May the image of our God be more
and more visible in our life and our
behavior.
Lord, we thank you that you do lead
us step by step.
Lead us, we pray, as you taught us
to pray, not into temptation or test or
trial, but deliver us from evil.
We know that all things work together for
the good of those that love God and
are called according to his purposes.
Father, we know nothing can separate us from
the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Yet, Lord, you've given us certain gifts for
a purpose.
As we think about our lives and as
we find ourselves at a turning point, draw
near, speak to us.
God, you said in your word that if
we draw near to you, you will draw
near to us.
You've called us not to be like the
animal, but to be guided with your eye
upon us.
Grant, Lord, that we walk worthily of the
high calling of our God in Christ Jesus.
For Jesus' sake.
We believe, don't we, that the Christian life
is a guided life.
The Lord said in John 10 verse 4
that, My sheep, they know my voice and
they follow me.
That verse that came to my mind as
we were praying, Psalm 32 verse 8.
Be not like the horse or the mule
that must be guided by the bit and
the bridle.
We are not to be just animals in
our thinking about this aspect of our relationship
with God.
God says in the same verse, I will
guide you with my eye upon you.
Guidance in the Christian life arises from our
intimate relationship with our Father.
And we are to develop our own judgment
and our own thinking as we live the
Christian life.
The ideal is not that we become like
these little radio-controlled or electronic toys that
the kids play with nowadays.
You know, you've seen these racing cars that
go around that my son always wants.
They cost about a hundred pounds, we never
buy one.
Or these little people that walk around and
there's someone playing with the button, you know.
God guides through the cooperation and the operation
of our own mind and heart and will
and personality.
We are children, not toys.
You know, I knew a man who was
on OM for a while.
He went really overboard on this thing of
guidance.
He got to the psychologically hopeless situation.
Where he would stand in a supermarket in
front of rows and rows of tins of
baked beans.
Praying about which tin to put in his
trolley.
That is not mature Christian thinking.
You know, he could stand on the edge
of a road just, you know, wondering, praying.
At what precise point should he start to
cross the road?
God says, look, if you want to get
to the other side, keep your eyes open,
watch the traffic, pick a gap and go.
Now, if God wants us to live guided
lives and promises guidance again and again and
again in scripture.
Why is it so often difficult to know
his will?
Now, if God wants something, why doesn't he
make it just easy?
Whenever you have a problem like that in
your Christian life, ask yourself, now why is
this so?
Why has God left me with a difficulty?
You see, when you become a Christian, God
could start to, every day, just write the
guidance for the day in gold letters on
the ceiling of your bedroom.
You'd wake up and there it is, you
know, you got to do this, you got
to eat breakfast at that time, you got
to see so and so, you got to
pay this bill.
You write and you go off and do
it.
God has enough angels to go around and
visit every believer, you know, at night and
leave them a little envelope by the bed
with the day's instructions for tomorrow.
So often we want things easy in the
Christian life because we don't understand God's goals,
God's benefits in the harder road.
My kids play with jigsaws sometimes.
I hate them.
What's the simple basic principle for starting off
with a jigsaw?
The edge, get the straight bits, yeah.
You don't start, you know, with all the
green grass or the blue sky and every
bit looks the same.
You get the corners and the edge.
Now when you're thinking about your life, what
is the outside edge of the frame?
God's ultimate objectives within which he will work
everything out.
God wants us to go through our life
on this planet and finish up like himself.
God can take someone from a Chinese background,
a German background, a Finnish background, an Italian
background and make them in the end like
himself.
The Lord says, I'm going to prepare a
place for you disciples.
When I come again, I will take you
to be with myself.
That where I am so there you may
be also.
Able to have fellowship and communion because of
likeness of mind and heart.
God isn't planning, spending eternity, having fellowship with
mechanistic little toys.
But with people of understanding, people who have
sometimes made wrong choices and now learn to
make right ones.
People who have grown up to be like
him, the great chooser.
And so this process of trying to discern
guidance will actually change our character.
If you just got an envelope by the
bed in the morning, you wouldn't really spend
very much time seeking God, would you?
You'd spend more time thinking about doing what
you have to do than in the God
who has redeemed you.
So God has deliberately left you in a
state of uncertainty and some puzzlement and hoping
for the best.
Some of you here, if I ask you
to put up your hands, you would say,
yes, I don't really know where I'm going
in this coming year.
I'm still unsure.
Now I want to say to you this
morning, you are, in saying that, precisely in
the position where God wants you today.
That's not wrong or sub-spiritual or unchristian.
That is exactly where God is going to
meet you.
Because in that situation you will be drawn
to seek him and listen to the shepherd's
voice.
But of course, in scripture, God does guide
his children in some fairly decisive ways.
And I want to look into one or
two examples in the Acts of the Apostles.
And then I'm going to ask, towards the
end, the question, what happens if I make
a mistake?
And one or two other practical questions.
And then if we have time, I'll give
even an opportunity for you to ask questions
back, if we have time.
I don't know whether we will.
Because I can remember so clearly, joining OM
and sitting in a meeting like this.
And wondering, you know, did all the little
indications that I've had so far as to
where I should go, did it really add
up to enough to base my next year
or two years on?
And as I
read the Bible day after day, you know,
wondering if suddenly a verse would sort of
jump out and stick me in the eye.
And I thought that India was mentioned somewhere
in the Old Testament.
I thought maybe Esther.
So I avoided reading that book.
I stayed mainly reading in the Old Testament
to be safe because, you know, none of
the European countries were mentioned in the Old
Testament.
You can get in all kinds of funny
games with yourself on this question.
Do you remember when Peter was suddenly told
by the Lord to go and take the
Gospel to the Gentiles?
Acts chapter 10, that is.
It was unusual.
It was unexpected.
It didn't fit the background thinking of the
Jews, even though if they had read the
Old Testament closely, they would have seen God
promising it long before.
So in chapter 10, Peter, the Jew, goes
and has fellowship with Cornelius, the Gentile.
And then we come to chapter 11.
And Peter has come strolling back into Jerusalem,
and he's met by...
He's met by a group of, I mean,
rather pharisaical-minded believers, and they're worse than
them.
And they say, Peter, we understand that you've
been eating sweet and sour pork.
With unwashed hands.
In a Gentile home.
Yep, says Peter.
And do you know, says Peter, God told
me to do it.
What?
God guided you?
Yep, says Peter.
How did God guide you?
Well, says Peter, I will tell you about
my experience of guidance to do that unexpected
and unusual thing.
And at the beginning of Acts chapter 11,
you get Peter listing the six ways in
which God guided him to do that strange
thing.
Verse 4, Peter began and explained everything to
them, precisely as it had happened.
I was in the city of Joppa, praying,
he says.
Number one, you've got it.
Pray.
There is no substitute for time spent just
seeking God in prayer.
The Lord Jesus said in the Sermon on
the Mount, when you pray, go into the
secret place.
And the word he actually uses is a
word that means a little leaned-up shed
at the end of a house, a simple
peasant house in Galilee.
Go into the garden shed, he said.
Now in there they would keep corn drying,
sacks of grain, onions hanging up, fish drying
out.
It's a perfect place for rats, spiders, the
creepy crawlies of every Palestinian sort.
And Jesus didn't just say go in there,
he said go in there and pull the
door shut behind you.
In the dark, you'll come out smelling of
more than just the fragrance of heaven, you
know.
Go somewhere where you can be alone with
God and the roof can come off as
your father in heaven sees you in secret.
The earliest crucial decision you have to make
at an OM conference is where are you
going to regularly meet the Lord in prayer.
It's not always easy in your own room.
Better go out for a walk somewhere.
Or have a little chair round behind some
country display or somewhere where that's your spot.
A place where you can be reasonably alone
to seek God.
Sifting through your motives, really listening to the
shepherd.
Peter apparently used to pray three times a
day, like Daniel in the Old Testament.
And Peter said, God began to guide me
in this strange way as I was praying.
And then secondly, he says, I had a
vision.
Now, I tell you, I have never had
a vision like is recorded here in Acts
11 in my life.
I know believers who have had, but God
has never given that to me yet.
A vision where you see very
clearly something that is not actually materially, physically
happening.
It's out of the normal.
It's something that happens quite a lot in
scripture.
Is not given to the majority of Christians.
Is at the moment, it seems to me,
one of the key ways in which God
is himself intervening in the lives of Muslims
right now.
And was not unknown in the New Testament.
Paul had some visions.
He had a lot of guidance that was
not to do with visions.
But I want you to notice this from
scripture.
Because of its very abnormality and unusualness, Peter
at first didn't believe it.
He asked for repetition.
And then a third time.
There are some believers today who the more
unusual the guidance seems to be, the more
they want to believe it.
The more odd seems to be the spiritual
communication, that the more passionate they are that
this is definitely of God.
That is not the apostolic way.
This vision is repeated three times.
But then notice in verse 11.
We've had prayer and a vision in verse
5.
And then 11, we read right then.
Three men who had been sent to me
from Caesarea stopped at the house where I
was staying.
The circumstances opened up just exactly at the
right time.
Peter and Paul and the other apostles often
allow themselves to be guided just by circumstances.
Paul is removed from Philippi by the circumstance
of the magistrates kicking him out of the
city.
I was having fellowship this morning with a
Scotsman who's just done two years with O
.M. in the Sudan.
And the circumstance of the secret police in
the Sudan have combined to remove him from
that country for the time being.
He's not, you know, determined to stay and
banging on the door and fighting the secret
police.
He's now looking for his next field.
God is in control sovereignly of your circumstances.
And just when that vision was completed the
third time and Peter was beginning to understand
there was a knock at the door.
I mean they didn't come ten days late
or two days too early.
The circumstances were just right.
And then we read in verse 12.
After prayer and a vision and the circumstances.
Number four.
The spirit told me to have no hesitation
about going with them.
This is also very important.
Because sometimes circumstances can open up for you
but it's still not right to go through
that open door.
And we must have that sense in our
hearts.
God is saying you have my permission, my
blessing, you go, my leading, I'm with you.
Colossians 3.15 says let the peace of
God reign or control like a referee in
your heart.
Now you will have during these days many
challenges put to you.
Give sufficient time to the Lord himself.
So that his peace which he promises to
give can be your birthright experience as you
move forward.
But then notice number five also in verse
12.
Six brothers were willing to go with him.
Peter didn't say I'm an apostle.
Whatever God gives me to do I'm going
to do.
Doesn't matter about the rest of you.
I'm off.
Bye.
Peter the apostle discusses it with six other
men over breakfast or supper or whatever.
I believe he says God is leading me
to go with these gentiles for a moment.
Will you come with me?
And they also had to have peace in
their hearts that this was the right way
to go.
We in OM are not just a bunch
of fanatical individualists.
There are people here who maybe know us
quite well.
People to whom God will give knowledge and
insight and wisdom.
And we can accept advice.
And even Peter the apostle discusses it with
others and they come to a unity before
they move ahead.
Ten years ago this summer I resigned the
job I used to have in England.
When my wife and I got married before
the law we had just come back from
three years in India.
We decided we had seen so much that
we couldn't just settle down to middle class
comfortable life as a school teacher in England.
So we committed ourselves for three years teaching
and then we would seek the Lord about
going somewhere else.
And when I began to pray about a
teaching job in Nepal, another teaching job in
Singapore, another one in India.
One after another God closed the doors and
I could hear him locking the key on
the other side.
It was definite.
And we were praying Lord we want to
serve you in a way that has to
do with world missions somehow.
And Lord I really would like to teach.
I like Lord helping people to understand things.
Now what are you doing Lord?
Phone rang.
Hi this is George Burrow here.
I just had a vision in my quiet
time this morning.
Well not a vision exactly but you know
what I mean you see.
Can I come over and talk to you?
I said sure come Saturday.
I'll be there.
Don't decide anything until I get there.
And he then said would we consider coming
back into fellowship with OM to do preaching
and Bible teaching and so on.
We thought about that for seven months.
We didn't just jump quickly.
My wife had been in OM since she
was 14.
Her parents had come in and she was
you know just dragged along as one of
the suitcases.
And then she'd been five years in OM
in her own right as an independent person
you know like all of us.
So she'd been in as a kid.
She'd then been in as a single.
Now she was being invited to come back
in as a wife and a mother.
She wasn't too sure about you know.
There's only the grandmother stage to go at
the moment.
But what we did was we picked out
I forget now four or five friends who
knew both of us over a long period.
And we took their advice.
Now we were not going to say look
whatever they tell us to do we will
do.
We have to stand before the judgment seat
of Christ and answer for our own decisions.
Some of you come perhaps from very authoritarian
church backgrounds or cultures.
But biblically you have to be sure that
what you're doing is right before the Lord.
But at the same time as you're praying
and as you're seeking God and listening to
the Spirit advice is helpful.
And every single one of those friends that
we consulted clearly said yes you must do
this.
This is the Lord's way for you we
believe.
So Peter sets off.
He preaches to the Gentiles.
The Holy Spirit falls on them.
And then he says verse 16.
Then I remembered the word of the Lord.
The final step of certainty is from the
word of God according to Peter in this
experience.
One of the things that we did during
that seven month period of just thinking and
praying was search through the scriptures.
And I can take you to the verses
in Isaiah, in 1 Corinthians and in 2
Timothy through which God led us at that
time.
These days are important in laying spiritual foundations.
Because most of you in this coming year
are going to be in a situation of
difficulty at some stage or other.
It could be relationships.
It could be health.
It could be some unexpected thing you just
don't know what will happen.
And when you get into that situation your
foundations are going to be examined.
And we need to know that the Lord
led us in there.
Otherwise you start to panic and look over
your shoulder and think I should be somewhere
else and you cannot withstand the pressure that
is being brought on you.
Prayer.
Sometimes a supernatural intervention from the Lord.
Circumstances.
The Holy Spirit in your heart.
The advice of friends.
The word of God.
All these things converge.
In the second world war the big cities
used to have searchlights around them to try
and pinpoint the enemy bombers that would be
coming.
Nowadays the planes move so fast and the
rockets and so on.
The whole system has changed.
It's radaring.
If a light picked up a plane.
If there was just one light the plane
could often twist and duck out of it.
But then other lights would lock onto that
plane.
Then the guns would open up and that
plane would be locked in a blaze of
light and be much more easy to bring
down.
In the same way in guidance we are
made more sure as we have more and
more lines of guidance.
And I want to say to you that
guidance is not a simple, easy, mechanistic thing.
It's a matter of humility before God and
seeking your Father.
And not reading too much into one thing
and us looking for corroborating, supporting evidence.
Actually as you read through the rest of
the Acts of the Apostles.
You can see that the Apostles were guided
in many different ways.
Can I just run through quickly one or
two?
Give you an idea?
Because I'm sure as you're reading scripture you'll
be thinking about these things in these days.
You remember the first two verses of Acts
13?
A group of prophets and teachers ministering to
the Lord and fasting.
And the Holy Spirit said, separate me Barnabas
and Saul for the work to which I
have called them.
That was the Holy Spirit speaking through the
leadership of a church.
It wasn't just Barnabas and Saul announcing one
day, we're off, bye bye.
But it was the whole church through the
Lord working amongst the leaders being very, very
content that that was the way to go.
But in Acts chapter 15 you remember the
quarrel between Paul and Barnabas.
Barnabas took John Mark off with him.
And Paul went with Silas.
Now we don't read that again the prophets
and teachers got together and again the Holy
Spirit spoke through them and said separate me
Paul and Silas.
Paul went up to Silas one day and
said, are you doing anything for the next
couple of years?
And Silas said, I feel it would be
really helpful if you could come with me
and your gift as a prophet could be
used in the establishing and building up of
the church around Asia Minor.
So in that case it was the suggestion,
the humble suggestion of an older Christian leader
that made Silas move out.
In Acts chapter 16 we read very interestingly
that Paul and his team tried to go
into one area, door shut, tried another area,
door shut and then a vision.
Later in chapter 16 we find them leaving
Philippi as I said because they were kicked
out by the town officials.
Later in chapter 16 we can read how
they left the town because they were kicked
out.
Vision in one case, circumstances in another.
In chapter 17 we find twice it's the
advice of the other believers, even younger believers
that is causing Paul and Barnabas or Paul
and Silas to move out.
Once in Thessalonica, once again in Berea.
We see the brothers immediately sent Paul to
the coast and Silas and Timothy stayed.
Verse 14, in chapter 17 Paul makes his
way down to Athens.
I had a fascinating time this summer, I
was asked to go down to Greece to
speak at a conference of the Free Evangelical
Church of Greece.
And I walked around the old Greek market
place in Athens where Paul was provoked into
preaching.
And then they invited him from these street
corners in the Agora, the sort of community
market place, up, half way up the Acropolis
hill to where Mars hill, the sort of
debating place was.
We read in Acts 17
that the spirit was provoked within Paul, he
was on his own.
But just the pressure from the Holy Spirit
inside him caused him to start preaching out.
So the same kind of principles that work
in Peter's experience as in Paul's in different
places.
Now let me end with just one or
two things and then perhaps have a few
questions.
Can I say that obedience to the Lord's
call and the Lord's will does not automatically
lead us away from suffering.
We sometimes assume that if God guides us
then life will be easier.
But you read in 1 Peter chapter 4
of suffering according to the will of God.
You read that Jesus was led by the
spirit into the wilderness in order to be
tested and proved and tempted by the devil.
You read of God's people, the Israelites being
led out of Egypt into the wilderness.
There they were going to run out of
water.
They were going to be attacked by enemies.
They were going to have problems with the
food supply.
And every single day they were led by
the pillar of cloud and the pillar of
fire.
So the Lord's leading does not always mean
that life is going to be sweeter and
happier and you know big cheesy grin.
So don't, you know if things get tough
in a year, don't therefore say well I
must have mistaken what God was leading me
to back in the conference.
And the other thing I want to say
is this.
What happens if I make a mistake?
Now again I want to ask you about
your philosophy of guidance.
Let's take the example of marriage.
Because I am presuming that you are all
committed to the idea of you know when
you promise to love someone unconditionally and forever
you mean it.
Is it possible to marry the wrong person?
Are you then in a permanently you know
damaged, hopeless state, second class Christian, married the
wrong one, doom, change of ember light, prisoner.
Or supposing you get what you think later
is the wrong job.
Or supposing you go on the doulos and
after two months you think you really ought
to be on the logos.
Why don't you get on the doulos and
have fun all the time?
The logos is in America and the people
need to be the mosquitos being in Africa.
And then I ask you, at the bit
of the logos I want to ask you
a question.
Am I then finished you know?
No longer really usable by God.
Do you ever get those kind of thoughts?
That I've missed it, I've blown it.
Maybe I married the wrong one.
Maybe my children shouldn't even exist.
Maybe my parents shouldn't have got married.
Maybe I'm not even supposed to be on
this planet.
And grandparents, I mean by now the whole
world is just a complete mess of people
who ought not to be here.
That kind of thinking can get you into
crazy mess can't it?
You know you think that the law just
shows you the one person that you have
to marry just momentarily, a few seconds, she
passes on the bus and you miss her.
And...
God does not behave like that.
And I'm not even sure that you ought
to be thinking in these terms about places.
Tell me, are there any teams this year
where God has promised not to go?
He's not going to be a member of
that team.
He's going to be on each one is
he?
And if you made a mistake in all
sincerity and finished up in the Sudan when
you should have been in Pakistan, are you
going to be the Jonah on that team
and completely destroy the blessing for that team?
God is able to meet you and use
you fruitfully wherever you go.
But it doesn't mean today it doesn't matter
what you think.
But basically on whatever team you go the
Lord is going to meet you, help you,
you're going to grow, wherever.
We are all failures.
Programmed if you like since the fall of
man to make mistakes.
And all the mighty men in Hebrews 11
made extraordinary mistakes.
Noah got drunk, Abraham prostituted his wife, David
was a murderer, Samson had horrendous problems with
his girlfriends.
And if the resurrection proves one thing it
is that God is the God of a
second chance.
He is a God of grace.
And so we make our choices in sincerity
and humility and honesty knowing that as children
of God we can rely on him wherever
we go.
That takes a little bit of a pressure
off doesn't it?
And God doesn't always require us to go
to the place we least want to go.
You know you come from a background of
years some of you before your conversion of
Satan drip feeding in wrong ideas about God.
And sometimes we come to a conference like
this and we think you know I'd really
like to go to this place.
Therefore that cannot be possible.
You know if I really want to go
there that's the one place God I'm sure
won't allow me to go.
What does that say about God?
You've got a real problem with your attitude
to God if that's the way you subconsciously
think.
God may well say you want to go
there?
Right let's go together.
Can I?
Oh thank you.
You see?
Or he may keep you.
But make sure that your attitude to him
and your thinking about him are worthy of
him.
Let me summarize.
Put your life completely in his hands.
No regrets, no reserve.
You want to do whatever is his will.
You trust him to give you the gifts
and the grace if the job seems a
bit difficult.
Number one you passionately want to grow with
him and do his will.
Secondly you're going to have a consistent prayer
life and seek his face.
He wants to be more important to you
himself than any question of geography.
And the Lord promises then to lead.
He doesn't play funny games with us.
If he promises to lead he knows the
complications that we have in understanding and trusting.
Some of you have much more difficulty in
making commitments of yourself than others because of
background and upbringing.
That's no problem.
And the Lord understands that.
And so he deals with us differently.
He says I will guide you.
You will hear my voice.
You will know me.
And I will go with you.
Should we put out fleeces?
The one example in scripture of a man
putting out a fleece it wasn't because of
faith it was because of doubt that wouldn't
go away.
If I catch any of you leaving coats
and jumpers out around here overnight.
I have a special squad that goes out
with buckets of water and just...
If you leave them in another place I
can have them dried for you in the
morning, whatever you want, you know.
Let's stop.
Any questions before lunch?
Otherwise if there's no questions we go straight
to lunch.
Yes.
The question is how can we have the
council of friends here when we don't really
know each other very well?
Obviously the council that you would get here
would be of less value than someone who
has known you for years and prayed with
you.
But we are much in prayer about this
question.
As I'm sure you are.
That the Lord will give wisdom and insight
quickly.
And you sometimes get situations in interviews where
the leader or the person seeking the interview
get a sense, you know, the Lord is
saying something here.
I'm not quite sure what it is but
I don't yet have permission to go forward
through this door.
Sometimes the interviewer, I've known this, they can
just have a sense, I want to put
my finger on this issue in somebody's life
and it's the Lord doing it.
We are looking to the Lord to be
very active in our thinking and discernment.
But we admit that it's not a local
church situation where you've perhaps grown up with
people who've prayed for you for years.
Last one.
I think the Lord is leading us to
have lunch.
Because it's 12.30. Father, we thank you
that we can have joy in your presence.
In your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
We look forward to that day when you
will say, well done, good and faithful servant.
And we will take our crown and just
cast it before you.
Because we don't deserve it.
It's your guidance and it's your goodness and
it's your grace that have kept us going.
Lord, we want to enjoy this experience of
making humble decisions before you.
And of accepting advice and of sensing the
peace of God flooding our hearts.
Grant wisdom and discernment to everybody day by
day who needs it.
In Jesus name, Amen.
Amen.