Led

Good afternoon, everyone. Now, I don't know how many of you have been watching the news lately.

It seems like you turn the news on and there's yet another horrific news story that's going on somewhere in our country. And very recently, we had one right here in Oregon that, for me, came as a complete shock. I had heard the story earlier that day as the news had broken it. In fact, I used my morning routine. I checked the news before I had to work and just pop online real quick and see what's going on. And they had broken the story saying that earlier in the morning, a passerby on Highway 6 had witnessed an argument on the side of the highway between two individuals.

They described the car and about 25 minutes later decided that whatever was going on seemed fishy enough that they needed to call Oregon State Police. The Oregon State Police agreed, and they sent a trooper out to investigate and upon arrival on the side of the highway discovered a young woman dead from a murder. A person of interest was sought in the case and later discovered dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Eureka, California. As the story continued to develop, they never ever released anything the first day. But as the story continued to develop, more information was released. They released, and the news outlets reported the names of the victim and the shooter. And I remember thinking it was so weird that the shooter had the same name as a young man that I knew in Newport, Oregon. Jake Green, age 24. And it was then that I realized that I knew the shooter personally. And I can honestly say that I didn't know him well.

In fact, realistically, I could barely call him an acquaintance. But I interacted with or with him several times over the last couple of years in the fishing organizations that I belong to. He was an avid fisherman. In fact, we'd seen each other on the river before. We talked a little bit online. He knew some of the same people that I knew and just kind of on Facebook back and forth talking fishing and what was on and what was going on. But this little bit of news was the most recent in what seems to be a swath of very high-profile shootings around the United States. From, as we all know, about a month ago, the horrific events of Newtown, Connecticut, to the more recent shooting down in New Mexico, our news media just can't seem to get enough. Inevitably, the next question comes as we all kind of process this information standing around the water cooler or discussing current events with friends. And we ask the question of how could someone do this? How could it get to the point? How could they find themselves led down this road? What were the mitigating circumstances to get to this point? In most cases, the shooter is killed or takes their own life before they can be captured and interviewed as to their thought processes and reasoning behind what they had done.

However, this wasn't the case in the most recent shooting in New Mexico. The young man, the 15-year-old suspect, was captured by police and interviewed. And according to a recent news article on CNN, admitted to police during the interview that after he killed the first two individuals, he, and I quote, lost his sense of conscience. Lost his sense of conscience and continued his spree. Now, what much of what's being said about the young man in New Mexico, I could say about Jake.

My first impressions were that he was very polite, very level-headed, just kind of, you know, kind of a regular guy. But as I now know all too well, you never know what individuals are capable of.

The human conscience is a fascinating thing. On one hand, it's an internal moral compass.

It's this internal moral compass based on our upbringing and our value system that allows us to realistically discern between what we perceive as right and wrong. Depending on our upbringing, these morals could be based upon the Ten Commandments, or it could be based upon the laws of society, or in some cases, an individual's own defined morality, absent of law.

On the other hand, though, the conscience, despite being in our internal guide, can be so easily ignored. Despite being this moral rule set that we operate, it can be so easily ignored, at least temporarily. Or in some cases, according to a clinical psychologist I was reading about, he makes the claim that some children never develop it in the first place.

A book written called High Risk Children Without a Conscience, author Ken McGear is a clinical psychologist, discusses a generation of young people today that are growing up unattached to parents and ultimately develop without conscience.

It's a quote from the book. It says, these are people without a conscience. They hurt. They sometimes kill others with no remorse. And something early in their development went terribly wrong.

They never developed a conscience. What happens right or wrong in the critical first two years of a baby's life will imprint that child for the rest of his life. A complex set of events must occur in infancy to assure a future of trust and of love. He goes on to say, in most infants the effectional bond, the essence of attachment to a parent develops during the first nine months of life. The most important event occurring during the first year is the formation of social attachments. Now pause for a second and think about what has happened to the family unit and the other things that have occurred within our country and within the world, really, in the last little bit. It says, a young person must grow up and learn to be attached to somebody. And it says, there are situations that develop where you could have a dozen different people taking care of a child throughout a day. And it makes it very difficult for attachments to develop. It says, attachment allows the child to develop both trust and reliance on himself or herself to be able to learn to trust others because here's somebody who loves you, who cares for you, and they are giving to you, and they are looking after your needs. So you begin to learn to trust and then you also learn to be able to help yourself and then you start to develop your own self-reliance.

The author claims that attachment is crucial to the development of conscience. And sadly in today's society, generations of children are growing up without and in absent of parental attachment.

We can see, though, biblically that even if a conscience is developed in a child, we'll start there for today. First Timothy 4, and we'll pick up the account in verse 1. First Timothy 4 verses 1 and 2. First Timothy 4 verse 1 and 2 says, Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared, as with a hot iron.

Their conscience is branded or seared with an iron. And now the overall context of this particular passage is outside of the realm of kind of what we're talking about right now. But what I want to illustrate is that a person's conscience can be deadened. A person's conscience can be deadened.

It can be burned. It can be seared. It can have its ability to feel removed. It can feel numb.

In fact, the New Living Translation, which I know many of you have, the New Living Translation puts it as this. Their consciences are dead. Their consciences are dead. And as a result, an individual operating without a functioning conscience can be capable of committing terrible acts of violence and not feeling a thing as a result. Police commented on the same article, or in the same article on CNN, that the shooter in New Mexico, after killing his own family, had no remorse whatsoever. Completely and terribly unfeeling. In fact, he was described as being stern and showing no emotion whatsoever during the interrogation. Now, we look at the end of verse one. Okay, we go back to 1 Timothy 4 and verse 1. What are the conditions that can result in the searing of one's conscience? What can cause the searing of one's conscience? We see that it says seduction of spirits and doctrines of demons. Demons are capable of producing a seared conscience.

They are capable of producing an individual who is incapable of feeling, who can't determine right from wrong, and can commit acts of violence contrary to the law of God. Now, our nation, in its infinite wisdom, is in the process of a witch hunt to ban the implements that were involved in the crimes, while completely and totally overlooking the root cause of these acts of violence, which is a being that many mainstream churches in the United States have convinced their members doesn't even exist. Satan the Devil. The phrase, the Devil's Made Me Do It, was popularized by Flip Wilson back in the 1970s in a comedy routine. And you know, when it comes to human carnality, that sentiment really isn't too far off. Let's turn to Romans 7. We're going to visit a very, very well-known passage when we talk about struggles with sin, when we talk about the kinds of things that go on up in our heads as we battle to live this way of life. We see the Apostle Paul here talking about the struggle within himself, that personal battle for his own mind. We'll pick it up in verse 14 of chapter 7. Romans 7 verse 14 says, For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice, but what I hate, that I do. If then I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells. For to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do I do not do, but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

If I find then a law that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. Verse 23, But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members, O wretched man that I am, who can deliver me from this body of death. The New Living Translation once again paraphrases verses 21 and 24 just a little bit differently, and I think it captures another aspect that I feel is extremely important in this section.

So we take a look at chapter 7 verse 21 in the New Living. It says, I have discovered this principle of life, that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. Verse 22 says, I love God's law with all my heart. Verse 23, But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind.

This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and by death. The author of sin and lawlessness, the power of which Paul speaks, is the father of rebellion himself, Satan. In fact, Paul states this explicitly in Ephesians 6, 12.

We won't turn there, but he says very succinctly that we fight not against flesh and blood, that our battle, the battle that we fight, we fight against principalities, authorities, spiritual wickedness in high places. Brethren, there is a battle being waged for our minds. And if we forget that for one second, that battle is lost. We have to be so hypervigilant, especially today, to keep that battle and to keep winning that particular battle. Now, if you think about it, though, in an individual without a well-defined morality, in someone who doesn't have a strongly developed conscience, a good idea of what is truly right and what is truly wrong, the influence of Satan is difficult to combat.

In fact, if you think about it, there isn't even really a battle. What is there to fight against? If there's no such thing as right and wrong, then whatever you're suggested or whatever you're led to do makes sense. These individuals can be more prone to steal, lie, cheat, because they don't see anything wrong with it.

There's no definition of morality. In fact, they don't see it as a sin, because in their worldview, there is no such thing as right and wrong. It's whatever works for them at the time. These individuals can be led easily by Satan to a life of sin, and sadly, a life that is increasingly more accepted and defined as normal in society.

We hear it all the time. It's okay to tell a white lie or to lie to protect yourself. Stealing's okay if your family's starving or if you really need something badly enough, and cheating is okay to get ahead.

You just saw a major public figure fall from grace this last couple weeks in years and years of blood doping in the cycling world, cheating to get ahead. Now, thankfully, someone took a stand and said, no, this isn't okay. They didn't just kind of poo-poo it away and say, oh, it's all right. We understand why you did it. But what about us? You know, we as converted Christians have a very clearly defined morality. We have the Holy Spirit, and sometimes we can still find ourselves off the path, walking the way of the world very easily.

Yet we see in numerous places in Scripture that in order to obtain the promises of God, we have to operate in a different way. We need to refuse the enticements and the polls of Satan and allow ourselves to be led, not a stray by Satan, but led by the Holy Spirit to a life of righteousness. So what does it actually mean to be led by the Holy Spirit? What is required of us to even get to a place where we can be led by the Holy Spirit? We're going to spend the remainder of our time today examining this topic. So what we're going to look at, and if you're a fan of sermon titles, I've actually titled this sermon very simply, led.

L-E-D. Led. When we dig a little further into Romans, we come across one of the most incredible promises in the entirety of the Bible, and it is directly tied to our ability to be led.

Turn with me, please, to Romans 8, and we'll see a promise that's given to us by God that almost defies human logic. Romans 8, just right across the page from where we left off in Romans 7 a little bit ago. Romans 8, we'll pick it up in verse 14, and we see that there is a particular promise that is tied specifically to our ability to be led. Romans 8, verse 14, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

For you did not receive the Spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, here's that promise, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ. If indeed we suffer with him, then we may also be glorified together. Now, our sonship doesn't come without a price.

God requires of us a condition. He requires that his children will be led, led by his Holy Spirit.

And the Scripture explicitly states those who are led are the sons of God, children, and heirs of that promise of eternal life. Now, we see another Scripture in Galatians that carries on with the benefits of a person led by the Spirit. Galatians 5. Galatians 5 verse 18.

Galatians 5 verse 18. We see another benefit of someone who is led by the Spirit.

Galatians 5 18 says, but if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Often, this Scripture is used as fodder in an attempt to prove that the law has been done away with.

But the reality is, it tells us that if you're truly being led by the Spirit, you're living the law. You're living the law in your everyday life.

And you're not under the penalty of the law because the fruits of the Spirit that are later outlined in Galatians 5 down in verse 23, long suffering, kindness, goodness, those fruits are readily apparent in your life. They're the fruits of the Spirit that is dwelling within you.

In today's vernacular, we sometimes call that walking the walk, that we're actually doing what the law tells us to do. That Spirit is, those fruits are an indicator of that Spirit being there.

So we can see that allowing ourselves to be led by the Holy Spirit is necessary.

So what do we do in order to ensure that we're actually led by the Spirit?

Today, with the time we have remaining, we'll explore three practical aspects of this topic to help us allow ourselves to be more easily led by the Holy Spirit.

The first of those things is to first prove the spirits.

The first point is to prove the spirits.

The second point is to surrender the self.

So first, we prove the spirits. Secondly, we surrender the self.

And finally, we listen.

Finally, we listen. So we prove the spirits, we surrender the self, and we listen.

We'll start by looking at proving the spirits, because as we brought out earlier, there is an active war going on for your mind, for the mind of the people of this planet.

The Bible specifically tells us in 1 John to prove the things that we hear, to prove the spirits.

Let's start there. 1 John 4.

1 John 4, we'll pick it up in verse 1.

1 John 4, verse 1, we'll read through verse 3.

But we see we are explicitly told we have to prove the things that we hear.

We have to allow ourselves to discern using the information that we have, whether or not the message is right or not.

1 John 4, verse 1, says, This passage indicates to us that as time goes on, we will be subjected to both sets of these spirits.

We, as Christians, will then have to discern.

And that's where our spiritual walk gets meaty.

We talk about the things that are milk and the things that are meat.

The milk are the things that we're taught all the time.

We tithe, we keep the law, we don't eat unclean meats.

But where the rubber meets the road is where the meat is.

That's what we do with that. Where do we go with that?

That's the discernment. That's the hard part.

For many, that battle might begin in college, as their previous worldview is now attempting to reconcile with this new radical worldview that you're getting in school.

I was a science major, and I spent four years hearing every day how evolution is the cause of everything.

Talk about confliction, where you're hearing one thing in a class that you know is not true.

And yet, you have to go through the process and tell the professor what he wants to hear.

And then add in really fine print, but that's not how it happened.

For many, though, that battle does begin in college, as they try to rectify what they've been taught as a young person, and what they've known to be true with what is now being added to their place.

For others, it happens at different times in different places.

And it will continue to occur, as we continue to live the life that God has called us to.

Now, the conscience itself allows us to evaluate the things that we see.

It allows for us to discern whether an action is right or wrong, based upon our personal moral compass.

Not everybody's moral compass is the same.

Not everybody's conscience is the same.

And oftentimes, we see this sort of thing characterized in movies or cartoons, as an angel on one shoulder, and a devil on the other shoulder, and the two of them are fighting it out, and they're arguing back and forth, and they're debating.

Maybe they play rock-paper-scissors, and then the person in the middle just sits and waits for the result.

And which one am I going to do?

Well, that's sometimes how we see it.

And it's an overly simplistic and kind of stylized scene.

But it's really not far off of what's truly going on inside of your brain.

You have a war going on.

Satan desires to deceive mankind and turn them away from God.

If he can do that through convincing the world that God doesn't exist, or that God isn't there for people in the wake of a tragedy like Newtown, or that God is just a rule-mongering deity that prohibits two people that are in love from being married, or that maybe his followers are just a bunch of hate-filled hypocrites, then he will. Satan will do what it takes to deceive mankind.

Paul Harvey, a man that many of you are very familiar with, wrote an essay in 1964 entitled If I Were the Devil. It's been altered somewhat since its original form.

This really, about three years ago, this went around email and social media really, really major.

And that was actually a slightly altered version with some of the things that Paul Harvey had actually written, not mentioned, in there. But I wanted to share with you today the original.

Because when you look at what's going on in the United States and what has happened in the U.S.

since the mid-1960s, with this being written in 1964, it's almost clairvoyant. It really is frightening how well he hit the nail on the head. So this is If I Were the Devil by Paul Harvey, 1964. If I were the Prince of Darkness, I would want to engulf the whole earth in darkness. I'd have a third of its real estate, four-fifths of its population, but I would not be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree. So I should set about however necessary to take over the United States. I would begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve, Do as you please. To the young, I would whisper, The Bible is a myth. I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around.

I would confide that what is bad is good, and what is good is square. In the ears of the young married, I would whisper that work is debasing, that cocktail parties are good for you. I would caution them not to be extreme in religion, in patriotism, or in moral conduct. And to the old, I would teach to pray to say after me, our Father, which are in Washington. Then I'd get organized. I'd educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull and uninteresting. I'd threaten TV with dirtier movies and vice versa. I'd infiltrate unions and urge more loafing and less work. Idle hands usually work well for me. I'd peddle narcotics to whom I could.

I'd sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. I'd tranquilize the rest with pills.

If I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine young intellects, but neglect to discipline emotions. Instead, let those run wild. I'd designate an atheist to front for me before the highest courts, and I'd get preachers to say, she's right. With flattery and promises of power, I would get the courts to vote against God and in favor of pornography.

Thus, I would evict God from the courthouse, from the schoolhouse, and then from the houses of Congress. Then in his own churches, I'd substitute psychology for religion and deify science.

Then, of course, Paul Harvey is a Easter and Christmas-keeping person. It says, if I were Satan, I'd make the symbol of Easter an egg and the symbol of Christmas a bottle.

If I were the devil, I'd take from those who have and give to those who wanted until I'd killed the incentive of the ambitious, and then my police state could force everyone back to work.

Then I would separate families, putting children in uniform, women in coal mines, and objectors in slave labor camps. I guess if I were Satan, I'd just keep doing what I'm already doing. That was 1964, Paul Harvey. And when you look at the deception that has happened in this country, and we sometimes, especially those of us in the church, we look at it and we go, why can't people see it? Why can't they see it? Why can't they see what's going on?

And the simple answer to that question is, our conscience alone isn't enough to help us determine the source. Now, we can determine right and wrong. We can say, yeah, this is okay, this is not, but we can't determine the source of the right or the wrong. The Holy Spirit can. In fact, the Holy Spirit can tell us the source of the idea. And this is a term that I've coined. You'll know exactly that it's a term I've coined since I say it. But it sort of gives us a version of sat-dar, which is a Satan radar. It gives us the ability to look at something and discern immediately that's of Satan. Or that's definitely not of God. But it gives us the ability to take a look at that.

Now, I can't expressly prove this next piece from Scripture, so I'm going to put that out there.

We are heading to the book of Ben here. But my personal belief is that the Holy Spirit upgrades our conscience. That it upgrades our conscience. Everywhere that conscience is mentioned in the Bible indicates the human conscience and the Holy Spirit are two very different things. And sometimes we hear this idea that, well, you know, the little thing in the back of my head that says, well, don't do this, don't do this, that's the Holy Spirit. Yes and no.

Everybody has a conscience. Logically we can prove it. Everybody has a conscience, but not all people have the Holy Spirit. So everybody has that little voice in their head that says yes or no, regardless of whatever their rule set happens to be. Even those people without conscience, as mentioned in the earlier article, they have some rule set that defines their life.

Whatever that rule set may be, it's there. They have something that motivates them and they look at it and go, well, I'm going to do that or I'm going to do this based on whatever is internal.

Some consciousness are weaker than others. Some are stronger than others, depending on how you were raised. But I believe when you are baptized and the Holy Spirit enters your life, I think that our conscience gets an upgrade. And that we no longer make discernments based upon our original moral standards, but instead we make our decisions and our discernments upon God's standard.

And when we look at things and when we make decisions in our life, instead of looking at it from, well, this is how I've always done it, we look at it from, this is what God wants me to do.

This is what God intends for me in my life. So instead of seeing things through our eyes, we see things through God's eyes. And the Holy Spirit then works with your conscience to help you to discern. I think that's the transformative power of God's Holy Spirit within that process of conversion. Like I said, can't expressly prove it by Scripture, but that is my personal belief.

It also doesn't always mean that we get it right. It doesn't always mean we get it right. But it does mean that once we're baptized, we might want to consider listening a bit more frequently to that little voice in our head that says, hey, this probably isn't a good idea. Or you might want to go apologize for that. That's a good probability. That's the Spirit of God leading us.

So once we started listening, and once we started looking for... or I'm sorry, not listening, but once we started proving which thing to listen to, the next step we have to do is we have to surrender the self. And this is hard. Oh, this is hard. Surrendering the self. Being willing to, I sometimes characterize it as just to let go of the wheel and let God guide your life as He would otherwise guide it without you getting in there and trying to change things. I would venture against the majority of people in this room at one point in time have owned a dog. But imagine most people have. Maybe not, but bear with me for a minute because this is a dog analogy. My wife and I had a dog. She actually passed away not too long back. She was relatively large and not terribly bright.

Big old German Shepherd. Her name was Bri. And actually, her not being very intelligent is not really a very accurate statement. She was exceptionally intelligent. And unfortunately, with intelligence comes a whole other set of headaches. When you have a dog that isn't terribly bright or even one that's really, really well trained, when you give them a command, they don't hesitate. They go, they do it, they just take off, they run as fast as they can, tongue a flap in the whole wedge, and they come running back and they're just so excited that they've done this for you.

And they just want to please you so much. Bri, on the other hand, was very set in her ways.

And what you would do is you would tell her to do something, and she just kind of cocked her head to the side and look at you. And you could see in her eyes, she was mulling it over like, well, if I do this, then... And then she'd either decide, well, it's in my interest to go and do this, or nah, and just sit back down. And so it really was kind of a bit of a headache.

We actually got her from some individuals when she was about a year and a half, and they were just kind of giving her away. That should have been our first clue. She had a lot of real bad habits already pretty well instilled, and we spent a very, very long time trying to break her of those bad habits. Despite the headache, she was a fabulous, fabulous dog. But I remember when Shannon and I first started training her to walk on a leash. When we first started training her to actually go outside, walk down the street by the houses with all the other dogs, with all those smells and everything else. We put the leash around her head. She was very excited to go out and walk, but she fought it every step of the way. You'd start down the road, and she'd just stop. She wanted to do this or whatever else. And realistically, she was a very big dog and a very strong dog. And so the first few trips, the question kind of became really, who's walking who?

Really, truly, she was very strong. And there were times that even when she really wanted something, even I had a hard time holding her back. I mean, she wanted to go after something.

She took off. And so it was kind of humorous actually watching Shannon walk her for the first little bit, just because it really was a question of who was walking who. But the reality of it is, if she wanted to go somewhere, she just went, and you went along for the ride. And we tried to correct her. We tried to model the right behavior. We tried to fix it for the next time we took her out.

And one thing that we learned really, really early on, if she didn't want to go where you wanted her to go, you weren't going. That was plain and simple. You wanted to turn left. She didn't want to go. You weren't going left. There was no way. You'd pull her and she'd pull the other way.

As time went on, as we worked with her, this changed. But in the beginning of our time with Bree, she was not interested in being led. She was not interested in being led. She was too headstrong. She wanted to go her own way, do her own thing, despite the fact that the only freedom she truly had in her life was with that leash around her neck. Otherwise, she was inside all the time. The true freedom that she had was with that leash around her neck. That was the only ticket out. Now, our requirements of where she was to go, what she was allowed to do, that for a while she was not interested in any of that. But as time went on, she began to realize that there were certain things that she wasn't allowed to do on our walk. She couldn't sniff that telephone pole. That particular flower garden off limits. And don't even think about urinating on people's lawns.

Not happening. As time went on, she accepted it. And as time went on, our walk started to become more relaxing and more enjoyable for us both. And as time went on, she trusted us enough that she would just go along with us. And as she did that, we trusted her enough to take the leash off every now and again and just let her walk by our side. She stayed right by our side. She walked with us, didn't even think about heading off to the telephone pole. She ignored the other dog. She just kept walking, stayed right at our side. Now and again, we'd look down and she'd be sniffing something over here and we'd just keep walking and she'd come right back. But she was right back at our side in a moment. She had accepted and had trusted us implicitly as her master. She'd surrendered her own will and was willing to walk with us and no longer fight it. I'm not going to ask a show of hands, but I would venture a guess that many of you can identify with this pattern spiritually. The concept of fighting against that leash, pulling against that leash, without really realizing that the only freedom we truly have is within the realm of that leash.

God requires us to surrender our will, to accept His yoke. And it says His yoke, His burden, His light, to walk in the paths of righteousness. And in order to do that, He gave us the Holy Spirit to lead us, to help us to conform our lives to His standard. But surrender only happens when there's implicit trust. Surrender only happens when there's trust.

It's a passage in Psalms that is one of my personal favorites. It's actually been turned into a beautiful choir piece. I believe it's been sung at the feast a couple of times in Bend.

And it contains an incredible message about surrender when you dig into it.

Let's turn to Psalm 46. Psalm 46. We're going to pick it up in verse 1.

Psalm 46 in verse 1. And we'll read from verse 1 down through verse 11. Psalm 46 in verse 1.

Psalm 46.1 says, And then verse 10. The big, very well-known peace out of this.

God here inspired David to write, essentially, trust me.

That I am your refuge, I am your strength. Don't lean on yourself. Instead, trust in me.

And because we know that God is our refuge and our strength, ultimately, we have no need of fear.

We have no need of worry. If the mountains shake, the waters roar, the mountains tremble swell.

It doesn't matter because God is with us. He is our protection. And we see in verse 10, we see the command to be still and to know that I am God. Now, if we look into a little bit of a word study on the word be still, in Hebrew it comes from the word rafa, which root is the word rafa, which means to become weak or faint, to let go, or to surrender. David's writing here that because God has it all taken care of, our fears, our worries, our doubts, the things that make us take hold of our own lives and try to direct our own paths apart from God's will, those things dissolve. When we come to the point where we see that God holds our lives in His hands and protects us, and that if we just surrender, if we just give up our own control a bit, that we'll be taken care of, that our needs will be met, we'll live a protected life as long as God happens to will it. And as we know, Christ said, not my will, Father, but your own. Realistically, God's in charge. And when we reach that point, when we willingly allow God to put the yoke on, and we're willing to allow Him to lead us, that's where we reach a point where the Holy Spirit is actively trying to lead our life. The question becomes, are we listening? The question becomes, are we listening? The final step in the process. Once you've proven it is actually the Holy Spirit that you're listening to, you've surrendered yourself to it, then is to listen to what it tells you to do. But we have to understand what it is to listen for. When we look at how God communicates with people in the Bible, there are various ways. Sometimes He answers, sometimes He doesn't. Sometimes He produces a result that provides the answer without speaking a word.

Sometimes whatever it was asked for just happens. We do see in numerous examples, though, that God spoke to His people directly. When God spoke to the people of Israel, it's recorded in Exodus 19. Let's turn there to get an idea of what it must have been like.

Exodus 19. We'll take a look at the way that the Israelites perceived communication with God.

Exodus 19. We're going to pick it up in verse 16.

Exodus 19 verse 16 says, Then it came to pass on the third day in the morning that there were thunderings and lightnings, and a thick cloud on the mountain, and the sound of the trumpet was very loud, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled.

Verse 17, And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was completely in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. And when the blast of the trumpet sounded long, and became louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by voice.

People of Israel were terrified, absolutely terrified by this. They trembled. They were terrified by it. And I think too often when we think of how God responds and how God speaks to us, sometimes we get that this is maybe how it works. It has to have, you know, it has to flash.

It's got to be big and loud. It's got to be some big, you know, production with pyrotechnics.

But we see numerous other examples in the Bible where God communicated directly with his chosen servants. God spoke to Abraham and Moses. He talked to them as friends. Spoke with him, person to person. Or God to person, rather. But, albeit sternly at times. There were times that he was very stern. God spoke to Job. He spoke out of a whirlwind, again, in a stern manner with Job.

When God spoke to Samuel, he spoke to him gently. He didn't come in the room and boom from the rafters Samuel and scare Eli out of his skin. He spoke quietly enough the voice didn't wake Eli.

Then with Elijah we see that he was looking for God in various places, but ultimately found him in a place he didn't expect. Let's go to 1 Kings 19. 1 Kings 19. We'll start in verse 11.

Oops, I'm in 2 Kings. It's not going to do me any good. It's not Hezekiah and went, wait a minute.

1 Kings 19 verse 11. It says, Then he said, Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, and behold the Lord passed by. And a great, strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.

And after the fire a still, small voice. So it was when Elijah heard it that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. And suddenly a voice came to him and said, What are you doing here, Elijah? God doesn't always communicate through large booming voices with fire, lightning, and thunder. At times he is a still, small voice. A voice that corrects us and sometimes speaks softly enough you have to be listening for it. Which means that if we're overly active, if we're distracted, if we're loud all the time, and we're living a life of chaos, we just might miss it. We just might miss it. Christ provided numerous examples of going to a quiet place when he wanted to speak to God, eliminating all of the outside distractions.

He would leave the disciples and go to a small place up on the hillside, or he'd go out into the garden where it was quiet to talk to God. And likewise, we need to reduce the distractions in our lives so that we can hear God's answer. If the response comes as a small voice, we don't want to miss it because our life is so chaotic we can't even hear it. We have to make quiet time for God to both communicate as well as receive communication. You know, listening has a second aspect as well. For those of you with children, you know that listening means significantly more than just hearing. I often implore... yeah, implore is a good word. We use implore. I often implore the boys saying to them, would you guys just listen? Would you just listen? When I say this, I'm not suggesting that they simply hear the words that are coming out of my mouth. When I ask them to listen, what I'm insinuating is I'm telling them that not only do I want them to hear what I say, I want them to follow through on what I've just said. I want action on what has been just said.

I want them to not just be hearers, but also doers. Truly listening. Active listening. It's an active event. The story of the book of Isaiah, and we'll take a look at our last scripture this afternoon. The book of Isaiah. Go to verse 30. Isaiah 30, and we'll pick it up in verses 20 and 21.

Isaiah 30 verses 20 and 21. And what we'll see here is that the voice of God, the way that it interacts in our lives, and ultimately, it's expectation in that process. Isaiah 30 and verse 20. It says, And though the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore, but your eyes shall see your teachers.

And here, verse 21, your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, this is the way. Walk in it whenever you turn to the right or to the left. This is the style by which God communicates with us when we sin, or if we're about to transgress. It's a small voice behind us that says, hey pal, what you're about to say, what you're about to do, it's not a good idea. Back on the path. Now, whether we listen to that voice or not, that's a whole other ballgame.

But the voice is correcting us. We've turned to the right, we've turned to the left, we've gotten off track. The voice of God corrects us as a father, corrects his children. Back on the path.

As our father, God with us as his children expects what I expect when I talk to my sons.

I expect that they're going to listen to what I've said, and that they're going to actually follow through, and to show me that they heard, based on the actions that they then do. I expect that they're going to allow me to lead and to guide their life. You know, brethren, the world around us continues to slide into this moral ambiguity. We look at the world around us right now. Right and wrong are so blurred. There's gray areas all over the place, and we've even got a term for this. We call it situational ethics, where we actually look at a situation and we go, well, you know, I know stealing's not okay, but in this situation right here, it's okay.

Or, you know, I know lying's not okay, but yeah, I want to keep my job. Or, you know, something along those lines. And as a result, what's happened to the conscience of the next generation of young people, their conscience has been brought up in a world where there is no clear right or clear wrong. And so as a result, when faced with a situation, they utilize situational ethics instead of morality. They decide, well, in this situation, I'll do this, but over here, maybe I'll do something different. More than ever, this world needs the final fulfillment of Joel, too, when the Spirit of God is poured out upon all flesh. The Holy Spirit can then lead all of mankind. You know, as the ecclesia, those whom God has really called out at this time, we have a very important calling. We have been called to be firstfruits, the beginning of God's family, not just all of God's family. There are going to be a lot more coming in after us.

The beginning of God's family, and to be a part of it, we have a condition that has been placed upon us. God requires that we be led. He requires that we have to focus on allowing ourselves to then be led by His Holy Spirit. And to do that, we have to start by proving that the spirits that we're hearing are maybe not operating from influence as our contrary to God's Word. It's a great litmus test for whether or not you're hearing one thing or the other. Great litmus test.

If it tells you to go contrary to God's Word, it's not God. Real good litmus test. But we have to prove the spirits. We need to surrender ourselves, give up our own will, submit to the will of our Father. And lastly, we have to actively listen to the Word of God and make the necessary changes in our life. Then and only then can the Holy Spirit truly guide our paths and work towards completion of the process of conversion that was begun within us.