The Spirit's Guidance in Ordinary Lives

I want to read a passage from 1 Peter to begin with, if you'd like to find that in your Bibles. 1 Peter chapter 2, in this passage Peter is describing to them, the people that are reading what he has to say, the relationship that they have with him and with each other. In this passage he is describing what all believers or followers of Christ are like and how their life is affected by the presence of God in their lives. He says, But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who calls you out of darkness and into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Peter is describing the relationship that people have with each other and with God. He starts out by saying you are a chosen people, God has selected you, and because of that you have God's attention in your life. Then he says you are a royal priesthood. When this phrase is translated, it translates the word royal from a word that could be either kingdom or it could be a royal kingdom or it could be the king. It can be translated and is in some places a kingdom of priests. When you have a kingdom in the world in the Old Testament there are priests and then there are the other people, the lay people we would call them. Here he describes that this is a kingdom without any lay people, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, the word holy simply means set apart or different than the world around them, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who calls you out of darkness and into the wonderful light. The way God deals with people in the era of the New Testament is quite different than the way he dealt with them in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament there was a similarity in the sense that the Holy Spirit guided the people in the Old Testament, but he did not guide them personally and individually. He guided them as a result of the leadership that they have. The Holy Spirit came to Moses and told him what to say to the people of God and he said it. So the people received the message of God from the Holy Spirit through individuals. So Moses gave them the words of God, the prophets in the Old Testament gave them the words of God, but it was the Spirit of God in the prophets, in Moses, who gave them the instructions. Now in the Old Testament a passage I want to read today is from 1 Samuel chapter 16. This passage describes how God acted in the Old Testament and I use it because it was given to us to use in the Sunday school lesson of small groups, but it is a very perfect example of how God moves and acts in the lives of all people from the very beginning of time to today. In this story the prophet Samuel has been sent to anoint a new king for Israel. Saul who had been the king before had not been responsive to God and had turned away from him, and so God said, I am no longer going to let Saul be the king, I am going to raise up a new one. Usually when God spoke to Samuel through the Spirit, he told him exactly what he was to do, who he was to talk to, and how he was to talk to him, but he did not do it on this instance. This instance he simply told him to go to Jesse's house and there he would anoint a new king. So Samuel is going, like many of us do, simply blind in obedience to what God asked, not knowing who it was he was supposed to anoint. When he went there, he assumed that it would be one of the sons of Jesse, and he started with the oldest one, who was a big and tall guy, and looked to him like he was a king, and God said, that is not the one. Then the second one, that is not the one. Then the third one, that is not the one. Finally all the sons that were there were shown, and he said, don't you have another son? This is where the story picks up. First Samuel, excuse me just a minute, let me balance this all, let me take it out. So he asked Jesse, are these all the sons you have? They are still the youngest, Jesse answered, but he is tending the sheep. Samuel said, send for him. We will not sit down until he arrives. So he sent, and had him brought in, he was ready, which means he was red-faced or red-headed, we don't know for sure what that means, with a fine appearance and handsome features. So the Lord said, rise and anoint him, he is the one. So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power. Samuel then went on to Ramah. The story of David's anointing, really his assignment from God as to what he was to be and do, is an example of how God deals with all people in the world. Just this anointing begins with God. It's God who made a decision he was going to reach out to David. Every time a person is guided by God, it's always God who initiates the process. So when you think of something that you're supposed to do, a good thing that you're supposed to do, something you know God would approve of, you always can be sure that it wasn't in your own mind that you thought this up. Every good and perfect gift comes from God. So it's something you may have learned in the past from God that comes back to your mind, but because we have thoughts coming through our mind all the time, we fail sometimes to delineate the source of the thoughts. We think sometimes if we get up in the morning and say, I'd like to have waffles, and then we get up in the morning and we think, I should pray for my friend, that they all come from the same source, me. I just thought of this. But the Bible gives us a far different picture of the way God works in the world. He plants in the mind of each of us the ideas that he wants us to follow. Those ideas are the guidance of the Holy Spirit for us in this term, in this era of our world. Here Samuel has come to David. He has been prompted by God to do this act. David knows nothing about it whatsoever. He comes before Samuel, ready to do whatever. He has no idea what the course is. God has already provided this circumstance and this event. God's action precedes the call of Samuel. It's important for you to understand because when you begin the process of relating to God, God is always the initiator. He starts this process. He creates in your mind a desire for what he really wants to say to you and do in you. So when that desire comes, it should be an awareness to you that God is actively at work inside of you. So God has chosen David. He's chosen him for a special purpose. And in this time of the spiritual life in the New Testament times, it is God who initiates all spiritual activity for us. He is our guide. He comes and presents us with what he wants us to do, how he wants us to act, the life that he wants us to live. Then Samuel gets up and anoints David. He pours on him the oil that was a symbol of royalty and there announces that this young man has been anointed as the future king of the nation of Israel. Then the scripture says, and the Spirit of God came on him and rested on him all the rest of his life. In the Old Testament, the Spirit of God did not come on everyone, but on the spiritual leaders, the priests and the kings, and now on David. David was guided by the Spirit in all the things that he did. He received wisdom from God and he received power from God. Now what the scripture wants us to understand is everything that in David's life from this moment on is the result of the presence of God in his life. People point to the event in David's life when he killed the giant. They talk about him being a good marksman and how he was courageous and how he did all these wonderful things. But the Bible lets us know that behind all of this, there is one thing. Everything that happened in David's life for good from this time on was the result of the Spirit of God. David, when he came to the fight with Goliath and he was listening to the giant roar, remember he was filled with the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God said, challenge this man. It wasn't David's courage necessarily that we should honor. It was his faithfulness to the urging of the Spirit that we should honor. He was ready to do whatever it took and whatever God asked him to do. When he took the sling to throw that rock, it wasn't necessarily his skill. Even though he had some skill, he'd used this before. But the guidance of this rock was a part of what the Spirit gave to David in that moment when he needed it. The result, the giant fell and he was dead. All of the things that happened in David's life go back to this one single event. He came to this place, he acceded, surrendered to the purpose that God had for him, and then the Spirit of God entered him. And the secret of his life is wrapped up in this story. Now the way God works in the lives of ordinary people like us is the very same way. The heroes of the Old Testament, David and all the others, didn't have their beginning as heroes. Many of them were ordinary people. I don't know if David was extraordinary in the family, no one seemed to recognize that he was. The youngest kid who took care of the goats, the sheep, that was his job. But the difference between his life before and after the Spirit is rather dramatic. After this anointing, he becomes a hero to the people of Israel. He was a hero in the wars, he was a hero in the management of the country, he was a hero in everything that he did. But all of it comes back not to his extraordinary ability, but to the power of God. What you will find all the way through the Bible is God's attraction to ordinary, limited people. I hear a lot of people talk about when they're confronted with something they know God wants them to do, to begin to excuse themselves for doing what God asked them to do based on ability, skill, time, preference. But when God asks you to do something, he has already prepared the means whereby it can be accomplished. For the Spirit of God that tells you that you ought to do something is the same Spirit that has the power to enable you to do it. Remember, the Holy Spirit of God was the medium through which God made the entire universe. He said, let there be light. It was the Spirit of God that did that light. It was the Spirit of God that created this earth. It was the Spirit of God that created the animals. Everything that God asked to be done was done by the power of the Spirit of God. Who in the whole universe do you know who could make a fire like the sun that would burn so long? So whenever you find that God has said, here's an assignment I have for you, it will oftentimes be bigger than your human nature can do. But when God asks you to do it, and you're a follower of his, and he has placed his Spirit within you, he will give you both the wisdom to be able to do it and the power to be able to do it. I was shocked by how the Spirit of God teaches people to do things. I was in seminary, and I had been studying something, I don't know what it was, a passage of scripture that I was going to use on Wednesday nights in my church, and I had gotten a rather powerful insight to this passage. And I thought, I'm going to go up to Bible study, and we're going to open this, and I'm going to explain this to them, and they'll be in awe of how much I know about the Bible. So I wanted them to be in awe, so I said, I read the passage, and I said to them, what do you think this means? I thought they would be stumped. I thought they would shake their heads or give the wrong answer, and I could show them the great insight that I had about God and his Word. There were only three ladies there. They were quiet. One of them said, I don't know, I reckon it means, and she explained exactly what the sense of the scripture was. I knew then that the power of God gives ordinary people extraordinary insight into God because he is in them. And when they say to him, what does this mean, he can give them the insight. She couldn't express it the way I could, but it was the truth, and she knew it, and it was real. You are not hindered by your mind. You are not hindered by your abilities or lack of them. You're not hindered by your nature. For when God gives you an assignment, he also places his Spirit within you to give you the wisdom to be able to do it, to give you the ability to be able to do it, and to give you the power to accomplish it. He took this little boy and made of him a great hero in the Old Testament. Every one of the people you see in the Bible were just like this. The great Moses, the giver of the law, was a shepherd who was not able to speak well until the Spirit of God came on him. So if you have in your life surrendered your life to God and you've said to him, I'll live my life in obedience to you, his Holy Spirit will come on you, fill your life, and then every time you think of something you're supposed to do, it is an assignment from God. Every time you set out to do it, he will both give you the wisdom to do it, the ability to do it, and the power to do it. If you fail in this enterprise, two things may have happened. One is you may have misunderstood the assignment that God has given you. Or second, the failure that seems apparent to you is one step in the process of accomplishing the purpose of God. For everything works. In the first instance, you'll learn better about how to listen to him. In the second one, as you look at things as they go along, you'll discover that it wasn't necessarily a failure, but one step in the process of God accomplishing something he wants to do. There's little David, the insignificant man in the family. What made him the great man that he was was not his wisdom, skill, or ability, but his willingness to let God use his life in any way. And the result of that was the Holy Spirit of God entered him. What God is trying to help us understand is that he does his work in the world through people by means of the Spirit. Now in the Old Testament, the Spirit and the prophets told the people exactly what they were supposed to do, and when they did it, the result was good. So the Spirit was behind all of that. It even empowered them in the act of obedience to him. In the New Testament, the same thing is true. You don't come to Christ and surrender your life to him on your own. You become aware in the beginning of the reality that you do not measure up to the standard of God. That spirit of awareness is the evidence of the Holy Spirit in your life. There's a difference for small children. Sometimes they don't know that. We ought to help them know it. There's a difference between disobedience to their parents because they're immature and sitting down and saying, I know what my parents told me to do. I know God told me I should obey my parents and I refused to obey them. This act of rebellion against God, this spiritual resistance, becomes something they're aware of only when they learn that God says obey your parents. When they learn that and they get hold of it, and then they disobey their parents and they feel guilt, it is God who is talking to them. You should not do this. When you think of something in your life that you've done that's wrong, and you know that it's wrong, in God's eyes, God is at work in your life. He's pointing out to you what he wants to have changed. Don't ignore that. This is God's way of guiding you. It's like those airplanes that land. They tell me there's an alarm that goes off if they get too high or too low, and the Holy Spirit is your alarm system saying, don't do this. There's danger if you do. Listen to that. The Holy Spirit of God guides ordinary people. The reason God uses us as ordinary people is because he wants to show himself to the world. If everyone who was a good follower of Christ was a genius, wealthy, had all the ability in the world, people would say, well, I would be a follower of Christ, but I don't have all those skills. But instead, he looks out across the world and finds all of us with our failures and our flaws, and he says, hmm, I can take this one. They'll never get anywhere without me, and if they'll listen to me and follow me, I will make their life in such a way that all the people around them will shake their head and say, how did they ever become a person like that? And then when they ask them, I admire you because of these things in your life, the person I've changed will say, it wasn't me. It was the power of Almighty God. So that through David, all the world would see the power that God has. Not David, the power that God has. That's what he wants for you. We're spread out all over this world in places each one of us live, have our lives. You see people I don't see. You touch lives that I don't touch. You're around people who never go to church. What they want, what God wants in you, is to build a David, a Goliath killer in you. The giants may be different, addictions may be one of the giants that you have, maybe your own personality is one of the giants that you face. Every one of us have limitations. And when God asks us to do something, it's entirely contrary sometimes to the very nature of our own lives. My mother told me when I'd probably been a pastor 20 years or more, she said, you know when you came home from church and said that God had called you to be a pastor, I said to myself, that's never worked, he doesn't even have any friends, I'm not a very social person. One of the greatest difficulties of my life is dealing with people. Still to this day when I walk in the annex and it's full of people I feel very self-conscious and I don't want to be, I want to go around the wall, I don't want to be out there shaking hands. It's just not my nature. But God asks us to do things that we can say to people, I am what I am because God has made me this way. Because every person you see is struggling with issues they cannot conquer. Everyone. And when they see your life, a life that has conquered some of those in your own life, then they want what you have. How can I be changed? Everyone in the world wants to be different in some way, better than what they are. So God takes a little boy, he anoints him with the Spirit of God, and he sends him out into the world to be a king. And everyone says, this man is a hero, I wish I could be like that. You don't become a giant killer by practicing your slingshot skills. You don't become a great warrior by practicing your bow and arrow. You become a leader of God's people by the power of God at work in you. God chooses ordinary people that the world can see very little value in, oftentimes. He asks them to say, Lord, I give you my life, I will obey you in whatever you ask me to do. And then he gives us wisdom from the scriptures to know how to guide our life. He gives us teachers and pastors to be able to help us understand how to put in practice the things God tells us. And then he opens our eyes to the world around us and what he wants us to do. Someone may come to you and say, I want you to help me teach in this class. You may run down the skills that you have already possessed and say, I don't have this set of skills. Don't do that. You stop and say, okay, God, here's a Christian person who thinks that you've asked me to do this. I'm going to try it. You may discover in your ability to do this job, the very power of God that you never ever knew. He may ask you to ask someone that you know. The idea may just come to your mind. You're one day, here's a friend, why don't you come to church with me? Your first thought will be, no, I can't do that. Did Satan put that in your mind to scare you to death? No, it's God. What you don't realize is in the life and mind of that person, he's already been at work, creating a hunger, an awareness of a need, a desire maybe even. And when you say, would you come to me to this Bible study group or prayer group or to church, the Holy Spirit has already prepared them. Now I told you that two things can happen. They say no, bad things as a result of it, but it takes maybe 10, 15, 20, 30 times before you can get people who don't want to do something to do it, husbands, wives, do you understand that? How many times have I told you, you say to your kids, how many times have I told you? Until finally one day it dawns and you may be the first of 20 that God is going to get you to ask that person. Don't see it as a failure, but one step in the process that God's using. And if you refuse to do it, you simply put off the process. You see, God is at work in our lives guiding us. He places in our mind what we should do. And when we do it, it accomplishes the purpose of God. Now you may look at it and say failure. He looks at it and says mission accomplished. What God is trying to do in our lives is bring us to the place where we are useful tools in his work and in his kingdom. David, anointed, becomes a great hero. What Peter is talking about in the New Testament was very clear. He was dealing with the people who were followers of Christ in a different setting than the Old Testament. He was looking for people who were experiencing what God was trying to do in their lives and the result that it would bring to them. Their lives would be powerful and useful. But you are chosen people. Every person who is a follower of Christ has been chosen by God. You are a royal priesthood or a nation of priests. There are no lay people in the kingdom of God. You are a priest. Why? Because you have inside of you the very Holy Spirit of God that every pastor has, that every priest has, that every leader in the church has. You have the same spirit in you. The spirit that can do anything has all power and all wisdom. You are a whole nation of priests wherever you are. You are a holy nation. You're set apart. You're different than all the world. Wherever you go, you're like one drop of oil in a pan of water. You will never become like the water around you. You're always different. So the people who are next to you might be in the same pot you're in, but they see that your life is different than theirs. That's your job. You should be different. Don't try to avoid it. It is the whole purpose of your life. God brings you to the place where you are different, a holy nation, and the reason is because you're a people belonging to God. He owns you. He controls your mind. He controls your thoughts. He controls your behavior, and His purpose is that you might declare the praises of Him who calls you out of darkness into the wonderful light. I don't know if you've ever been in a place where it's just pitch black and no light at all, but it doesn't take very much of a little bitty piece of light in complete darkness to change all the environment. Everywhere you go, you're surrounded by people who live in darkness. If the Spirit of God is in you, you are a bright light to them. You won't see it because you're with that light all the time. It's you around you. But the world out there sees something different, and the light of your life praises God. You know how it praises God? It says to all the world, look at what God has done with this ordinary person. How can they do these things? How can their life be this way? How can their homes be this way? How can their marriage be this way? What is the secret to that person? You don't say anything. You just live this life, and you praise God. That is, you tell the world how great God is. And the worse off you are, or the less significant you are when it starts, the more powerful your message is. And so when someone says, well, you sure do live a good life, you have an opportunity to say, you should have seen me before God got hold of me. I'll tell you, the difference is enormous. That is your praise to God. Look at what God has done with my life. That's your witness. If people don't ask you how you're different, you might have some problems. Look at yourself. Does the Spirit have full control of your life, or is this a part-time job for you? If you're one way at church, one way at home, one day at work, your light's not going to be very bright. But if your life is the same, surrendered to God, then people are going to look at you and say, I wish I could have that life. And you have witnessed the power of God by your life. And you will vocalize that when people say to you, man, how do you deal with these things? And you will experience it when you say what God wants you to say. And you ask people about their own lives and their needs. For then God uses you to kill the giants. Every person who enters the kingdom of heaven is intended to be a giant slayer. They're not skilled enough, not able, but when the Spirit takes control of their mind, they think right. When He takes control of their hand, they throw right. When He takes control of their mouth, they speak right. And the result is the victory of God in the lives of people around you. Would you bow your heads, please, for a moment? We've been focused today on the reality of your presence as your spirit. All of us are different, but each one of us are connected to you by means of your spirit. So each one of us heard different things today. I ask, Father, by the means of your spirit that you would alert each of us to what words or thoughts in our mind were from you. If there's anything you want to show us that needs to be changed, highlight that. If there's anything that we've resisted today that you've said to us, open our eyes to that. If there's a task that you've assigned us to that we've been pushing aside, remind us again. In this moment, may the Holy Spirit of God in every one of our minds bring your message. What do you want for me? What in my life stands in your way of making me a holy person? What mission do you have for me? So, Father, tell us what you want to say. Give us the courage to say as David, I'll do the job, even though it might seem impossible. It may be for you that God has said something to you that you want to make a public, open commitment. I'll be at the front. Rusty will be here to be able to share that with me. While the instrument plays this morning, God's going to speak to you. You respond to him. You say, Yes, Lord. David and Rusty will be here at the front. If there's some response you want to make, feel free to do so. This is between God and you. Would you stand, please, for a moment to pray together? Now you are responsible for whatever God put in your mind. If he did say something to you and you said no, he's not through. If he said something to you and you said yes, it's just beginning for you. God will hold us all accountable for what he says. The way of life or the way of continued struggle, that's what God opens for us. And so we say thank you, God, for talking to us. Even if we didn't want to hear what you had to say, we thank you for letting us know what you want from us. How you want us to live, how you want us to think, how you want us to be a part of our families. We ask that you don't give up on us. And we ask, Fathers, we said yes to you, that you would give us the guidance we need to do what you've asked, the power to be able to do it, the wisdom to be able to do it, and the spirit of love in which we do it. The whole world might know who you are and what you're like. We leave as a nation of priests to live in a world that needs you. Help us to be a part of changing it. Change us to be like yourself. Amen. you