Sermon Tone Analysis

Oh, My God:

The God who Guides

Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor

March 16~/18, 2007

 

Welcome to our series, Oh, My God, where today we are looking at God’s guidance in our lives, that our God is a God who guides.

I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to stand up if this is true of you.

How many of you are facing some kind of pressing decision right now…a decision that you know you have to make?

Go ahead and stand up.

That’s not surprising, because life is largely made up of a series of decisions…we go from one decision to another.

This last week I filled out my bracket for March madness, the NCAA tournament for the office challenge.

A lot of prayer went into that: North Carolina or Texas?

Florida or UCLA?

I’ll go ahead and let you know that I have Florida winning the whole thing.

Some of you right now are praying about who to marry or date.

Others are praying about a job choice, or some financial decision.

Some are wondering what kind of chocolate to get your pastor for Easter.

Big decisions.

The good news for us who are facing decisions is that our God is a God who guides.

*Slide: ________________: *Proverbs 3:6 /(NLT)/

 

tells us: /Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take (NLT)./

That is a wonderful promise, and God is committed to guiding our lives.

However, what you see in the Bible and experience in life is that he does not always guide us the way we want to be guided.

What I mean by that is that he doesn’t generally make the decision for us, just part the skies and reveal to us the specific answer to our guidance questions.

We often want God to be like this magic 8 ball…that whenever we have questions, we can go to our 8 ball and it will tell us (play with 8 ball a little).

We expect God to somehow give us the magic 8 ball answer: yes, no, not now, and we can get a little peeved when those answers don’t seem to be coming.

We can make the same general mistake that a guy in the Old Testament made, a man named Saul.

Saul was the first king of Israel, and he was used to relying on his friend Samuel, who was a prophet of God, to tell him what God’s will was for the nation.

Toward the end of Saul’s life, Saul was in a real pickle because he was facing a very tough decision about what military action to take against this huge Philistine army that was bearing down on him, and Samuel had just died.

Saul panicked.

He prayed and asked for God’s specific guidance, but nothing was coming.

The 8 ball wasn’t working.

So, he makes a fatal mistake:

* *

*Slide: ________________: */1 Samuel 28:5-7/

 

/When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart.

He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets.

Saul then said to his attendants, “Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her” (1 Sa 28:5-7).

/Oops.

Bad idea.

He turns to the occult to try to find the answer of what he should do.

God actually allows this woman he finds to call out Samuel from paradise, and Samuel appears to Saul and says,

 

*Slide: ________________: */1 Samuel 28:15/

 

“/Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” “I am in great distress,” Saul said.

“The Philistines are fighting against me, and God has turned away from me.

He no longer answers me, either by prophets or by dreams.

So I have called on you to tell me what to do/” (1 Sa 28:15).

As you can imagine, Samuel is not impressed and Saul gets a rap on the knuckles for his dumb decision.

Now, many of us in this room know better than to turn to the occult, though I don’t want to take that for granted.

Please understand that the Bible talks directly about and very strongly against turning to astrologers, fortune tellers, psychics and the like for direction—essentially turning from God to the occult.

You are consulting the wrong team when you do that.

Even knowing all that, we still can make the same mistake Saul made.

We treat God like the magic 8 ball, expecting God to guide us a certain way, just lay it out for us in some miraculous way…part the clouds or something.

I’ve heard about Christians doing all kinds of things to gain God’s specific guidance, and I’ve done many of them.

Some play Bible roulette, where you open the Bible, throw your finger down on a verse, and see what God is saying to you.

I tried that this week before going to lunch, because that’s a big decision, where to go to lunch.

The second verse I came to in Bible roulette was

 

*Slide: ________________: *1 Samuel 16:2

 

which says, /“’Take a heifer with you,’ the Lord said.”/

So, I’m supposed to take my own cow.

Bummer.

Other Christians rely on feelings, and will often describe it is “having a peace about it.”

They will pray and then see if they have a peace about a certain decision.

But feelings are totally unreliable.

One friend of mine justified having an affair and leaving his wife for another person because he had such peace about the decision.

He just knew it was what God wanted.

*Slide: ________________: *Jeremiah 17:9

 

says, /The heart is deceitful above all else.

/Our capacity to rationalize wrong decisions is astounding.

We’ve all made dumb decisions based on impulse that seemed great at the time.

Feelings of peace are an unreliable guide to God’s will.

So, how then does God guide?

If God does guide our lives, then how do we know what his will is?

Think about a decision that you have in front of you right now, or perhaps a decision you feel like could be around the corner.

Got one?

Let’s talk about God’s guidance with that in mind with two very basic and important principles about God’s guidance in our lives.

*Slide: ________________: *

 

·         God’s will is more about the HOW than the WHAT.

When we think of God’s will, we typically think of the answers to the what questions.

What choice do you want me to make?

What girl should I marry?

What job should I take?

What church should I be part of?

When you read what the Bible says about God’s will, however, you quickly see that God’s will has much more to do with the HOW questions than the what questions…meaning, how am I to be a husband or wife?

How I am to do my work?

He gives us freedom in the what questions, but gives us a lot of instruction about the how questions.

Let’s look at some of the New Testament references to God’s will to play with this principle a little bit.

Let’s say you are single, and you want to know God’s will about dating, so God’s will for you is about the what—what girl or what guy.

But the Bible emphasizes the how…how should I relate on a date?

*Slide: ________________: *1 Thessalonians 4:3-6

 

says, */It is God’s will/*/ that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him.

/ On a date, God’s will is that you behave yourself physically.

Stay morally pure.

That is God’s will.

Another passage that mentions the “will of God,” relates to work.

We go to God to ask him where we should work or if we should take the promotion…but here is the will of God for our work:

 

*Slide: ________________: */Ephesians 6:5-8/

/ /

/Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.

Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.

Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free/ (Eph 6:5-8).

The passage is talking about slavery but to apply the passage for today you could put in its place, “employee.”

God’s will is for you and me to be great employees at whatever job we have, which is far more important than the particular job we take.