Sermon Tone Analysis

How do I discern what God’s will is for my life?

1.) Scripture

God will never tell you to do something that goes against scripture.

Ever

If something goes against scripture that you feel the Lord is leading you to do, then it is not God leading you to do it.

The word of God is living and effective.

It is able to judge the ideas and thoughts of the heart.

The New Testament use of pneuma for the human spirit focuses on the spiritual aspect of man, i.e. his life in relation to God, whereas psychē refers to man’s life irrespective of his spiritual experience, i.e. his life in relation to himself, his emotions and thought.

There is a strong antithesis between the two in the theology of Paul.

Soul: Psyche

Spirit: Pneuma

Our feelings can be misleading and you will notice in the three things I use to discern the will of God this morning that feelings is not one of them.

Feelings can be misleading.

Hebrews says the word of God piercing to the division of soul and spirit.

Psyche is the man’s relation to God and Soul is man’s relation to himself.

The word of God is alive and it divides these two.

It is on my to do list to sit down with Dayle and record a segment what Dayle our living free recovery leader refers to as Intoxication of feelings.

Dayle described this two me recently.

He shared how when we are not careful we become intoxicated by our “feelings” rather than what is truth.

The theme that the Word of God affects us to the extent of discriminating our intentions is challenging.

Nothing, not even our innermost thoughts, is shielded from the discernment of the message of God.

It affects in a most comprehensive manner the whole man, as the next verse so clearly brings out.

The Key is that our feelings can be misleading but in order to determine the will of God we must make sure what God is calling us to do lines up with the Word of God.

2.) Use the wisdom of the Body of Christ

The Body of Christ is so diverse. 1 Corinthians 12 shares this diversity.

When I believe God is calling me to do something, then I will run it by fellow believers.

I will ask them for their thoughts.

I will watch their verbal signals and their nonverbal signals.

I study the person to see what their response is.

It is good to seek wisdom.

I don’t just seek wisdom from one person.

I gather it from as many people that I trust that I can.

I met with Jack Herschend this week and he was sharing some leadership principles with me and one of the principles that he said was they had an environment where you were free to make mistakes.

You would not be fired for making mistakes, but when you made a mistake you had to bring the mistake before the leadership team and share what you did so that all the leaders could learn from your mistake.

They wanted everyone to hear the mistake and be in a position that they would not make the same mistake.

If the ax is dull and one does not sharpen its edge by getting wisdom from others then you will end up exerting more strength.

However, the advantage of wisdom is that it brings success.

A friend who will tell me the truth even when it hurts is a true friend.

I listen to friends who disagree with me.

As I seek out wisdom, there are times where people will disagree with me.

I listen to my friends when they disagree with me.

I listen very closely and I keep asking them questions as to why they disagree with me.

3.) Look for fruit or confirmation of the decision

I watch for what God is doing and join Him where he is.

Confirmations can be positive

Resistance can also prove you are moving in the right direction.

(The enemy wants to kill, steal and destroy)

Resistance from a friend or mentor should be heard and respected.

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