Sermon 3-7-10

Great God, Heavenly Father, we are thankful that we can be in Your presence this morning. We are thankful that You are here and that You speak to us not only through the words in Holy Scripture but, as we will discuss this morning, You speak to us in other ways to guide us and direct us. We ask that Your Holy Spirit would be with us this morning that we would hear Your voice. And we pray this in the Name of Jesus. Amen.

The first reading from the Book of Proverbs tells us that God has a plan and He has a purpose. The great thing is that God, who cared enough to die on the Cross and pay for your sins, loves you so much that His purpose will always prevails. And that gives us peace.

Old Testament – Proverbs 19:20-23 Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise. Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. What a man desires is unfailing love; better to be poor than a liar. The fear of the LORD leads to life. Then one rests content, untouched by trouble.

Our second reading from the Book of Hebrews reminds us that God does speak to us today. In Biblical times He spoke in various ways and today He speaks to us through His Son. Jesus is the Word made flesh. We know Him through His Word; it’s through His Word that He speaks and communicates with us and this will be the topic of our sermon this morning.

Epistle – Hebrews 1:1-3 In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoke to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

In our Gospel lesson Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit coming. The Holy Spirit comes through God’s word and leads us in the truth. You will always know what’s going on, you will always know where you are supposed to be, you will always know what you are supposed to be doing because God will guide you through His Holy Spirit.

Gospel – John 16:12-15 (The words of Jesus) “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine, that is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.

Sermon –

I brought an amazing thing with me this morning – it’s a compass – and it will tell you what direction you’re going. However, I think these things are absolutely worthless and I never use these them. You know why? I’m a man – I never get lost, right?! But seriously, I never use them because you can’t tell me that a little thing like this is able to tell me the direction I’m going - it’s not connected to the satellites and it has no batteries - how is this thing going to work?

Is it a wise decision to not use my compass? It’s probably a stupid decision because it doesn’t matter how this compass works, the only thing that matters is that it does work. And if we can understand that principle, we will always have God’s guidance and direction in our lives; life will become less confusing and begin to make sense.

Our theme during the Lenten season is Making Sense Out of Life, and we are going through the basic principles from Experiencing God. Last week we talked about the third principle: God Invites You to Become Involved with Him in His Work. All you need to do is watch and see where God is working and when we understand and see where He is working, we can follow Him in His work.

And last week we talked about a passage from John 5:19. Jesus said, “The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” It’s really pretty simple. God is always at work and the Son, Jesus Christ, simply watched to see where God was working and joined Him in his work.

For us here, today, God is working in the worship service, He’s working at Trinity Christian School, and He’s working in the Sunday School and all you have to do is simply join Him in what He is doing. When you look at the Time and Talents Survey that’s in your bulletin today, you can see that we need people for the altar guild, ushers, music people, and people to run the sound system. All you have to do is say. “These are the ways that God is working here. All I have to join Him in His work.”

That’s the basic concept and although we go through these concepts again and again and again, it seems as though there is a disconnect. We know the concepts, but we don’t know how to apply the concepts it in our life.

And this brings us to the principle for this week which builds off last week’s principle. Principle four is:

GOD SPEAKS TO YOU BY THE HOLY SPIRIT THROUGH

THE BIBLE, PRAYER, CIRCUMSTANCES IN LIFE and OTHER CHRISTIANS

TO REVEAL HIS PURPOSE and HIS WILL

How often have we talked about that here? Hundreds of thousands of times – and that’s only a slight exaggeration! But there is still some disconnect – we know the concept, but how does it work? How does God speak to us? That’s what we want to discuss today so that you can take these concepts and actually use them in your life so that you will know what you are supposed to be doing, where you are supposed to be, and God’s plan and purpose for your life.

God speaks by the Holy Spirit. As we read in the Gospel lesson, the Spirit leads you in the truth. It takes the mind of God, the will of God, and makes it known to you and me, that’s God’s promise. We are disconnected from God because of sin and our sin is forgiven through faith in what Christ did on the Cross. With sin is forgiven, we are connected to God but we still guidance from God, we need the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit works to directs us through the Bible, through prayer, through circumstances in life, and through other Christians. Today we want to look at the most abstract of those four concepts: God’s guidance through the Bible and His guidance through prayer. Then on Wednesday night, we will talk about the easier concepts, God’s guidance through circumstances in life and through other Christians.

We may think that the Bible was written so long ago that we can’t get specific information but the words in the Bible put us in touch with the Holy Spirit. The words in the Bible are living, alive, and active because they are accompanied by the Holy Spirit to guide and direct us. You can get specific information on where to go, you can get specific information on how to find an emergency room nurse when a family member is having a seizure, you can get specific information about what to talk to your kids about when you come home from work. God will give you very, very specific information and He has done all those things during the past couple of weeks for various people in this congregation. Holy Spirit works to directs us through the words in the Bible.

When I look at my compass, I can know what direction I’m going because there are unseen forces, magnetic fields, at work that give me direct guidance about where I am and what direction I need to go. So let’s use that same concept with the Bible. The Holy Spirit is the unseen force so that when you are into God’s word, whether you hear it preached in a worship service, in a Bible Study, reading it at home in your daily devotions, or are listening to tapes in the car, the Holy Spirit, an unseen force, is there to guide you and direct you. And if you say, “Well, how does that work?’ it really doesn’t matter how it works, it only matters that it does work. It’s the most incredible thing and that’s why you hear the testimonies with people saying, “I didn’t know what to do and I was reading the Bible one day, and presto, it just became clear to me what direction to go!” God will guide you and direct you by the Holy Spirit through the Bible.

And God guides and directs through prayer. We usually think of prayer as something we do, we zing off a bunch of stuff to God, but we need to understand that, through prayer, God also speaks to us. A little over a year ago in our Wednesday night prayer service we began turning off all the lights in the church and only the Christ Candle is lit. There are no other distractions and we have silence, just sit there and listen for God to speak to us. And it’s incredible, He does speak. February 16, during Trinity Prays Days, all day long I kept thinking that there was something I had to do but couldn’t remember what it was. When we were in the Prayer Service that night and it was the time of silence, all of a sudden it came to me, February 16 is my son’s baptismal anniversary and I knew exactly what God wanted me to do. I knew that when I went home that evening, I needed to talk to him, remind him of his baptism, how the Holy Spirit is at work in his life and I needed to pray with him. I wasn’t getting it all day long, but during my prayer time, God communicated that to me.

Evelyn’s Sunday School class also experienced this and she is going to tell us about it. As background, she and I meet every Monday morning and discuss the music for the week and during this meeting I always mention the theme of the upcoming service. This particular Monday, I told Evelyn that we were going to talk about how God guides us through the Bible and through prayer and she said, “Well, I have an example of that.” This is exactly how God guides, leads, and directs. Evelyn told me that during the devotion time in her 7^th grade class, the Holy Spirit guided her to pray with the kids and then to have a time of silence so that God could speak to them. Evelyn had no idea that I was going to be talking about this and I had no idea what was happening in Evelyn’s Sunday School Class. So Evelyn prayed, and then had a time of silence with the kids. And she will tell you what God revealed to those kids in her class:

Evelyn speaking: “Our time of silence was an example of giving God back the time that He deserves. I asked each of the kids, “Where is your favorite place to go?” and each of them mentioned different places. Then I said, “What I want you to do is picture God coming to you in your favorite place and speaking to you and telling you what you need to know.” They didn’t get it at first so I said, “I’m just going to close my eyes and pretend that I’m at Panera Bread having a cup of coffee and God walks in and sits down and has a cup of coffee with me and talks to me about what I need to be doing for Him.”

So we had a moment of silence and afterwards I asked the kids to share what they thought God said to them. One of the kids said, ‘He told me not to forget about Him during the week, that I remember Him on Sunday but I forget about Him during the week.’ Another young person said, ‘He said that I need to read the Bible more.’ And another young lady said, ‘I need to be more obedient to my parents.’ I was blown away. They were so forthcoming, they didn’t hold back, and they actually felt that they had heard the voice of God.”

And that’s exactly what this week’s principle is about. God speak to you directly by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, through prayer, through circumstances in life, and through other Christians so that you know His mind, His will, and what He wants you to do. It’s like my compass, it works - we don’t know how it works, but the important thing is that it does work!

Sometimes people will say, “But I wanted guidance and direction from God on this one thing and I didn’t get it.” Remember God doesn’t give you everything you need to know all at once. Hebrews chapter eleven tells us that when God called Abraham, He made some promises to him just has He has made promises to you. And verse 8 says, “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.” God many times doesn’t give you all the information in one package. But all you have to do is do what God wants you to do right now. God told Abraham what he needed to do right then - pack up and leave - that’s all he needed to know. He didn’t know where he was going, all he needed to know right then was pack up and leave.

And for you and me, if you’re not getting specific information or the information you need, just do what God requires of you at that moment, that hour. Maybe it is to read His word and pray, that could be just exactly what God wants you to do right then and there. Then when it is time to get up and do something, He’ll let you know! So continue to read His word, continue to pray and continue to know that God will direct you by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances in life and other Christians. It doesn’t matter how He does it, He just does it and that’s the important thing. And when we understand that, life begins to make sense.

Next Wednesday evening we’ll get into some more specifics about how God will give you specific information just when you need it and how he uses circumstances in life and other Christians to do it. God is an amazing God. He does direct.

Prayer -

Heavenly Father, we come to You this morning thanking You for your promises. Help us Lord, not to question or doubt, but to hear Your voice and follow, and do Your will. And we pray this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

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