Wanderlust: Navigating God’s Will

Definitely don't want you to forget that. This coming Wednesday night we have our

monthly worship and prayer night. Make sure that you come out seven o'clock on

Wednesday. We have big plans for this fall. I just think Tony has

been gone for a month. He looks around and he says, this is

like the end of July. Look at how many people are here. God

is doing big things at our church. This fall is going to be amazing.

But I've told you for years that God responds to our seeking and our

hunger. And one of the ways that we show God how serious we are

is these worship and prayer knights. So I want to invite you to come

out. Let's start August off right. It really kind of gears us up

for the fall. Be here Wednesday night, seven o'clock. Grab your bibles.

Turn Psalms thirty two. Psalms thirty two. It's gonna be many verses

that I'm gonna refer to. I'm going to refer to them quicker than you're

going to be able to turn to them. So the verses will be up

on the screen for your sake, to allow you to follow along. Recently,

I spoke for one of my friends, and they were sitting around the

table in their staff meeting trying to figure out what to put in the basket

for me. So oftentimes when you speak at large churches, they will put

a basket of swag and leave it in your hotel room. And they were

trying to decide what they would put in Brandon's basket, and my buddy's wife

said, well, Brandon's easy because he likes chotchkes. For the next three

months, my buddy kept texting me about chatch keys. I couldn't figure out

where it was coming from. So I eventually looked up the word chotch key,

and it means this a trinket that is decorative rather than functional. If

you know me at all, that's a pretty accurate description. I know the

teenagers just laughed. So if you do have somebody under the age of thirteen,

cover their ears, because here's how the Urban Dictionary defines chotchkey. It

says useless crap with little to no actual value. What's ironic about this is

I consider myself a collector. I believe deep down inside that if I hold

on to stuff, someday it'll be worth money and I can sell it and

make money on it someday. Unfortunately, I married a woman who is an

absolute minimalist. Die would have nothing. You would walk into a house,

there would not be a picture on the wall or any furniture. It would

be an empty house. That would Bede's choice. Well, I discovered Etsy

about a year and a half ago. Etski is choch Key Heaven. I

find so many treasures on Etsy that I must own. My wife was away

on a week camping hiking trip and she was fully off the grid, and

while she was there, I found something on Etsy that our home had to

have. Here's the grand reveal of it. No, no, it's better.

So when we got home, this is in our house. I thought,

I told you guys to like blur out the price. This was made

by an Amish community in Pennsylvania, so that three hundred dollars I spent is

like a gift. It was supporting the community. Needless to say, my

wife said, that is not staying in my house, and it has now

banished to the outside. Dian, I've lived in muckle To now for two

years. We loved muncle To. The best part about muckle To is we

feel like we're on vacation when we're home. That's how when you feel like

you're on vacation. When you're at home, you know you found your forever

house. One of the things that I love about muncle To is the famous

lighthouse. Everybody go to the lighthouse, checks out the lighthouse, the Lighthouse

Park. Since living there, I have done a lot of research on lighthouses

because I'm curious about them. In seventeen eighty nine, Congress created the Lighthouse

Establishment Act. Back then, there were twelve working lighthouses in America and their

job was to oversee those lighthouse and then oversee the construction of many more lighthouses.

Today there are seven hundred and seventy nine working lighthouses in America. Fascinating

to me that even as technology has advanced GPS, sonar, radar, all

of those seven hundred and seventy nine lighthouses have the exact same purpose and use

that they did four hundred and fifty years ago. When you think about how

everything has changed even over the last ten years, we still need lighthouses four

hundred and fifty years later, and their original purpose is still their purpose today.

You see, the purpose of a lighthouse is to warn ships of potential

danger and guide them safely on their way. Today we conclude our Wanderlust series,

and we have been looking for the past month about how you when you

face a fork in the road, how you know which way to go,

how you hear God's voice, how you know God's direction for your life.

And my staff has shared all month long, really done an amazing job.

And today I'm gonna basically sum up everything that you've heard, hopefully illustrating in

a way that you will forever remember. Because every single one of us we

face choices, every single one of us reaches across roads, and we're trying

to determine not just what's good, but what is God's best for us.

Psalm's thirty two says this. It says, I will instruct you and teach

you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my loving

eye on you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which

you have no understanding, but must be controlled by bit and bridle, or

they will not come to you. I want to ask everyone to buy your

heads, close your eyes. I want you to repeat this prayer after me.

Everyone say, Dear Jesus, speak to my heart. Change my life

in Jesus name. Amen. So, as a follower of Jesus, how

do we determine God's will? How do we recognize his voice amongst all of

the noise and numerous options that are presented to us? How do we not

be like Psalm's warns. Have you ever heard the phrase or do you know

someone who you would define as this person is stubborn as a mule. Well,

if you've ever wondered where the phrase stubborn as a mule came from,

it came from Psalms thirty two, and David was using this to describe us

and how stubborn we can be. He said, we can be as stubborn

as a mule, that we have to be drug to do the right thing.

One of the most challenging parts about being a minister as I meet with

people in my office is right back there, and it is watching people spend

their lives in an endless cycle of bad choices. Did you know that bad

choices are habit forming. I think for some people they're like an addiction because

they make one bad choice and it leads to multiple bad choices, and then

I watched their life spiral out of control. The one thing I know about

bad choices is that bad choices always have bad results. Paul said this.

He said, a man reaps what he sows. Proverbs says, he who

sows wickedness reaps trouble. I've met with way too many people their life is

a string of terrible decisions, one after another, and then they meet with

me and then they share all these choices that they've made and they want to

know what to do next. I've actually told many people of you sitting here

to do what I'm about to say. I have a supernatural ability to have

a Seinfeld illustration for anything that happens in life. So here's a picture of

who was recently there. It is who was recently voted the number one TV

character of all time. This is George Costanza. George Costanza, super funny

and also completely inept. The guy makes one terrible choice after another and his

life has just not worked out. And my favorite episode of Seinfeld is called

The Opposite. So what happened in that episode is George and Jerry Seinfeld were

sitting down talking in a coffee shop and George was lamenting his life and he

says, my life is one bad choice after another, he goes, I

got no job, I got no girlfriend, I got like life is terrible,

and he's whining about his life, and Jerry wisely looks at him and

says, George, if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite

would have to be right. Do the opposite. So for the entire episode,

every natural instinct that George has, he stops and does the total opposite.

By the end of the episode, he has this great job with the

New York Yankees, this beautiful girlfriend. Everything is worked out. If you

knew the number of times I have looked at people and said, be like

George Costanza in the opposite episode, every natural instinct you have is dumb.

Do the opposite and you won't end up back in my office in a month.

Well, as you know, habits die hard. So eventually George went

back to doing what George knows how to do. But I want to remind

you that bad choices, mistakes in the past don't have to be repeated.

What's unfortunate for you and I is our life is not like a wide open

highway that we just drive straight as fast as we want. Life has curves,

life has dead ends, life has forts, in the roads. It

has crossroads. If you live in Snowmash County, life has roundabouts. It's

just not a clear path. If you live near the water, it's not

calm. The water is rocky. Sometimes the weather is foggy and things are

unclear. So how do we in the windy road of life navigate ourselves through

good choices and God's will? Well, I want to use the illustration of

a lighthouse. So remember, a lighthouse warns you of danger and guides you

safely in the right direction. I actually believe that God provides you and I

lighthouses that if we will pay attention to the problem with the lighthouses, you

have to look out for it, and when you see it, you have

to heed its warning. But God provides us lighthouses to navigate our way through

his will. And I want to share with you today quickly the lighthouses that

God provides for you and I that help us navigate through His will. And

the first lighthouse is the lighthouse of prayer. If you really want to know

what God's will is, you need to commit and submit everything you do to

God. It should be the first thing you do. You should start your

week by submitting and committing it to God. Every time I fly on an

airplane, I commit it to God. This morning, our staff before every

service we meet, and we pray every Sunday, commit the service to God.

You need to commit your ways to God. Commit whenever you start your

work, we commit it to God. Submit it to the Lord in prayer.

Ask God to guide you. Ask God to make his will known.

The very first verse that I ever memorized as a follower of Jesus, I

was sixteen years old, and it's one of your next steps today. It's

a verse that everyone should memorize. It's Proverbs three five. It's just trust

in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on your own understanding in

all your ways. Acknowledge Him and it'll make your paths straight. So if

you want to know what God's will is, submit your decision to him in

the beginning. Too often people find themselves in the midst of a storm.

Then they stop and start praying. You want to not get in the storm.

To begin with, pray before you start. So the lighthouse of prayer,

the second lighthouse that God provides to us, and I talked about this

a lot last week, is the lighthouse of God's word. So the Bible

guides us whenever you face a situation or a decision. What does the Bible

say about it? Are there characters people in the Bible who have faced similar

circumstances and experiences and how did they choose? The coolest thing about the Bible

is the Bible doesn't just let us see all the great things that these heroes

of our faith have done. It lets us see their huge mistakes too,

So we get to not just see their decisions, but we get to see

the end result of their good decisions and the end result of their bad decisions.

If someone in the Bible made a wrong decision, you and I can

learn from that decision. One of the things and I talked about this on

detail in our podcast for the week, I kind of unwrapped the entire Wanderlust

series on our Thursday podcast. I had a couple twenty somethings in our church

just ask questions from their perspective about this series. But I reminded them that

God isn't saying anything new. Everything that God had to say to you and

I he said in his word whenever a preacher, pastor prophet, whoever it

is, claims a new revelation. You immediately get a sign, do not

listen to this person. There is not a new revelation. What God's words

says is what God had to say. He's not gonna say anything new that

he didn't already say in his word. So as you're navigating, you pray

what does the Bible say? The third lighthouse that we have is our circumstances.

What's going on around you, what's going on in your life. You

see, God isn't just working in us, He's working around us. And

God will oftentimes guide us through circumstances. And it's amazing to me how people

interpret the circumstances around them. Really, your circumstances guide a lot. Now,

when you have circumstances, you either view them as good or you view

them as bad. If you view them as good, you usually have a

couple different ways that you interpret it good. I don't want to mess this

up. Stay the course. Did you know that that's great wisdom? If

you are in a situation in your life, your kids are happy, your

spouse is happy. You have a job that pays you enough to not only

pay your bills, but put a little money into retirement. And savings.

You love your church, you like your neighbors. Why would you mess that

up? But oftentimes we have the second response when things are good is we

feel guilty because part of Christians we have a little of this martyrdom syndrome.

When our lives are blessed, we feel guilty like it should be full of

hardship. So even though things are going great, we mess it up always

because we're incredibly impulsive by decisions that we make. But your circumstances, by

the way, sometimes they're bad. And if you like, if you want

to see how God will navigate you through bad circumstances. Say you're working a

job that you've been plugging along at for a long time, and bottom line,

you cannot provide for your family with this job. And then all of

a sudden, you get offered a job. It's a career switch, but

the job will pay enough for you to provide for your family. It doesn't

take a rocket scientist to say, my circumstances are bad. Here is a

clear open door that God has given me so that maybe they can become good.

But bad circumstances we tend to interpret them in four ways. Sometimes you

have bad circumstances around you and realize God is testing you. God will do

that. He will put you in circumstances sometimes to strengthen your faith, and

He does that by testing your faith. Spiritual tests are the same as tests

in real life. What happens if you fail a test in real life?

You have to take the test again. Who likes having to retake a class?

No one. So if God gives you a test, recognize that it's

a test. Pass it, because if you don't, He'll make you take

it again. Another response we have to bad choices is sometimes your bad choice

is because you are reaping the consequences of bad decisions. I watch this one

happen a lot. I meet with people and they're like, why is all

this happening to me? Why my marriage falling apart? Why are my finances

a wreck? Why do I feel so far from God? Because you make

terrible decisions. A man reaps what he sows, a woman reaps which she

sows. Sometimes you're in your circumstance because you made a series of tomb choices.

You gotta recognize it that way. Sometimes your circumstances are bad because the

enemy's attacking you. Sometimes the devil's just picking on you. By the way,

Christians are too quick to blame they're reaping and sewing of their circumstances on

the devil. I am not a person who finds a devil or a demon

behind every bush. I do believe there are times you are in the devil's

cross hair and he is going big time. But more often than not,

it's one of the other things. I also thinking the last response to bad

circumstances. Some people, you just gotta step back and realize I'm being persecuted

for my righteousness. I am a follower of Jesus in a broken, fallen

world, and as a follower of Jesus in the Seattle area, there's gonna

be times it's gonna be tough. It's gonna be tough to be a Christian

around here. You dealt with that three years ago. And the problem when

people don't recognize what is happening and the why of their bad circumstances, they

make impulsive decisions, and impulsive decisions always lead you the wrong way. Here

is the most tweetworthy thing I'm gonna say today, Like, stop what you're

doing, write this down, type this. You are not grabbing a pen.

I'm dead serious this you need to write down. You're ready. Impulsive

decisions come when we wrongly interpret our circumstances, and people make decisions like they

don't recognize that this is just a season of persecution where it's a challenge,

and they think I'm quitting my job and I'm moving somewhere. Fast forward three

years later, they haven't made any friends, and they're like, I did

this, and now I'm lonely and I can't move back to where I was

because all the software companies are not allowing telecommuting anymore, and I don't know

what to do. It's when we misinterpret circumstances, we tend to overcorrect.

So if you're reaping consequences, what should you do? God's word is clear

repent, Like if if you are in the middle of bad circumstances and it

is because you are reaping the consequences of bad decisions, repent. Jeremiah says,

if you repent, he will restore you that you may serve him if

you're being attacked by the enemy. The Bible's clear, resist, James said,

resist the devil and he will flee from you. By the way,

it doesn't say resist the devil, and he might flee from you. It

says he will. So if you recognize, oh, this is just the

devil's picking on me, I rebuke this in the name of Jesus. Flee.

Guess what, he won't think about it. He will flee. So,

if you view your circumstances, maybe like many of us three years ago,

it really was we're just being persecuted for our faith, our belief system.

Jesus said it. He told us how to deal with it. He

said, endure stands strong, Jesus said in Matthew, he says, the

one who stands firm to the end will be saved. Lighthouses that help us

navigate through God's will we pray. What does his words say? What are

the circumstances around me? The fourth lighthouse that you're going to come across is

the lighthouse of godly advice. What do people who you love have to say?

Who love you have to say about this? What are your pastors?

What are your leaders? What are your mentors, your coaches, people who

give you unbiased advice have to say? People that are proven through time to

be wise. Every time I meet with somebody in my office who's made a

series of dumb choices. I always asked him if you got an advice from

everyone, and they always say yes, And I said, tell me who

you got advice from, and they'll tell me, and I'll say, that's

your problem. You get advice from those people. I had somebody one time

that came to me and they were really frustrated that they had trusted a financial

advisor and had had this financial advisor take over all their wealth and it just

almost led him to bankruptcy. And I said, who is this person?

And they told me their financial advisor was and I looked at him. I

was like, why would you get financial advice from an adult man who lives

in his parents' basement. Like you got advice, you just didn't get advice

from someone who's wise. Get advice from someone who has a proven history of

wisdom giving good advice. Seek it, evaluate, listen to it. A

while ago, I had a couple that came and met with me and they

wanted me to perform their wedding ceremony. Talked a lot about pre marriage counseling

during this series, and I said what I always say, Well, you

need to get pre marriage counseling backstory of this couple. This was gonna be

his third marriage and it was her second marriage. And when I suggested they

do pre marriage counseling, they paused and they said, we don't feel like

we need pre marriage counseling because we've already been around the block a few times.

You can't help stupid. I looked at them and I went, you're

terrible at this. This could be you could be on your fourth marriage really

quickly, you on your third. If anyone needs pre marriage counseling, it's

the two of you, because you've already proven how bad you are at this.

Needless to say, they didn't have me do their wedding. Proverbs says

this. It says plans go wrong for lack of advice, but many advisors

bring success. Proverbs fourteen says there's a way that seems right to a man,

but in the end leads to death. Did you know sometimes you don't

even need to meet with the coaches and pastors and counselors in your life because

you already know what they're going to say, because when you bring similar circumstances

to them, they always give you the same advice. Learn from these people

now, sometimes they'll give you the same advice and it might not work every

single time, but more often than not, I call these the more often

than not life principles. So I have been a pastor for thirty years.

In thirty years, I've only worked at three churches. By the way,

that's like unheard of the fact that Die and I will be celebrating our nineteenth

year pastoring this church, and our church will be having its nineteenth birthday in

November. It's like unheard of. The typical senior pastor transitions every four to

five years, so this should be like my fourth church. But venture will

be the only church that Die and I will lead our entire life until we

retire. But I worked for two people twelve years as a youth pastor.

I worked for Glen Bertow and Rob Carlson, and both of them taught me

some life principles that helped me navigate through big decisions. And I can hear

them their words echoing in my head every time I reach acrossroads where I need

to make a decision. Do I go to the left, right, go

straight, or go backwards? I can hear Glenbertoe say this. He always

says it's better to stay too long than to leave too soon. Most people

quit their job prematurely, most people move prematurely. His advice is stay longer.

It's better to be wrong because you stayed too long than to leave too

early and realize too late that you made a mistake. And he always applies

it to talking about a minister and his anointing, and an anointing for a

minister is the supernatural favor that God gives us to accomplish the task that He's

called us to. So Glenbertoe teaches that your calling and you're anointing are woven

together. So God will call bray end In an anoint Brandon to lead venture

church in the Seattle area. If I choose to leave before I'm supposed to,

my calling and my anointing stay there and I leave and end up at

the next place on my own strength. So he says, better to stay

too long than to leave too soon. And again doesn't work to every scenario,

but it's a more often than lot life principle. Rob Carlson taught me

this whenever I'm in conflict. My job is weekly conflicts, and he says,

be quick to say you're sorry. The easiest thing to do is to

say you're sorry. He said. People will hunker down and their pride will

not let them see the situation for what it is. And he would say,

you, man of God, get out of the situation. If all

you have to do to get out of the conflict with this person is say

you're sorry, tell them you're sorry, and get out of it. And

by the way, that is an amazing life principle. When you have conflict,

just be quick to say you're sorry. People that have worked with me,

they know what a constant life principle for me is when you face a

fork in the road and are trying to figure out what to do when you

face one of these big decision moments. More often than not, my advice

someone to someone is don't quit. You outlast everyone else, You outlast your

circumstances, you outlast your mistakes, you walk through them. You don't quit.

You see, sometimes when people are reaping what they've sown, instead of

walking through the circumstances and coming out of it the other side, they run

away. I watched ministers do this all the time. A minister will make

an epic failure and rather than walk through the discipline and walk through repentance and

walk through God restoring them. It's way easier to just start over somewhere else.

The problem is that when you leave, all those problems go with you.

So my advice is usually don't quit. Stick with it. In our

family, we don't quit. A couple great examples. My daughter is great

at, like lots of stuff. She played basketball one year. I was

excited. I love basketball. It's one of my favorite sports to coach,

and so my daughter was finally gonna play basketball. So dian I were all

excited. We went to Rachel's first basketball game as a kid, and it

was the first time she touched the ball. I knew this was bad.

She starts dribbling the ball down the court and she looks over at dian I,

who are watching in the stands. Instead of smiling like kids do,

she dribbles down and looks at us and shrugs her shoulders, and we knew

in that moment she doesn't have a clue what she's doing. For all the

things Rachel is good at, she might be the worst basketball player in the

history of basketball. Most loving parents would have immediately after that game said Rachel,

let's just quit. But guess what. We made her finish the season,

because that's what we do. What you may not know about my son

Judah. My son Judah is a third degree black belt in taekwondo full on

registered lethal weapon. He is did you know what takes anywhere from seven to

nine years of training to get to that level of mastery in a martial art?

Which you might not know about my son Judah is he was four weeks

into taekwondo and he came home from practice sobbing, and he was done.

He was quitting. So I did what the beel's family does, pulled him

into another room and I gave him the best Mickey to Rocky speech I could

give. I was like, Judah, don't quit. Someday you were gonna

stand up and get your black belt, and there's yeah. And I gave

him this speech. I said, everyone gets a letterman's jacket, but do

you know how few people are actually black belts in a martial art? Said

you are gonna do something that a very rare percentage of people will ever do.

I might have said it too loudly. I might have said it too

passionately. It might lead to Judah having therapy later on in life. But

that was the pitch he got from me. Did you know sometimes people will

use your messages against you. I remember when I started my doctorate. I

was five years into it, miserable. I was done. I was quitting.

I went to my friends and everybody that I could think of, and

I told them that I was going to step out of the program. And

I had a really good spiritual reason for doing it. By the way,

don't we pull that one? I got asked by the Twenty some Things for

the podcast. I got asked this question, and it it was does God

ever call you to something and then mid stream tell you to quit? How

do you think? I answered that never. It is possible you missed God

initially, and that's on you. But get God would never start you down

a path and say I changed my mind quit. That is not God.

That is called wanderlust. That is I got distracted by something and it changed

my mind, or that is called it got hard all of a sudden,

and I quit. So I'm gonna quit. I finally have dinner with my

family and I start sharing with my kids that I'm gonna quit my doctorate.

And then that punk son of mine, Elijah, it looks at me and

he says, this is literally how he said. He goes, huh,

Dad, that's weird, And I went, why Son, He said,

because I've never seen you quit anything before. Needless to say, I have

a doctoral diploma on the wall in the office, and when people come in

and tell me about their bad choices. These things don't apply to every circumstance,

but they apply to most. So a lighthouse is godly advice. The

last lighthouse is the lighthouse of the Holy Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit

leading you? What is the Holy Spirit guiding you to do? Now?

This one is dangerous because sometimes people misinterpret what the Holy Spirit is saying to

them. When you start the process by honestly, sincerely seeking God's guidance.

In the middle of that process, when it gets difficult and when it gets

confusing, God will give you an inner conviction or a prompting to confirm which

way He wants you to go. Killer verse from the prophet Isaiah. Remember

this starts with us committing our ways to God. Initially says whether you turn

to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind

you saying this is the way. Walk in it eighteen years, Dian,

I leading the same church. For those of you that don't know me very

well. For the ones that do, they will they'll shake their head and

say, this is true. I have wanderlust. You think you like change,

I like change more. You think you like new adventures. Guarantee I

like new adventures more. The fact that Me Brandon is still leading the same

church after eighteen years is nothing short of absolutely impossible, because I would move

every two years if it was up to me. But here's how it works.

I start going this path that I think I'm supposed to go, and

then all of a sudden, I get distracted by a squirrel. And then

I see a lighthouse, and the lighthouse starts flashing and I heed its warning.

And then I go this way and another opportunity comes and it's exciting,

and then I see a lighthouse and it guides me this way. And then

I woke up one day and Di and I were away recently, and we

were just talking about how Venture will be the only church that we will ever

pastor our entire ministry career. Do you know how crazy it is? We

are, Like less than a percent of ministers in the world will start and

pastor until they retire the same church. And if you would have told me

eighteen years ago that I would spend the rest of my life pastoring venture,

I'd say, you don't know me very well because I have wanderlust. You

might be like me. You didn't know when to stay the course fall,

the lighthouses that go places in front of you, Everybody by your heads,

close your eyes. I'm gonna close in prayer. And this is the one

question that I have for you. If you're here today, and you'd say,

Brandon and I got some big decisions coming in the next two three months.

I really need to know what God's willis. I need to have my

eyes open to see the lighthouse that He's guiding me through. If that's you

and you want me to pray for you right now, I want you to

raise your hand up, raise it up. Everywhere we do me a favor.

Will everyone stand up on your feet though everybody close your eyes. Those

of you that raised your hands, I want you to lift your hands up

in the air. Just lift both of them up. Those of you that

raise your hand lifts so I can see who you are. Dear Jesus.

Right now we come before you an absolute humility and say, Lord, our

desire and our hope is that our life would honor you, and the decisions

that we make would honor you. That you would guide us, that you

would direct us. Lord, you see the hands that are raised. You

know the situation and decision that they're facing. And God, I asked right

now that you would begin to speak to them, that you would give them

clarity, that you would show them the people that they need to go seek

advice from, that they would be attentive to when you are guiding them.

And most of all, when there's something that maybe in their flesh they want

to do, but there is a lighthouse warning them against it. I pray

their eyes would be open to notice and heed that warning. But Lord,

I pray that you would be with them, You would guide them, you

would direct them and help them. Lord, I thank you for our church.

As we head into this fall, we commit our ways to you.

We ask that you would continue to move in our midst continue to bless us

in Jesus's name. Amen,