Thrive: In God’s Plan
Lead Pastor: Rollan Fisher
Focus: We will thrive in every season when we learn to sow into that which God is doing.
God Has a Plan
Sow into that Plan
Reap with Christ
God has a plan
To thrive, we must acknowledge that God has a plan in the place in which we find ourselves.
Genesis 26:1-5
Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar to Abimelech, king of the Philistines. And the Lord appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; dwell in the land of which I shall tell you. Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you, for to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father. I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”
Everyone, even the people of God, experience times of famine when they’re living in a fallen world.
What you do during times of famine matters more than you realize and can affect your destiny in Christ.
God made sure to intervene with Isaac to cut off our natural human proclivity to take flight when times get tough.
Isaac learned from God that we should never make life altering decisions in the midst of famine without first seeking his counsel.
We may miss the voice of the Lord if we only make decisions based on felt needs that we perceive.
There is a promise on the other side of famine when we cling to the unchanging purposes of God.
What did Isaac learn about God’s plan?:
God cares more about where we live than we do.
Where you live should be a calling, not just a concern.
When we embrace this biblical truth, we learn to thrive, living PRODUCTIVELY in the land to which God has called us.
This means that we begin to serve our cities rather than using them, and understand that we have to spend time in them to cultivate them.
Isaac was wealthy, having received an inheritance from his father Abraham, and had the means to leave Canaan during the famine, or any other time that he wanted to, for that matter.
Yet God instructed Isaac to stay, rather than opting for the freedoms that his upwardly mobile life provided, so that Isaac might fulfill God’s plan to build a legacy for the Kingdom of God in that land.
The question is:
What do we do with our freedoms and mobility?
And even before that:
What is the vision that God has given you and the people with whom God has called you to walk to be productive in the land to which HE has called you?
There was purpose in God calling Isaac to stay.
Why was God so intent on Isaac remaining in the land in the midst of famine?
God knew he would provide for Isaac, but was determined to also preserve something through Isaac’s influence in the land.
Something will always fill the intellectual, spiritual and cultural voids of our lands.
It will either be the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Darkness.
As the church, Jesus has said that we are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:13-16).
Too often the church has abdicated its role to be salt and light in industries, cities and nations because they have been swept up in delusions of comfort, wealth and personal satisfaction above all else.
Yet Jesus warned against such things in his teaching of the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-20).
When we are more saturated by our culture’s idea of fulfillment rather than driven by the pleasure of God, we abdicate territories to Satan being relegated to merely commenting on the violence, corruption and sin that have filled the void that Christians have left.
This is why notable theologian John Piper says:
“The task of all Christian scholarship—not just biblical studies—is to study reality as a manifestation of God’s glory, to speak and write about it with accuracy, and to savor the beauty of God in it, and to make it serve the good of man. It is an abdication of scholarship when Christians do academic work with little reference to God. If all the universe and everything in it exist by the design of an infinite, personal God, to make his manifold glory known and loved, then to treat any subject without reference to God’s glory is not scholarship but insurrection.”
― John Piper, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God
So what are we to do with our lives?
We are to sow into the plan of God where we find ourselves.
Sow Into that Plan
To thrive, we must learn to sow where God has planted us.
Genesis 26:6-16
So Isaac settled in Gerar. When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, “She is my sister,” for he feared to say, “My wife,” thinking, “lest the men of the place should kill me because of Rebekah,” because she was attractive in appearance. When he had been there a long time, Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out of a window and saw Isaac laughing with Rebekah his wife. So Abimelech called Isaac and said, “Behold, she is your wife. How then could you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac said to him, “Because I thought, ‘Lest I die because of her.’” Abimelech said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.” So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, “Whoever touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.” And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him. (Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father.) And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.”
By the command of God, Isaac settled in Gerar.
What God knew was that:
TO AFFECT A PLACE FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD, YOUR LIFE MUST BE INTENTIONALLY SOWN THERE.
Yet there were other lessons that Isaac needed to learn to be the man of faith, the seed, that God wanted to sow into the land.
The first lesson that Isaac had to learn is that to thrive, he needed to realize that the environment is not always the problem - it’s our life patterns.
To thrive, Isaac had to learn to break the faithless patterns that were passed down to him by his father Abraham.
There was another reason that God came to remind Isaac not to leave the land of promise to go to Egypt.
During his time of famine, Abraham did what seemed natural to meet his needs, but got he and his family in trouble when he went down to Egypt.
Now God was gracious enough to cover over Abrahm’s mistakes and put him back on track in the land of promise, but Abraham had to go back to the place he left to rebuild altars of worship to the Lord (Genesis 12:10-13:4).
Abraham, and now Isaac, were driven by fear and self-preservation rather than faith and the purposes of God.
They both had to learn that God had a plan bigger than theirs that involved a place, a people and a purpose.
And when God shows you these things, by faith and with faithfulness, you sow into that plan.
It is no different for us today in Christ.
Most people end up in unfulfilled wanderings throughout their lives because they forsake one or all of these three things about which God is concerned.
Yet God is determined to teach us how to live by faith, and will use life’s circumstances to provoke this.
God supernaturally provides as we sow by faith into his plan - even during times of famine.
Isaac did not hoard his time, talent or treasure during the famine.
He knew that each of these things were a seed that he could:
Consume and have no more
Horde and have nothing but false security and wasted potential
Sow and reap a harvest
By faith, Isaac sowed and in the same year reaped one hundred fold.
*Even in famine, the place of God’s choosing, not ours, is where we will most thrive.
Think of your marriage, city, ministry assignment and career.
You will thrive when you learn to sow the word of God into each of these areas to shape them rather than letting your fear of lack in these areas shape you.
Learning to sow by faith in the land which God has given you will allow you to thrive in any season, despite the circumstances.
What types of famines have you experienced recently?
Relationally? In your marriage or parenting? In your career or financially? Spiritually?
In what ways does God want you to sow by faith into that which HE is doing to bring a harvest in the very place you thought there was nothing left for you?
When we sow by faith into that which GOD is doing, like Isaac, we begin to thrive as we enter into God’s divine calling on our lives.
“You can’t submit a resume for a Divine calling. A calling is initiated by God, and has more to do with his plans and purpose than our dreams.”
-Christine Caine
What was the result of Isaac sowing into God’s plan?
*The people began to envy Isaac in the land not because he got lucky, but because he obeyed God by faith and began to reap the fruit of that which he had sown.
Many times people want the fruit of what you’ve labored for without doing the work.
God doesn’t work that way.
This same principle of doing things God’s way and investing into what God is doing will apply to our marriages, child-rearing, relationships, work and ministry life as we learn to sow by faith into God’s plan.
Reap with Christ
We will thrive when we find the life-giving waters in the land to which God has called us digging them along with those with whom he’s called us to walk.
Genesis 26:17-33
So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there. And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham. And he gave them the names that his father had given them. But when Isaac's servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the name of the well Esek, because they contended with him. Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that also, so he called its name Sitnah. And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, saying, “For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.” From there he went up to Beersheba. And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham's sake.” So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the Lord and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac's servants dug a well. When Abimelech went to him from Gerar with Ahuzzath his adviser and Phicol the commander of his army, Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, seeing that you hate me and have sent me away from you?” They said, “We see plainly that the Lord has been with you. So we said, let there be a sworn pact between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you, that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you and have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord.” So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. In the morning they rose early and exchanged oaths. And Isaac sent them on their way, and they departed from him in peace. That same day Isaac's servants came and told him about the well that they had dug and said to him, “We have found water.” He called it Shibah; therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.
Again, Isaac learned from his father Abraham that there will always be a people, a place and a purpose for you as you follow God (Genesis 12).
When you are a spiritual nomad without roots, you think that you will find the call of God by moving to an easier environment or seeking different relationships, but it’s the internal patterns that follow you that can keep you disconnected from God, his people and his purposes.
Warfare did not mean that Isaac was to leave the land to which God had called him.
It meant that he had to search for the life-giving waters within that land.
Within the land in which God has called you, you may need to be ready to press past the warfare to find the wells that will bring you life.
This means that you have to fight to find ways to meet with God in the midst of daily responsibilities and fight for the relationships in the church community that will strengthen you and help you grow.
Do not give up because it is challenging to build relationships.
Don’t let the fear of rejection keep you from thriving in Christ.
Genesis 26:34-35
When Esau was forty years old, he took Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite to be his wife, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.
To thrive, we must have a culture of discipleship where we pass these principles down to our children.
Esau departed from the path of faith and became a bitter pill for his parents Isaac and Rebekah.
Jesus, on the other hand, was perfectly pleasing to the Father.
Under the threat of not a famine, but Herod’s infanticide, in a dream God called his parents to take him to Egypt.
After Herod’s death, Jesus returned to the small, seemingly inconsequential of Nazareth to grow and be prepared for God’s plans.
In the land of Galilee, Jesus sowed after a 400 year period of famine where the prophetic word of the Lord had become rare around the time of Malachi.
In Christ’s sowing, he reaped one hundred fold in miracles, demonic deliverances, teaching regarding the Kingdom of God resulting in the multitudes being saved through his sacrificial work on the cross.
Because his focus was making disciples, after his resurrection from the dead, those who would follow him lived in that same faith to bring the gospel to the world.
The 120 disciples who remained after Christ’s ascension remained in the city to which he called them until the day of Pentecost when they were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfill God’s plan.
As they were, operating in the same signs, wonders and miracles as Christ, they went into a hostile world to turn it upside down with the love and good news of Christ.
Now there are billions worldwide who call on the name of the Son of God.
So again, where you live should be a calling even more than a concern that you might reap with Christ.
In the place to where God has called you, he wants to use your life to be a disciple and make disciples of the unreached who do not know Christ but will come to know him through your life.
This, your placement, is of eternal consequence.
Paul summarized God’s plan to the Athenian onlookers of his time when he said:
Acts 17:22-31
So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
So finally, what is God’s plan for the place where we live?:
That we would be provoked through that place to seek him and his Word.
That in seeking God, we would encounter him in Christ his Son by the power of the Holy Spirit.
That in encountering God, we would become testimonies of thriving in every season by his grace so that others might come to know him as well.
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher 2021
