Spirit-Led [Part 3]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. If you feel like you don't know which way to turn and you're struggling with a decision right now, and you wonder if there's just something wrong with you because you haven't yet received a vision from God, or you don't know for sure if this is the way you're supposed to be going, you feel like I'm headed towards Ephesus, now I'm going towards Bithynia, I thought I was going to go.

If you feel like that, then you're a good company. The same thing happened to Paul and to Timothy. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series Unlimited as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I'm going to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special author. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Now more on this later in the program, but right now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. It just isn't accurate to say that all that you need to know is in the Bible. The Bible is the whole of my life. I love the word of God.

I want to spend all my days just thinking about the word of God and proclaiming the truths that I see there and the endless riches of God's grace that point to Jesus and His saving purposes. I love the Bible, but the Bible doesn't tell you who you ought to marry. Although the Bible tells you a whole lot about recognizing good fruit and people and how to recognize good character, so there's a lot there to learn about the kind of person that you should marry, but the Bible doesn't tell you who to marry. I dated a wonderful girl for many years through high school and college that I didn't end up marrying. It was a difficult, difficult breakup because she was a wonderful Christian girl, but the Lord wanted me to marry my wife, and I can't even imagine if I hadn't fallen in love with my wife and married her.

I can't even imagine life. I'm just so thankful to God. I couldn't figure that out by reading the Bible. There are so many ways that God leads and guides us, never in conflict with the Scripture, but He certainly speaks to us.

Some say that God spoke to the Christians in the first century with visions and prophecies, but He doesn't speak to us today anymore directly. Well, I think that's kind of a cruel thing to even say. I mean, imagine this. Imagine if after raising our son Bennett for his first 18 years of life, if we drove him out to Baylor in Waco, Texas to take him to college, imagine me moving stuff into his dormitory room and then getting ready to leave and saying, Bennett, I'm here. I've prepared a book for you, and in it are all kinds of instructions, and so I've enjoyed speaking to you over this 18-year period while you've been growing, but now I'm just going to give you a book, and I won't be speaking to you directly anymore.

You just consult this book if you have any questions about direction, but I won't be actually helping you with any direction or counsel or guidance about leading you as you move forward. Well, that's just ridiculous. I didn't give him an instruction manual. I gave him a phone. I said, call me any time, son. I said, we're going to stay in touch all the time. We're texting each other every day.

Any way I can help you, any way I can help guide you, I want to help you. That's because fathers love their children, and they therefore want to help lead them. This is what Paul said in Romans 8 14, for all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry Abba, Father. He's saying, you've received the position as if you were a firstborn son. This isn't about gender.

This is referring male or female. You're like a firstborn son who is the heir of the whole estate, the one that the father has so much affection for that he wants to lead and guide and help grow up and go in the right direction. God's a father. James said in James 1 5, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. Ask God, ask him, because that's what God loves.

It's an honor. I tell you, any parent can tell you this, that it's a tremendous honor actually. If your child trusts you enough to ask for wisdom, then I don't know of any decent parent that doesn't feel honored by that and say, well, for whatever wisdom I do have, let me share with you. Ask God. He's a loving father.

He's the perfect father. Another reason you can be assured that God is still speaking to us and he wants to lead you is that when you become a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit himself. We have the spirit of Jesus himself. John 14 verse 25, these things I've spoken to you while I'm still with you, but the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name, he'll teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I've said to you. Also in 1613, John 1613, when the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak and he'll declare to you the things that are to come. The promise to every Christian, every Christian, not the spiritually elite or some who have found some special process of hearing from God, the inheritance, the promise to every Christian is in the first place, you're a child of God and you have a father and that father loves you and wants to guide you. But it's an even greater promise because Jesus said he'll send you my own spirit.

The helper will come. And so the Holy Spirit, the third person, the triune God lives mystically in the heart of the believer. So you have the actual presence of God in your life. God leads you by his own dear presence in your own life, communing with your own spirit, spirit unto spirit, deep unto deep.

You have the Holy Spirit. And you have this assurance also that God is a protector and a one who loves to guide and lead in the right way. And Jesus compared this to being a shepherd in John 10. John 10 verse two, he who enters by the doors the shepherd of the sheep. The sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he's brought out all of his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow him for they know his voice. He's using a very common image in the Mideast because the sheep that people see following shepherds around, they know the shepherd's voice. He knows him. He calls them by name and he's saying that's the way it is to be in relationship with God.

We're the sheep of his pasture. So the first piece of good news here is God is still speaking. Paul loved the scripture. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees, but there wasn't anywhere in the Torah. There wasn't in the Hebrew scriptures that would tell him where to go minister next. He needed the Lord to lead him and God wanted to do that.

And I think the other thing I love about this story is that it just feels like such good news to me to see how messy the whole story is. It means if you feel like you don't know which way to turn and you're struggling with a decision right now and you wonder if there's just something wrong with you because you haven't you haven't yet received a vision from God or you don't know for sure if this is the way you're supposed to be going. You feel like I'm headed towards Ephesus. Now I'm going towards Bithynia. I thought I was going to go.

If you feel like that, then you're a good company. The same thing happened to Paul and to Timothy. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's daily blessing.

It's free and just a click away at PastorAlan.org. God's always been there in every moment you narrowly escaped from danger, in every moment you were surprised by a blessing, in every moment you just knew the direction to take. God was there. Your life is defined by countless moments of God's grace. Perhaps they've been covered by the sands of time or have just gone unnoticed in the rush of life, but your life is full of God moments. When you make a gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's heart-stirring book, God Moments, that will lead you on a spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments. It's Alan Wright's timeless book, God Moments.

Discover your God moments in the past and be filled with fresh faith today. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. In fact, the whole story of Acts, if you've been following along with this, is on the one hand so supernatural, but on the other hand so earthy and real because these are real human beings. In fact, before our story today, there really was a sad thing that happened. Paul and Barnabas had a parting of ways. We read about it in Acts 15, verse 39.

I want you to see this because it precedes the text we're reading today. It says there arose a sharp disagreement so that they'd separated from each other. Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and departed, having been committed by the brothers to the grace of God. They just had a parting of ways because they had a real disagreement with each other about who should be traveling with them and how they should do it. And they talked about it and they couldn't reach an agreement. So they just parted ways and the people, they just went ahead and blessed them.

It just feels so, it feels so earthy. We're just human and we're not going to always get it right. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13, we know in part, we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. Well, along the way, Paul picked up a new partner in ministry, Timothy, that he grew to just love. And I just worry about Timothy. Timothy's just, they're going around, they're going towards Ephesus, they're going to Bithynia, they're just hanging out at Troas, they're wondering what to do. I wonder what Timothy's thinking. He's like, I thought this was the great apostle Paul. We don't even know where we're going. Well, this is the way it is when you walk with God sometimes.

I really appreciated somebody, a parishioner that they, who complimented me and our whole church's leadership during the pandemic by saying, you know, it's an admirable thing and it's actually good to see a leader that will say, we're not totally sure which way to go with all of this. And we're going to have to watch the science reports and we're going to have to learn what's happening in our own counties, where we serve, and we have to consider what we can do with safety. And we're going to listen to the spirit of God and we're going to talk to one another. And it might be that we're going to head down this way and then we may come back later and say, listen, there's new information. We're going to have to go this way. There's a part of us that says that we don't want to live like that. We'd like to say, I'm doing this and here I go.

That's not the way it was with these guys. And I love this phrase. I love, go back at this at verse 10. I love this phrase here. Paul had seen the vision immediately.

We sought to go onto Macedonia. Look at this, concluding that God had called us. I love that.

Concluding. You know what this means? It means that Paul had this dream or vision and he came and he told the guys about it. And he said, listen, fellers, I know we've been struggling.

We don't know where to go minister next, but I had this vision and let me just tell you about it. And they talked about it. And they, they conferred and they prayed about it.

They see if they bore witness to it. And they, they made the decision together. They concluded. They did. They said, well, this seems like it's the Lord. That's, that's, that's the way it is when you follow God.

There's some grappling with things like that. Here's the greatest news. The great news from this little story.

That's so fascinating. The greatest news is this beloved. You can recognize from the way God interacted with them, preventing them here, preventing them here.

They can give them a vision to go here. God is more committed to leading us than we ever could be committed to being led. God knows what's best for you.

He loves you. He's designed your life and he has too much invested in you to simply let you flounder. Proverbs 19 21 says, many are the plans in the mind of a man, but the purpose of the Lord will stand. That's good news because what it means is that I might say, I think I'll do this.

I think I'll do this. I think I'll do this, but God's transcendent sovereign good plan still has priority. And God wants to see it through. It doesn't mean that our seeking God is not important.

Seek and you'll find, ask and you will receive. It doesn't mean that we're not supposed to cultivate our spiritual ears to be able to hear the voice of God. I wish I had time today to talk to you about the ways you can cultivate a life of tuning in to the Holy Spirit. That's important, but what it means though, beloved, is that God knows so many moves down the field.

He knows the good things that are in store so that the little decision that you're making today, that you may not understand exactly how you got prompted towards that decision, but God wants to move you in the right way because of all the good that he has in mind. Most of the story of my life, now that I've been walking with God for so long, I now have to say was far more about God's commitment to lead me than it was any of my prowess in being able to hear him. Sometimes I tell bits and pieces of how I was called to Rinaldo Church.

It was a supernatural call. I was in the car riding with Gladys Keating, who's been on our staff for years. At the time, I was pastoring a church in Durham, North Carolina. Things were going well, and we were riding past Rinaldo Church on Rinaldo Road, and I didn't know much about it. I said, tell me about the church, and she said, it's a wonderful church, and she said, you know, the pastor has retired, and when she said it, the Lord spoke to my heart just almost audibly and said, you're going there, Alan. But how did I end up actually coming here?

Well, here's what happened. The search committee here committed that at first they were just going to pray. For months, they just prayed about it.

They didn't even start their search. They just prayed. I loved everybody on this committee, such godly and precious people. Thank God for a committee that just wanted to pray and seek the Lord. And they asked for reference from, they asked for a suggestion that they, from a missionary in Burlington, and do you know anybody that might be a good fit for our church?

And he said no. He said maybe a friend of his named Bill Wilson might know, and he was a former head of psychiatry at Duke University, wonderful man. And so Bill Wilson gave the committee my name.

Why? Why did Bill Wilson give him my name? Well, because I had invited Bill Wilson to come speak at the Christian Life Conference in Montreat. Why was I the one inviting him and getting to know him by him coming to speak at the Christian Life Conference? Because I was the director of the Christian Life Conference. Well, why was I the director of the Christian Life Conference? Because a man named Bill Dudley, a pastor, had asked me to lead it, and he had been in charge of it before. Well, why did Bill Dudley ask me to lead it? Because I had spent time with Dr. Dudley as a student, and he had interviewed me for a position at his church in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, to come as an associate. I didn't end up going, but I got to know and love him, and he was a mentor to me, Bill Dudley.

But why did I get to know Bill Dudley? It's because Bill was a graduate of the same Presbyterian Seminary that I attended in Atlanta, and because he lived nearby, he interviewed students at that seminary for his associate positions. So I was one of those he interviewed, but why was at that seminary? It's because I decided to become Presbyterian. I'd never been Presbyterian growing up, so why did I decide to become Presbyterian? Well, it was because my first job out of college was youth ministry, and it was at a Presbyterian church in Louisville, North Carolina, and it was with a wonderful man named David Partington. And I had a really good experience there, and David Partington had a prayer group of other Presbyterian pastors that prayed weekly, and I got to meet them, and they were all wonderful men of God, and so I thought, well, the Presbyterians seemed to be wonderful. And so I thought, I'll be Presbyterian.

In order to be a Presbyterian pastor, you had to go to a Presbyterian seminary. But why was I at the church where I learned to become Presbyterian? It was because my roommate David Lambert was the son to Clem Lambert, who was an important Presbyterian leader, and they were the ones that told me about the ministry position and opened the door for me to get the job. But why was David Lambert my roommate? It was because he and I both lived at Stacey Dorm at Chapel Hill, and we became friends in our senior year. One of the guys decided to find a house for about seven of us to rent together, and because I was a close friend with David, we shared a room together. But why was I at Stacey Dorm? Well, I was at Stacey Dorm because my brother David had lived at Stacey Dorm for four years, and he told me it was the best dorm. But why was I at Carolina? Well, I was at Carolina because I grew up watching Carolina basketball, and when I was in junior high school, my favorite player in the nation was a guy named Phil Ford, who had the sweetest jump shot in the world. And so if God has ever used me to be a blessing in some way to your life, don't thank me, thank Phil Ford.

You all have a story like that that can go back. Every single one of us is going to make some decisions today, and some of them are big and awesome, and some are small, but even the small ones are going to have great ramifications of wonderful things in your life. It's a big and wonderful worthy pursuit to learn to hear the voice of God, but I want to just say being led by the Spirit is a little bit more messy than we realize.

We learned that from the Macedonian call. So ask God, and he'll speak to you. Confer with otherwise Christians, and if you're wondering today why a certain door has been closed, remember Paul and Timothy and his traveling companions, for eventually God spoke to them and brought them to the continent of Europe, which changed the world. God still leads us, and that's the Gospel. Alan Wright, our Good News message today, Spirit-led.

It's in the series Unlimited, and stay with us. Pastor Alan is joining me in the studio sharing his part in Good News Thought for the Day in just a moment. Your life is defined by countless moments of God's grace. Perhaps they've been covered by the sands of time, or have just gone unnoticed in the rush of life, but your life is full of God moments. When you make a gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's heart-stirring book, God Moments, that will lead you on a spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments. It's Alan Wright's timeless book, God Moments.

Discover your God moments in the past, and be filled with fresh faith today. The Gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back here with Pastor Alan. And our parting good news thought for the day as we wrap up this teaching on Spirit-led is the good news for someone at the end of their rope, maybe summed up simply that you're not alone.

You're not alone. God's with you. And there's a whole beauty in the discernment of other children of God with you. And God wants you to be able to discern direction. He wants you to be able to go through the proper doors. He wants to help you when you have big decisions. He wants to guide you when you're not sure which way to go. And He wants to bring you back when you're wandering in the wrong direction that won't be good for you. That's what a father does.

That's what a good shepherd does. And so be assured that you're not alone. God's with you. And God's Spirit is still leading God's children. There's a difference between new revelation and being Spirit-led. Is that active communication from the Lord?

Yeah. So the Lord is still speaking to us and leading us and guiding us. Now He never does in any way that's contradictory to the Scripture.

And it's not to say that there's any sense in which Christians should be seeking a voice that could in some way displace or replace Scripture. We love the Scripture. But as a Christian, a child of God, you can know this. God loves you. He is utterly committed to leading you. And He can speak to you in a thousand different ways. And so be assured you're not on your own. And He's not going to let you wander off. And He is guiding actively and bringing to pass all kinds of circumstances and ways to nudge you or even open wide or close shut a door so that He can lead you and get you. God cares more, Daniel, about His children getting where He wants us to go than even we do. And so He's still speaking to us. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.