Deciding to Say Yes to God

Thursday, Dec. 6, dawned bright, cold, and clear in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The year was 1917 and World War I raged in Europe. Halifax harbor was busy with the movement of warships carrying troops, relief supplies, and munitions.

At around eight o’clock that morning, the Norwegian ship Imo left its moorings in Bedford Basin to head out to sea. At the same time a French cargo ship, the Mont Blanc, was heading into the harbor to join a convoy. She was under the command of Captain Aime Le Medec, and was carrying a full cargo of explosives. Stored n her holds, or simply stacked on deck, were 35 tons of benzol, 2,000 tons of picric acid used in artillery rounds, 10 tons of gun cotton, and 200 tons of TNT.

As he steamed slowly into port, Capt. Le Medec noticed the Imo coming straight toward him at a rapid clip in the wrong channel. Le Medec signaled his intention to pass the Imo to port, which would normally be the correct procedure, but the Imo kept coming and didn’t change course. Capt. Le Medec then made a fateful decision – he decided to try to avoid a possible collision with the Imo by turning hard to port himself, hoping that he could cut across in front of the Imo before she got there.

Well, it didn’t work. The bow of the Imo sliced into the Mont Blanc. The force of the impact ruptured some of the drums of benzol on deck and they caught fire. Knowing the kind of cargo they were carrying, Capt. Le Medec and the crew of the Mont Blanc immediately abandoned ship. They began to row frantically for the shores of Dartmouth, screaming out warnings for people to clear the area.

Meanwhile, the Mont Blanc, now without a crew, drifted slowly across the narrow channel toward Halifax, burning furiously and putting up a great column of black smoke. People in Halifax who had seen the collision and the fire and smoke flocked to the waterfront or to the windows of their houses, factories, and office buildings to watch the unfolding spectacle. Word of mouth spread around the city and people hurried to various vantage points to see the show.

Members of the Halifax Fire Dept. responded to the alarm and raced to the docks. The Mont Blanc had by now drifted straight into Pier Six, setting it ablaze. Just as the firemen were connecting their hoses to the nearest hydrant, the Mont Blanc exploded in a blinding flash of white light.

The shock wave leveled 2.5 square kilometers of the city of Halifax. 1,600 people were killed instantly; hundreds more would die of their wounds. Hundreds of people who were watching at windows were blinded by the shattering glass. Huge fires erupted in the ruins of Halifax because of the wood and coal stoves that had been toppled by the explosion. An enormous tidal wave roared through the harbor, tearing ships from their moorings, and capsizing many of them.

The Mont Blanc simply disappeared, blown into tiny bits of deadly shrapnel, which rained down from the three-mile high mushroom cloud that rose over the city. The shaft of the ship’s anchor, weighing half a ton, landed in a lake over two miles away.

The blast was heard and felt as far away as Cape Breton Island 400 km north of Halifax. Windows shattered in Truro, 100 km up the road. It was the largest man-made explosion in history prior to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. And it all happened because of that fateful decision of Capt. Le Medec to change course.

We make our decisions and then our decisions make us. Every day we make hundreds of decisions. Most of them are minor – what clothes to wear, what food to eat, what route to take to work. Every now and then, we make a major decision – what university to attend, what person to marry, what career to pursue. But the interesting thing is that many of the seemingly minor decisions of life can turn out to have very major consequences down the road.

For example, on a certain weekend at the end of August 1971, I asked a pretty young lady named Carolyn to come shopping with me in downtown Montreal. It was the last weekend before I moved to Toronto to attend Ontario Bible College. If I hadn’t asked Carolyn out then, we may never have developed the friendship that led us to become husband and wife, and there never would have been five McKnight boys in the world today. A seemingly minor decision that turned out to have major, life-changing consequences! Kind of makes you want to pause and take a deep breath before making decisions, doesn’t it?

I want to talk to you today about how we make decisions. We have no idea, when we make these decisions, how they are going to turn out. We don’t see the end from the beginning like God does. We have no clue about the unforeseen consequences that may be set in motion for years to come by the decisions we make today.

So how do we go about making good decisions? How can we make decisions that won’t blow up in our face? Are there any principles we can build on? Is there anything in the Bible that can help us?

There are plenty of illustrations in the Bible of people who made decisions that turned out to have very significant consequences. Some of them turned out well; others turned out very poorly. Over the next few weeks of the summer, we’re going to look at some of these “moments of decision”. We’re going to try to dig under the surface to see whether there are any principles that we can use to guide us in our decision-making today.

The first person I want to look at is a man named Abram. His story begins in Genesis 12. Let’s read it.

The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

So Abram left, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran.

Abram lived in the city of Ur, about 2000 years before Christ. Ur was located in Mesopotamia at the head of the Persian Gulf near present day Kuwait. Ur was a cosmopolitan, sophisticated city. If Mesopotamia was Canada, Ur was its Toronto.

Ur was not only the economic hub of the Middle East, it was a highly cultured place as well. It had libraries, art galleries, and great temples and pyramids decorated with the finest craftsmanship. Ur was at the forefront of science and learning.

Abram would have been familiar with all these things. He was a city-dweller, an urban creature comfortable with life in the big city. He may have had the benefit of an advanced education. From every indication, he came from a rather successful and wealthy family, so he would have been accustomed to the finer things in life. He probably knew all the best restaurants. He probably could get tickets to the finest theaters and sporting events. Perhaps he even owned some of the magnificent art treasures that archaeologists have uncovered from the ruins of Ur.

At any rate, there he was busily carving out a good life in the big city, trying to make himself a home, when God spoke to him.

“Abram, I want you to leave your country, your people, and your father’s household, and go to a land I will show you.”

How did God speak to Abram? I don’t know. Did he speak in an audible voice? I don’t know. Did he appear to him in a vision? I don’t know. All I do know is that Abram believed that it was God telling him to do this.

Do you believe that God speaks to us today? In the midst of our busy lives, filled with choices and decisions to be made, do you believe that God’s voice is there calling to us, speaking to us, prompting us? Do you ever take time to listen for the voice of God?

You say “That’s crazy. You want me to start hearing voices?” Seriously, God speaks to us. He speaks to us through his Word, the Bible. He speaks to us through the promptings of our conscience. He speaks to us through the counsel of godly friends and spiritual leaders. He speaks to us through the ordering of circumstances, through the happening of coincidences, through the pain of crisis.

Truth be told, God is speaking to us all the time – if only we have ears to hear his voice. We don’t know which of these methods he chose, but God spoke to Abram.

Stephen tells us in Acts 7:2 that “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran.”

Hebrews 11:8 tells us that “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

Often when God speaks to us, it is to tell us to do something we would never have thought of doing on our own. He puts a thought in our head and we think “Where did that come from?” And we often dismiss the thought because it is so completely outlandish, so “out-of-the-question”.

Think about Abram for a moment. He is a wealthy, successful man who lives in the most prestigious, sophisticated city in the world. He probably owns his own business. He has a good livelihood. He has an extended family around him. And in the midst of all that prosperity and accomplishment, God speaks to him and says “Abram, I want you to drop everything and leave. Turn your back on everything that is familiar, say good-bye to everyone who knows you, including your extended family. Bid farewell to this great cosmopolitan city and come with me out into the wilderness to a place I will show you.”

Notice that God didn’t even have the courtesy to tell Abram exactly where he was going. He simply said “Come with me to a place I will show you.”

What Abram did next is the most significant thing that any human being can ever do. He said “YES” to God. He simply laced on his sandals, shut the door of his house behind him, and walked out of the city of Ur in obedience to the voice of God.

Can you hear his family? Can you hear his friends’ reaction? Can you hear the conversation they must have had? Can you hear Sarai his wife: “We’re going to do WHAT? We’re going WHERE? You mean you can’t even TELL me where? Abram, have you lost your mind?”

People who are listening and responding to the voice of God are marching to the beat of a different drummer. Perhaps you have met some people like that. And the thing that makes them stand out is that they aren’t doing what everybody else is doing. They’re swimming upstream against the current. They’re going against the conventional wisdom. And there’s something magnetic and attractive about someone like that. Jesus was like that.

Abram said “YES” to God and walked out of Ur. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was literally going to change the destiny of the whole human race. With every footprint of his sandals away from Ur, he was making an impact on world history - an impact that is still being felt to this very day, 4,000 years later. But all he knew was that he was putting one foot in front of the other in response to what God had told him to do.

I’m sure that it must have been hard for Abram as he walked away from his home in Ur. I’m sure that he must have had second and third thoughts about what he was doing. And God wasn’t always there whispering in his ear to reassure him that he was doing the right thing. Over the next few years, there were going to be long periods of silence when Abram didn’t hear from God. All he could do was put one foot in front of the other and keep walking. Walking by faith as he kept saying, “YES” to God.

I believe that God wants to do the same in our lives today. God stands at the crossroads of every decision we make and he wants to be heard. He wants us to stop and listen for his still, small voice in each choice that we make. Because often, when we stop and listen for him – we find that He will show us a way through our decision that we may not have considered; a road ahead that we might have missed. That’s why the Bible says…

Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

I don’t know about you, but I want to cultivate in my life the ability to better hear God’s voice; to be more senstitive to His promptings. I have just enough experience to know that amazing things happen when I hear Him and do what he tells me to do.

Saying YES to God has powerful consequences:

1. Enables me to know Him more deeply

   1. John 14:21 Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. My Father will love him who loves me, and I too will love him and show myself to him.

   2. Want to get to know God better? Say YES to him. But if I keep saying NO to God, how long do you think He’ll keep talking to me?

2. Enables Him to bless me

   1. Cf. Prayer of Jabez – Oh, that you would bless me!

   2. But just asking for God’s blessing isn’t the whole story – it is saying YES to God in the daily decisions of life, so that He is able to bless me.

3. Extends His blessing to future generations

   1. Psalm 103:17 But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children

   2. As I look at my life, I believe that God has blessed my family beyond measure, and I think that my father and mother, Tom and Mary McKnight are the reason why. They lived their lives saying YES to God. They determined to honor Him in their choices, in their decisions, in the way they lived their lives. And the result has been blessing for their offspring. My wife can say the same thing about her parents.

   3. You want your children to know the blessing of God on their lives? Say YES to God today. It’s a way of reaching into the future.

4. Results in God’s glory

   1. Jesus said “When you say YES to God, people will notice the way that you are living your life, and they will give glory to God. (That’s a free translation of Matthew 5:16)

   2. And when God gets the glory, we all win

Let me close with the story of a young man who was born in humble circumstances in Alabama. His name was Millard Fuller. Through hard work and diligent study, Millard did very well for himself. He graduated from Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama and the University of Alabama Law School at Tuscaloosa.

He married a beautiful young woman named Linda. Millard and a college friend began a marketing firm while still in school. His business expertise and entrepreneurial drive made him a millionaire at the young age of 29. But as his business prospered, his health, his integrity and his marriage were falling apart.

He and his wife Linda became increasingly alienated until finally they separated. She flew to New York to see a marriage counselor, and she was thinking about divorce. In the midst of this crisis, Millard began to re-evaluate his values and direction. Although he was on top of the world from a business point of view, he was a broken man with a broken marriage. He decided to turn his life over to God.

He got on the next plane to New York City to try to find his wife Linda. Through a remarkable set of circumstances, he found her in that huge city and tearfully told her of the changes that God was making in his life. The two of them checked into the Plaza Hotel and spent that entire night on their knees pouring out their hearts to God. They were asking God “What do you want us to do now? We’re all yours.”

That night, they both sensed that God was asking them to take a drastic step: to sell all of their possessions, give the money to the poor, and begin to search for a new focus for their lives. So that’s what they did. Over the next several weeks and months, the Fullers “cashed out” and gave away all their assets.

Over the next few years, God began to form in them a new vision – a vision for helping the poor, particularly to help poor people own their own homes. In 1976, Millard and Linda founded a new organization called Habitat for Humanity.

The way Habitat works is that they will help poor people purchase at no profit, a simple, affordable house. They will provide them a mortgage for that house at zero percent interest. They will then help the new owners to actually build the house using the skilled labor of volunteers. Perhaps you’ve seen former President Jimmy Carter wielding a hammer working on Habitat houses. Yesterday, Pope John Paul blessed a new home that had been built here in Toronto by Habitat volunteers.

The program gives poor people the pride of building a decent home in which they will live. It gives them the dignity of home ownership and the economic benefit of an equity stake in the community. It also has the wonderful benefit of bringing people together from all over the world to work together as volunteers in literally helping to build a better future.

Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has built over 100,000 houses in 82 countries worldwide. These houses provide a home for over half a million people. In 1996, the Fullers were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, who called Habitat for Humanity the “most successful continuous community service project in the history of the United States – one that has revolutionized the lives of thousands”.

And it all happened because Millard and Linda Fuller said YES to God.