when our plans go astray, something inside of us just pinches and we hate it.

It could be a simple thing like you planned to drive to the grocery store and you got a flat tire and everything just gets all bundled up because our plan has been ruined. Our plan has gone astray. Today I want to challenge you to surrender the plan. I want to challenge you to relinquish your need for control. I'm not telling you to not have a plan. I'm telling you to hold your plan with open hands.

When we have a death grip on our plans and we're literally choking the life out of this thing, we don't realize it, but the plan becomes God in our life instead of God. Because every decision we make is about taking the next step towards our plan, and the center of our life becomes our plan instead of God. We don't even realize it, but in the process of wanting things to go according to our plan, we knock God off of his throne in our life. We fight to hold on to our plan without even realizing that we are actively fighting against God.

I want you to hear my heart right now. That thing you are holding so tightly to, that thing you are fighting to maintain control of, let go. Let go. God's plan is bigger than yours. God's plan is taking more into account than yours. God's plan is better than yours. God's plan might mean you have to hear a no in order to get to where you need to go. Just because your plan got derailed does not mean that his did.

I want to talk to the person in the room who feels frustrated by some closed doors. Step back, take a breath. God is not finished with you. God's plan has not been broken. He is not small. Your yes is coming. Surrender your plan. Hold it with open hands and let him give you his plan.

God's Plan Is Not Just About You

The next part of the story I want to talk about is this: God's plan for your life is not just about you. God's plan for your life is not just about you. Paul realizes via the Holy Spirit in a dream that God is sending him to Philippi to preach the gospel there. He and his companions travel with a group of people. The direct route to there included like four stops. They're going the complete opposite direction of where they had originally been headed. They're in Philippi for days before they decide they're going to go to a place known as a place of prayer. They go on the day of the Sabbath.

It's actually super significant that they go on the Sabbath. They're preaching to these women who are there. Of all the people gathered there, scripture tells us that one woman gives her life to the Lord. One. Lydia gives her life to Christ. She goes and gets her family and her entire household is baptized. Paul and his team of missionaries don't start the church in Philippi. Lydia does.

Paul and his missionaries reach Lydia. And that unlocks God's plan for her life.

What if we were more concerned with God's plan than we are with our egos? It is easy to be like, well, if God is putting me through all this. He said no, no, no, and then he sent me on this extra long journey to the city of Philippi. I'm going to be there and I'm going to preach in front of thousands of people, and I'm going to do an altar call and there's going to be a bunch of people up at the front crying and it's going to be incredible. They get there and after days of waiting, one person responds to the call. It is so easy to be like, man, this isn't great. Like, God commissioned me for greatness. What's so great about this? What a disappointment. This wasn't a successful trip. One person.

I had a mentor in college who had this prayer that continually wrecks me. And it was his motto for ministry. And he would pray it every single time before he preached, before he taught, before he did anything. His only prayer was, God, one more. God, one more. His vision for reaching people wasn't an auditorium full of people. It wasn't fancy worship sets. It wasn't everyone knowing his name. If I told you his name right now, you would have no idea who he was. The man doesn't even have a Facebook page. His vision for ministry was that every time he preached the gospel, one more would come to know Christ. No ego. No counting heads. One more. One person said yes to Jesus. Lydia said yes to Jesus, and an entire church was born.

But what if Paul got all up in his ego because his feelings were hurt because only Lydia said yes? All those people heard him and only one person said yes. Instead of realizing that that one yes changed the directory of a city and generations to come. It's not about you.

You bear the burdens of obedience, not of the outcome. I've been saying that a lot and learning that a lot. But part of that is not just you don't bear the burden of the outcome. It's that you don't even have the right measure of success. When you're talking about what the outcome was, your measure of success doesn't line up with what God thinks is success. We get upset when not enough people come in the room or not enough people sign up or not enough people praise how we did it. And God's measure of success was Lydia got saved. That's it. That was the mission. Lydia got saved. Philippi was Lydia's mission, not Paul's.

Lydia got saved. But maybe God just needs you to talk to that one person because their yes is why he told you no to the other thing you wanted so bad. Because their yes is worth more than that thing that you fought for. God won. So I want to talk to the person who feels like what they're doing isn't so great. To the person who feels discouraged by the outcome, it's time to relinquish the burden of the outcome and to walk in the burden of obedience.

There is a Lydia that needs to hear what you have to say, and she might be the only one, but it's going to change generations. God's plan isn't about boosting your ego. It's about the one.

There Is a Plan, and It Is in Motion

I want to say there is a plan, and it is in motion. Lydia was outside of the city walls, and the author, which is Luke, makes the point that it was on the Sabbath that they went and did this. Why is that important? The fact that she was outside of the city walls at a place of prayer says that she was a worshiper of God. So she was a Jew. She worshipped Yahweh. She would have always been at the place of prayer on the Sabbath.

She would have always been there praying. She was a Jew. She spent her whole life waiting for the promised Messiah, for the Savior to come. No answer to her prayer. How many times had she gone there and had no idea that God was telling Paul to go on this wild goose chase to get to Philippi? She had no idea that God was working things out to give her the answer to her prayer.

And here she is at the place of prayer where she likely spent every Sabbath. A faithful believer who would have been at this place all the time. While Lydia was waiting and praying, God had a plan in motion to get to her. I like, when you really think about it, it's insane. Lydia was just living her life, minding her business. She was a trader of purple cloth, which was really expensive. She worked in textiles. She had a job and she was just taking her day off, coming before her God to pray a prayer that she'd gotten used to not having an answer to. Having no idea that what was about to happen would lead to thousands of years later, a woman preaching about her in Madison, Wisconsin. Like she had no idea. But there is a plan and it is in motion.

God had a plan for Lydia and it was happening without her even knowing it. So to the person in this room who has been faithfully on their knees asking God for the plan. To the person who's been praying with no answer. To the person who feels forgotten by God. Hear this. God has not forgotten you. There is a divine plan and it is in motion.

I know you can't see it. I know that you don't know it. But what you've been praying for is on the way. Keep praying. Keep showing up. Keep engaging in community. Keep reading your Bible. Keep raising your hands in worship. There is a plan and it is in motion. God has not forgotten you. He has not forsaken you. He will not forget you. He will not forsake you.

There is a divine plan for your life, and there is something inside of you that God has a plan for. The thing you've been praying for is on the way. It may not look like you thought it would. Lydia spent her whole life waiting for the Savior, and these dudes show up one day and are like, your Savior was actually this lowly servant. He's dead, but then was brought back to life because he resurrected. I highly doubt that's what she expected to hear. She was like, this random guy was born in Bethlehem and that's the Savior of the world? So the answer might not look like what you think it does, but it's coming. Keep praying and keep your hands open. There is a plan and it is in motion.

Surrender in Worship

I'm going to close now. The worship team's going to come up. In the coming weeks, we're going to be reading through the book of Philippians. We're going to preach about it. We're going to discuss it. We're going to learn about what it looks like to live like Christ, all from the book of Philippians.

But there's a lesson to be learned before we read even the first verse of Philippians. There was a divine plan for the people in Philippi. There was a divine course of events that led to the church being born in Philippi. We miss the story and the power when we gloss over the divinity. When we treat it like it was this random course of events that just so happened to work out. There was a divine God with a divine plan that, coupled with the obedience of a few, accomplished great things.

You will have to choose between your plan for your life or God's divine plan for your life, but you cannot have both. This week I've spent a lot of time on the phone with my pastors from college. They've guided me through a lot of different things. One of the things we keep talking about is this idea of this God that goes before us and this incredible divine God and how his hand moves in our lives in such divine ways that we don't even notice.

Because without even realizing it, we have a tendency to shrink God down and make him like us because that's more digestible. We understand humanity. We are human. We don't understand divinity. It's too big for us to fully comprehend. So we shrink God down so we can understand him better. But he's not like us. He's divine, and his ways are divine. His ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He has a plan that is bigger than ours.

If we minimize his divinity, we won't trust his plan. Because if he's not divine and his plan is not divine and holy, then it is only as trustworthy as we are. And if you've been around humans for five seconds, we're not very trustworthy. That's why we end up thinking that we're God, that we're the one man, one woman show that can do it all, because we don't trust nobody. But when we realize God is holy, he is not a man that he should lie, he is divine, and his plan for our life is divine, and it can be trusted. He has a plan, and it is divine because he is divine. So now you have to choose your plan or his.

My now what for today was to live with open hands. This is the art of surrender. This is a practice of trusting God enough to say, give it to me or take it from me. Either way, you're still God and you're still good and you still have my yes.

For me in my life, it has looked like the practice of simple prayers. Really simple prayers. When the thought of that thing comes into my mind, whatever I'm trying to control, whatever's going off track, it's just simply saying, Lord, I surrender this to you. That's it. Just this simple prayer. Not all the fancy words. Sometimes we don't have to do all that. It's as simple as, Lord, I surrender this to you. And taking a breath and resetting.

And if I have to pray that 70 times that day, then I have to pray it 70 times that day. Lord, I surrender this relationship to you. Lord, I surrender my finances to you. Lord, I surrender my career to you. Lord, I surrender my dreams to you. Lord, I surrender this degree to you. Lord, I surrender my health to you. I surrender this to you.

Another really simple practice I do is like brain dumping. So literally taking a piece of paper and writing every single thing that is clouding my brain and making me anxious. All the things I'm trying to control that I can't control. Throwing it on a piece of paper. And literally at the bottom of it, I've literally written this prayer so many times in my journal. Just saying, Lord, I surrender to you. You are God and I am not. You are God and I am not.

Learning to live with open hands and a posture of surrender is going to lead us into a time of worship. And as we worship, I want you to surrender. To the person who is frustrated by the no right now, open your hands. To the person who is frustrated by the outcome, open your hands. And to the person who feels forgotten by God in this plan, open your hands.

In worship, there's this practice that we see all the time of people raising their hands. I remember talking to a friend of mine who didn't step foot in a Christian church until he was 23. He had never been in a Christian church, and he said he remembers sitting there being shook because there was a bunch of people doing what looked like karaoke and raising their hands. He didn't get it.

But this act of raising your hands means something. It's a physical act of surrender. It's saying, God, I give it to you, and I receive whatever it is you have for me. So I want to encourage you today, if you're comfortable or maybe it's a little out of your comfort zone, if you have something to surrender today, put out your hands. It doesn't have to be like this. It can be like this. Whatever it looks like for you. But open your hands and surrender today.

God, I thank you because you are sovereign, you are divine, you are holy, you are unshakable, immovable, and there is nothing you cannot do. I thank you because you are the God that goes before us, that stands behind us, and walks with us. God, I thank you because every giant mountain in our head, scripture says this is but a light thing for you.

So Lord, whatever it is that we're holding so tightly to, whatever dream it is we're scared to let go of, whatever relationship it is that we're scared to let go of, whatever it is we're holding so tightly to, God, I give it to you. Teach us to release what we cannot control. Give us hearts that are humbled and realize you are God and we are not.

God, I pray that you come and you bring comfort to the Lydia in the room. The one that's been praying and praying, waiting and waiting, not seeing anything. The one who's been waiting on that word but hasn't gotten it yet. Holy Spirit, I pray that you come and meet her or him even now. There is a plan for the life of every person in this room. It is in motion. You are doing great things. Teach us to be surrendered to that, God.

We want your will, not ours. We want your best, not ours. Thank you, because you're better. You're better. Lord, we need you, and we surrender to you today. In your holy name I pray. Amen.