The Pastor’s Piece, Pastor Kevin Cernek – FCFI Chaplain

FCFI
March 9, 2025

When I was a senior in high school, one of my teachers predicted that one day I would be farming 10,000 acres of land and own half the state of Wisconsin. Those were his exact words. I have never forgotten what he said nor the confidence he had in me. I had another teacher who told me I’d be wasting my education and my life if I went to Bible college instead of a university that would train me in a vocation. You know what? They were both wrong! I’m not farming 10,000 acres and I didn’t waste my education or my life.

I did take a roundabout way of getting into the ministry – some people may even call it a convoluted route to get to where I was going. But the fact is, at the time, I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I had to go. But God had the route all planned out ahead of time. As my wife and I look back, we can see God had a master plan for us all along and even though we couldn’t see exactly where we were going, God led us every step of the way. That’s not to say we haven’t had our doubts along the way, or even second guessed some of our decisions, because we certainly have. But we’ve always trusted that God is Sovereign over our lives.

Ps. 119:105 says: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” God’s Word guides us one step at a time (shining down as a lamp unto our feet); and its beam lights the path just far enough ahead to keep us from stumbling along the way. But we have to trust God for the rest because we can’t see to the end of the road – just the path we’re on today. Sometimes that path can get a little crooked, but we live by faith and not by sight, (2 Corinthians 5:7). What is God using in your life to get your attention and draw you to Him? God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick.

Recently, I talked to someone who was on a lifetime quest to find God in his own way. The Bible was not sufficient in his opinion because the God of the Bible is just too offensive and too exclusive for him. In his mind, the God of the Bible is inadequate for what he needs and what he is looking for. He called it a spiritual quest that began 50 years ago. He finally settled on a mystic religion of sorts that defines itself in a way where everyone determines their own path to God. “Everybody finds God in their own way,” he told me. “No religion and no faith is better than another.” The “only” problem with that is, that while God uses many different circumstances in our lives to bring us to a place where we realize we need Him, the only way to God is through Jesus Christ. It is very exclusive. “I am the way, the truth and life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” Jesus clearly explained in John chapter 14.

When someone or an organization decides to make God according to who they think He ought to be, then the god they’ve invented, while he may be appealing to them, in reality, is nothing more than an idol. It makes God exactly who you want Him to be. It defines God from the bottom up – from us up to God: instead of from God down to us. That’s what the pagans did in the Old and New Testaments. They made their idols in the perception of who they wanted their god to be, making their god favorable to their definition. Then they worshiped him according to their own random wants and desires and they gave him a personality they could live with.

It’s no different today. People want God to be someone who condones their sinful bent. They want God to be someone who accepts them on their terms, not on His. And so that is the god they create. That is the definition of putting self on the throne. The God of the Bible is pushed aside and the god they’ve created in their image then takes the throne of their life. They become their own god.

So what does a Christian do in response to the pressure of the times in which we are living? The Apostle Paul answers that when he says to trust the Scriptures to guide you. “All Scripture,” he says, “is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work,” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

(Kevin Cernek is Lead Pastor of Martintown Community Church in Martintown, Wisconsin).