Well let me ask you this morning, who is the most important or famous person you've ever personally met?
Well I think for me I would have to say it was Evander Holyfield. I'll tell you the story. In Israel, I was in Israel in November of 1995 leading a tour.
My youngest son Jonathan was along with me, he was 10 years old. And we were in Jerusalem, we were staying at the hotel and we came down one morning for breakfast. And there across the dining room sat Evander Holyfield having breakfast. And so I said to John, I punched John and I said, Hey John, you see who that is over there? And he said, Well I see him, but I don't know who he is.
I said, That's Evander Holyfield, he was the former heavyweight boxing champion of the world. I said, Hey John, how'd you like to have his autograph? And John said, You know dad, I don't really think that's a good idea. And I said, No, no, no, trust me on this John, it'll be fine, trust me on this. And so John wouldn't go with me, he went over and sat down at the table. So I went over and I said, Mr. Holyfield, my name's Lon Solomon, I'm pastor of a church in Washington D.C. I'm here leading a Christian tour of Israel and when you're through with your breakfast, I wonder if you might be willing to come over to our table and sign an autograph from my son.
And he said, I'd be happy to. And so when he finished breakfast he came over, Evander Holyfield, he signs this autograph from my son, he says, John stand up, let's take a picture together. And so we've got Evander and John taking this picture, I mean which we still have, amazing. Well little did we know that exactly one year later, November 1996, in Las Vegas, and against overwhelming odds, Evander Holyfield would defeat Mike Tyson to recapture the World Heavyweight Championship, making him only the second man in history to ever win the World Heavyweight Championship three separate times.
Do you guys know who the other man was that did this? Well it was Muhammad Ali. And after Holyfield beat Mike Tyson in 1996, he took out a full page ad in USA Today with a big picture of himself in there with his belt, and then under it were these words, Evander, Janice, and Team Holyfield would like to say thank you to everyone who supported Evander in his championship win. He would not be the three time heavyweight champion of the world without your prayers. And then under that was Philippians 4-13 from the Bible, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Now Evander's ad, and his appearance on many talk shows after beating Tyson, in every case where he gave God the glory for his win, raised some serious objections.
Some serious eyebrows went up. One to tell you about is a fellow named Mitch Albom at the time, he was a sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press, and here's what he said, and I quote. He said, now I don't claim to know God, and I don't have conversations with him. But based on everything I've heard and studied about him, my guess is that God has better things to do than jump in a boxing ring. However, you would never know it from Evander Holyfield's post fight interviews. When Evander was asked, how did you fight such a brilliant fight, he replied, I live by the Spirit of God, it was God. Now Albom goes on to say, now this is foolish, do we really believe that God cares one way or the other about how a sporting event comes out? Personally, Albom says, I like to believe that God is involved in healing the sick, helping the needy, comforting the broken hearted, and soothing the troubled soul.
Call me a heathen, but I just don't think he cares about a rematch in Las Vegas. End of quote. Well friends, last week I spent the entire message proving that as followers of Jesus Christ, God has a specific and an individualized will for every one of our lives, which extends down to even the smallest details of life. Who we marry, what job we end up taking, what car we buy, what house we move into, the school we go to, the college we pick, how we serve the Lord, and whether Evander Holyfield won or lost that boxing night that night in Las Vegas. Now moreover, we saw last week that God offers to lead us step by step in this perfect will and plan if we'll just let him. And we looked at some examples last week. We saw how God did this for Abraham's servant looking for a wife for Isaac, how God did this for Amos when he called him into the ministry for Jacob, how God did this for the apostle Paul, how God did this for Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China. If you missed last week, you owe it to yourself to get the tape or the CD and listen. Now we said that today in part three, and finally in our little series on the leading of God, we were going to answer a very important question that all of this brought up, and that is how can I discern God's will, God's plan, God's leading in my life so that I can follow it?
And that's what we're going to talk about today. I mean how did all these people know for certain that they were following God's will? How did they figure that out? How did they discern that?
And how can I do it? Now before we launch into this, let me say one preliminary thing, and that is that when it comes to discerning God's will and leading in our lives, I cannot give you a scientific precise formula for doing this, like one plus one equals two, or E equals MC squared. The Bible just doesn't give us that. What I can give you is a set of biblical principles to go by, principles that when they all line up going in one specific direction, we can be confident that this is God's leading and God's plan for our life. It's a lot like navigating a ship into the harbor, and what does the captain do? Well he looks for the buoys in the channel, and he lines all the buoys up straight and follows them straight, and he ends up safely in the harbor. Well what I'm going to give you today are the buoys that God has put in the channel for you and me, and when they all line up going in one direction, God does that when he's leading us in that direction, and he does it in a way that's impossible for us to miss.
So here we go, here come the buoys, I've got five of them to give you. Number one is the buoy of the written word of God, the Bible. Psalm 119 verse 105, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path, the Bible says. The same Psalm, verse 130, The entrance of your word gives light, it gives understanding to the simple.
Finally verse 97, I meditate on your word all day long, David says, Your commands keep my path from every wrong way. My friends, God's word, the Bible, is the greatest and most important buoy that God has placed in the channel to help guide us, and this is one of the unchanging eternal principles of God, that God never leads anybody contrary to his written word. Let me repeat that, God never leads anyone contrary to what he says in the written word of God.
You know for 25 years now, as the pastor of your church here, I have had the opportunity to meet with people on Tuesday afternoons, and I have people who've come in over those 25 years, tell me everything you can imagine about how they believe God's led them. I have been told, I've had people sit in my office and look me right in the face and say to me, God led me to move in with my girlfriend. God led me to have an abortion. God led me to be a homosexual like I am today. God led me to marry my unbelieving boyfriend.
God led me to not report that extra income on my 1040. God led me to break the rules at my school, my office, or in the military. I've had people look at me and say, God led me to take revenge on that person who hurt me. God led me to have an affair with that woman. It was God leading me to do that. God led me to buy that house or that car or all the other stuff I couldn't afford, which got me in the mess I am in now. And you know, I have had the opportunity to say to all of those people in my office, you know what, I'm not sure who led you, but I can tell you one thing for sure, it was not God.
And you know why it wasn't God? Because every single one of these things stands in direct opposition to what the Word of God says. And God never ever leads anybody contrary to the Word of God. If you come up to me and tell me you want to marry an unbeliever, I can tell you the will of God in about three seconds.
You come up and tell me you want to leave income off your 1040, I can tell you the will of God in about 10 seconds. You come up and tell me any one of these things, I can tell you the will of God in about 10 seconds, because God never leads anybody contrary to the Word. Friends, this is buoy number one, and God's will, God's plan, and God's leading in your life and in my life will always be lined up with this buoy. Number two, buoy number two is the advice of godly people. And the key word in that phrase is the word godly, advice of godly people. Proverbs 20, verse 18, make plans by seeking advice, the Bible says.
Ask others for guidance. Proverbs 11, verse 14, in a multitude of advisers there is wisdom. My friends, asking advice from godly people, now you say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, what is a godly person by your definition?
Friend, it is a person, number one, who knows Jesus Christ in a real and personal way, a person, number two, who knows the Word of God deeply, and a person, number three, who loves you enough to have the courage to tell you the truth and not just what you want to hear. That's a godly person. Asking advice from these kind of people, this is one of the most important buoys that God uses to guide his people. And you know, I can look back in my life on some of the worst decisions I've ever made in my life, and I can see in looking back that every one of those decisions did not have this buoy lined up with it. I had people standing there, godly people, telling me this is a really bad idea. And I did it anyway.
And I regretted it. Listen, if you've got some godly people in your life, God wants to use them to be a buoy to help line you up with the will of God, use them. Number three, buoy number three, the circumstances of God. Listen to this verse from the book of Proverbs. It says, Proverbs 16, 33, the lot is cast into the lap.
Now these lots were like dice. I mean, they were completely random, you would think, but look what it says. But it's every decision is from the Lord. Proverbs 16, 9, the mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. Friends, what these verses are telling us here in the Bible is that as followers of Jesus Christ, events that seem random aren't.
Things that look like happenstance aren't. But as followers of Christ, the Bible tells us that God is in every event that happens to us, carefully orchestrating those events and using them to lead us right where he wants us to go. Listen, as followers of Christ, the fact that no event entering our life is random, but that God has his all-knowing hand on every one of them, this is very important in terms of figuring out where and how God is leading us. We need to always keep a discerning eye on the circumstances around us and how they're unfolding when it comes to figuring out where God is trying to take us. You know, I told you last week that I knew for certain, without any shadow of a doubt, that God led me to McLean Bible Church 26 years ago to be the pastor.
I didn't tell you how I knew that, but it was a lot because of this buoy. Let me tell you the story. I was a seminary student in 1975 and the pastor of a church that I knew nothing about, McLean Bible Church, came over to the seminary one day and the dean of the seminary called me in his office and said, I want you to meet this man. He introduced me and he said, this man would like to hire you to be the assistant pastor of McLean Bible Church. What do you think?
Well, I didn't really know. I was my last year in seminary and I said, all right, I tell you what, we'll try it for six months and we'll see how it goes and we'll reevaluate. This was January 1975.
I said, we'll reevaluate in June. Well, I came over here and for six months I taught Sunday school and visited sick people in the hospital and did all kinds of other things and at the end of the six months, I just didn't think it was right for me and so I left and I struggled for years to figure out, now what was that all about? That was so random. I mean, I went on, I went and got my graduate degree at Johns Hopkins, I taught in seminary for five years, but I always struggled with what in the world was those six months at McLean Bible Church all about? Well, I was out painting my house, I was on vacation, 1979, the summer, and I was up on the ladder and as clear as a bell, I remember the Lord saying to me, you know, Lon, we're leaving the seminary. I want you in the pastorate.
I want you preaching every single week. I came in for lunch and I said to Brenda, I said, hey Brenda, guess what? We're leaving the seminary.
She said, oh really? And where are we going? And I said, well, I don't know yet, but we're going in the pastorate. Now you need to know, Brenda had always said she would never marry a pastor.
Well, when she married me, I wasn't. So anyway, I said, but that's where we're going. So I went to the dean of the seminary when I came back from vacation, I said, I just want to tell you, I know I'm leaving, I don't know exactly where I'm going, but I know God's leading me somewhere in the pastorate. He said, okay, you can work this next year and after that, you're done. Whether you got a pastorate or not, I can't keep you around here forever.
If you know you're leaving, you got one more year. Okay, that was September 1979. In April of 1980, I came in one Monday morning to work and one of the other professors there said to me, hey, he said, did you hear what happened at McLean Bible Church over the weekend? And I said, no. And he said, the pastor resigned.
I said, really? He said, yep, he's gone, they're looking for a new pastor. Now I hadn't told anybody but the dean that I was interested in the pastorate. I went upstairs, I called Brenda, I said, hey, Brenda, what you doing? She said, not much.
I said, I want you to go up to Giant Food and start getting boxes. I said, because I think we're going to McLean Bible Church. She said, what do you mean, is the pastor? I said, yeah. She said, well, they have a pastor. What do you think he's going to say about that?
I said, no, no, no, not after this weekend they don't. And all of a sudden, this is starting to make sense to me. I said, go get some boxes. I was half kidding at that point. But two weeks later, Bill Poston came to see me, who's still an elder here in our church. He didn't have an idea in the world that I was thinking about the pastor, but he was a fellow colleague over at Capital Seminary. And he said, hey, Lon, you wouldn't have any interest in being the pastor of McLean Bible Church, would you? And I said, well, I might, Bill.
Why? They said, well, we've been sitting around talking about who we might want to interview, and because you were there five years ago, a lot of people know who you are, and we just thought maybe it'd be worth us having a conversation. I called Brenda back up and said, Brenda, go get more boxes.
We're going to McLean Bible Church. I'm telling you, I know it as sure as I know. I know what my name is. And, you know, how did I know that? Friends, all you had to do is keep your eye on what God was doing and on the circumstances as they were unfolding, and the will of God started to become patently clear.
I'll tell you one final little anecdote. I was over here interviewing, not in this building, obviously, but I was over interviewing, and I had a meeting with the congregation just before they were going to vote on me the next week, and one gentleman out there who did not want me to come, and that was fairly obvious, said to me, he said, well, Reverend Solomon, he said, my question is, the Constitution of this church says you need 75% vote of the congregation to be called as the pastor. He said, my question is, how much more than that, what higher percentage of that would you need in order to be confident it was God's will for you to come here and be the pastor? And I said, sir, I said, it will be such a miracle if I get 75%, that 75.1% will be all I need to know, sir, to come here and know this is the will of God. I wasn't trying to be funny.
I was trying to be completely serious. Well, you know, I made it. I made it by three votes. The chairman of the board here never told me that for years because he said he was afraid he'd discourage me. It was years later when he told me what the actual vote was. I made it by three votes.
But you know what? I knew it was God's will for me to come to this church. All I did was watch the circumstances God was bringing in my life. And friends, what I'm here to tell you is when the buoys of God's word and the buoy of the advice of godly people and the buoy of the circumstances and the events God's bringing your way, when they all start to line up in one direction, you can be fairly certain that you've got the will of God coming at you.
Now, there's two more buoys I want to give you before we finish. Number four is sanctified common sense. You say, what in the dickens is that?
Well, I'll tell you. Romans chapter 12, verse 2. Listen, do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, the Bible says.
Now, watch, watch. Then you will be able to evaluate and discern what God's perfect will for your life is. Folks, the Bible tells us that one of the blessed results of renewing our mind is that we become able to evaluate the world around us and discern God's leading and God's will. The real question is, what does it mean to renew our mind?
Well, to renew our mind refers to the process of saturating our minds each and every day with the written Word of God. My grandfather, my father's father, used to have big 50-gallon vats in his house and every couple times a year he'd pour these huge barrels of cucumbers into these vats and he'd put this really, really, well, I thought as a little kid it was a stinky solution in there and then he'd let them sit in there for a while and when they came out they weren't cucumbers anymore. They were big, luscious, crisp, dill, Jewish, pickles. They were awesome.
I'm telling you, they were awesome. You'd stink for a week after you ate these things. Now, what I'm trying to tell you is that the Bible says that the Word of God is God's supernatural pickling solution. You understand what I'm saying? You soak your mind in the Word of God day after day after day and it will come out different. It won't be a cucumber anymore, it'll be a luscious, beautiful, kosher, dill, pickle, so to speak. You understand what I'm saying?
Well, I think you do. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that when we soak our mind in God's Word we will be able to look at the issues of life and we will be able, the Bible says, to sense God's will, to smell God's will, God's will will stand out and make good sense to us. Listen, Psalm 103 verse 7 says God made known his acts to the children of Israel but he made his ways known to Moses.
Now, look at the difference there. The children of Israel saw what God did but they didn't understand what made God tick. God says he let Moses understand what made God tick, what his ways were.
Not just what he did but why he did what he did. And as we saturate our mind with the Word of God, God does that very same thing for us so that as we begin to look at the world, understanding deeply how God works and what makes him tick it begins to become obvious to us what God is up to. You can smell where God is going.
You can sense where God is going. I believe God wants us to use our brains my friends but he wants us to use brains that have been renewed by the truth of the Word of God. To use an unrenewed brain to try to figure out where God is taking you is a very dangerous thing to do because 1 Corinthians chapter 2 says the person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned. If you have an unrenewed mind that's not in the Word of God you will never figure out what God is up to.
But look, the spiritually attuned person can make judgments about all things. Friends, for a person who is renewing their mind daily in the Word of God thinking through things will often point them right at God's will because they'll start thinking God's thoughts right after him. Number 5 and finally, the final buoy, is the guidance, the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Isaiah chapter 30 verse 21. When you cry to the Lord for guidance he will answer you, Isaiah says, and you will hear a voice behind you saying, this is the way, walk ye in it. Now whose voice is that behind you telling you that? Well it's the voice of the Holy Spirit himself. Jesus said, John 16, 13, the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth.
I often have people come to me and say, Lon, what should I do about this? What's God's will about this? And I say, you know what, I can't tell you that. You've got to get on your knees. You've got to seek God. And you've got to stay on your knees seeking God until he says to you, this is the way, walk in it. Until he gives you a settled confidence about going one way or the other a lot of people refer to this as having a sense of peace about something. I've got a sense of peace about doing this. Or I don't have a sense of peace about doing that. They're referring to this settled confidence, to the liberty or the lack of liberty that the Holy Spirit directly gives us as we pray about the circumstances of life. Now let me just say, it is dangerous to make this buoy the exclusive one we use to determine God's will for our life.
It is one of five buoys. But many people make this the only one they use. That's dangerous. And I'll tell you why. It's because I've learned after 35 years of being a follower of Christ that if I really want to do something bad enough I can whoomp up a sense of peace real quick about doing it. I can. You know what?
I've had a sense of peace for years about buying a red Corvette. I do. But I've never been able to do it. You know why? Because one of the other buoys refuses to line up with this.
It's buoy number two. The advice of godly people, specifically my wife, won't line up with this. So I don't have a red Corvette.
And at this point I'm 58 years old and I can't bend over enough to get in one anymore. So the dream is dead, friends. But anyway, my point is that I had a sense of peace about doing this for years. But it wasn't the right thing to do. I can whoomp up a sense of peace and so can you. So be careful.
This is one of five buoys. But don't make this the only one you go by because we're all too fragile as human beings and we're all too vulnerable to our own human flesh to let this be number one, the one that we use. So let's summarize. What have we learned? Want to figure out where God is leading? Well, God's given us five buoys to help us navigate down the channel.
And what we're looking for is those areas in life where they line up all five in a row. And then we know that's God's leading in our life. Buoy number one, the written Word of God. Buoy number two, the advice of godly people. Buoy number three, the circumstances, the events that God brings in our life. Buoy number four, sanctified, common sense. And buoy number five, the guidance of the Holy Spirit directly, having a peace, a confidence, and a liberty directly from the Holy Spirit. Now, except for number one, the Word of God, every one of these other buoys is insufficient all by itself to reveal God's will to us. But when all five of them start lining up, as I said, we can be confident that we're looking at God's will. Now, conversely, let me say that if we're considering some choice, some decision, some course of action in life, and one or more of these buoys are grossly out of line, friends, then my advice to you is that we need to wait at those times and pause and take no action until either God resolves this situation and all five buoys are lined up, or until God makes another course of action clear.
I tell my boys, told them for years, I still tell them a little mantra. It goes like this, if in doubt, don't. If in doubt, don't. If those five buoys are not lined up, don't do it. Listen, I have never regretted waiting longer for God to get all five of those buoys in a straight line.
But I have often regretted making knee-jerk decisions and actions when the buoys weren't lined up and running out there in my own wisdom and energy and making mistakes that I regretted for long, long, long periods of time. Folks, I'll give you the same advice I give my sons. If in doubt, if the buoys aren't lined up, don't. Just sit tight until God either lines them up or until God says we're going in a different direction.
But make sure they're lined up before you act. Well, I hope this is helpful. I hope the little series we've done on the leading of God has been helpful. Next week, Lord willing, we're going to begin talking about God opening the Red Sea and about the lessons that God has in that amazing event for our lives here in the 21st century.
So I hope we'll see you then. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, thanks for reminding us in these last three weeks that you are a God who leads your children. You lead us specifically.
You lead us precisely. You lead us according to a very carefully laid out plan that extends down to the smallest details of life. And Lord Jesus, I pray that we would come out of this short series encouraged in the role that God wants to play every day, personally, in our lives. And that Lord, we would allow you to play that role, that you would find us to be good followers, Lord, as we let you lead. Thank you that you always lead safely and you always lead benevolently. And Lord Jesus said, we can always follow your lead with confidence. So make us good followers, Lord, and use this short series to change the very way we think about life and the way we live it. We pray these things in Jesus' name. And God's people said, Amen. Amen.
