Leading The Way

Guest (Female): Thanks for listening to this episode of Leading The Way. Dr. Youssef’s current series has brought life change to many as he's unpacked the words in the book of James. Words that seem pointed at 2026 and our crazy culture of today. So, to give Dr. Youssef just as much teaching time as possible, let’s join him now as he begins this episode of Leading The Way.

Dr. Michael Youssef: I have lived long enough and I’ve ministered far and wide to know that there are some Christians who have the wrong view of the will of God for their life. They really do. I have met some people who literally fear the will of God for their life. I have known others who say they want to do the will of God for their life and they want to know what that will of God is, if it only does not conflict with theirs.

Now there are some people who view the will of God as some sort of a bitter medicine. It’s like castor oil. But let me tell you something, this is one of Satan’s biggest whoppers. This is one of Satan’s greatest lies. He wants us to distrust in the Lord. He wants us to be skeptical of God’s plan for our life. Satan wants us to believe that God does not have our best interest at heart. And yet our trust in God’s plan for our life is one of the evidence of genuine faith.

I remember some time ago, I was talking to a lady who was literally terrified of God’s will for her life. I mean, she thought if she’s going to obey the will of God, He’s going to ask her to do something she doesn’t want to do. I mean, she was really terrified of the will of God for her life. She asked me and expressed that fear, and I knew she was an animal lover. So I said to her, "Think about this: You’re inside a warm house. Outside it’s stormy, it’s freezing, it’s raining, it’s cold. And then you see a cat on your windowsill. What would you do?"

It took her a few seconds to process this and then she started crying. And she said, "Say no more. Say no more." For the first time in her life, she was able to see her life from God’s perspective. God does not want us to be miserable. Far from it. God does not want to ruin our life. God wants what is best for us, even when we don’t know what that best is. God wants to save us from the drenching, freezing storms of life to bring us into the warmth of His embrace.

Please listen carefully. The will of God and the plan of God for our life come out of His loving heart. That’s where they come from. God’s will is the expression of His love for us. And when we do not joyfully submit to the will of God, we miss out on untold blessings that He has for us. But these blessings can only come as a result of joyful obedience and submission.

What I’m going to tell you is really important, listen carefully. What is the most helpless creature on the face of the universe? It's a newborn babe, right? It’s the most dependent, most helpless. Then that babe grows to be a toddler and then to walk, and they think they can conquer the world. And then that toddler becomes a child and learns to feed itself. And a child then becomes an adolescent or a teenager, and at that point, they know everything.

And then that person becomes a young adult. And each of these stages of development become increasingly independent. And that’s the way we want it. You don’t want it any other way. But when it comes to the spiritual life, it goes in opposite directions. It goes in reverse. When a person is a brand new Christian, a babe in Christ, our tendency is still to want to express our independence. We want to go it our way. We want to do it ourselves.

But then when we become a little bit more mature in our Christian faith, we begin to trust in the plan of God, we begin to trust in the will of God. And then as we begin to mature, we learn the joy of submission. In fact, the most mature Christians of all are those who are most dependent on God. Those truly mature Christians are the ones who are totally say to the Lord, "It is Your will, not mine," and they mean it and are happy about it.

Again and again in the scripture, we see those who submitted joyfully to the will of God got the victory. Now beloved, if there is a desperate need for believers in this 21st century, listen to me, if there is a desperate need, is to get rid of this notion that submission to God somehow robs us of our rights or our rightful identity. Far from it. Far from it.

So what is James saying here to us? Listen carefully. Here’s what he’s saying: Stop overplanning your life. Seek God’s plan for your life. Submit to God’s will in your life. Discover God’s purpose for you in life and jump on it. Verse 13: Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend the year there and carry on business and make money," you don’t even know what tomorrow brings.

What is James saying? Is he saying that we should not have any plans for life? Is he saying that we should never set goals for our life? Is he saying that Christians supposed to be drift on life’s highway and just go along with... No! Far from it. He is saying nothing of the sort. Listen carefully because he himself gives us the answer.

He is saying don’t make your plans based on your selfish desires and your selfish ambitions, and then go to the Lord and say, "God, bless my plan." But you must take time to pray and seek the Lord so that He may give you His plan so that you may obey it. I set goals every year. You say, "Michael, are you not jumping ahead of the Lord?" Not at all. I take special time alone with God.

I try to discern to the best of my ability, listen to the Holy Spirit, and to the best of my ability as I discern those plans, those goals, I write them down. But daily I pray to the Lord to help me obey these goals if they’re His. But that’s not all, because I daily submit those to the Lord if He wants to change them because there is a possibility that I misheard the Lord.

There’s a possibility that I was not careful in listening to His voice. And so everything I’m holding in submission to Him. He can change them, He can scrap them anytime He wants to. He can modify them, He can fulfill them if they’re His goals, not mine. I have no pride of ownership, I have no pride of authorship. And by doing this, I am daily declaring the Lord’s ownership over me. I’m daily declaring the Lord’s total control of me. I’m daily declaring the Lord’s sovereignty over me. I’m daily declaring the Lord’s prerogative.

If He changes the plan, great, fine. Why should I worry? If He modifies them, wonderful. If they don’t come to fruition, that’s fine too. I’m at peace. I don’t own them, right? They’re not my plans. Listen to me. Grief and pain will come when I set my heart on something or someone or anything and say, "God, I want this. I want this. I want this. I want this." Stress and pain come about when we cease to give Him complete control even in the things we don’t understand, even in the things that do not make sense to us.

Perhaps by now, some of you are saying, "Well, Michael, that’s fine, this is all well and good, but how can I really discern the mind of God? How do I discern the will of God? How do I discover that plan of God for my life so that I may obey it and daily surrender it?" You came to the right guy for this because I blew it many times. Here’s the first problem: When people say, "I can’t discern the mind of God. I can’t discern the will of God in this matter. I don’t know what the will of God in this situation."

One of the biggest problems is that they are also while they’re trying to listen to God, they’re listening to a cacophony of voices. I often say my problem is not distinguishing between the voice of God and the voice of Satan. With God’s grace and discernment, I’m able to discern Satan even when he tries to trick me. My problem is to try to distinguish between the voice of God and my voice when I want to answer my own prayer. And that’s why I take time.

It is not a secret that we live in a noisy culture. We really do. This business of multitasking stuff is diverting our attention. We’re not concentrating anymore. You see, most Christians when they say, "I don’t hear God, I can’t hear God, I can’t discern the will of God," they basically cannot discern the will of God because they are like a person inside a room, lots of people in the room, and they're all talking.

And on top of that, you’ve got a stereo and a television bellowing at the top of the volume. I mean, it’s loud as can be. And meanwhile they’re on the phone saying, "Hello Lord, I can’t hear You. What are You saying? Speak louder, I can’t hear You Lord, what is this You're trying to tell me?" They say, "What’s the use? I can’t hear the voice of God." And they go through their Christian life lurching from crisis to crisis to crisis. Can’t discern the will of God.

In fact, I was thinking about this and I thought of a story that comes from back in the days of... in the days of Morse code. How many of you know about Morse code? Series of dots and dashes. And the story goes about back then, there was a job opening, one job for a wireless operator. The reception room in that company was filled with candidates, all applying for that one job. Lots of candidates.

And they were all talking. They were jibbering away, lots of talk, lots of talk, and it was going on except for one guy. He came in and he sat there quietly by himself. Everybody else was making lots of noise. He sat all by himself. Then all of a sudden, he jumped in, goes into the interview room, a few minutes later he walks in and he announces, "You can all go home now, I got the job."

Well, they were furious. I mean, these applicants were incredulous. They said, "How come? We were here ahead of you. How come you got it?" Here’s what he said: "If you hadn’t been busy talking, you might have heard the message that came on the loudspeaker in Morse code saying, 'I need a man who’s always alert, and the first man who hears this message and comes to my office gets the job.'" That’s what the Lord is saying.

You see, the main reason we can’t hear the voice of God is that we are listening to all sorts of voices, not the voice of God. If you’re not listening to the voice of God, you’re not in tune with His will. And if you’re not in tune with His will, you’re not in tune with His plan for your life. And when you're not in tune for the purpose of God and His plan for your life, you are missing out on God’s best for you.

Now there are times when God cannot rule. You say, "What do you mean God cannot rule?" Yeah. When you’re disobeying Him, when you’re not listening with the desire to obey, and God be speaking, He can’t rule. So what does He do? He overrules. And I’m so grateful to God for that, that He has overruled in my life many times.

Jonah was a great example of that. God had to overrule in his life. I’m going to come back to that in a minute. I’m going to come back to Jonah. But in John chapter 7, there’s something... there’s a nugget there where these miserable religious leaders were out there to trick the Lord Jesus. He said to them, "If you are willing to do the will of God, God will reveal more of His will to you." God will not reveal His will to those who are full of their own importance.

God will not reveal His will to those who are merely trying to impress others by their biblical knowledge. God reveals His will to those whom He knows they want to and willing and desirous to obey His voice regardless of the cost. In Ephesians 5:17, Paul said, "God wants us to understand what the will of the Lord is." Now I’m going to plead with you, don’t misunderstand what I’m going to tell you.

I don’t always know why God does what He does. I don’t always know why God allows what He allows. I don’t always know why God commands what He commands. Not always, I don’t know. But I’m like a five-year-old spiritual child. When He says 'do this' and I say 'why?' He says, "Because I said so." When I grow up a little bit more, I know why. I know why my heavenly Daddy did not want me to play with matches, because that matches could burn me. And He loves me enough to tell me not to play with those matches because He said so.

As I’m mature in Christ, trust and obey in Him, I see why He did something or did not do something. Learning to discern and obeying the will of God is like playing a musical instrument. It gets better with practice. It gets better with practice. Did you get that? I said earlier that sometimes when God cannot rule because of our stubbornness, He overrules. It’s out of love for us that He overrules.

Jonah is like really many Christians today. Much more than you’d even... or even admit. They had to obey God. You know what I’m talking about? They had to obey God. Jonah had to obey God. He did not willingly and joyfully obey God, but he obeyed God grudgingly and reluctantly. He did not go to Nineveh with all of his heart. He did not preach out of love for God and for people. He only wanted to get out of the slimy sushi food that he’s been eating all the time.

And after all of that, after all of that, he resented God’s mercy that He shown the Ninevites. And he missed out on the blessing that can only come from joyfully obeying the will of God. You might be going along doing God’s work, but you’re really missing out on the blessing that God really has for you. You say, "Why should I joyfully obey the will of God?" James gives us the answer. He said, "Because life is so uncertain."

It is foolishness to insist on our own plan for tomorrow because tomorrow might never come to you here. Tomorrow might be the day in which you’re going to give an account for your life that you lived here. He said life is like a mist. It appears then for a little while, it vanishes. Only what is done for God joyfully will count for eternity. I know young people think that you are invincible.

Most young people cannot see the fragility and the brevity of life. The hardest and the toughest funerals that I’ve ever conducted is when a young person dies. That’s the hardest funeral. I watch young people in a state of shock, they really are. They are absolutely traumatized because all of a sudden it dawns on them: this could happen to me. But as time passes, they get back into the invincibility mode and talking as if they’re going to live forever.

And that is why James concludes by saying, "So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is a sin." It might not be for somebody else, but for him it’s a sin. For her it’s a sin. Listen to me: If you continue to make your self-centered plans which ignores the call of God in your life and the purpose of God in your life, you are sinning against God.

The New Testament makes it very clear that the sins of omission are treated just as severely as the sins of commission. Knowing what is right and not doing it will be judged just as severely as the sin that is committed willfully and intentionally. Someone said years ago, "It is not the mountain climbing that wears us out, but it’s the pebble in your shoe that wears you out."

Many of us are focusing on climbing the mountains and don’t pay attention to the grains of sand in the shoe. Stop and check your shoe for pebbles and grains of sand that are causing you to struggle. You say, "What is that pebble? What are these grains of sand?" Listen to me very carefully, please. Indifference to what is right. Indifference toward biblical conviction. Indifference toward the work of the kingdom of God.

Indifference to what God hates. Indifference to what God wants you to do. Indifference to the truth that’s being trampled upon now. These are the pebbles in our shoes. Do you seek the will of God in your life? Only you can answer that. Is it because you want to obey it or you want to compare it with yours? Do you obey the will of God grudgingly and reluctantly like Jonah? You had to obey? Your answer, your right answer to this question could mean the taking out of the pebble, the taking out of the grain of sand, so that you can keep on climbing the mountain with joy on the journey. Do you want that?

Guest (Female): Thank you for joining Dr. Michael Youssef for Leading The Way audio. Initiate a conversation with a Leading The Way pastor or counselor about your special spiritual journey and questions that you have by visiting ltw.org/jesus.

Guest (Male): I grew up in a religious family. I was sent to a specialized Islamic school. I memorized the entire Quran without a mistake by the age of 13. Not for the love of the Quran, but for the fear of punishment. When 9/11 happened, there was a big celebration in Saudi Arabia. Since then, Osama bin Laden has inspired me to become a jihadist like him. I decided to learn English as fast as I could. So I went to New Zealand and I joined an English school.

In Ramadan one day, I had a dream. And a light was shining to the room. And in that bright light, I saw a figure of a shape of a man draped in a robe of sunlight. And a voice saying, "Come to me." I looked at the other side of the room and I saw a picture of a house with white pillars. And the voice said, "Go to the house of the white pillars and in there you shall find the truth." I start to walk on the street and I saw the building of the white pillars that I saw in my dream. I waited there and all of a sudden I heard greeting in Arabic, and he explained to me this is Jesus came to me in my dream.

He explained to me what a follower of Jesus is, and that dragged us to a conversation that lasted till 3:00 AM. He said, "Now you know who Jesus is. Would you like to accept Jesus to be your Lord and Savior?" And I said yes. He gave me a Bible and he said this will guide you. After a few months, my family discovered that I have a Bible, and they beat me. My dad disowned me for staining the jihadist legacy of my family and my name was erased from the family tree. But I’m thankful that my name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life.

After this, God took me on a journey to know who He is, to make Him known. Along the way while I am going around the world, I came to Atlanta, Georgia. I met with personal hero to us in the Middle East, Dr. Michael Youssef. I’m thankful because I was isolated, alone in my faith, and the only way that to be encouraged to grow in my faith is to watch sermons from Dr. Michael Youssef and other programs through the Kingdom SAT that is not only applicable to me, but so many others who are isolated in the Middle East, North Africa, who can’t go to church, who can’t talk to Christians.

Dr. Michael Youssef has a heart to share the gospel with Muslims for our region, especially the Middle East, which my heart and my passion as well. His sermons have reached us in the Middle East and North Africa. And wherever I go in those countries, the navigator device is available and his sermons are there. I have learned of people who are in the desert using those devices and listening to those sermons.

Dr. Michael Youssef: God delights in the repentance.

Guest (Male): They find your YouTube channel and other avenues. And in there they will encounter the truth of Jesus Christ. Dr. Michael Youssef, please continue doing what you’re doing. You have reached so many isolated believers. You're looking at one of them.

Guest (Female): You can check out ways that you can stand with Dr. Youssef in generosity, including a very special opportunity this month. Give us a call, 866-626-4356. Or visit ltw.org. That’s 866-626-4356 and ltw.org. This program is brought to you by Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. Connect further with audio and video content at ltw.org or through your favorite social media platform.