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Grab a scene, grab a scene. Good morning, good morning. We are currently wrapping up our series Hearing God. I don't know about you, but maybe there's something that you're facing currently in life. And you've had the thought, man, I really wish I knew what God had to say about this situation. Anybody, right? Like you're going through something, you're like, I need to get God's voice on this. Anybody? Okay, a couple of us. I'm happy the series was helpful for like five of us, including myself. But we're wrapping up that series this week. Um, and we're gonna be in Acts chapter 16, so you can go ahead and turn there with me in your Bibles. If you have them, Acts 16. But I want to kind of set the scene for you this morning. Paul and a couple of his traveling companions, likely Timothy, Silas, and Luke, the author of the Gospel according to Luke, and also Acts, are traveling together and they're doing some pretty incredible things. They're planting churches, they're preaching the gospel, doing really radical things for his day and age, when all of a sudden during one of these missionary journeys, they encounter some resistance. A circumstance happens, an event happens that keeps them from doing the call and the work of the Lord. Have you ever felt like that? Going about your normal everyday life when all of a sudden you encounter resistance. That's the story that we're going to be unpacking together this morning. Acts 16, starting in verse 6. It says this. Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mijah, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mijah, went down to Troas. During the night, Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, come over to Macedonia and help us. After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. One of the world's best known sinners, turned saint, is a man named Aurelius Augustine. You may know him as Saint Augustine. He was born in the year 354 A.D. He was raised by a Christian mother, but spent his teenage years wrestling intellectual doubt and turned away from the Christian faith. And with his Christian faith, a thing of the past, Augustine took up a wild lifestyle. He later described himself as being a quote, slave to pleasure. He was addicted to success, fame, and influence, and he struggled with intellectual pride. And to try and put it nicely, he liked to sleep around a bit. He enjoyed stealing, not because he wanted something in particular. He just really liked the thrill of doing something wrong. That is, until one day, in a garden, it all caught up to him. He was overwhelmed by inner turmoil and struggle, and in the agony, he heard what he described as children in the background singing or chanting this phrase: take up and read. Take up and read. After looking around, he realized that he was completely alone and sensing that maybe, just maybe, this was God trying to get his attention, he picked up the Bible and did that thing we all do from time to time, flip it open and point to a random passage. He turned to Romans 13, verse 13 through 14, which says, Let us behave decently as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality or debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh. When Augustine read this passage, he said he felt as though his heart was filled with, get this, the light of security. Augustine would later go on to become one of, if not, the most influential theologians of Western civilization for his time period. I think if we could ask Augustine this morning, do you think God speaks to us through life events and circumstances? I think he would undoubtedly say yes. If you kind of flip through the library of Scripture, you yourself, you will come to the conclusion that yes, in fact, God does speak to us through life events and circumstances. I think of Moses, right? He's just watching his father-in-law's sheep. He's a murderer on the run. And while he's tending to this group of sheep, he notices this shrub ignites and catches on fire. Gets his attention, he walks over to it, and then all of a sudden the Lord begins to speak. Or I think of Jonah. He gets a clear call from God. Hey, I want you to go to Nineveh, tell the wicked people there to repent, turn from their ways. And Jonah's like, uh, thank you, sir, but no thanks. Heads off in the opposite direction, boards a boat, and flees the scene entirely. Storm hits the boat. The captain of the ship is like, Who's this Jonah guy? And by the way, Jonah, did you happen to do something to make your God angry? Because this storm is about to take us out. They come to the conclusion we gotta throw this guy overboard. When a whale swallows him all, vomits him, spits him up on the shore, you think God speaks to us through life events and circumstances? Or how about in the New Testament you're reading this story of Paul? He's on the road to Damascus when instantly he is blinded by light. And God starts to speak. Paul, why are you persecuting my people? Why are you murdering my people? He's left blinded for several days. He's sleeping it off in a friend's home on the couch when God sends this guy named Ananias, and he gives Ananias direct coordinates to this house he's never been before. He says, You're gonna meet this guy, Paul. I want you to lay hands on him. He's gonna be filled with the Holy Spirit, you're gonna heal him from this blindness, and he's gonna go preach the gospel. It's like, do you think God speaks to us through events and circumstances in life? Yes, the answer is yes. And here's the thing if you're like me that you're probably thinking like, those are the obvious ones. I think I can get the hint, all right? Like, I know I'm stubborn, I know it takes me a minute, but I think I can get the hint. If a fire shrub starts speaking to me, I'm like, you got my attention. If a whale swallows me whole and spits me out on the shore somewhere, I'm like, okay, God, I see you. Like, I'm you've redirected me. Yes, sir, I'm gonna do it. Like, those are the extreme ones, those are the easy ones, but what about the ordinary, everyday life moments? How do you know what's God and what's not? How do you know when God's speaking to you, trying to get your attention or redirect your path, and when he's not, and it's just everyday life. Because we've all been there. You've walked into the office on Monday morning, dreading the work week. You gotta put up with that boss that's driving you crazy, and those coworkers that are frustrating. When all of a sudden that friend of yours who hasn't talked to you in months or years sends you this cryptic text, hey man, you looking for some work? And you're like, is this God right now? Is God opening a door? Or is this just coincidence? What is it? Or, you know, maybe maybe you're here, you're like, I want to move to a new neighborhood, a quieter place, somewhere far, far, far away from 1488. You're like, I just want some acreage out there, you know? And that's when it hits you when you're scrolling through the old Instagram, you get a little ad that's like new development coming to the area, and it checks all your boxes, and you're like, God, is this you speaking to me right now? Or is that just like a really good algorithm? Like, like, what is it? How do you know? Or maybe you've been here, you you want a new car, so you test drive a car and you you return the car to the dealership and you get in your car, you know that's not as good, and you're driving down the road, and that's when you realize every car I see is the car I just test drove. And you're like, is this God saying, buy the car? Buy the car. Or is it just confirmation bias? What is it? What is it? The simple truth is this God speaks to us through events in life. But here is the warning: not everything that happens to us in life is God speaking to us. And so today I want to answer this simple question. How do we discern God's voice in life events and circumstances? And I want to give you a framework that Paul uses in this text in Acts 16 to discern what's God and what's not. And a little foreshadow for you, a little hint. The framework is the hearing God series. And so all we're doing this morning is we are copying and pasting Clayton and Courtney's content, and I am reusing it with my name on it, okay? So three things, three things. First up, God's word. God's word. In this scene, you have Paul, Silas, Timothy, some say Luke, traveling together. But I often ask, like, what made Paul do this? Like, he's on this missionary journey, he's planting churches, preaching the gospel, but like, why? Why did he do this? Because here's the thing, if you read the life of Paul, you see he had it pretty tough. Paul was persecuted in one situation. He's literally preaching the gospel and he heals this guy who's paralyzed. He gets up and walks, and the crowd is like, oh my gosh, Paul, you are the man. They're like chanting, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul. And there's the crowd is together, like, this man is a God, and this man's a God. Like everyone's losing their mind, and Paul's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, hold up, hold up. I'm no God. He says, I'm here to preach Jesus the Messiah, the savior of the world. The crowd is like, wait, what? Boo, Paul, you're the worst. No, you're the worst. And then they pick up stones and they start stoning Paul. When they think he's dead, they drag him outside of the city walls and leave him for dead. What does Paul do? When he gets back up to it, he dusts himself off, he heads back in the city. He's like, I'm gonna go preach the gospel again. Let's go, like right back into the same city that left him for dead. This man had it difficult. In another instance, he's a prisoner being shipped to Rome. He's shipwrecked, stranded on an island. I just wonder for a moment, did Paul ever come home? He wasn't married. But I like to put myself in this story. It's like, if I'm Paul, I'd be coming home to my wife. Babe, you know, I just don't know if I'm cut out for this whole church planting thing. It's kind of hard. This whole preaching the gospel thing, it's tough. I've been in jail, I've been beaten, like I've been persecuted. Like, I wonder if Paul ever just wanted to give up based on the life events and circumstances. But here's what we see. Acts 13, just a couple pages back, Acts 13, starting in verse 44. Here's what we see of Paul. I love this. It says, On the next Sabbath, almost a whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. When the Jews saw the crowd, they were filled with jealousy. They began to contradict what Paul was saying and heaped abuse on him. Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly. We had to speak the word of God to you first. And since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, now we turn to the Gentiles. So why is it that Paul is preaching the gospel? Why is he planting churches to all of these Gentiles, non-Jews? Here is why. For this is what the Lord has commanded us. I have made you a light to the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth. That last phrase, quotations, direct quotes from Isaiah 49. What kept Paul going? He had himself a passage. He was anchored on God's word. When things got difficult, he knew his calling, his mission, his vision for his life was grounded, rooted in this passage from Isaiah. He was that servant sent out to be the missionary to the Gentiles. You need God's word. It reminds me of 2020 to 2021 time. I felt like the Holy Spirit was speaking to me, and I went for a walk one night and I was just thinking about the future and felt like the Holy Spirit just dropped it in my heart. When Clayton and Courtney go plant a church, you and Holly are supposed to go with them. So I was like, okay, like went home and told my wife, and my wife was totally on board, like, yeah, that's it. Like I sensed that too. And I'll never forget I sat down with Clayton, and Clayton was like, he loved hearing that. He's like, yeah, let's go. But he said this: he said, I want you to get a scripture. I want you to have something to base this on. Like you need a direct word from the Lord. And here's what he knew: he knew that it would be tough to plant a church. He knew it'd be rough, it'd be difficult. And when life throws circumstances and curveballs at you, like you need something to stand on. And later on that week, I I remember sitting just in my study, just getting quiet. And I was reading through Deuteronomy at the time, and this passage from Deuteronomy just leapt off the page. I was like, this is it. Like God spoke to me so clearly through his word. I went back to Clayton, I'm like, I got it. I got the word. Like I am anchored in this, I'm grounded in this. I know this is from God. And here's the thing, and here's why that was wise counsel. It's because it was difficult. And there would be nights where I go home to my wife and I'm like, man, it's tough out there. It's like, hey, remember, Deuteronomy, he gave you a word. God gave you a word. The amount of times that we'd have to go back to this word, time and time again, Paul had an anchor. You and I need an anchor. God's word is that anchor. The second thing you need, the Holy Spirit. Acts 16, 6 through 7 says this. Having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia, when they came to the border of Mijah, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. Paul and his boys are just out here trying to do some good work, just trying to plant churches. Paul's like, let's go to this city. Boom. No, Forcefield. Holy Spirit doesn't want you to go to that city. How about this city over here? No, Forcefield, no, can't go there. I just bet, like anybody in here, you like taking road trips? Are there crazy people in here that like driving in a car for hours on end? Yeah, like I just picture Timothy in this story as the little kid in the back seat. Like, are we there yet? Like, are we there yet? Are we there yet? Like Paul, just pick a city already. The whole city needs Jesus. Everybody needs a church. Just pick one. And Paul's like, it ain't right. It's not right. That's not the city. We're not told why. We're not told why the Holy Spirit wouldn't let them in the city. We're just told he doesn't. Maybe it's an illness. Maybe there's some political leader that doesn't like Paul and is like, Paul, you can't come in here. Or maybe Paul just had this inner witness, like, this just isn't it. We're not given a reason why. We just know the Holy Spirit closes the door. What do you do when you feel the Holy Spirit is closing a door? What do you do? The answer is you wait for the Holy Spirit to open that door or another door. But you wait. You wait. You wait. One of my favorite things after a long hard day at work, sometimes when I walk in the door, I'll see my wife and two kids baking something really good in the kitchen. And if it's a rainy day, I'm like 87.6% positive that it's gonna be banana bread. And I love me a good loaf of banana bread. Okay, especially when it's hot, right? And I'll walk in and I'm seeing my wife and kids just have a blast in the kitchen, and I'm like, this is a picture perfect moment. It looks so sweet. And like one Saturday morning, I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna try and bake with the kids. Let's try this out, you know. You you laugh, so you know where this is going. But my thing is pancakes, or at least I thought it was. One Saturday morning we're making pancakes, and I invite my kids into the kitchen, like, come on, cook with me, you know. Well, uh, as we get into this, I realize that one of my kids likes to straight, like, dry scoop like flour, just like we'll just eat straight flour. Right? Arm in the flour container, flowers everywhere. I have another kid who's like wants to try the batter at every step, no matter like how gross it is or what it looks like, and you just eat the batter straight with a straw if you let him. Like he's like, he's like in it, you know. It's a mess, and there's chaos going on around me, and that's when the kid figures out how to turn on the stove for the first time, you know, and I'm over here in the corner just trying to figure out the difference between like tablespoon and teaspoon, like when they're abbreviated, they look a lot alike to me. I don't, you know? And then I hit this point where I just get overly stimulated and I say this. I'm like, if you kids, if you would just go over there, like like go sit at the table. You know, like let me cook in the kitchen. Like, let me just, I just need a moment. Just go sit over there. I think sometimes I act like my kids when the Holy Spirit closes a door. Like in that scene, my response a lot of times, my kids in the kitchen going crazy, beating on pants, flour all over the place, burner on, like when the Holy Spirit closes a door, that's what I'm doing internally. I'm panicking, I'm freaking out, I'm like, okay, this door closed, sound the alarms, chaos, like that means I must have to go over here and pry this door open, or that means, oh, the Holy Spirit wants me to kick through this door over here. And it's like all the chaos is going on internally. So what do we do? I think the answer is we're just supposed to wait. We're just supposed to wait. It's time to get out of the kitchen and let the spirit cook. Come on. Jesus did the same thing to his disciples. You see, Jesus, when he's ascended to the right hand of the Father, what command does he give his disciples? He says, go and wait. Go and wait. Yeah, go into every nation, making disciples, teaching them to obey everything I told you about. But your first step, go wait. Why? Because I'm about to give you the Holy Spirit, the comforter, the helper. And so what do they do when they're waiting? They lock themselves in the upper room, and it says they pray continuously. And so when you feel like a door has been shut in your life, and you don't know how to make sense of it, it is a sign and it should drive you to wait. And what do you do when you wait? You pray continuously. And here's what happens Acts 16, verse 9. During the night, Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, come over to Macedonia and help us. I just want you to pick up what's happening to this point. Paul has his mission, vision, identity grounded in Scripture. He's sensitive to the Holy Spirit. He's not pushing down doors. When the Holy Spirit says, no, not this way, he listens. And in the middle of him being patient and prayerfully considering the voice of the Lord, God gives him this vision. It's like God backs him in the corner and then gives this vision of, ah, I brought you here to take you to Macedonia. Here's what Frederick Meyer says. If you do not know what you ought to do, and I love this, stand still until you do. How simple is that. And when the time comes for action, circumstances, that is the events in your life, like little lights, will sparkle along your path. The circumstances of our daily life are to us an infallible indication of God's will. When, this is key, when they concur with the inward prompting of the Spirit and with the Word of God. So long as they are stationary, wait. And when you must act, they will open and a way will be made through oceans and rivers, waste and rock. You see, when you bring together God's word and the inward leading of the Holy Spirit, I believe circumstances will start to unfold. You won't have to force anything, you won't have to kick any doors down, but it'll just be this gentle path that develops. And third, we see this trusted voices will confirm that. Acts 16, 10. After Paul had seen the vision, we underline, highlight, we, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia. We concluded that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. Paul wakes up, he's like, Boys, I got me a vision. I know exactly where we're going. I know the Holy Spirit has closed doors here and here, but guess what? I have a vision. I find it interesting that everyone wasn't just like, okay, whatever you say, Paul. No, it says that they concluded. That word concluded means to bring together, to knit together. It literally means to drive two things together. And so Paul and his traveling companions drove to the conclusion. They knit together the conclusion. Okay, we know we're called to preach the gospel. We know the Holy Spirit has been blocking us from these cities. And third, now you have this vision. Okay, now we're seeing what God is up to. And they conclude together. You need trusted voices in your life who will help you knit some things together. Here's what trusted voices do: they walk with you patiently, they help you piece things together. But trusted voices do not mean that you look for somebody who's gonna be a yes man. It's like whatever you say, yes. Whatever you say, yes. Trusted voices are not gonna let you jump off a cliff. They don't belittle you like this. Oh, oh, Paul, you got yourself a vision. Oh, that's cute. Like you're one of those crazy spiritual people. Okay, like eh, I'm out. Like they don't belittle the voice of God in your life. Some of you, you need people in your life that encourage the voice of God. And they don't rush you, they don't pressure you. But here's the thing: why is this so important? Why do you need God's word? Why do you need the Holy Spirit? Why do you need trusted voices to discern what's God in your life and what's not? Here's the thing: you and I, we get the privilege of living out a beautiful story. You, along with God, you are writing a beautiful story. God wants to do something really special with your life. I pray that you believe that. I think of it like this, like a tapestry, okay? I'm ripping this illustration off of an animated movie I saw with my kids called David, okay? So if you've seen it, this is that illustration. But think for a moment about a tapestry. A tapestry is this handwoven piece of art. It's massive. In my personal opinion, I think it looks like a really old area rug. But it's a piece of art. And kings would often commission these pieces of art to tell a story, to capture a story, a moment in history. And this right here is an example of Henry VIII. He commissioned this series called The Story of Abraham. And the next slide here, you'll see in this giant uh kind of foyer area here, ten different scenes from the life of Abraham. And the thing that I find so fascinating about this is all the thread that it would take of somebody to sew intricately all the different scenes. But I want you just for a moment to think about what it would be like if you went to the artist and you said, I want you to tell the story of Abraham. I want you to take a moment in history, but I'm going to handicap you, and you can only use one color thread. That's all you get. Just picture for a moment as the artist would start to weave that together, you'd step back and you'd be like, oh, this is kind of confusing. I can't really make out what's happening. It just looks like a blank slate. That's what happens when we handicap God and say, God, you can only speak to me one way. You may say things like this, you know, I like when God speaks to me out of his word, but the Holy Spirit stuff, that's for spiritual people. That weirds me out. I don't want anything to do with that. Others of us we're intimidated by scripture. Like, I lose my place, it's kind of boring, not really my thing, but like, man, the Holy Spirit, I can feel the Holy Spirit all day. Like, that's easy. I'll go on that. And I think what we do a lot of times that way is we handicap God and we say, God, you can only use this one color thread. And the thing that I just want to tell you this morning is that when you step back and look at the story of your life, and you look at some of the events and circumstances happening in your life, it's gonna be really hard to make out what's going on. It lacks contrast, it lacks depth, it lacks definition. But if you allow God to speak, use multiple colors of thread. Say, God, you can use a little bit of blue here. I'm gonna hear you through your word. You can use yellow thread over here. I'm gonna listen to your Holy Spirit. I'm gonna bring in trusted voices. And what you do, you allow God to put together, weave together the story of your life using multiple threads. And then you step back and you're like, okay, I see what this circumstance was all about over here. Oh, this difficult thing over here, it felt like a closed door, but God was actually protecting me. And you step back, you're like, look at what God wants to do. You need to allow God to use multiple threads to weave together your story. Looks like this. If you can go ahead and throw up that diagram. Here's how you do this: when you have an event, a circumstance, something you need God's help with, you need to throw it in the center of these circles where they converge together. In the intersection of God's word, the Holy Spirit, trusted voices. You need to throw it in the center of that and see what comes out on the other side through a process of waiting. And here's what this looks like. I want to give you two quick stories. This is what this looks like in life. One of my favorite things that I got to witness just a couple weeks ago was a student. We had a youth worship night in this room. And I'm up over here by the steps, and I'm just worshiping, but I'm doing one of these numbers, or I'm like looking at the students and I'm seeing if they're worshiping, and I'm just observing what's happening in the room. And I can tell there's this upperclassman over here. He's a junior and he's just having a moment. And the Holy Spirit is downloading something directly to his heart. I can just sense it. And then I watch as he runs over here to his chair and he picks up his Bible that he has under his chair and he starts flipping through the scriptures like a crazy person. He's just going through, going through, going through. And after service is all said and done, I pull him aside. I'm like, man, what's going on in your life? What's God doing? He's like, it's the wildest thing ever, Chris. He's like, during worship, I just felt like the Holy Spirit was speaking to me something. And then all of a sudden, next thing you know, I was flipping through the scripture, and Isaiah, a passage out of Isaiah, just spoke to me so clearly. He said, Chris, you know what? Like, I've been worried and stressed about what college I was gonna go to, what my future was. I had all these questions, I was so anxious, but in a second, God took it all away and he's like, I have vision, I have clarity of what I'm supposed to do now. And here's the thing He today doesn't have it all figured out, but when it comes time to decide what college to go to, he's gonna know what choice to make. He'll know because he's working this discernment process. And the next thing out of his mouth was this he's like, I need to go talk this over with my small group leaders. I need to get some of my guys, like, I need to go talk to them. It's like that's the trusted voice piece at play. You need a discernment process. When an event or circumstance happens, you need a process. Think of another guy in the church. Complex business decision, staring him right in the face. God wakes him up in the middle of the night, says, You need to go pray. So he gets alone, he prays, and instantly a scripture comes to mind, dropped on his heart. And he's like, This applies to exactly what it is that I'm going through. I'm sitting down, I'm having lunch with him, we're unpacking this. What is he doing? He's taking what he feels the Holy Spirit is speaking to him, what he's hearing through scripture, and he's laying it in front of a trusted voice, saying, Can you help me kind of figure out what's going on here? That's a discernment process. You need a discernment process, but here's my fear. My fear is that you hear something like this and you try to make it a formula. You say, Okay, hard problem I'm facing in life. Let me find a scripture. Okay, got it, check. Okay, let me try and hear something from the Holy Spirit. Check, let me get a voice on this, check, like, and that we just make it a formula. But I just want to warn you, this isn't a formula, this is a relationship. This is just what it looks like to walk daily with your Heavenly Father. You need to know that. And here's why that's so important is because you're going to stumble along the way, and that's okay. This is not a pass-fail. Like a grading system, a process is cold and mean, and it is pass or fail. A relationship is no, you're figuring this out. You're gonna stumble your way through. You're gonna get a word from the Lord and think it was God, and you're gonna go out on faith, and guess what? You're gonna get it wrong. I've gotten it wrong. But it's okay because it's a relationship. It's a relationship. So, how might you put this into practice this week? Three quick things as we close. First, you need to get the mind of Christ. There have been studies done on this, but it's better to memorize and know one passage than it is to crank through three or four chapters of the Bible at one time. And here's why. It's because as you memorize scripture, you're getting the mind of Christ. You want to renew your mind, you want to look at life and the events in life the way your father looks at them. The way to do that is to bathe your mind, soak your mind, meditate on his word. Second, you need to embrace moments of stillness and quiet. Just a pattern I've seen in my own life, but I sense and I hear the Holy Spirit most clearly when I'm just quiet. When I'm quiet. You need moments where you get quiet, you're just still before Him, and you say, Here I am, Holy Spirit. Would you just speak to me? And third, we need to intentionally seek out trusted voices. Look for somebody who has the evidence that they know the voice of God and they are obedient to the voice of God. You need people like that who can show you the way. You need people like that to walk alongside of you. God speaks to us through events and circumstances, but not everything that happens to us is from God, and you need a strategy to discern what is the voice of God. Would you go ahead and stand with me?