How to Seek God’s Guidance Part 2

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Seek God’s Guidance Part 2. He will be reading out of Acts 11:1-7.

But I’m here to assure you that God is effectively working in your circumstances and that God knows the future. He has a plan and he is carrying out his redemptive purpose in the life of your family through the circumstances of your life.

Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders and we are broadcasting from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. It’s hope worth having. It’s time to learn the Word of God and thank you for tuning in. And so we’re back in Acts chapter 11.

We’re learning how to seek God’s guidance in your life. We sometimes feel like the journey of faith may be so aimless, but truth is God has a plan. He has a purpose and we just need to be sensitive to his leadership in our life.

So let’s dive in Acts 11 and get to learning the Word. And so God’s Word is a lamp unto my feet, but it is a light unto my path. It not only reveals where I’m at with God, but it shows me my next steps.

It is a light to my path. It shows me where I need to go. Now hear this. God will never call you to do anything that contradicts his Word. Do you understand that? Many, many years ago when I pastored in Indiana, I know this is hard to believe, but it’s the honest God truth.

God is my witness that there was a man and woman who came into my office and they said, Pastor, God has told us that we should leave our spouses and marry each other. And I said, no, he hasn’t because it’s not in the Bible.

There’s nothing in the Bible that teaches in principle or in detail that teaches us that. What the Bible teaches us is total love. different. So sometimes you may be led astray by the world, the flesh, or maybe even the devil.

But I want you to be assured that how do I know God’s will? It aligns with the Word of God. That’s how I know. So when you are seeking God’s guidance, seek it through the confirmation of His Word. Second of all, you are to seek God’s confirmation or God’s guidance through the conviction of your spirit.

Now go back to verse 11. Here Peter, he is being called to make changes in his life that are deep -rooted in his faith of Judaism. Now the new covenant is upon him. It is the confirmation of God’s Word that helps him to make this change.

But in verse 11 and 12, we see the conviction of his own spirit. The Bible says at that very moment, three men stood before the house where I was. having been sent to me from Caesarea, then the Spirit told me to go with them, doubting nothing, moreover, these six brethren accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house.

The Spirit of God had convicted the heart and the Spirit of the Apostle Peter that this is what he is supposed to do, that this is what God was calling him to do. And friends, I want you to understand something that the Spirit of God lives in all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the Spirit of God, just like he pointed Peter into the direction that he wanted him to make and the change and the person that he wanted him to go see, that God works in his Spirit through you. We are led by the Spirit of God every day.

We must get up every day and ask the Lord to lead us and to guide us through his Spirit. We are not to be led of the flesh, we are not to be led by the world or the philosophy of the world, but we are to be led of the Spirit of God.

You see, what Peter is pointing out is that the providence of God in this situation was being unfolded before him and the Spirit was leading him to go to this man’s house, share the gospel and how wondrous was it that this man got saved, his whole family got saved, this man gets baptized, his whole family gets baptized, the Spirit of God had convicted him that this is what he needs to do and there are times that the Spirit leads you to talk to someone,

the Spirit leads you to text someone, the Spirit leads you to call someone, the Spirit leads you to send a call. It’s hard to someone, to reach out to someone, to minister to someone, to just be a blessing to someone, and when the Spirit of God is leading you, you know that you are following the will of God in your life.

Now you might wonder, how do I know when the Spirit is leading me? How do I know when the Spirit is leading me? Well, let me give you a few things that’ll help you understand the leadership of the Spirit.

First of all, is prayer. Prayer will always help you to sync up with the Spirit. When I take time to just shoot arrows of prayer to God, Lord, are you leading me? Is your Spirit telling me to do this?

Are you telling me not to do this? Some of you have been prompted to get out of your bed in the middle of the night, and to pray for your children and your grandchildren. It’s the Spirit of God that is moving you.

And you don’t know, and you may never know until you get to heaven all that the power of that prayer did for your children and your grandchildren and how it may have protected them from a very difficult situation from the attacks of the devil or the attacks of this world upon their lives.

But I assure you this, that as we are praying, we are gonna be more sensitive to the Spirit of God. The second key word to knowing the leadership of the Spirit is peace. You see, there is a peace that comes from God.

The Bible tells us that He gives us a peace that passes all understanding, may not make sense to the world, may not even make sense to our own understanding. Remember in our scripture reading that we learned in Proverbs three that we’re not to lean on our own understanding, but we’re to acknowledge Him in all of our ways.

One of the ways that I acknowledge Him is I seek Him in prayer and He gives me His peace in my heart to know, listen to what the prophet Isaiah said. He said, you will keep Him in perfect peace. Whose mind is stayed or focused on you because He trusts in you.

You see, I want you to know that I can know the leadership of the Spirit in my life through the peace that God gives me. That as I am praying, I am seeing God at work and I recognize that He fills my heart with His peace.

And so I reach out, I minister, I walk up to that stranger and I share the gospel of Christ or I administer to whatever their particular need is. This is the work of God in your life. Church, we have to be more sensitive.

We have to recognize that God is always at work. He is not only at work in me and through me, but He is at work around me. And He wants to use you like He used Peter to help others to know Christ. Have you ever thought about that?

What if Peter would have said, you know what God, I’m not doing that. I don’t know Cornelius. I’m not going there. I’m gonna just stay at home where it’s… more comfortable. I’m just gonna do my own thing and I’m gonna let Cornelius do his thing.

But no, he was led of the spirit. The spirit told him to go and he went. He went. Friends, I want you to know that you can be sensitive to the spirit and you can be led of the spirit by prayer, by peace, and let me give you the third one by God’s principles or God’s Word.

Now again, the spirit will never lead you in contradiction to the Word of God. The spirit will lead you through the Word of God. The Word of God and the spirit work simultaneously together in your life.

That as you’re reading the Word of God, He is prompting you. He is convicting you. He is challenging you to get out of your comfort zone. He is calling you to a particular task. He is calling you to a particular cause.

He is calling you to a particular mission. And so we must be sensitive to these principles in God’s word that are instructing us and leading us and even convicting our own spirit that we should do this.

I promise you that every day of your life, God wants you to make an impact upon someone. He wants you to make an impact upon someone. Some of you would like to make impact upon people that you don’t even know, but I would recommend you start with the people you do know.

God wants you to influence the people that you know, and then he’ll use you in a greater way as you are faithful and saying, Lord, how can I be a blessing to my children? How can I be a blessing to my grandchildren?

How can I be a blessing to my spouse? How could I be a blessing to my church family? How can I be a blessing to the people that are already all around me? Every day, help me, Lord, to respond in grace and to be led of the spirit of God in ministering to people.

As I’m seeking God’s guidance, I not only want him to guide me and confirm to me his will through his word, but I want him to convict me in my spirit. Now, the leadership of the spirit is a unique thing that we must understand.

Sometimes as believers, we don’t know, is this the flesh, is it the devil, is it the world, is it the spirit? Keep in mind this, as you are trying to discern the leadership of the spirit, that the devil and the world and the flesh are always condemning you, but the spirit of God is always encouraging and building you and calling you to a greater work.

Many times I meet with, believers who feel very convicted in their life. Perhaps maybe about unresolved sin in their hearts, maybe unresolved anger, and there is some bitterness in their life, and there are struggles in their hearts about these things.

And they say to me, Pastor, is this God speaking to me? Or is this the world? Listen, the devil condemns you. The devil says you’re a loser. The devil says you don’t have a relationship with God. The devil tries to tell you that you’re never going to amount to anything.

But let me tell you what the Spirit says. The Spirit says you’re more than a conqueror. The Spirit says that you are led in triumph with God Almighty. The Spirit says that Jesus Christ went to the cross, and if you confess your sins and you bring it to God, and if you’re honest with Him and humble before Him, He’ll take that sin and He’ll cast it as far as the east is from the west to be remembered no more.

The Spirit tells you that you have a new creation, a brand new start in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the work of the Spirit. It is not the work of the devil. And so I want you to listen what you’re hearing.

I want you to discern what you’re hearing and that’s how you’ll know whether you are being led of the Spirit or you’re being led of the devil or the world. Now the third way that we seek God’s guidance is not only through His word and through the Spirit, but I want you to see through the circumstances of your own decision.

In verses 13 through 17, here what we see is an amazing unfolding that these circumstances seem to take place in the life of Peter that he cannot fully explain. But he says in verse 13, he told us how he had seen an angel standing in the house who had said to him, send men to Joppa and call for Simon whose surname is Peter.

Now while Peter is receiving a vision, you remember in chapter 10 that Cornelius was receiving a vision and God was bringing the saint and the sinner together that the sinner might find Christ. God was working providentially in the life of Cornelius and he was working providentially in the life of Peter.

It’s no accident that your path is crossing people who are hurting. It’s no accident that God is putting people into your life that are struggling. You might feel like hey man, this is too much drama.

I can’t handle all this mess that people are in, but I’m here to tell you that God is bringing about people in your path so that you can minister to them and make a difference in their life. How wonderful is that?

A major theme in this passage of scripture and even through the whole book of Acts is God’s role in directing Cornelius into the path. of Peter and this became a historic encounter. It would be the gateway that would lead the church to leave behind Judaism and all of its trappings that had been holding back the church of reaching the world with the gospel.

It would not only be historic but it would be transformative for the life of Cornelius and it would be transformative for the life of Peter and it would be transformative for the life of the church because from this moment on as we are studying the book of Acts we are gonna see the church propel into the uttermost parts of the earth and even through the life of the Apostle Paul as they will share the gospel to hundreds and thousands of people who now are in heaven because of this one moment.

Have you ever considered how historic the moment was? when God brought a soul winner into your life. How profound it was the moment that someone shared the gospel with you and how that has had a ripple effect upon your family, not just your life, but the life of other people.

I think about that often, about that pastor in Oklahoma who went in for coffee every morning at a gas station where my mother worked and how he would get a cup of coffee and every time he paid for that coffee, I’m not even sure the coffee was good.

But he invited my mother to come to church and she started out resistant, but she said, you know, I got these three kids that are driving me crazy. He said, man, I got a bus that’ll pick them up. And on that day, the first time my brother and sister and I ever heard about Jesus, we didn’t even know about God, gospel, church, Jesus, nothing.

But somehow in the providence of God, he brought us to that church and put us on the front row. But here I was on the front row and I remember it was this side of the church, church, little small church, wasn’t even 50 people there that Sunday.

But in the providence of God, somebody in the church paid for a bus, somebody paid to have gas put in it and somebody got up and said, let’s have this bus ready. And on that day, the preacher preached on Jesus and that day, three children walked forward and received Christ as their savior.

I told you church last summer that my wife and I were able to visit my mother in Oklahoma and in the living room, she received Jesus Christ as her savior. I told you, church, yes, go ahead, amen. I told you, church, and I’m not, I know that the things don’t always work out like this, but I’m just telling you how it is profound.

That my sister is married to a wonderful man who loves Jesus, her children love Christ, my brother is married to a wonderful lady who loves Jesus Christ, and their children love Christ, they’re all active in their church, they’re all active.

When I was talking to my mother about being baptized, she said, I’m not sure about that, Mike, because she’s afraid of water and she’s having some physical health problems. I said, well, mom, the sprinkler’s outside in the front yard, maybe we could just run you right through the sprinkler in a wheelchair.

I said, we just can’t let the church know this. We didn’t do it that way, don’t worry. But I just want you to know, I think about God was working in the heart of a preacher. He was working in the heart of my mother.

It brought about our salvation and that ripple effect today. What I’m trying to say to you is this, don’t ever look at any person crossing your path. Don’t ever look at your circumstances as something as being an accident.

Some of you might feel like that you are just hanging in there by faith or that you are hanging by luck, good or bad, perhaps more bad than good. But I’m here to assure you that God is effectively working in your circumstances and that God knows the future.

He has a plan and he is carrying out his redemptive purpose in the life of your family through the circumstances of your life. That your circumstances are not by chance or accident, but God is sovereignly bringing things together.

This is what Peter is sharing with the church in verses 13 through 17. He is saying, man, look at verse 17 at the end, who was I that I could withstand God? Who am I that I could withstand God? Who are we church that we can withstand what God is doing and where he is working and what he is up to.

It is no accident that people cross your path for he has a purpose that may have significance beyond the moment and be historical in the life of the church. We think about a young man that perhaps you have heard about many.

His name was D .L. Moody. D .L. Moody was a young boy who walked into a shoe store. That shoe store owner was a sole winner and he shared Christ with D .L. Moody. D .L. Moody got saved and would grow up to become one of the great evangelists of the world.

The Bible declares that God can use any person and he can use them in any way and D .L. Moody was very uneducated. He never went to Bible college, never went to seminary, but he was a man that God literally used.

Historians say that D .L. Moody metaphorically took England in one hand and America in the other and he shook them for God. In his ministry, there was a young man named Mordecai Hamm who came to Christ at one of D .L.

Moody’s evangelistic crusades. Mordecai Hamm, again, another young man, very uneducated, but he would grow up to be an evangelist for God. and he would crisscross America, more particularly the South, and he would preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Mordecai Ham held an evangelistic crusade in Charlotte, North Carolina. There was a young boy whose name was Billy Graham, who would come to Christ at that meeting and crusade in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Billy Graham would come to know Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. And Billy Graham would become one of the world -renowned evangelists preaching the gospel, not just in America and England, but through all the world, literally every continent, every country telling people about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Billy Graham would have a son. His name would be Franklin Graham. Franklin Graham would grow up hostile to the gospel. He would be rebellious to the gospel. His mother prayed night and day for him. She would not give up on Franklin Graham.

Franklin Graham would finally come to Christ, surrender his life to God. He would surrender to serve God in whatever capacity that he could. And he started a group called the Samaritan Purse. And you and I know today that the Samaritan Purse puts out millions of Christmas shoeboxes around the world.

It was a historic moment of circumstances that would lead a little boy named D .L. Moody into a shoe store that would lead to his conversion, that would lead to Mordecai’s conversion, that would lead to Billy Graham’s conversion, that would lead to Franklin Graham’s conversion, that would lead to millions of people around the world being saved.

God is working through your circumstances. Don’t you ever think that any moment or any person is in sin? significant in your life. Finally, we seek His guidance through the Council of Godly Friends. We come back to verse 18 of chapter 11.

When they heard these things, they became silent. They glorified God. Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life. This is how the people responded to Peter when they heard this story.

We back up to verse one of chapter 11. Remember that He went, the Judea heard that the Gentiles had received the Word. Peter came to Jerusalem, and those of the circumcision contented with Him. They argued with Him.

Who were these people of the circumcision? They’re holding on to Judaism. They’re loyal to the old covenant. They wanna make sure that everything is just as it ought to be. And here is their response to Peter in verse three.

You went into uncircumcised men and you ate with them. What are you doing, my friend? It would be those same people who by the time we get to verse 18 that they would glorify God and they would counsel Peter that God is granted to the Gentiles repentance.

We back up to verse 12, Peter recounting the story of this amazing circumstance of how the Spirit told him to go and not to doubt that there were six brethren who accompanied him. There were six friends who were of the faith and they entered into the man’s house.

He goes on to explain how these men would help him and that they would give him counsel. I want you to understand the advice of our close friends and family members, those in the church family, those who love Christ, God is using them to help guide you in his will.

The book of Proverbs says without counsel plans go awry but in the multitude of counselors they are established. When you and I are trying to seek the will of God, the people that God puts around us that love God, the people that are committed to the cause of Christ, we should seek the counsel of wise people.

Proverbs 1 .5 says, a wise man will hear and will increase in learning and a man of understanding will attain unto wise counsel how sad it is that sometimes God’s people are the most unteachable people.

How sad it is that sometimes we think we figured it all out and we know it all and we won’t listen to the people that God puts in our path. God is putting godly people in your life. Sometimes they’re a warning sign.

Don’t go down that way. The bridge is out. Sometimes they are good people who are here to encourage you. There are three types of people you need in your life. Write this down and I’ll be done real quickly.

I promise you but you need three types of people and if you haven’t found them… Start looking, number one, you need an Apostle Paul, you need a mentor, you need a mentor in your life. You need someone that you can counsel.

I recommend that you have at least five of them. When I was a young pastor in Indiana, I had a pastor friend tell me, Mike, find five pastors to mentor you. You need at least one, don’t be afraid to have two.

You need mentors in your life. You need to pursue them, you need to ask them if they would be a mentor in your life. You need to ask them, could you bring anything to them and they would counsel you to make good decisions.

Number two, you need a Barnabas in your life. You need an encourager in your life. You need people in your life who are positive, they’re refreshing, they’re renewing. You know, there are some people in our lives, they drain us, don’t they?

Every time we’re around them, they find fault, there’s a speck on the wall, they’re constantly critiquing us, they’re always doubting everything about us and they don’t believe in us. But you need a Barnabas in your life.

Paul was a man who was new to the faith and he had Barnabas who encouraged him and he had Barnabas who stood up for him to the church that his conversion was legitimate. And there’s much to be said about Barnabas but you need encouragers in your life.

People who will renew and refresh you. But thirdly, you need a Timothy in your life. You need a mentee. Who are you pouring your life into? Who are you encouraging? Perhaps one of the greatest things I enjoy is helping younger pastors, helping young men who want to serve Christ.

I love pouring my life into young people who want to serve God in any capacity. When I see a young person that wants to serve the Lord, I don’t care who they are, where they are, what their situation is, I wanna do everything I can to help them to be faithful to the call that God has upon their life.

And are you like that? Are you willing to be a blessing to someone? Are you willing to find ways to help this person? You see, there was a time, there was somebody who took a risk on Pastor Mike. There was somebody, there was a pastor who said, you know, I don’t know about this guy, but hey, I’ll let him come on staff, we’ll get it a try.

There was somebody who said, you know what? I’m gonna drive Pastor Mike all the way from Oklahoma all the way to North Carolina, 17 years old. My mother was freaking out, but here I am to Bible college, but it was my pastor who did that.

Somebody took a risk on me and somebody took a risk on you. Somebody took you under your wing and said, let me show you the way. What I’m trying to say is that we all need these relationships in our life as we’re seeking God’s will.

And God has put special people in my life and he’s putting special people in your life. The key is, are we responsive? Are we gonna be like Peter and be responsive? Or are we gonna be like that crowd at the beginning of the church?

In verse 1, all they could do was see fault and criticize. Or we will just step back and say, Lord, what are you up to? And what are you doing where I can serve you? The Christian should never wonder or worry if God will guide them.

We know that he’s promised to lead us day by day and give us our daily bread. And so we don’t have to be filled with anxiety and questions. We can just come in confidence, believing, and trusting that God has a purpose.

And he’s guiding us each day. And so we encourage you to keep that in mind as we have shared with you today. We want to encourage you to grow in your faith. And one of the tools we have is our YouTube channel.

If you go to YouTube, type in Hope Worth Having. You’ll see that there are many interviews. There are many Bible lessons. There’s devotions. and a lot of resources that I think will be a blessing to you.

So check us out on Hope Worth Having in the YouTube channel. And I know you’ll be encouraged by that. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.