24 Aug HAPPY NEW YEAR! (ARE YOU ADDING ANOTHER YEAR TO YOUR LIFE, OR LIFE TO ANOTHER YEAR?): PART 20

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Over the last few weeks we began our…

  “Four Fascinating Facets to Find the Will of God”:

Let’s review…

1.) Biblical Principles (Col. 3:16)

5 biblical barometers:

  1. God will not reveal the unknown will of God until you begin to do the known will of God.
  2. When you don’t know what to do…do what you know to do.
  3. God’s unknown will, will never contradict His known will.
  4. God’s direction will never contradict His instruction.
  5. Ask yourself, “Does God’s Word prohibit or permit what I’m about to do?”

2.) Wise People

“Six Counsel Concepts”:

    1. When we are messing up, we tend to run to permission instead of correction (John 3:19-21).  
    2. You can always get the counsel you desire by who you run to for counsel.
    3. You can always get the counsel you desire by what you choose to share with them.
    4. Wise people seek the counsel that they need…not the counsel that they want.
    5. Counsel provides angles and prevents blind spots (Ps. 119:24).
    6. Solomon, the man who needed counsel the least…received it the most!

3.) Spiritual prompting (Rom. 8:14-16)

The Scripture is the primary way God leads us but thank God for the Holy Spirit!  Here the Scripture tells us, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.  For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father.  The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”

The Scripture protects you from making a purely emotional decision.  The Spirit protects you from making a purely rational decision.  The Scripture tells you…you need a job (see II Thes. 3:10).  The Spirit tells you which one.  The Scripture tells you to marry only a believer (see II Cor. 6:14-18).  The Spirit tells you which one.  

Remember:  The Spirit’s leadings will never contradict the Scripture’s lessons!

4.) Inner Peace (Col. 3:15)

Here the Bible tells us, “And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.”  

The Greek word translated “rule” denotes an “umpire.”  Well what does a baseball umpire tell us?  As a baseball player slides into home, the umpire tells us he is either “safe” or “out”!  God-given biblical peace acts very much this way!

This week we continue in Inner Peace with…

“Two Peace Principles”:

       1.- The will of God will never lead you where the peace of God can’t keep you.

       2. – Don’t mistake losing your peace for losing your nerve.

Please allow me to elaborate on the second principle.  As Christians we banter about our own spiritual language.  It’s almost a “Christianese.”  We say things like, “I just don’t have peace about this.”  While certainly there is a biblical truth to this, we can also use this phrase as a kind of spiritual cloak to cover for something we just don’t want to do.  Anytime you step out of your comfort zone and embark on doing something new with God, it will bring a bit of hesitancy to you.  If we are not cautious, we can mistake this natural hesitancy of trying something new for “losing our peace.”

I remember many decades ago when I was a youth pastor, we were taking about 30 teens to Guatemala.  As you can imagine, this was quite an undertaking as we raised about $45,000 over a nine month period (this meant a lot of car washes and spaghetti dinners!).  One young teen called me the night before we were to leave for Guatemala.  She was very fearful and shared with me she “did not have peace about going on this trip.”  

Now this sounded very spiritual, but truth be told she was simply afraid…but did not want to admit this.  So she cloaked it in the spiritual terminology of “I lost my peace” when she had really just lost her nerve!  That week on the mission field our teens led over 1500 people to Jesus and lives were radically changed.  She stayed home and truly missed out on what God had planned for her!

Join us next week as we continue our series!