Sermon Tone Analysis

take initiative following God - but be ready for Him to change your direction

Introduce me

Have you ever stood at a crossroads in life and wished it was clear which direction you were meant to go? Ever had one of those moments where you think a bit bigger, where you’d love to know what it is you are meant to do with your whole life?

Sometimes I think I’d love to know exactly what God wants me to do, exactly where he wants me to go, exactly what he wants me to say.

That I’d love guidance so clear I couldn’t doubt it or miss it or question it for a moment.

That I’d thrive with continuous direction from above, writing in the sky at each turning, a blow-by-blow plan for my whole life.

But then, depending on the directions I got, maybe not so much.

Maybe actually I’d start to feel trapped, like I was just an actor following a script, a robot following orders.

Maybe I’d start to feel scared - scared of where that path was going to lead me, of what it would force me to go through.

How are we meant to make the big directional decisions that life presents us with?

What difference does being a follower of Jesus make to that?

How does God direct his people, or his church?

The section of the bible we’re going to look at today invites us to explore these questions.

If you wouldn’t call yourself a follower of Jesus today, I’m so glad you’re here.

You might be tempted to tune out right away thinking this is all going to be irrelevant - but can I encourage you to try and listen in, still.

Why?

To see if there’s any sense to how this shakes out, to see, if there were a God with a plan for the world, how our human lives and decisions might fit into that.

Before we read today’s bible passage, I’m going to take just a little bit longer than usual to give us some context because we’re diving back into the book called Acts which we got about half way through some months back.

It tells the story of the very first churches, picking up from where the gospels telling the story of Jesus’ life leave off.

It’s been a while - we took an excursion into Galatians, because we reached the point in the story of the very first churches where it’s most likely that letter was written - and then we did something entirely different, working through the famous bible story of Jonah.

But we’re back - back in Acts - back in the story of the very first churches.

If you’ve not been with us through this series, or if you’ve just forgotten what’s going on and where we’re up to, let me bring you up to date.

The gospels end with Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Acts picks up the story, taking us through the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the beginning of the very first church in Jerusalem, and Jewish persecution coming to the boil in response, scattering the disciples and their message.

It shows us this message crossing boundaries which seemed unbreakable - first between Jew and Samaritan, and then between Jew and Gentile, and then it zooms in on the story of a guy called Paul - once a key persecutor of the message of Jesus, now a key preacher of it.

We’ve followed him on a first mission trip stretching across hundreds of miles and leading through tens of cities and we pick up the story as it’s tracking him getting started on a second even more epic mission trip.

He’s in an area called Galatia as we pick up the story, modern day Turkey.

Why not read along?

We’re in Acts chapter 16 and we’re starting at verse 6.

If you have one of these blue church bibles, that’s on page 1111 - how’s that for a number?

page 1111.

Chapter 16 - big 16 - verse 6 - teeny weeny six.

Page 1111.

And Ruth is reading for us this morning.

Just a short section but lots to think about.

Thanks Ruth.

So what do we see here about guidance and direction?

Well, a lot, right?

I guess probably the first thing I should say is this is a very unusual passage, packing in so much supernatural guidance in one short section - in fact, this is the most concentrated set of guidance you’d find in the whole book.

So we have to start out recognising that what we’re reading here is unusual even by the standard of this book of Acts.

This is not every Thursday even for this key guy Paul, even in the earliest days of the church.

And that’s where I want to start as we think together about guidance and direction.

I want to argue the very first thing we learn from this passage is a general principle about God’s direction for our lives:

1. Go until God says stop

Go until He says stop.

As you might know, I worked for Amazon.com

for a long time and as it turned into a huge global company things which had just been instincts and unspoken norms in the early days gradually got formalised.

One place this happened in particular was the style of leadership in the company.

The HR team put together a list of what they called Leadership Principles and one of those is “bias for action.”

Here’s how they explain what that means:

Bias for Action: Speed matters in business.

Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study.

We value calculated risk taking

Bias for action - the default is to try and move forwards, try and press ahead.

To accept that there’s a measure of risk in that, but to decide it’s worth it because even with some mistakes along the way, on average you’ll be further forward.

The team we’re watching here, Paul and his companions, have a sort of bias for action, too.

They have this “go until God says stop” attitude.

Think about what’s going on in the passage we read: the team had planned to head into the province of Asia - modern-day Turkey’s west coast before God stopped them.

Then they’d planned to head into Bithynia - towards modern-day Istanbul - before God stopped them again.

Both these routes they tried to take are sensible ones, humanly speaking; they both follow major roads to key cities - when the team’s mission is to tell new people about Jesus, these would both seem like reasonable places to start.

This is their bias for action in play - defaulting towards trying things, pushing at doors, rather than just sitting and waiting for direction.

Their standard operating procedure seems to be “go until God says stop”

Now it’s easy to imagine situations where we shouldn’t do anything until we’re absolutely certain it’s the right move.

There are times in life when wisdom says our default should be stop rather than go, when the risk of taking a wrong step is extreme.

Think about diffusing a bomb, for example: cut the red wire or the blue one?

That’s a major decision with serious consequences if you’ve made the wrong call.

Don’t do it until you’re absolutely sure - or time’s about to run out, and the risk of a wrong move is less than the risk of doing nothing.

This is not a universal principle you can adopt as your everyday default for everything in life.

But in the Christian life I think there are some pretty big areas where it’s exactly the right default - just like it is for this team.

See, we have some very clear directions from Jesus.

High level, perhaps, but clear nonetheless.

We are to love people.

We are to make disciples - that is, to do what we can to share the hope that we have in Jesus, wanting others to join us in knowing and following him.

These are places where our default should be to “go until God says stop”

But For me at least, it is all too easy to get stuck on pause - when I’m worrying about the risks, thinking of everything that could go wrong, or when I’m just not clear on precisely what I should do and wanting more specific guidance - stuck on pause when really I could at least be trying something.

Often what I’m dressing up as “searching for guidance”, or as prudent caution, if I’m honest, is really just an excuse for not doing what I’ve been told.

What holds us back?

Sometimes I think it’s laziness.

Like the child who can’t even lift a pen or make the tiniest start on their schoolwork because they don’t understand exactly, precisely everything they are to do.

“Miss?” “Miss?” they cry, hand up, pencil still on the desk.

They pretend they’re raring to get going, just need a bit more instruction, but really they’ll go to great lengths to avoiding even starting the work that’s been set for them.

And other times I think it’s fear.

Like when I won’t have the hard conversation I know I need to because it’s going to be painful - I’m just not looking forward to it.

So I tell myself I’m not sure yet what the right thing to do is - when really I know already.

I tell myself it’s not clear yet that there really is a problem - when it’s already clear enough.

This passage is emphatically not an invitation to sit on your hands and wait for divine direction even though the passages is filled with it.

Instead it’s a challenge to share that team’s bias for action, to hear Jesus’ clear commands, and then to go until God says stop.

Use your human wisdom and initiative to figure out practical things you can try which might take you towards fulfilling God’s commands.

And then to get going.

So lets pick up that challenge together right now.

Let’s take a moment to think:

- where am I sitting on my hands?

- how could I take the initiative this week?

- what would it look like for me to go until God says stop?

just thirty seconds to get us started.

[pause]

One of the biggest reasons to go until God says stop - one which we see so clearly in today’s passage - is that God is perfectly able to stop you anytime He wants when you’re not going the right way.

2. God can stop you easy.

Look at how this passage describes God’s guidance working out when the team are stopped from going in the directions they’d planned, from taking the actions they’d planned.

Verse 6, they were kept from heading into the province of Asia - modern day west Turkey.