Experiencing God - Reality 4

Amen.

Well, hey, if you have your Bibles, turn to Exodus chapter three.

We're going to continue to jump around a little bit, but we'll start looking at the story of Moses, and we're going to continue to look at these seven realities for experiencing God.

That God, today we're looking at the reality that God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal himself, his purposes, and his ways.

I know that's a mouthful, but we got it all on a slide.

It's a nice, nice slide.

As we look at these seven realities, it's really simple, and it's also really like, okay, I've seen this in my life.

I've seen this in scripture.

As I look at scripture, I see this pattern that this is how God often relates to his people.

That he speaks, that he's at work all around us because he's sovereign.

He is ruling over all and he is accomplishing his purposes.

That he's pursuing first a continuing love relationship with each of us uniquely and perfectly.

And as that love relationship grows and it becomes more real and personal, he invites us into his work to become involved with him in his work.

That as disciples, we get to make disciples.

And then we're looking at number four that God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church, those four ways: his word, us sitting before him in prayer, our circumstances and the church, like the people of God that have the Holy Spirit living inside of them, the church, to reveal himself, his purposes, and his ways.

That he wants to show us first who he is.

Then he wants to show us his purposes.

What does he want to do in this world?

And then he wants to show us his ways.

How is he going to go about accomplishing that?

And as we start to wrap our mind around these seven realities, it would help us to be a disciple that would make disciples, that it would help us to really have a relationship, a love relationship with God.

Because it's not like here's the formula, follow the formula, let's walk through it this way.

No, it's God wants a love relationship with you.

Like he's crazy about you.

All of your weird idiosyncrasies that make you uniquely you, he says, I'm crazy about you.

I want you to experience the joy that I have for you.

And based on that, now let's go on an adventure together.

Let's go on an adventure of sharing my love with people all over the world, with every man, woman, and child, that they would have repeated opportunities to hear and respond to the life-changing reality of Jesus Christ.

That uh, as he invites us in to work with him, it leads to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action.

That's next week.

That we may we have to make major adjustments in our lives to join God in what he's doing.

And then we only know, come to know God by experience as we obey him and he accomplishes our work through him.

My favorite verse in Scripture is John 14, 21.

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.

And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.

There's this great promise.

And the reason why that verse is my favorite is that that's been my experience.

As I've ran away from the James way of doing things and ran towards the Jesus way of doing things, that I've experienced this joy that is full, this joy that overflows, this joy that cannot be shaken, that I've experienced the love of Jesus, I've experienced the love of the Father through that obedience that doesn't make sense.

And we come to know him as we obey him and as he starts to work through us.

It's like you feel alive for the first time.

You go from black and white to living color as you live in obedience to him.

Not just like, let me do it partially, let me do it halfway.

No, like I'm all in.

Jesus, I'm yours.

And I want to live your way because your ways are better than mine.

Mine are like walking in the dark, stumbling around, tripping on my face, getting up, stumbling a little bit further forward, tripping on my face, and you're like, why is everything on fire?

Well, you kind of caused all the fires, buddy.

You got to stop it.

You got to stop setting everything on fire and then being mad when you see the ashes.

You've got to start living his ways, according to his ways, his purposes, uh, because you're delighting in our Lord Jesus.

You're experiencing him through the Spirit, you're experiencing the relationship, the love of the Father through that obedience.

And so uh we've been looking at Moses' life first as we kind of springboard into looking at all these different elements of this.

Uh, this is simple, but it's also deep.

Like we could go uh three weeks for each of these realities and not cover everything.

And there's a reality that we're leaving some on the cutting board uh that you're only gonna get if you participate in these studies, or if you go and buy a book and you walk through this on your own.

Uh but I would I would say, I would venture to say that you're gonna have the best experience if you do this in community, because the way that we experience God, it's gonna be enhanced by experiencing him in community, that there are different aspects of the Lord that you'll experience more as you hear other people talk about him.

And if you're just like, this is how I'm experiencing God, and you do that by yourself, you you go in this weird area of like, you might start to sound like a heretic if you don't have other people full of the Holy Spirit that talk to you and say, Yes, that's how I've seen God relate as well for me.

So we have to do this in community.

You were made to experience God in very real and tangible ways.

As we walk through this, it's the foundation for who we are as a church, uh, who we are as disciples of Jesus.

And our prayer as elders is that we would continue on this journey as we're all changed to be more like Christ personally and collectively.

As a church, we become more like Jesus.

We become more like the head as we grow into this unity, just as we talked about in our Ephesians series recently as well.

As we talked about before, there's a prerequisite to experiencing God, and that is a relationship with Jesus.

And so we've been looking at uh the Roman road uh as we we talk about this, that Romans 3.23 says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Romans 6.23 that says that the wages of sin is death.

Romans 5.8 says, but God demonstrates his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

We sin, we deserve death, but God has provided a way in Jesus for us to be forgiven.

How do we receive that?

Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Jesus invites us into this relationship with him, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

As we talked about week one, we looked at John 15, John 5, and one of the key passages there is where Jesus is saying, My Father is still working, and I am working also.

Truly I tell you, the Son is not able to do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing.

For whatever the Father does, the Son likewise does.

For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he is doing.

So, reality one, God is always at work around you, even for Jesus, he's joining where the Father is already at work.

He says, the Son is not able to do anything on his own, but he only joins what the Father is doing.

And that's how at the end of his life in John 17 3, he says, Father, I've done all that you have given me to do.

I have completed the work that you have given me.

Everything you've set before me, I've done it because he remained connected to the Father throughout his ministry.

That's where we want to be, living that fulfilled life, seeing where God is at work and joining him there.

Because the Father loves the Son, he shows him everything he's doing.

We get to live and abide in that love and join the Father in his work.

Week two, we talked about how God pursues a love relationship with you.

That before Jesus called his disciples to go and preach, before he called them to cast out demons, before he called them to do miracles, he wanted them to be with him.

He wanted them to, he wanted to enjoy them.

He called them who he desired, and they came to him.

And he appointed the twelve, whom he also named apostles, so that they might be with him.

Before it's about doing, he wants them to be with him.

For a lot of us, it's flipped.

We say, if I do enough, then I'll be good enough, then maybe God will love me.

Maybe God will forgive all the crazy things that I did last night.

If I can just do enough good stuff today.

No.

God says, Come and sit with me.

Let me transform you with my love.

Let me enjoy that relationship with you because it's about a love relationship with you that's real and personal.

Last week we talked about how God invites you to become involved with him in his work.

And a key passage for this would be Ephesians 2, verse 10.

Ephesians 2:10

That he's created us in Christ Jesus for good works.

We are his masterpiece, his workmanship.

We were created in Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand that we would walk in them.

And if we we're gonna be full of joy as we walk in the good deeds that he's prepared beforehand.

And you might say, James, you're taking away my freedom.

No, this is gonna be the freedom that you want.

This is gonna be the freedom where your life will be full.

Your joy will be full as you're doing what Jesus has called you to do.

Not whatever you want, and then feeling guilty and ashamed and like, oh, if everyone knew what I was doing in the dark, then nobody would be my friend.

No, the freedom is doing what Jesus has called you to do, walking in those good works.

That's where your life is gonna be meaningful.

That's where you're gonna experience God.

And so my prayer is that we would say, like Isaiah, here I am, Lord, send me.

I'll go.

He's inviting us into a life filled with purpose and joy.

Will we join him in his work?

And so the big question today is we're opening God's word, is how do I know it's God?

How do I know that God is the one speaking?

How can I have a filter to understand?

Okay, I've got decisions in front of me.

Which one is from God?

Is this from God?

Is this a distraction?

Because good things that aren't God things are distractions from us doing God's will.

We want to be aligned with God's will.

And the beautiful part is it's not about you knowing everything fully, completely, forever.

You can't handle knowing anything beyond today.

And if you just remain faithful with Jesus, what do you have for me to do today?

That's how your joy is going to be full.

That's how you're gonna be right where he wants you to be.

How do I know it's God?

How will he speak to me?

How can I be sure it's him?

And my prayer is that we would leave today with a clear framework of how do we discern if it is the will of God, if God is the one speaking, we'll have a decision-making matrix to walk through this.

That's a fancy way to say, we'll have a way, a framework to say, is this God's will for what I want to walk through, what he's calling me to do?

Because God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible prayer circumstances in the church to reveal himself, his purposes, and his ways.

So we're gonna pray, and then we're gonna open to Exodus chapter three.

We'll read verses two through six together, and then uh we're gonna continue to unpack what it means that God speaks by his spirit through the Bible prayer circumstances in the church to reveal himself, his purposes, and his ways.

Let's pray.

Lord, um you reign above it all.

You are sovereign, you are beautiful, you are worthy of all of our worship and all of our praise.

Uh Lord, would you just help us to be still right now and know that you're God?

Would you help us to silence uh the ESPN alerts about uh football games?

Would you help us to silence uh the distractions of thinking about is my kid screaming over in children's ministry right now?

Help us to just be present to be in this room to hear from you.

And would you help us to walk in what you have for us?

Help us to know that you speak to us today, that uh though this is an old text, an ancient text, that you are living and active.

That this word is sharper than a two-edged sword, able to cut through the flesh and the marrow.

Would you convict us?

Would you call us to live close to you today?

Right now, we need your help.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Alright, so there uh can I get the white slide or the the red slide that has the the whole thing, the whole game, not all seven just uh this week.

Reality four, God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal himself, his purposes, and his ways.

Beautiful, thank you.

This is a mouthful.

If we're gonna say this briefly, God speaks.

Four ways he speaks the Bible, prayer, our circumstances, and the church.

Believers filled with God's Spirit that can encourage us, can remind us of who Jesus is.

Now you might say, well, God can speak and it and it can be uh through a number of things.

Yes, he can.

And if we were to go and have a burning bush moment ourselves, uh, then a lot of us would say, Yeah, sure, you had a burning bush moment.

Great.

Uh but how do we verify that what we heard was actually from the Lord?

How do we, because we know that if we know God's word, that we can test what we have heard against the Spirit of God inside of us, because we know the character of God, the nature of God through knowing him in his word.

As we pray about it, we can sense where he's leading us, where he's guiding us.

Our circumstances can direct us.

He can direct us through the way he reveals us through himself, through his circumstances, our circumstances.

And the church, like I rely heavily on the elders as we are talking, as we're discussing things, saying, hey, this is where it feels like the Lord is leading us and guiding us.

Am I crazy?

Or are you sensing the Lord leading you in this way too?

I rely heavily on our ministry leaders saying, hey, here's what we're thinking.

Let's talk about this and let's unpack what this looks like together.

Like we we aren't suited to just be like, uh, I I used to, Katie and I used to argue about this because like I wanted all the spiritual gifts.

And part of that is like, yes, I want, I want to see the Holy Spirit manifest through all these different things.

And like the root of that, it sounds cool at first, but then the root of that is like you want to be independent and you want to be able to have control.

And that's evil, that's wicked, that's not from the Lord, that's from the enemy.

What we actually need is we want to we want to see God work in our lives through all these different ways, but we need to be interdependent, we need to be dependent on each other as we're pursuing the will of the Lord, and we need to be ready to yield to each other and say, you know what?

I don't have a monopoly on truth.

I need to rely on brothers and sisters who have walked with the Lord and say, Do we sense God working in this way?

Do we sense God moving in this way?

Can we work and get there together?

If we want to hear from him, we need to know his word first.

That's very clear.

And we need to be a people of prayer.

We should look at the circumstances around us and the passions that he is growing in us as we are doing his will.

And we need to bounce these ideas off of one another.

We need godly counsel from his church to recognize what is the will of God.

God's word from Genesis to Revelation speaks to his people.

In our day, he speaks with through the Holy Spirit.

He uses the Bible prayer circumstances in the church.

Generally, none of these on their own is uh by itself a clear indicator of God's direction.

But when God says the same thing through these ways, we have this confidence to proceed of saying, Yes, I sense the Lord leading us here.

Let's go here together.

And so as we do this, uh, we're gonna start out looking at Moses' life.

God spoke to Moses through a unique experience at a burning bush to reveal himself, his purposes, and his ways.

And so right now we're gonna read Exodus 3, 2 through 6, as we sense uh what the Lord is teaching us, and I'm gonna invite you to stand for the reading of God's word.

And it says this, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush.

He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.

When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called him to call to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses, and he said, Here I am.

Then he said, Do not come near, take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

And he said, I'm the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.

And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

You can grab a seat.

In this particular moment, God spoke to Moses to reveal himself, his purposes, and his ways.

In this particular little screenshot, little slice of Moses' life, God came and he talked to Moses about his will.

He wanted him to go to Egypt so he could deliver the Israelites out of slavery, out of bondage to Egypt.

He revealed to him his holiness, his mercy, his power, his name, his purpose to keep his promise to Abraham.

I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.

I'm keeping my promises.

So do you want to come and participate in that?

But Moses hid his face.

He was afraid to look at God.

When God spoke through this burning bush, Moses knew that it was God.

He knew what God said, he knew what he had to do to respond to the Lord and be faithful to that.

When God speaks to you, you'll know that it's the Lord.

It'll be you can verify it with biblical truth, you can verify it with your circumstances, you can verify it with other believers, with the Holy Spirit living inside of them, and most of all through his spirit dwelling in you.

Later on in Numbers 12, 6 through 8, we see a similar experience where God says, Hear my words.

If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision.

I speak with him in a dream, not so with Moses, not so with my servant Moses.

He is faithful in all my house.

With him I speak mouth to mouth clearly and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord.

Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?

As he's correcting Miriam and Air Aaron for opposing Moses, he's saying, Hey, like I speak more clearly to Moses than anybody else around right now.

What are you doing?

Like who who are you to oppose Moses?

When he speaks to us today, it won't be face to face, it won't be in this audible voice.

There won't be a booming revelation or a burning bush that's not consumed by the fire.

There might be bushes that are burning, but are they consumed or not, right?

Uh but there will be this prodding, this prompting.

He'll draw us toward his work.

And you might become more passionate for his causes, these very specific things that he's directing you toward.

A light suddenly comes on you, clearly see a need.

Others will affirm that.

They say, I see that too.

Let's participate in that together.

They may even come aboard, they may even join you, they might confirm your call to join God in a work for him.

No matter how God leads you, it will never contradict his word or his character.

God will never contradict his nature.

And so what that's why it's important for us to know his purposes, his ways, and him personally, because he's not going to contradict himself.

He's God who never changes.

He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And that's awesome because he's perfect, he's holy.

He doesn't change like everyone else around us seems to change and that draws us to him.

And so as we look at this reality that God speaks to us to reveal these things, Jesus also said in John 8 47, whoever is of God hears the words of God, but the reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.

As he's rebuking people, he says, Hey, the reason you don't hear this is that you're not of God.

And so if you're of God, you can hear, you can recognize, hey, that this is the Son of God.

This is God in the flesh, Emmanuel, speaking to you.

But they didn't recognize that.

And so keep in mind that hearing God speak depends on our love relationship with Him.

That He speaks to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways.

And as He does that, uh Hebrews 1 says it really well when it says Hang on.

So long ago, at many times and many ways, God spoke in these different ways in the Old Testament.

But in these last days, now in this new dispensation, now in this new era where we're filled with the Holy Spirit, He's speaking to us by His Son, the heir of all things, through whom He also created the world.

A lot of times we we want to obsess with like a method like just give me the formula.

How do I know the will of God?

Give me step one, step two, step three, I'll run that play.

No, he's saying, I want you to have a love relationship with me where you're experiencing my power through a relationship.

And the good news is that a relationship is uh there's beauty there, there's joy there, there's this richness there.

The difficulty is that it's it's oftentimes, and at least our humanly relationships, it's more work.

I've got to make time to set aside to pursue uh my relationship with my wife, pursue and cultivate my relationship with my kids.

And oftentimes I find myself lacking, like I'm not setting aside enough time to build uh deep, strong relationships at home, not finding myself in a place where I'm ready to build and cultivate deep relationships uh even in the church.

And there's there's this I need more time, I need more this.

And you've got to have a relational priority of like, this is where my joy is going to be full.

This is where I'm gonna be made new as I enjoy my relationship with him.

Uh we we want to look for spiritual disciplines, books, seminars, conferences to feel more satisfied, but God doesn't want us to trust in our methods, he wants us to trust in him.

He wants us to look to him, and he will make us radiant.

It's not about hearing a dream, it's not about hearing a vision, it's about having an I hear from God.

He speaks, he speaks to me.

And that is that changes everything.

It's it's not how he communicates, but it's the fact that he spoke.

That God uses all sorts of means to communicate with us, it's irrelevant.

The fact that he is communicating is what is critical.

But often we lose our sense of awe that our creator still chooses to speak to us, to his creation.

Do we approach God's word with a holy expectation, listening for the life-changing words that God has for us that day, or do we say, I've just got to rush in, rush out, check the box, I've done my quiet time, I'm good now.

He's not interested in the checkbox duty sense of a relationship.

He wants you.

He wants you to just be still.

Like sit down, shut up, and listen.

Just be with him.

Enjoy him.

His word is powerful.

As he speaks, nothing remains the same.

At the beginning, God spoke and a universe was created from nothing.

We continue to see this pattern.

He's not making suggestions.

He's full of this determination to see what he has said come to fruition.

So it's not like a buddy where that's just a suggestion that you can ignore.

No, when you're reading God's word, you say, Yeah, this is the way.

And if I disagree, then I'm wrong.

Like if I disagree with God's what God's word is calling me to, then I'm wrong.

I need to raise my life to live to that standard rather than saying, ah, maybe I'm misinterpreting that.

Maybe I don't have to do that.

And then we start to make all the excuses.

Through the words of Jesus, lepers found that his words meant healing.

Blind men found that words from Jesus meant sight.

Sinners experienced forgiveness through a word from Jesus.

Like it took Jesus one attempt to raise Lazarus from the dead with his word.

How powerful a word of God is to our lives.

Have you experienced his voice?

Are you trusting in methods or are you meeting with a person expecting to speak to God through encountering him in his word?

And so experiencing God has some helpful pictures of like broad level overview.

So we're going to look at uh in the Old Testament, God spoke in many ways.

Uh that God spoke is not the important factor, but how not how he spoke.

So uh some things to note about when God spoke in the Old Testament.

When he spoke, it was usually unique to that individual.

When he spoke, the person was sure that God was speaking.

When God spoke, the person knew what God said.

When God spoke, the that was the encounter with God.

So uh when we're thinking about Moses, for example, with the burning bush moment, like how silly would it be for him to say, wow, like the burning bush, uh had this moment.

I just can't wait to have that future experience with God now.

No, like that was the experience.

God spoke to him through that burning bush, saying, Hey, I've got work for you to join me in.

When he spoke, it was usually unique to that individual.

He couldn't say, Where else did I see burning bushes and people talk to them?

Let me look to the scripture.

Wait, I'm gonna write the first five books of the Bible.

I can't, I can't go and bounce that off something.

There was no, it was unique to him, that experience of God speaking through the burning bush.

But Moses was sure that God was speaking.

And because he was sure, he knew immediately that it was God.

How could he logically prove to him that he had heard from God?

Not really, he couldn't.

All he could do is testify to his encounter with God.

Only God could cause people to know the word he gave Moses was a word from him, the word of God, from the God of their fathers.

Two, in the Gospels, God spoke by his son.

So Jesus is on the scene.

It's easy to say these are the words of Jesus.

They're coming from Jesus.

In Acts and to the present, God speaks by his spirit.

As we know God's voice, uh, it's going to come from an intimate love relationship with him.

If you want to know the will and the voice of God, you have to spend time cultivating that love relationship with him.

Again, we keep going back to these other realities, and that's why it's all connected.

They're all connected together.

That God's speaking when he has a purpose in mind for our lives, and the moment that God speaks to you is God's timing.

Delayed obedience is disobedience.

And so when we hear a word from the Lord, we say, Yes, this is the time that you want me to act on that.

Number seven, you never discover the truth.

God reveals the truth to you.

God reveals himself in order to increase our faith.

He wants to increase our faith that leads us to action.

So we should listen attentively to what he reveals to us about himself.

We want to believe God is who he says he is.

We want to believe that he can do what he says he'll do.

And we want to adjust our thinking in light of this belief.

That's how we'll know God by experience.

Number nine, God reveals his purposes so that you will do his work.

Number ten, God reveals his ways so that you can accomplish his purposes.

He wants us to do his work, he wants us to accomplish his purposes.

He's inviting us into this, even though he could do it without us.

He says, Hey, I want you to be a part of this with me.

And so, how do we learn how God speaks?

Uh we've got a picture of God speaking through his word.

And as we look at this diagram, um the Holy Spirit is directing us.

We see truth revealed through God's word, and then we make adjustments to God, and then that's going to lead to us obeying his works.

So we read the word, the Spirit takes truth of God's word, it reveals it to us.

We adjust our life to God's truth, we obey him, and he works in us and through us to accomplish his purposes.

Why would we do this?

We do this because all scripture is God breathed and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

He's prepared good works beforehand that we should walk in them.

We have that on a slide too, uh, that verse.

Not just James' opinions here.

God's word directing us here.

He speaks through his word.

It's all breathed out by God.

It's profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, training in righteousness, that we might be complete, equipped for every good work.

He wants to shape us through his word.

He wants to guide us into his righteousness.

We need to be convicted.

We need to take his word seriously.

And then as we as we say, okay, do I disagree, then I'm I'm wrong.

Do I not get it?

And this is also a great place as we're studying God's word for us to do this in community.

Because if you're studying God's word and you go to an obscure passage and you're confused, uh, you can just Google it, but you're gonna get all sorts of weird answers as you just Google it.

And even if you've got a very sophisticated AI agent helping you, you're still gonna have a great chance of missing.

You can't just microwave your faith.

You want to wrestle with God's word, you want to do it in community with people that have followed him and want to encourage you in your faith as well.

Don't try to microwave your faith, but regularly set aside time to listen to him through his word.

And when you feel convicted, don't ignore that.

Don't harden or callous your conscience.

Respond in faith quickly to that conviction.

Apologize for the things that other people might be saying, I don't even know what you're talking about.

You you're apologizing to me for something, I don't even remember that happening.

Like, that's the place you want to be.

You don't want to be in the place where your heart is hard and you're not hearing correction, you're not hearing this training in righteousness.

Because God wants you to be complete, He wants you to be made whole.

He wants you to be ready for every good work that He has for you.

And you're not gonna be ready if your heart is calloused because you've ignored Him when He's prompted you to act.

Like some of the there were these big movements that were like word of life, uh lots of uh gifts of uh the Spirit, gifts of the Spirit, that weren't backed up by a life of righteousness.

And it's heartbreaking, but it's not unique to just one denomination, it's not unique to just one group of people that claim to follow Jesus.

But if you claim to follow Jesus and your life is a wreck, then you're missing it.

And you're you're missing the weight of I need to respond to what he has for me.

I need to respond in faith when he's convicting me to grow into the likeness of Jesus.

I need to respond in faith, and and I want to do that quickly and not just ignore the Holy Spirit prompting me.

And and I say that as like an imperfect guy who's failing and trying to do it better and better, uh, but the Lord is still convicting me in areas that like we're gonna continue to be made more and more like Jesus from one degree of glory to the next, and it's gonna be painful.

And the sharpening from walking with brothers and sisters in Christ, it's gonna hurt.

It's gonna hurt for us to be vulnerable, for us to be exposed, for us to bring sin into the light, and for us to repent and turn.

But we need to be people that respond in community through the way that God's speaking to us, through his word.

God speaks to us through prayer.

We got another picture here.

It's cool, good little picture, keeping it simple for us that the Holy Spirit is gonna guide us through, and how are we gonna know it's God's word?

How are we gonna know it's coming from him through his word?

But then as we know his word more, we're gonna speak that to God.

We're gonna uh be saying, God, what do you want me to do with that?

And as we spend time, unhurried time with him, we make adjustments to obey him, to live for him.

He speaks by his spirit through our time in prayer.

He's present, actively working in our lives.

And as we pray, that is our encounter with God.

Uh, he's the one who takes the initiative, causing us to want to pray.

The Holy Spirit takes the word of God and reveals to us the will of God.

Says, okay, here's how you've got to shift that to here's what this looks like with the wheels on, here's where the rubber meets the road, here's the practical way to live this out.

You start to pray in alignment with God's will.

You adjust your life to the truth of God's word.

You look and listen for further direction from the Bible, circumstances, and the church.

You obey, and God works in you and through you to accomplish his purposes.

That's how you experience God as the Holy Spirit reveals to you in prayer.

Uh Psalm 37:4 says, Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Psalms 37:4

So as we're delighting in him, he, our will is being aligned with his will, so that we can live in according to his ways, so that we can start praying for his will to be done.

But as we pray, we shouldn't throw up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, thinking that they'll be heard for their many words.

Do not be like them, Jesus says.

But instead, what should we do?

We should pray and trust that the Father knows what we need before we ask it.

The Father knows what you need before you ask Him.

God speaks to us through prayer.

Prayer doesn't give you spiritual power.

Prayer doesn't give you power.

It aligns your life with God so that He chooses to demonstrate His power through you.

The purpose of our prayer isn't to convince God to change your circumstances, but to prepare you to be involved in God's activity in your life.

That's how we're gonna experience Him.

That's how we're gonna experience His work as we are aligned with His heart.

And then we've got a picture of God speaking through our circumstances as well.

God has a different perspective than we do.

He sees into eternity past, into eternity future.

We have a very limited, uh here's where it is, right here in our point of view.

What's God what's going on through this, God?

Are you telling me something?

He reveals the truth, and then we go and we obey.

As we hear the truth from him, we go and we act, we go and obey him.

We need God's perspective first.

And sometimes our circumstances are going to be confusing.

Um and so if your circumstances are confusing, you've got to settle in your mind that God has forever demonstrated his unfailing love for you on the cross.

That love doesn't change.

We don't try necessarily need to understand everything that God is doing, but we just want to be with God, enjoy him, go to him, ask him to help us see his perspective.

And then we wait.

Like that's the part I think most of us struggle with is the being still and waiting with God.

Because we want to just move on to the next thing.

Say, maybe God will speak to me in my next thing.

And like it's it's easier to listen to a podcast and say, Yeah, that was my time with God, than actually sit and be still and wrestle with his word and then hear from God through being still before God and him speaking to us.

Then we wait on the Holy Spirit.

We adjust our life to what he shows us and we do what he tells us to do.

We we have to be willing to obey what he calls us to.

We want to be sensitive to what he's doing around us and trust that he's gonna speak to us through his activity.

And sometimes God might seem silent to us, that he might seem like he's far away.

And oftentimes, when he seems silent, it's because we're living in rebellion to him.

Uh we're we haven't obeyed the clearly revealed will of God in our lives.

And then we're like, what's the word, God?

I need another word that I can ignore.

We don't say it, but that's what we mean.

That's what our life is showing, right?

What's the what do you have for me today, God?

And so we want to be quick to respond to what God has given us to do.

And for some of us, that's like look at the commands of Scripture as you read his word, and when you see like those sins to denounce, those sins to avoid, avoid those sins.

When you see those promises to rest in, rest in those promises.

Like you we see the examples to follow, follow those examples.

Like live courageously in faith.

And so, how how can we know that God is the one directing us?

That's that's the question we started with.

That's the question we're gonna look at.

Uh, and we're gonna just look at a big picture.

What does that look like?

How do we know it's God?

And this is this is all the same as what we've just been talking about.

That we have an idea, a thought, a feeling, we bring it to God's word, the Bible.

If we're still unclear, we go and we pray.

If we have clear direction from God's word, hey, um, be faithful in your marriage.

Okay, go and be faithful in your marriage.

Like, I could do that.

Don't lie.

Okay, I won't lie.

Let me let me listen to the commands of scripture and then go and obey.

Let me start there.

And as I am obedient to him, I'll experience him.

If I'm still uncertain if it's from the Lord, this idea, this thought, this feeling, then I continue to pray.

And then I say, let me look at my circumstances.

What is God doing around me?

What's God doing in my life?

And then as I'm still wrestling through that, it doesn't necessarily have to be a sequential order, but this is a good progression to go one, two, three, four.

Then I invite people in.

Sometimes we don't want to pray, so we go and we talk to mature believers.

Stop doing that.

Go and pray and spend time with God first.

Hear from him yourself.

Like you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you.

If you have trusted in Jesus alone for your salvation, then his spirit dwells in you.

You don't need to go to uh your favorite AI model to ask a question.

You don't need to go to uh godly counsel right away.

You should just sit and be still with the Lord and say, Will you direct me?

And then, because I tell you what, if if I give you advice, you can ignore some of my advice.

Like I'm just number four.

But if God is guiding you through his word, if he's guiding you uh through prayer, you should listen to him.

You should absolutely listen to him every time.

God speaks to us.

Are we listening?

If God's word is clear about it, we need to obey.

If his word says something we don't agree with, we're wrong.

God speaks.

Do we pray and spend time with him?

Do we seek his will?

Do we enjoy that time with him?

Do we look at our circumstances and where he's working?

Like if it's roadbackblock after roadblock after roadblock, is that him saying, Hey, I've got something else I want you to be focused on?

Or is that sometimes this road is difficult and I want you to persevere through the difficulty?

And for you to wrestle through that, you need to bring other mature believers in to say, what do you see here?

How can we do what God is calling us to together?

Do we create time and space to reflect, to listen to God, or do we just not ever pause and look back because it's too painful?

Do we allow God to speak to us through his people?

Do we share what we think God's doing in our life and ask for help and wisdom and guidance?

One of my favorite things about our experiencing God group is that we're sharing in there the ways that we see God at work in our lives.

And as we share, we have a chance to say, okay, that sounds crazy, or okay, that sounds like the way I've seen God work in my life before.

I haven't seen too many of the that's crazy.

But a lot of our one-off conversations, we can we can help to guide each other as we say, this is from the Lord, or this is just your will, and you're trying to look spiritual as you do your will.

What circumstances is God inviting you into right now?

Is he giving you a burden for something that he's doing around you?

Have you accepted Jesus as his spirit living in you and guiding you?

Because none of this works if you haven't.

None of this works if it's just let me just pretend to be the a Christian and pretend to do the things.

Are we listening to his word?

Are we uh obeying what he's called us to do?

He's speaking.

Still today, through these things.

He wants us to experience him, he wants us to enjoy him, and we can.