How many of you in here tonight have heard of the GPS Navigational System? Its main purpose is to keep you from getting lost. But if the truth were known, the easiest way to get to a specific destination is either to know where you are going before you leave or to follow someone who already knows the way. For the sake of preaching tonight, allow me to use the second of the two notions I just made, being that of following someone who already knows the way. I can’t speak for any of you, but I haven’t been saved all my life. I followed after this and chased after that, only to find myself in the wilderness lost and detached from all that you knew and needed. But in my eyesight I didn’t know the difference and neither do some of you here tonight or our loved ones that are at home, but I found the answer to that riddle nestled in the confines of our blueprint to life as to why we didn’t know or don’t know II Corinthians 4:4 says, In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. (Expound)
Many of us have found ourselves stuck in difficult situations often feeling as if we’ve become lost. Have you ever been there? I mean seems as if everything has dried up and nothing seems to be growing, in essence you are in a proverbial Lodebar. And after being there so long you have given up on things changing and concluded that this must be all God has in store for you, because you have attempted to change your situation, but all of your efforts have failed and the situation has grown dim. If this sounds like you, you are in the right place at the right time, for you very well may not be lost at all, you have just been misled! You may be squarely within the Will of God; for our dry places in life are not always the result of being lost…sometimes God uses the dry places as a places of preparation.
In Exodus 3:8, when God met Moses at the burning bush, He told him that He was going to deliver His people from bondage and into a land flowing with "milk and honey”. Yet, we know when God finally delivered His people from bondage, He led them directly into a "wilderness” where they spent 40 years. We know that their wilderness experience had a purpose because the Bible tells us in Exodus 13:17 that there was a shorter route available that they could have taken and avoided the wilderness altogether. But I tell Bethel in order for you to get to; you must be willing to go through. Let’s put it this way, whenever God leads you somewhere He has a purpose and a predestined place for you, even if the route is a long and dry. (Expound)
I don’t know whom I am talking to tonight, but I can hear the Spirit of the Lord saying, “Your wilderness is the doorway to your promise.” For if my memory serves me correctly, before the ministry of Jesus began He was led, not lost but led, into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tested. In other words even though He didn’t have too, he was qualified in a dry place. If you are in a wilderness right now, don’t get depressed and dysfunctional, for what you have ascertained while being there, will be necessary to sustain you in your Promised Land. Some of you in here tonight are a step away from your promise and purpose and you think that your lost...but I have been commissioned by the Holy Spirit to help you distinguish “The Difference Between Being Lost and Being Led.”
I. You Must Know Who To Call If You Think You Are Lost
(Read verse 22-25 & expound)
Isaiah 55:6 Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:
Psalms 50:15 And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.
Psalms 55:16 As for me, I will call upon God; and the LORD shall save me.
Psalms 145:18 The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth.
Speak Holy Ghost!!!!
II. Learn How To Follow Directions
(Read verse 26-27 & expound)
Close w/ Directions to Our Father’s House!!!!
