Decisions and Destiny II, Knowing God's Voice

I really knew two weeks ago that God wanted to bring a very special message today, and I knew it more than ever this week as I battled all week with an obvious cold. Someone said to me, well, you're not very godly, you're sick. Well, it's all right, I loved him anyhow, gave him a big hug, asked him just to rub some of that holiness off on me and I'll be fine. Then I knew it even more, I knew that God wanted this message even more when I woke up and the snow was coming down, and you know, folks, it would be easy to be paranoid when Wednesday evening and Sunday morning are the only time of the week it snows. That's exactly what happened this week, but by God's grace I have about 30 more minutes of power left, and I want to share what's on my heart today as I've been preparing you this week, how to know when God is speaking. Listen to what Jesus said in John 10, 25, well, let me start at verse 24, the Jews gathered around him saying, how long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly, and Jesus answered, I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice. Most translations say, hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me. A few weeks ago, a couple from our church was returning from a routine business trip to Cincinnati, Ohio, where they frequently travel. On the way home, they were led off of the interstate to visit their son and daughter-in-law in Worcester, Ohio, something they had not done in seven years of making this same business trip. For some reason, the Lord directed them to go off and to visit, and when they arrived at the home, or the office, rather, of their son, a phone call came from the state police. Their daughter-in-law and her sister and their five-year-old child had been involved in an automobile accident. What is typical, they don't tell you how serious it is, they get in their car and they're going toward the location. When they're two miles away from the location, traffic is at a dead stop. They knew something serious had taken place. They got out of the car, the two men did, the husband and the person from our church walked the two miles to the location, and there they saw the station wagon in which the family had been riding, totally destroyed from the back up, having been rear-ended by a semi-trailer with 72,000 pounds of payload on it, the driver apparently having fallen asleep at the wheel. At the same moment they saw the car, they looked over and saw on the side their daughter-in-law and her sister, and shortly thereafter they discovered that the five-year-old that had been riding in the back seat had been shoved down underneath in the little well between the seats, you know where your feet go, and a car seat had fallen over top of them, making like a cocoon under which they were protected as other parts of the car were smashed on top of them. They had to cut the five-year-old out. Most amazing of all, for some reason the mother that day, highly uncharacteristic, had decided to leave the 18-month-old at home, which would have meant normally the 18-month-old would have been in the car seat and the five-year-old back in the cargo area, which was totally smashed by the truck, but as it was, no one was really seriously injured, although the car was totally demolished, and for some reason the police said it was a miracle that no one was hurt in the accident, even having been pushed forward into cars in front of them. For some reason, that sequence of events took place. God spoke, He nudged, He whispered in the still small voice, and people in the normal routine of life were prepared and equipped for the circumstances that they faced. Two weeks ago I talked to a man, eight or nine years in a particular company, very successful, number one in this whole East Coast region in sales, and he said, he said, Jay, I'm leaving the company. I'm going to another company, taking another job. I said, why would you do that? You know, he has a great success record with this company, lots of benefits and all the rest. He said, well, I think you understand when I say, the Lord spoke to me, he said, about my priorities and the way in which I was putting too much of my life into this job and I need another job. I need to get my life directed. And I said, you mean you'll go ahead and do something that seems kind of illogical? How many people leave what they consider to be a highly successful career to take a turn because God spoke to them? You see, and this is the subject that we're looking at today, hearing the Lord's voice amidst the din of all the other voices in the world today, in the culture in which we live. How do we know when God is speaking, when God is nudging us to turn off the highway, to go see this person, to pick up the phone? I had an experience a few months back, for some reason I was nudged by the Lord to call a family. I hadn't seen a church for a while. I called them up and I said, you know, we prayed this week that if God wanted us in that church, that you'd call. Now, I don't recommend that prayer, but I happened to hear it for that couple. And you see, we looked last week at the fact that God wants to lead his people. These unmistakable impressions that come from God are absolutely crucial to life being full and rich as we follow after him. And yet I cannot stand up here today and give you a formula that will always work in every circumstance to ensure that you'll hear that it's really God. For some reason, as I said last week, God says that in this life we walk by, let's all say it, by what? Faith. And not by sight. And so it will never be, as one friend said to me yesterday in a Bible study, he said, I just wish God would appear to me on my deck and stand on my deck and his two feet would sear footprints right in the deck. And then he'd speak to me. And every time I needed to know that it was really God, I'd look out and see his two footprints out in my deck. And he was serious and he's a smart person. But he knows, I think, as I will share with you now, that the children of Israel had every physical manifestation you can think about. They had a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. They had burning bushes. They had glowing tents. They had faces of people that looked like they'd seen an alien. And still they did their own thing. And they said, is that really you, God? They still did not listen to the voice of the Lord. No, we looked last week and saw that it takes faith to follow the Lord. And we discern, if you weren't here last week, I'll review it, three steps in it. Number one, it takes a plan. Number two, it revolves around a person, the Holy Spirit. And it takes, as I'm saying now, a posture of faith. I said last week that the Holy Spirit is the one that does the speaking. And I said there are two kinds of people when it comes to the Holy Spirit and listening to him. There are the quenchers. May everyone put up their hand. The quenchers and the quackers. Pastor Scott, correct me. It's not quacks. It's quackers. All right. The quenchers are the ones who say, no, that's too weird, too mystical. God's not in these things. And the quackers are the ones who say, oh, oh, oh, you know, they speak in modulated tones. And, you know, it's just because everything's a mystery and a leading. And, folks, let me say, I'm in no way judging the people that are on those ends of the spectrum. I do want you to know, though, that if you live out there for too long, if you're a quencher, your life will soon be the most, your Christian life will be the most boring thing you can imagine. And if you're a quacker, your life will produce so little fruit because all you're going to do is bounce up and down. God wants us to blend those things, sound judgment and spirit sensitivity. That's how we follow the plan of the Lord. And I want to look today very specifically at how we can cultivate those hearing ears so that we can know when the Lord is saying, it's time to do this. It's time to take that step. How many of you really wish you knew that? Because God wants to lead you. He doesn't want you to be wondering all the time, is that really you, Lord? Let me give you three simple little words. Number one, anticipate, anticipate His speaking. You've got to be looking for God. You've got to anticipate that it's really God that's going to be speaking to you. See, God has always been speaking. He's always been communicating. Who were the first people He spoke to? Adam and Eve. The Bible says He went in the garden and He was communing with them, talking with them. And all through history, we find Him speaking to Abraham, and then He spoke to Isaac, and then He spoke to Moses, and then Isaiah, and then Jeremiah, and all through the prophets He spoke. He spoke. You read it. Get your Bible and look up, spoke. And you'll find God's name beside it an awful lot. Then in the New Testament, He continued speaking. In fact, He spoke to Philip and said, get down out of the chariot and find this man. He spoke to Paul and said, why are you persecuting me? I find it fascinating when I just, this popped into my mind, what does the Bible say that Jesus was? He was the Word of God. In other words, He was God speaking in a fleshly way. The Word, the Logos, the Manifestation. Now how many of you think, as some teach, that God did all that speaking, but somehow now that we have the Bible, He stopped speaking? That's not true. God is still speaking. Your Father wants to communicate to you today. He knows you intimately. He watched you as you walked in this building. He's hovering over you now as you worship Him and as you fellowship here in this place, and He wants to send messages to you today. You see, I believe that in our culture, the standard understanding of God that most people have is it's still rules, folks. Rules are what pleases God. If you went to the average man in the mall, we don't have a man in the street in North Hills, we have a man in the mall. The average man in the mall would answer the question, how do I relate to God? He'd say, well, you keep the Ten Commandments, you don't have any fun, you do all the things that the Bible says to do maybe, and he'd list off all these rules, rules, rules. But the Bible teaches that we don't gain acceptance by the rules we keep. The Bible teaches that Jesus said, come and know me, come and accept me, come and receive me, and I will see that you have acceptance. In fact, He says, acceptance before God is a gift that I give you. It's not a merit that you earn by being or doing a certain thing. God loves us enough that He reaches out with a gift and says, come to me and I'll show you acceptance like you've never known. And we have to anticipate that He's speaking to us in all these things. You know, people who find the Bible alive are people who are expecting to find it alive. If you walk out here today and start reading the Bible and say, well, it's going to be, I've got to read three chapters today, it'll be boring. If you walk out and say, well, you know, I've got to pray tomorrow morning and get up and say, well, maybe it'll work, maybe it won't work. How many of you find when you start to anticipate, you begin to see things happen? I said to the Lord some months ago, I was flying back from Colorado, and I said, Lord, you give me the seat that you want me to have. Now that was a strange perk because I had an assigned seat already. So I said, well, you must have already done it. Well, the stewardess came out or one of the people from the airlines and said, it's open seating on this flight, a few passengers. I said, well, that's interesting, Lord, I'd like a seat where nobody was, if that's okay with you. I'd like to just rest, you know. Well, I said, Lord, but whatever you want, I want the seat you want me to have. Well, I found the seat where nobody was, a little hole, you know, up against the window, and I was just praying that everyone would not see me there and just came walking on by. And after a while, you know, but I was anticipating, I said, Lord, you do what you want to do. The young man sat down beside me in his late 20s, he said, you know, we started talking and when the dinner came out, we talked for two hours. And he wanted to know all about why I really believed that there was a God and what, and he told me all about his strong traditional religious roots and his dad was an orthodox priest and all these things, and he hated God, because no one ever related to him about God in a relational way. And I said, Lord, I'm thanking you for helping me anticipate that, helping me to see it, because it was there all the time. I just needed to anticipate it would happen. Miracles don't happen to people who aren't looking for them, but can I tell you a lot of things are going on right now, and if you're not looking for them, you won't see them. How about a very common illustration? How many of you know what a Saab automobile is? Ladies, how many of you would identify a Saab if you saw one? Now, some of you drive Saabs, so I'm not going to say anything that's not nice about it, alright? Great car, expensive, many of them. If you don't know what a Saab is, and you're not looking for it, you know, they'll just go by all the time. It's interesting, though, when you say, and you'll probably do this now, you'll go looking for Saabs. You will see them. They're everywhere. There are all kinds of strange shapes and colors, and it's amazing, once you're attuned to look for something, how many of them you see. You may think, oh, there's no Saabs at all in western Pennsylvania. Surprise, there's a lot of them out there, once you start looking for them. Well, when it comes to hearing from the Lord, begin to anticipate. Begin to believe that when you walk out of this auditorium today, you're going to hear the Lord. Anticipate it, and it will make all the difference in whether or not you do, because if you don't look for it, it's likely you won't hear Him. We need to be a people who are expecting guidance to come, looking for the word of comfort, the word of encouragement, the word of warning. God is sending a message today to warn some of you. If I had a little radio here in my hand, and I had it off, how many stations would you pick up? Not a one, but if I turned it on and began to set the tuner back and forth, it's likely that we'd pick up dozens of stations. Can I say to you, God's sending a transmission today. His transmitter is working. What He's looking for is some people who will open up and anticipate hearing Him. And I want you to know God's messages are wonderful for our lives. Jesus said, I've come to give you life and life abundant, and that's what He wants to do. But you've got to do it. I want to ask you a very honest question. This is a tough question. How many of you today are really hearing the Lord? Are you really? When is the last time you can say with confidence, I really heard the Lord speak to my heart? For some of you, you're not there yet. It's still a religion. It's still sort of, maybe it's just now it's North Way religion. I hate to say this, but North Way religion is no better than any other religion, folks. It's the Jesus that we worship. That's the one who wants to have our ear. If you are hearing the Lord, I want to encourage you, press on, keep doing it. We need you, and we need to hear the message that you're hearing. Let us know that. Number two, eliminate the hindrances. Number two, eliminate hindrances. One of my children has a problem. Wax accumulates in their ears. And I'm not talking about the kind of stuff you just get out with a Q-tip, because we do that. You know, we have basic hygiene and all. But down deep inside where you can't touch, wax accumulates. And so every so often, they have to go to the doctor and get that stuff out of their ear. Things start, you know, it gets fuzzy, and you know, we start saying two or three times their name, and we realize, ah, it's time to go to the doctor and get that ear cleaned out. There are some of us today, in fact I'd say all of us at one time, have a lot of wax in our spiritual ears. And I want to share with you just a couple of hindrances, because if we can get those out, you know what we're going to hear? Ah, that's God. God speaking to me. You see, Jesus gave us the example as to what the number one hindrance is. Folks, here it comes. You've heard me say it a bunch already in 1989. Busyness. I think the Lord's telling me something. I keep hearing, busyness, busyness, busyness. The pace of life. Jesus got up, the Bible says in Mark 135, way before dawn, went out to a solitary place and prayed. And I have to say to you that the two words that are toughest to put into my routine are, here we go, stillness and solitude. Those are not words that we hearken to very much in our culture. Stillness and solitude. Oh, let me know. We always have to have something in our ears. Does that bug you as much as it bugs me? People walking around in public places with these things in their ears. Or you go over to the park to run or walk or just to be out there on a beautiful day and you're walking by all these people and they have these things in their ears. It's like they read your lips and they don't respond because they're listening to something. We're always drawing behind earphones. Kids walk around the house with earphones on. I don't want to hear what you're saying. It's time to take the earphones off. Turn the TV off. Withdraw from the tape recorder and just listen. Get still. Get a little bit silent before God. The Lord wants to speak to us. Isn't it marvelous when Jesus did that? The Bible says that the Father opened up heaven, the dove came down and descended on Him, and the Father said, This is my beloved Son. Hello? Listen to Him. Listen to Him. The Lord spoke to my heart when I was preparing this. He said, You know, if people will listen to me, I'll tell others to listen to them. Say that again? In Jesus' life, He listened to the Father. The Father told the people, Now you listen to Him. If we'll listen to God, God will tell others to listen to you. If you listen to God, God will tell others to listen to you. You have a problem with authority? People not interested in your message? Home group leaders, Are you listening to me? You listen to God and God will tell people to listen to you. Because Jesus, we find, said that the only message He had was the message He heard from His Father. John 12, 15 The words I speak, I speak because my Father gave them to me. I say what He said. What an amazing thing for the Son of God to share with us. Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46, 10 The Bible says that David sat in the presence of the Father. 2 Samuel 7, 18 When's the last time you just sat down and said, God, here I am. Are you like me? I'm getting in my car. God, hurry up. I'm late. Get in here. Lord, deliver us from that hurried spirit. Another major hindrance is the predisposition that we already think we know what God's going to say. I already know what you're going to say, God. When Peter saw the vision of the animals coming down in the white sheet and the voice said, Rise up, kill and eat. What did Peter say? No way. That's unclean stuff. Church, could it be that some of us are not hearing God today because we already think we know everything there is to say? I don't mean that we'd ever say that, but inside we really don't know that there's anything new out there. We've already heard it all. We've been to every conference and heard every tape there is. And I want to just say a word to the more mature of you. Don't be deceived to think that God wouldn't have a new word. It just might be a word of love. We neglect God so often. We just don't take the time to hear because we already think we know what He's going to say and all the rest. There's one more hindrance I want to share, but I want to get to that in a minute. Let me give you the third thing you need to do. Cultivate your hearing. Cultivate it. Build it up. Make it work better. Improve your hearing. Now when it gets down to guidance and knowing God's will, 95% of everything you need to know about guidance comes from where? From where? His Word. Either directly, when the Bible tells you to do this or not do that. Be not drunk with wine. That's a clear command of Scripture. Don't get drunk. Don't hate your enemies. Clear command. Someone does you wrong, you can't hate them. And indirectly, the Bible leads us very often just by the things that we know we shouldn't do because of the character of God. God's Word's not just an optional excursion for people who feel like they'd like to get some inspiration. It's daily life. It's manna. It's moment by moment eating for us. And I've learned a pattern I want to share with you to get the most out of God's Word. You may want to jot this down. What I do to hear the Lord speaking, I get along with God and I take a pad, you know, an 8 1⁄2 by 11 pad, and I begin by writing the word yesterday on it. Yesterday. And I just sort of recount the things that happened in my life yesterday. And I had a Bible study and I did these things and I came over here and I saw this person and I just take a page and then I stop for a minute and I say, now Lord, speak to me about any of those people, any of those circumstances, any of those situations, things that I need to hear. Then I take my Bible and I read along in the plan that we've made available to all of you, the Victory Bible plan which you can get from us. Have one here somewhere. And I look it up and I say, all right, today I'm going to read these chapters. Now this may be too basic for some of you but it works for me. I commend it to you. If you don't have one, get one from us. And I say, now Lord, what in here today is relevant to me? How many of you know sometimes you do that and there's not a thing there? It's like, ooh, boy, where'd that come from, you know? And they went out and killed the goats and splattered it all over the front or something. That just doesn't make... But then there'll be something in there that'll jump up at me and I'll know that's what God wants me to know for that day. I remember not too long ago that I was going through an understanding, you know, struggling with why someone had said something to me. Boy, the Lord used one of the Psalms and He spoke to me and showed me how what really had happened was I'd been offended because they hadn't been sensitive and the Lord showed me that He was taking them through something and I needed to be sensitive to them instead. Boy, that was really eye-opening to me. Well, the Bible will do that. It'll speak to you. Then I write that down and I make it a prayer. I said, Lord, make this happen in me. Make it work in my life. Show me how it can happen. Now, church lesson. Listen, there are times when I'll get before the Lord and it just is like real silent. You've heard me say in times past going up to the cabin up in Mars from time to time regularly on a Wednesday. There were times that I'd go up there and I have six or seven hours set apart and I'd go up there and just sit and I'd even fall asleep. You know how guilty a pastor feels when he falls asleep? I think all all the people who are out working they couldn't just fall asleep like this and here I am falling asleep. They think I'm up here seeking you, Lord. I'm sleeping. They're praying for me. I'm walking out the door and I'm saying, hear the Lord. We're praying for you. Have a great day up in the cabin. I'm there. I remember so distinctly one day and I was way I'd been there four or five hours it was real silent. Nothing. I didn't want to come back because they would say, well, what did the Lord say to you? And I got up and I went out and I was walking up this hilltop and I said, Lord, why is it so dull here? What's going on? I had all these things in my mind I was looking for answers for and I looked up and soaring up above me was this huge bird and I mean big. It wasn't some crow or black bird. We're talking about a big bird. In fact, one man told me after the first day it was a turkey buzzard. God was speaking to me right then. What it was whether it was that bird or I thought it was soaring it was like it would flap its wing and then it would ride on a current and what I noticed was this bird was just slowly drawing nearer and nearer to where I was and boy, in a moment boom, the Lord just boom said, I want you to soar with me. I mean, that was it. And my whole day was that one word. It wasn't and the Lord showed me how I was flapping how I was struggling to make everything He said, I want you to soar with me. I said, well, that's not a whole lot for seven hours right there. I want you to know that broke into my heart. That lifted a burden from me. I want to tell you something. If you just hear one thing from God in a day it's a great day and if you really know it was Him it's a great day. You say, well, Jay, how do I know that you didn't make that up? I mean, maybe you just saw that and said, oh, that looks like a burden and He's soaring. How do I know it's the Lord and not me? Well, I have six things for you to jot down here. How do I know it's the Lord and not just me making up those things? Number one, Oswald Chambers says something I think is profound. He says, you are the will of God. When you are walking in the Spirit your decisions are what God would decide because you are filled with God. So, God's will is not something you decide. You are the will of God being worked out. Number two, the Word is the cornerstone. God's Word, if you hear something and it doesn't line up with the Word of God don't believe it, okay? Don't believe it. Someone came to me not long ago and said, Pastor Jay, I think I've sinned. I said, what do you mean? He said, I married the wrong woman. It was serious. Why do you think that? Because the Lord sent me the person I should have married. I'm not, this is serious. I mean, and this brother believed it. And I, you know, I said, well, that's real interesting. Let's see if that was really God, okay? We sat down, opened up the Word and I showed him Scripture. Well, then he had a choice to make. You see, when it's the Lord it lines up with the Word. Number three, when the Lord speaks to you, which I believe He reinforces what He's building into your life. Listen to this carefully. Sometimes we're so desperate to hear directive word from the Lord that even if it's a wild thing, we'll say, oh, it was dramatic enough, that must be God. My own conviction is the Lord, how many believe the Lord is a builder? He's not going to give you 20 years of a certain preparation and then yank you out of that and throw you into this. That's not God. God reinforces. He takes the, look at Paul the Apostle. What a great illustration, okay? Now, here was a man who spent his life learning the book. I mean, he knew that book and he drilled into that thing and when God appeared to him, God revolutionized his whole frame of reference but what did he do? He still made him a teacher, didn't he? He still made him a man who used his knowledge. God wants to do that with you. Someone said, well, you know, I'm up here learning music now and playing in the orchestra but I think the Lord is leading me out to teach kids. Well, I have 20 years of music experience. It probably isn't the Lord leading right off the bat to do something like that. Why would he put you in here and then yank you out all of a sudden? I don't think so. But, if you're not sure, go on to the next one. Receive counsel. Listen carefully. I believe, my own conviction, don't receive counsel from 40 or 50 people, okay? Go to 2 or 3 people. Wise, godly, mature men and women of the body of Christ. One of the things that frustrates me an awful lot is people looking for someone to give them the counsel they want to hear. And I'll go to this elder and I'll go to this home group leader and I'll go to this person here and, you know, this staff member and they'll get 45 opinions until they find the one, ah, that's the one I really think is the Lord, you know? Please, when you seek counsel, trust God will use the people that He has placed around you and go directly to them and don't mess around with them. Ah, here's something else. When you go to counsel, be careful because we are prone to think it's the Lord when it makes people around us happy. Let me give you an illustration. Many times I'm asked to do things by people and I have a big wrestling match with all my, you know, the things I have to weigh out and many times this thing gets into it. The decision, if I do that, whether it's a wedding or show up at their house for a dinner, I'll think, boy, that would make them happy and there's enough of that in all of us who want to please people but it isn't necessarily God. Be careful. Let it be God's will for you. It's okay to please people if you're pleasing the Lord first. Number five, servanthood. Many times the leadings of God, when they come, they require a sacrifice, they require giving up or turning over and many other times, folks, these things, all these little tempting things that come up, make you more, give you more, provide you more. I don't necessarily think that that's often the Lord. People said to me, why do pastors always get the call from God to bigger churches and more and this and that and the other? How come it's never just smaller? Well, it's about the same with business people because we're all inclined to do that, all inclined to want to go on and do more. Finally, though, the main thing I think is the peace of God. How do you know it's the Lord and not you? Because there is an umpire in your heart and it's the Holy Spirit of peace, Jehovah Shalom, the peace of God and you can't go wrong when you have the peace even if you begin to go the wrong direction. God's peace will check you. You can back up and be sure that it will be okay. He's going to take your hand and draw you back. Now be careful. I'd never make a major decision without peace. There are some decisions you have to make just because it's time to make them but you need the peace of God once you step out and if it's not there be careful, be careful. Now let me conclude right now by saying this. What about the times when it's silence? I have no doubt as I look around the room there's many of you here today. You, this all sounds good but for you you haven't heard the Lord. I've been asking for this decision or I've been wondering about this thing you say for years. Where is the Lord in this stuff? Two things. I have discovered and I hope this helps you that God's guidance for us many times is like Morse Code. If you're a former boy scout or military person if you've lived on this planet for long you know what Morse Code is. It's a series of flashes electronically sent dots and dashes longs and shorts with little pauses in between. And I've discovered that those pauses in the voice of God when it's still are necessary for the whole message to come. And just like Morse Code becomes nonsensical if all it is is dots, dashes and there's no pauses in there so the leading of God somehow gets jumbled. God needs to let there be the gaps so that faith can fill in and make sense of what he's saying. If you're in a period right now where it's silent dear ones can I tell you it's God allowing your faith to grow. Don't run from it. Number two when the Lord is silent for some reason I don't know why for some reason God has so inclined himself that it seems to be that the silent times are one of the times when he is most pleased with our faith. Think of the company you keep when things are silent in your life think of the company of Abraham who heard a word heard a flash from the Lord then 15 years till the next. Oh you know I don't want to hear that Pastor Jay I don't want a 15 well these are extreme examples to encourage you that it won't get as bad as you think it will. Think of Moses you know given a word from the Lord to be the redeemer the deliverer 40 years later or think of along the way when David heard these things about his house being the lineage that was going to raise up a throne in all the years that it took you see Hebrews 11 is called the hall of faith because there are the people that the Bible says held on to God when he was silent the ones that were stoned and thrown in jail and sawn in two t