Being Led by God’s Spirit

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Good to see everybody here today as we dig into another psalm. Another psalm. I hear there's a lot of good fellowship going on.

Praise God. That's what it's about, right, guys? That's what church is about. It's about fellowship and being strengthened by God's Word. Again, thank you for being with us here today.

We're so thankful that you are in the house of the Lord. And we are rolling through our teaching on the psalms. We've just been kind of hitting psalms. And last week, my wife shared with you that my favorite psalm was Psalm 23. And, you know, hers was 24.

Mine's 23. Guess what? I'm going back to 23. You can dig so much out of Psalm 23. And I got a follow-up with her this week after she nailed it last week.

Just killed it in her message. So, how many of you enjoyed that message last week from my bride, Miranda? I always tell everybody she runs circles around me in communication. I can't really keep up with her. So, to follow her is very, very, very hard.

So, but if you'll turn with me to Psalm 23, and we're going to look at verse 1 through 3. And I want to talk today about how to be led by God's Spirit. How to be led by God's Spirit. Because life, there's a series of choices that we make in life. We can make the right choices and we can make the wrong choices.

Right choices lead us to success. And wrong choices lead us to the opposite. We're always going through choices. Bad choices don't take us to where we want to go. And it's important for us in these sequences to seek the Lord.

And the potential for error is really high because we're human beings. We're flawed people. So, it's important for us to make the right choices. And indecision even causes greater stress when we're kind of back and forth. I heard a friend of mine say that's a great leader.

He says, good leaders, they make decisions and they do them. But a lot of us, we kind of bounce around from decision to decision. And did I make the right decision? And it causes a lot of stress. And then you second guess yourself when you make decisions often.

And then what happens? We create more stress in our lives. Did I make the right decision? Did I make the wrong decision? And you might even lose sleep because of those decisions.

Well, the antidote to that is God. Is listening to God. How do we go to God with good decision making? God doesn't want you to be stressed. In fact, He's on the journey with you.

The Bible tells us that life is a journey. And God has given us the road map here, the Word of God. We also have the compass, which is our conscience. That's a part of it. But we don't want that to operate alone, right?

We need the Word of God. And we also need a counselor. And that's the Holy Spirit. We listen to the Holy Spirit to be able to guide us in life. So the Holy Spirit wants to lead us down a path of righteousness.

Wants to direct our paths on the path of righteousness. So we're going to be looking at Psalm 23 today. And for some of you, the question is, and you have these questions in your heart and your mind, why is it so difficult to figure out what God wants for me? Why can't He just tell me I hear Him clearly? Is He playing hide and seek?

Is He playing cat and mouse? Is He playing games with me? You know, why is it so difficult? Is God trying to confuse me? Have you ever been there?

God, are you confusing me? Of course God's not. The real issue is that we often look for the wrong things from God. That's the problem. And so in Psalm 23, there's a little statement in here that we're really going to dig in today.

But did you know that, and I know many of you have heard Psalm 23, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. We hear that in funerals all the time, right? In memorial services all the time. In fact, me and Kelly were talking about that just this past week. Kelly here on the front row, her mother passed away a couple of weeks ago, and we had her memorial service.

It was a wonderful memorial service. Great, great time fellowshipping with her Filipino brothers and sisters. Man, they like to eat, and they like to hang out, and they got some good food. Praise God for that. She was really blessed to be there.

But she was talking about that very thing, Psalm 23. Isn't that, that's just an overused verse. But it doesn't actually mean death at a funeral like death. It means that scripture is actually about a guiding shepherd that gives us life, that helps us through choices, that helps us navigate life. So if you'll look along with me here in chapter 23, verse 1, it says, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

Some versions say, I lack nothing, or I have everything I need. Can you say amen to that? You have everything you need. I have everything I need to live out what God has put in my life, my purpose. You have everything you need.

Some of you need to hear that right now. I have everything I need because you feel like you don't. But God, if you're a believer today, God has equipped you with everything you need. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.

He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. I want you to underline that piece right there. He leads me in paths of righteousness. By the way, if you don't have your Bible with you, that is absolutely okay.

We have it. We have a printout there for you that you can look at, you can hold on to. Also, you can go to thebible.com and look up our live service, and we have everything there for you to follow. Not quite everything.

You might have to take some notes, okay? I don't give you everything, but you can go there so all of us can follow along. So, he leads me. That's a promise. It's a promise that God has given us that he leads us.

We're not left on our own. He says he leads us down paths of righteousness. And if you've never felt God lead you before, if you've never experienced God's lead in an area, that's a problem because when you're in the family of God, we have a good shepherd that leads us. And it's vitally important that you learn how to be led by the Spirit. Romans 8.

14 says, Only those people who are led by God's Spirit are God's children. So, if you're God's children, then you are to be led by the Spirit. So, that's what I hope to help you with and navigate today. If you're a child of God, how to listen to God's Spirit. Now, I think of hiking.

I love hiking. I love going down trails. And I lived in the mountains while I was in college for a little while. The Appalachian, Appalachian, depending on where you are from. Trail, you take those trails and you navigate those trails.

But you don't start at the beginning and just go as fast as you can unless you're a cross-country runner or something like that. You don't just race all the way to the end of the trail and not see anything, right? As you're going along, I love to stop and look at the beauty. Sometimes I stop and pause and take a break and take a breath. Sometimes I look at plants on the way.

I make choices. Sometimes there's splits in the road. That's the same way we follow the Holy Spirit. We don't just run to the next thing. We are guided.

And there's times you're going to have to stop. There's some things you're going to have to stop doing. And there's some things that you're going to have to start doing as we navigate this journey. So I'm going to give you some things that, first of all, that we need to stop doing. And then we'll talk about some things really quick about what we need to start doing.

The first thing is, I must stop being led by my culture. Stop being led by my culture. I can't follow culture and follow God at the same time. You can't follow two masters. You can't follow money.

You can't follow money. And you can't follow God. You can't follow fame and follow God at the same time. You can't serve God in something else. It's very clear in Scripture.

Exodus 23 says, Don't follow the crowd in doing wrong. The common thought is, if everyone else does it, I must do it. It must be right if everybody else is doing it. If it's legal, it must be moral. But that's not always the case, right?

Most people make decisions in their life according to what's acceptable, what I can fit into, what makes me look. I don't want to stick out so I don't stand out. But God has called us to stand out. We are to be different. But people don't want to rock the boat.

When I'm in Rome, act as the Romans, right? Just be that way. When I'm going to look like the people around me. There are great pressures to make us conform in this culture. And the Holy Spirit's duty is to conform you to Christ's image, not to pull you in three or four different directions, but only one direction.

This was Israel's biggest problem in the Old Testament. For 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 years, they just could not, for thousands of years, they could not get away from what other cultures were doing. They wanted to look like other cultures. And God said, you're supposed to be different. In fact, he set laws in place, civil and ceremonial laws and moral laws in place.

And he says, don't copy everybody else. Yet Israel over and over again, begin to copy and do what the other nations were doing. They wanted to fit in. And we see the disastrous results over and over again. When you look at the kings and the different rulers of those times, look what Romans 12, 2 says.

It says, do not copy the behavior or values of this world. Instead, let God transform you. That means you're going to be a little different. When God transforms you, you look a little different. He's going to transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

Then you will know what God wants to do. And that means you're going to think a little different than everybody else. That's exactly what that means. And the reason we don't know what God wants to do is because we are too indoctrinated into this culture. We're too indoctrinated in thinking and acting and making decisions based on the popular thing.

If we really want to hear God, we can't be like the culture. We either listen to God or we listen to the culture. The world's purpose or God's purpose. And let God transform you into a new person. How do we do that?

By changing the way you think. By changing the way you think. And you will know what? What? The pleasing and perfect will of God.

God's will for your life is good, not bad. God has the best for you. God doesn't want to ruin your life. He wants to make your life enjoyable. Yes, there's hard times in life.

Don't get me wrong. You're not going to have an easy road all the way through, but it will be enjoyable because you are in the purpose and the plan of God. God. And that's what God wants to do. He wants to give you life.

The purpose of this psalm is to show you that there's life when you walk in the way of the righteous. Because culture is temporary, guys. Think about it for a minute. Styles come and go. I mean, what you're wearing today isn't going to be tomorrow's style and tomorrow's trend.

Culture comes, fashions go. Some of you are holding on to clothes for 30, 40 years hoping they'll come in back in the style. Yes, they do turn around again. But it's very temporary. Look what 1 John 2, 17 says.

The world and all of its desires pass away, but the person who does the will of God lives, what? Forever. See, the things of the world pass away. People will say, well, well, you're on the wrong side of history. It's not important whether you're on the right or wrong side of history.

It's important that you're on the right side, the right side of truth. I just want to be on the right side. That's God's side. And you can't be on both sides, which leads me to my next point. You got to stop being led by your friends.

You got to stop being led by your friends, okay? You can't follow God, and you can't be led by people who don't follow God. If my friends are going the exact opposite direction that God is going, then I don't need to follow them. It's one thing to say I'm going to be counterculture, but it's another thing to say I'm not going to let my friends influence me. That's a really hard thing.

And why do I make such a big deal about this? Because peer pressure is probably one of the number one things that keeps people from pursuing and following the will of God in their lives. Peer pressure. That's in your, if you're in school, your schoolmates or your co-workers or your teammates or those that live around you, keeping up with the Joneses, whatever that might look like. 1 John 3, 7 says this, do not let anyone, that includes your friends, do not let anyone lead you in the wrong way.

Christ is righteous. So to be like Christ, you must do what is right. Anyone who keeps on sinning is being led by the devil. I love that paraphrase. You're being led, anyone who's sinning is being led by the devil.

Anyone who's not following God and following their own ways and doing that contrary of God is being led by the devil. So are you following them? Then you're being led by the devil. You're being led by Satan. And he says, don't let anyone lead you the wrong direction.

Don't let anyone manipulate you or pull you in a way that is contrary to God. And there's a lot of bad advice floating around there. In fact, I saw a blog post just the other day, an influencer saying why everyone should have an affair, how it's good for your marriage or it's good for your relationships to cheat. And people are like, ah, yeah, you know, that's, that's, it's incredible the amount of people, the amount of influencers and what's being said in this world and culture is just following it. Oh yeah, that's, that's good.

That's good. People are hungry for truth. They're searching for it everywhere. And we have the truth. Are we following truth?

Proverbs 13, 20 says, keep company with wise friends and you'll become wise. So simple. Just hang out with smart people. Hang out with wise people that follow God. Where does wisdom come?

Wisdom comes from the Lord. Are we listening to people, uh, that, that listen to the Lord or, or follow or, or stand in line with what God says? But if you associate with fools, your life will suffer great hurt. I heard it said, you can't soar with eagles if you run with turkeys, right? How many of you are running with turkeys?

Okay. You're soaring with eagles or you're, you're chasing down the turkeys. All right. Choose your friends wisely and let culture, uh, you, you can't let culture or your friends take you off track. You make sure you're getting the right advice and you're choosing your friends wisely.

Let, let me just say this, just a few little side points here. I can't believe how many people receive counseling that are believers that receive counseling from those who aren't Christians. Now I'm not saying that there's not really good non-believing counselors out there, but I would say this, if you're a believer and you follow the Lord, why would you receive counsel from anyone else but those who are led by the spirit? Professional counselors, uh, there's, there's tons of professional Christian counselors out there that are here to, to help you and navigate you. It's good to get counseling.

Amen. Sometimes we need counseling. We all need counseling from time to time. Amen. It's not a scary thing.

I got a lot of giggles out there. I got it. Yeah. Yeah. Especially, uh, the last five or six years, man, more people need counseling than ever before.

It's a good thing, but we need to be guided, guided by good counselors. And another thing, be tender without surrender, be tender without surrender. See, that doesn't mean that you're not going to have. Non-Christian friends, okay? I'm not saying go out and just cut off everybody that's a non-Christian.

You're gonna have non-Christian friends. In fact, you're told to associate with non-believers, that you're supposed to be ministering. In fact, it even commands you to love your enemies. We are to love our enemies because that's what the Great Commission is all about, loving our enemies and loving those who are against us. And that's a commandment made.

Look what Jeremiah 15, 19 says, and this explains it. You will be my spokesman. That means to those non-believing friends, you are a spokesman to those people. You are to influence them, but do not let them influence you. So you are to influence them, but they are not to influence you.

Every day you're deciding, am I a thermostat or a thermometer? What does a thermometer do? It just mimics what already is happening in a room, right? It just shows what's already there. But a thermostat changes the entire environment.

We need to be thermostats in our world. That we love people, but we hate the things that hurt them, right? That God loves them. So how do, how, some people ask, well, 1 John 2.15 says, do not love the world or anything of the world.

You know, love the world because if you love the world, the Father's not in you. And then you read John 3.16 says, for God so loved the world. How do you reconcile those two things? That just doesn't make sense.

I heard it said like this, we are to love the people and not love the value system. Love people, but don't love the value system. Why? Because the value system of culture and the world hurts people, and we don't want people to hurt. God doesn't want people to hurt.

So we don't love the value system that goes opposite of God, but we love the people. Amen? Number three, stop being led by substitutes for God. Now, this is really big, and this might not apply to, well, it does apply to everybody in some way, but I can't look at other sources outside of God. I can't go to other sources, TV shows, podcasts, media personalities.

There's a lot of things floating through our heads all the time, right? Advice from everybody and everything. And the best place to look is to read this owner's manual here, and that's the Bible, to go to the Word of God. That's the best advice you're ever going to get. Decision is one of the greatest sources of stress.

We all can admit that. When you're at a place where you have to make a major decision, there's a lot of stress involved. You're in and out and in and out, but James says not to be double-minded, you know? And you know what that means? It means to stagger back and forth in the Greek.

It means to literally be drunk. Like, I'm drunk and trying to make a decision. I'm going to go here. I'm going to go there. I'm going to go there.

I'm going to go there. And you just become a drunk, and you prolong pain in making the decisions in your life. How do we kill that? Because all of us have been there drunk on our decision-making, right? The antidote is to let God guide you.

And God doesn't want you to stress, and the Bible is this beautiful road map. Your conscious is the compass, and your personal guider is the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Amen.

I've lost my place here. Got a little carried away. No substitutes for God. This is the bad part about technology here, you know? But a good part of the Holy Spirit's involved anyway.

Hallelujah. Substitutes for God. Everything wants to tell you how to run your life, okay? Everything in the world tells you how to run your life. Any replacement of God is an idol.

Anything that you put in place of God for decision-making is an idol. And I can tell you more than anything, I've seen a counter-spiritual move beyond what I've ever seen before, maybe in the last 20 years. Because I grew up in a generation that didn't believe in God at all. We had more atheists come out of my generation than ever before, but now there's a return to spiritualism, but the wrong kind of spiritualism. People are going to tarot cards, crystal balls, to New Age spiritual advisors.

Right down the road here, we have Edgar Cayce, a New Age ministry that is actually affecting our entire city. I can tell you, there are Christians I've even talked to that go to get spiritual advice from fortune tellers. And there's this thing called new thought. I don't know if you've heard of this. New thought that disguises New Age in Christianity actually pulls a lot of Christian ideas in that we're actually looking to Jesus, but it's metaphysical.

And people are tapping into the metaphysical world. In fact, Melissa Dautry, who came out of that movement, wrote a book called Happy Lies. It makes you happy. It makes you feel good, but it's disguised. What does the Bible say?

The devil disguises himself as an angel of light. So it looks great. It looks good. We had a young lady that attended our church that had amazing testimony of how she came out of a movement, a New Age, where she worshiped angels. She talked about how great it was at the beginning and how awesome, you know, you felt like you belonged.

It felt like God. But ultimately, as it took over her life, as that spiritual, that demonic activity took over her life, she was tortured. Disguises as an angel of light. And we see throughout Ezekiel where the king of Babylon stands at the crossroads and he's uncertain about what to do, so he throws arrows out. And where the quiver lands, he determines their direction.

So this is nothing, nothing new. So why do people do things like this? Because they don't want a boss. They don't want a God in their life to determine where they're going, so they're running to anything and everything else to make their own decisions. They don't want a Lord of their life.

And the Bible warns us in Deuteronomy 18, 10 through 12, it says, never look at psychics and seances and fortune tellers and the stars or people who claim to be in contact with the dead. People who do these things are doing evil and God hates it with a passion. I love that paraphrase. God hates it with a passion. If you want to be led by the Spirit, you can't have substitutes for God.

Number four, stop being led by your circumstances. I got to stop being led by my circumstances if I'm going to really listen to God and what He wants. I'm amazed of how many believers determine God's direction based on their circumstances. I missed a plane. It must be God, you know.

I wasn't supposed to go there. It's heavy traffic. That's why I was late. It must be God. It was meant that way, right?

Or the offering plate skipped me or I didn't see the screen up on it, so I must not supposed to be giving today. Or I overslept today, so, you know, maybe that's, maybe you're online and you overslept and this is going to hit you really hard. I overslept, so maybe I'm not supposed to be at church today. Maybe that's why that is. I don't know.

It's amazing how people determine God's direction based on their circumstances and a lot of the circumstances that they base God's direction on is things that they have done themselves to themselves. And that's a very shallow, that's a very shaky ground to base your listening to God on. A lot of examples in the Bible are exactly this. I mean, think about Jonah, for instance. You know, he was supposed to go to Nineveh and preach to the people that he hated.

And I'm sure he went to the docks of Tarshish and said, oh, the circumstances are perfect. Look, here's a ship. Maybe I'm supposed to be on this ship and maybe I'm supposed to sail this way. But that wasn't God's plan for his life. Sometimes, oh, well, there's a boat right here.

God wants me to go this direction. I think I will go the exact opposite direction based on the circumstances. that are before me and we make a lot of decisions about what God wants for our lives based on our opinions, it must be God’s will. Paul tried to warn some people in Acts 27 of this. There were some Romans that had taken Paul prisoner and they were getting ready to embark on a boat.

And Paul received in a dream the night before that there was going to be a terrible storm. He wakes up the next day, he tells them, guys, there is going to be a storm. Look how this is. In Acts 27, 10, men, I can see that our voyage is going to be disastrous and bring great loss to the ship and the cargo and to our own lives also. So he's warning them, guys, guys, listen to me.

But here's what happened. But when a gentle south wind began to blow, they saw their opportunity. So they weighed anchor and sailed along the shore of Crete. Have you ever had a gentle breeze blowing your life? And it made you head in a certain direction, you know?

And then it ended up being very disastrous. You end up being in a storm. Why did I make that decision? Because you trusted your feelings. What happened?

Before very long, the wind of the hurricane force called the nor'easter. Like, what's going on outside right now? Have you all been to the ocean today or yesterday? Man, it's crazy out there. Imagine the ship.

Sweat down from the island. The ship was caught by the storm and could not head into the wind. So we gave way to it and were driven along. The epitaph of many believers is they trusted in their circumstances. They trusted in their feelings.

And we just finally gave up and drifted along because we trusted in whatever it was. And it didn't look good at the end. So what do I do? You drift along like a storm. Just back and forth.

You can't trust your circumstances. In fact, Satan can manipulate your circumstances. Did you know that? Now, God does use circumstances. And you've heard me preach on that.

But we must learn that not every circumstance that happens in your life is God. Some of it's you. And you always check your circumstances against God's word to discern and confirm what God has. Which leads me to my next point. Number five, stop being led by your feelings.

Circumstances kind of bring about feelings, right? I cannot be led by my feelings because feelings lie to you all the time. Why? Because they're temporary. Whether bad or good, your feelings are temporary.

I can be elated by a wedding when I attend a wedding, but it will not last. I can be elated by Disney World, you know, wow, look at this. Or an amusement park or whatever that looks like for you. But it will fade. I can be elated by winning a game.

Or I can be elated by a new pair of shoes. Look at these white shoes up here. Man, man, they're already old. I bought them a few months ago, man. Because if we trust our feelings, then those feelings fade.

They're very, very temporary. I can be elated and some of you will get this because we have surfers and action sports people and outdoor sports people all around here. I can be elated by a big wave. I can be elated by the storm out there, but it's not going to last. That's why we keep going back and back and back for more to fulfill that thing inside of us because we trust in our feelings.

Get depressed because you're elated by something and it doesn't last. But on the opposite end, it's temporary as well. Like that's why they say when you go through panic attacks or you're dealing with depression, it's not forever. My father, who's a professional counselor, he always says, just know that it's a season. It won't last forever.

There is an end. But when we trust in our feelings, it is short-lived. It is temporary. And the common mistake Christians make is they let their conscience be their guide. Just like Jiminy Cricket said, right?

Always let your conscience. If I'm dating myself, you know, I don't know. I think Pinocchio is still real popular, right? Did they even put that on the new movie? The new Pinocchio movie?

Did they sing the song? But your conscience is often wrong. It is. The mind's wrong. Because the Bible says your heart is deceitful.

I know this is hard for a lot of people to receive, but our hearts follow your heart, listen to your heart. You know, you hear all these songs and it really gets you. I just want to follow my heart. But guess what? Your feelings, your heart, it could be the pizza you ate the night before.

And you're just having some, you wake up in the middle of the night and you're having bad dreams. You just don't, you don't, you don't know. I've heard this. Well, I just have peace about it. Maybe.

Maybe. But you better have more than peace. You better have God's word backing that up, right? You better be praying about it, not just peace about it. I mean, Jonah, he fell into a deep sleep in the bottom of that ship on his way to Tarshish.

He didn't even know the storm was going on. He was very peaceful because he didn't have to go to Nineveh. Some of you need to go to Nineveh and you're, you have peace about where you are. Make sure that that's God and not your feelings. Proverbs 14, 12 says, you may feel you're on the right road and still end up dead.

Don't trust your feelings. I love how Isaiah 43, 6 says, it says, we've all strayed away like sheep. We have left God's path to follow our own. We all have done that. We all, when we listen to our hearts, our hearts are drawn to do the opposite of what God wants.

That's why we need the spirit of God in our lives. So we've got to stop listening to our feelings. Those are things that we have to stop listening to. Now let's talk about some things that we need to start doing real quick here. First of all, I must want to be led.

You've got to want to be led. You've got to know that you need it really bad. You need God. I need God. I need a hunger.

I need a craving. I need a longing for God. I want God. You've got to be so desperate that you're crying out with everything that's in you. God, I want what you want for me, Lord.

It's got to be like oxygen. It's got to be like food. It's got to be like water. For as the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs for you. You've got to want that.

Psalm 48 says, my God, I want to do what you want. What is it? Your teachings are in my heart. I think that's interesting right there. He's been reading the word of God.

He's been looking at what was pinned on the pages of the word of God. It's in his heart. And that helps him pursue and helps him hunger for what God wants him to do. How many of you are spending time in God's word? How many of you are really going to God in your personal time?

You've got to be willing to be led by God. And the second thing that adds on to this is I must be willing to do what God says. If I'm going to be led by God, if I want to be led by God, I've got to be willing to do what he says, even if it's something that I don't like, even if it's something I don't want. I've got to be willing in advance. I've got to pre-decide that I am going to follow God in whatever he calls me to do.

When I was first called to ministry in my early 20s, I said, God, everything's yours. I will do whatever you want me to do. If you send me halfway around the world, I will be glad to go, God. I will give up anything and everything, and I will be willing to do to completely surrender to you. John 7, 17 says, whoever is willing to do what God wants and chooses it will know if what I teach comes from God.

I don't, you may not understand it, but you've got to be willing. You've got to be willing to walk in the direction that God points you to because you will never fulfill that thing that God has put in your life if you play it safe and you decide. See, what we do is we decide what we want to do and then go to God about it. He says, God, this is what I want to do. That's what we do.

And if God says different, you know, I'm sorry, I've already made that my decision. But what if we were to blindly just go in and say, God, whatever, whatever, whatever you want me to do. Number three. Number three. I must look to God’s Word.

I got to go to God’s Word, okay? I know I keep pointing back to God’s Word, but I think it's so important that we forget that this is the very, very map in which we need to go back. If you're not an everyday Bible reader, you need to start being an everyday Bible reader. If you want to listen to the Spirit of God, which Spirit guides us, He never contradicts His Word, right? So, we go to His Word.

Because if you're walking this life without a Bible in your heart, then you're walking it blindly. You're going down a dark trail with no flashlight. You don't know where you're going. Psalm 119 says, Guide my steps by Your Word, so I will not be overcome by any evil. Guide my steps, Lord.

Just three quick points about that. God’s will is found in God’s Word. God’s will. Some of you are like, what’s God’s will for my life? Well, there's some pretty evident stuff here.

Now, He's not going to have your future spouse printed here on the page, okay? But He will tell you who you need to be looking for. He will show you directly what you need to be doing. He's not going to have the job that's laid out for you right there. Oh, I guess this is the right one right here, because He says it right here on page.

No. But He tells you what you need to be doing, ethical, living an ethical life, doing the right thing, doing the best with what you've been given. And God will unfold what is next in your life. So stop listening for a voice and start looking at a verse. Stop listening to a voice.

Stop looking up to the sky and start looking right here. And start praying and seeking God and what He says, and He will begin to reveal. And God expects me to obey what I already know. If you already know, He expects you to start there. What's God's will for my life?

Do what He says right here first. That's your will. Your will is to follow Him. Your will is to follow His law and His life and everything that He's given you here in Scripture. He's laid out things pretty plain in Scripture.

And guess what He begins to do? He begins to unfold things, the mysteries. The mysteries can't come until you do the first thing first. Are you living for God? Are you following what is right in front of you, black and white and plain?

And the gray areas will start to rise. And you'll see God lead you. And the second thing is God will never contradict His Word. Someone once told me that they felt that God was telling them to divorce their husband because he's not a believer. I look at the Scripture, what do I find?

The contrary. I'm going to look at God's Word. God is the final Word. The third thing is God's will never contradicts God's will. Excuse me, I've lost my place here again.

Having a tough day today. As you read God's Word, He speaks to you. That's the third thing. God's Word is the very mouthpiece that speaks to us. When we close the Bible, He doesn't speak.

When we open the Bible, He speaks. How often are we opening God's Word? So we need to go to the Word. Fourth, I must ask the Holy Spirit to guide me. This is a really big part of it.

Not only do we go to God's Word, we need the Holy Spirit. He's our guidance counselor. How many of you had a guidance counselor in high school? Helped you navigate to choose whether you're going to go to college or not, or what college you'll go to, the career path. That's sort of like the Holy Spirit in our spiritual lives.

He guides us and He shows us the way. He says, this is where you need to go. This is what this Scripture means. When I go to Scripture, I don't just go to Scripture without the power of the Spirit working in me and showing me and revealing to me what He has for me. James 4.

2 says, you do not have because you do not ask for it. Have you asked the Holy Spirit to help you? Have you been seeking the Holy Spirit? Because God's interested in every little detail of your life. He knows the very hairs on your head.

He cares about them. Are you coming to Him? I love how the psalmist says it in 27.11, Teach me, Lord, what you want me to do and lead me down the right path. Teach me, Lord.

Show me. Guide me. And I love how the Holy Spirit does this. He can bring to memory things when you're not capable of bringing them to memory. Because I can tell you right now, I forget things all the time.

But have you ever had that moment where God just pulls something that you've studied in the Word of God or He brings to attention a verse when you're talking to somebody? That's what the Holy Spirit means. He reminds us. He's walking with us. He's speaking to our hearts.

He's working through us. And He's wanting to encourage us and move us along to that path of righteousness. Have you asked the Holy Spirit to be involved? Are you walking in cadence and step? I love that word cadence.

When we say walking in the Spirit, the literal definition of that or the literal Greek of that is in cadence. Are you walking in cadence with what the Spirit wants and where the Spirit's leading you? Are you walking ahead of the Spirit or are you walking behind the Spirit? We want to walk in and in cadence with the Spirit of God. How do I speed up that process though?

Some of you are like, how do I speed up that process? I really, you know, I want to listen to the Spirit. Well, first of all, number one, you have to ask humbly. Just ask humbly. Psalm 25, 9, God guides the humble in what is right and He teaches them His way.

The more humble you are with God, the more He's going to share with you. Because pride goes before the destruction, right? Before destruction comes that pride. And if we let pride in, a haughty spirit fails every time. Another way is ask in faith.

You need to ask in faith that you need the Spirit of God. I'm expecting you, God, to answer me. I'm expecting you, Spirit, to share it with me. In advance, I'm thanking you. I have the faith that you're going to share it with me.

You're going to tell me. So you need to ask in faith. You have not because you ask not. You need to ask in faith and trust that God is going to give you that answer. I love this paraphrase here in James 1, 5, and 6.

It says, if you want to know what God really wants to do, ask Him and He will gladly tell you. For He is always ready to give a bountiful supply of wisdom to all who ask Him. But be sure that you really expect Him to tell you. So you've got to really expect Him to share it with you. You've got to believe that He's going to share it with you.

If you don't ask in faith, don't expect the Lord to give you any solid answers. You need answers? Believe in faith. And number five, and finally, I must listen to God's response. I must listen to God's response.

This is really the big reason why we don't hear God because we ask and we don't wait. We ask and we go running along, pick up our iPhones and go to the next thing, go to the next activity, text and answer emails, go to our TVs or whatever it is that we do. We just ask and I've got to run. I've got to go, God. We don't stop and just listen and pause for a minute on that journey to where God is carrying us.

I can't stress anymore, I can't overemphasize anymore the need for a private time with God where you just listen and you hear God and you get all those distractions out of your life so that you can really hear what God has for you. Job 33 says, God does speak in sometimes one way and sometimes another even though people may not understand it. God is always speaking. God is trying to speak with you. I heard the example one time of imagine everybody in this room is just speaking and talking and y'all are doing the fellowship thing like you do at the beginning of service.

Listen, and I'm trying to talk to them. Hunter on the soundboard back there, but I can't get through to Hunter because I don't have a mic or anything like that. So he's trying to hear me, but he hears all these other voices and I'm trying to talk to him. Hunter can't talk, can't do anything because of all the noise and all the distractions and all the things. And what we do is we invite them into our minds and into our hearts all the time.

It keeps us from really being able to listen to God. But God, he not only asks us to be quiet, but he uses his word, he uses our conscience, but with the direction of the Spirit, all three of those playing, he begins to speak to us. He begins to share with us. And my heart is that we stop doing things and we start doing others so that we can really lean in. My heart is that you are completely in the will of God.

Because there's nothing more enjoyable in this life than being right with God. He's been calling you for a long time. Have you been listening? Do you hear him? In closing, I want to point over to Psalm 77.

I know I have a lot of scripture today. I know it's hard to follow along sometimes, but it's really important that we get everything we can out of this. So write things down and go back and study them. But Psalm 77 was actually written about Moses and the delivery of his people. Remember, Moses was called to deliver his people.

And hard-headed Pharaoh would not let him go after 10 miracles. He finally lets them go. And they're delivered and God's will is happening, right? They're heading towards the Red Sea. And then when they come up against the sea, there's mountains on every side.

There's obstacles on every side. There's a sea there. And it looks like they've come to a crossroads. They've come to a cul-de-sac. Like, we can't get through here.

What's going to happen? There's mountains. There's a sea. But God had placed them right where he wanted them. The Pharaoh changed his mind.

His armies are coming after him. The chariots are rolling. And everything seems impossible. But God knew what he was doing. He was getting ready to perform a miracle that would still echo till today.

That we believe that we have a God that can bring us through impossible things. In Psalm 77, it says, Your road, Lord, led by the pathway through the sea. A pathway no one knew was there. Some of you are at pathways in your life. Enormous barriers.

Now, I've been there. Enormous barriers. Barriers of approval. Physical barriers. Energy barriers.

Whatever that. Financial barriers that are there. And it just seems impossible. It just seems like there's no way through. There's no road to the other side.

But our God is so big. Our God can part red seas. Because he has you exactly, if you're going through that right now, he has you exactly where he wants you. Because he's getting ready to perform something in your life. So you can be on the other side and say, Oh my goodness, I can tell of the story of God's goodness, of God's grace, of God's bigness.

That he is so much bigger than any obstacle, any mountain, any sea, any army that's coming after me. Because that's how good my God is. That's how good our God is. That's how good our God is. And he wants us to be led by him.

No matter what the circumstances. No matter my feelings. No matter what culture tells me. No matter what people tell me. No matter where I am in life.

God wants to guide you directly to where he wants you. Would you receive that today? Would you believe that today? That God has big plans for your life. Let's bow our heads.

Father, we thank you, God. You're a big God. And we have some tremendous decisions ahead of us, personally. And if we don't have decisions ahead of us, we will have decisions ahead of us. Because every decision that is made determines the direction we're going, Lord.

The direction of our lives, Lord. But Lord, more than anything, we want to make sure we make the right choices. So today, we are making a commitment, Lord. A commitment. That we are going to stop doing some things.

That we're going to cut some things out of our lives, Lord. And we're going to add that. Which allows you to guide us by your spirit. To be able to listen to your spirit, Lord. Maybe there's people here today that you're in a place.

You're in a cul-de-sac in your life. Can I encourage you today? Stop doing and start doing. Stop doing those things that are keeping you from focusing on God's will for your life. And start doing.

God, I pray over those here today that might be facing some very, very difficult circumstances. That you would help them and guide them. And they would take the next steps to know your perfect and pleasing will for their lives. Maybe there's some other people here today. Maybe you've never made a commitment to Jesus Christ.

And you're a witness that my own decisions don't work. I can tell you the word of God works every time. And Jesus Christ works every time. And all God cares about. He doesn't care about what you've done.

Or the mistakes you've made. He just cares about you. He wants a relationship with you. He looked at you from the very beginning before you were born and said, That's my child. I love that.

That individual. He loves you. And if you give your life to him, he will change and transform you. He will make you a new creation. And you will never be the same.

And you will experience this guiding spirit. Holy Spirit. If that's you today, would you commit your life to Jesus? It's not in the magic words of a prayer. It says, He who believes in my name and confesses with their mouth is saved.

All you have to do is confess with your mouth. Jesus, I believe that you are the Son of God. And you died on the cross. And I confess that I'm a sinner. And I can't do it without you.

That I need the covering grace and mercy of Jesus Christ over my life. Today, I receive, Father, your Son, Jesus, into my life. Make me a new creation. Make me whole. Make me yours today.

In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Can y'all give God a hand clap of praise? If you gave your life to Jesus today, please do fill out that card or let somebody know.

We would love to walk you down that path of discipleship so that you could become and conform more like Jesus. I'm going to have my lovely bride come up and lead us out. Thank you, Pastor Leon. And I don't know if he saw this yesterday, but I do think sometimes it's important, too. You know, when you have confirmation of the word from God.

But Leon's Uncle Paul, our Uncle Paul, who's also a lifelong minister, he just posted yesterday from a book called The Way to Pentecost. And it was written, I think, at least a hundred, if not more than a hundred years ago. But he particularly zoomed in on one paragraph where we said, The church still has a theology of the Holy Ghost. But it has no living consciousness of his presence and power. Theology without experience is like faith without works.

It is dead. And the signs of death abound. The Christian religion is hopeless without the Holy Ghost. And hear this. Confusion and impotence are inevitable when the wisdom and resources of the world are substituted for the presence and power of the Spirit of God.

Wow! So this is the message for us. This is the message for Salt this week. So let's invite the Holy Spirit into our lives this week. And if we live by the Spirit, we will walk in step with the Spirit.

Thank you all for being here. We don't... Don't pass around buckets or anything. But if you would like to support Salt, you can. They will put the information back there for our new guests.

Please don't feel compelled to give anything. We're just so excited you gave us your presents today. For the rest, you know how to give. You can put something in the box. You can mail something in or you can give securely via the Church Center app or even text to give.

But we're so grateful that you are here. We hope you have a wonderful, glorious week enjoying this weather and we'll see you right back here next Sunday.