Well we’re in this series called doors and we’re discovering that in many ways, life is all about the doors. It’s about the doors you go in and the doors you come out. It’s about the open doors and closed doors and sometimes its even all about the slammed doors. And speaking of doors, here goes: knock, knock. WHO’S THERE? Come on, every campus, play along! Knock, knock! WHO’S THERE? Doris. DORIS WHO? Doris locked and that’s why I’m knocking! Ok, I’m here all day!
Hey, I want to get real practical today, last week was like uber inspirational, but today is going to be like uber practical because I want to help every single one of you become the best decision makers possible. I want to help you know with certainty which door to open. I want to give you a new way to know which door to enter through with every decision in life.
So maybe you’ve got 2 job opportunities, which one do you accept? Or maybe you’ve been accepted into a couple different colleges, which one do you attend, and once you choose that, which major do you choose? Or maybe you’ve got multiple people to choose from for a date, or maybe you’re on the next season of the Bachelor and you’ve got multiple people to choose from for a mate, how do you know which one to choose? When you’ve got multiple doors to choose from, how do you know which door is God’s will? That’s really the question that I want to talk about today, which door is God’s will? Is it the red one because that’s God’s favorite color or is it the white one because that represents purity, I mean really. How do you know? Should I buy this car or that car? Should I buy this house or should I stay in our old house? Is it private school or public school? Dunkin Doughnuts or Krispy Kreme – wait, we know the answer on that one already! Which door do I open? What is God’s will?
Let me just check and make sure this is a relevant topic. How many of you would like to know what is God’s will in a particular situation? Would you just raise your hand if that’s you, if you’re online, you can just type in “that’s me!” Ok, that’s most of us. What’s God’s will? In fact, I would bet that some of you have come here today and you’re facing a decision, a decision that you MUST make this week and you need to know God’s will.
Look at what the Bible says, it says, Ephesians 5:17 NASB: So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. In other words, you better be asking the question, what is God’s will, because without that question, the Bible calls you a fool! It says your foolish so today I want to help you know how to answer this question and you may want to jot down some notes because really, what I’m about to teach you is going to help you make the best decisions of your life.
I want to start with this basic premise, and I’m going to draw you a little picture here, you’ll have to excuse my drawing capabilities, I’m not an artist, but I think you’ll get the point. Here’s the premise. We only want to go through doors that God’s hand is opening. Do you see this? This is God’s hand. That’s good right? It’s a big hand! God’s got a big hand! So the premise is, we don’t want to enter doors that God has shut. We don’t want to force our way into doors that God doesn’t want us to enter. We only want to go through doors that God is opening.
When faced with a decision or with multiple options or opportunities, we always want to choose the door that the hand of God is opening because watch this, we know, down deep inside, we know that God’s plan for us is the best plan! We know that if we can make our decisions in this life based on God’s will, our lives will be better. Even if you’re here today and you’re not so sure about following God and you’re not really a church person and you’re unsure about the Bible, I think you would probably agree with me, that doing it God’s way leads to the best results.
I want everybody to look at me and understand this. God’s got a plan for your life and His plan for your life is infinitely better than your own plan for your life and so wouldn’t it be awesome if for every decision you make in the future, for every door you enter, if you could have the knowledge and the confidence and the assurance that God’s hand was opening that door? Wouldn’t that be awesome? Think about how much better your life would be if you only entered doors with God’s hand on it and today I want to tell you how you can. You can send me a thank you note later. If you’ll follow what I’m teaching you today I’m going to keep somebody from getting into a bad marriage. I’m going to keep somebody from saying yes to the wrong job. I’m going to hook somebody up who’s about to make a purchase and you shouldn’t make it. And what I’m about to teach you is going to make that clear because today I want to walk you today through the five ways that God reveals His will to you and me and before you go through a door, you ought to be looking for God’s finger prints through one or more of these ways. This is how you know God’s will about which door to enter.
So here we go, let’s start with the thumb, you can know if a door is God’s will based on The Bible. If your ever faced a decision that has to do with money, relationships, alcohol, the language you use, your thoughts, sex, marriage, parenting, church, ethics, morality, and so much more, the Bible directly answers whether or not that’s God’s will, you just have to read it for yourself! You just have to read it for yourself, the Bible clearly tells us God’s will in all of these areas and more. This is why I point you almost every single week to our web notes at watersedgechurch.net. Using our web notes every day are a way for you to read your Bible to know and understand God’s will.
Listen, that’s one of the benefits of reading the Bible for yourself is you find out things right here, in black and white, about God’s specific will. And by the way it doesn’t have to be right here in black and white, it could be on your phone or your ipad or your computer. In fact, my favorite apps is called youversion. You can get it from the app store or go directly to youversion.com and there you can read the Bible for yourself and here’s what I promise, as you read the Bible, you’ll know and understand more about God’s will for your life.
The Psalmist in the Bible wrote this, he said about the Bible, Psalm 119:105 NIV: Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. In other words, it helps me know which doors to open. And can I just tell you this because I love you and I care about you and I want what’s best for you? If you and I would just live by what the Bible says, even if that was the only revelation of God’s will we had, just the Bible, if we would just live according to that, 90-95% of our problems and challenges and frustrations and hurts and pains in this life would be solved.
It’s like this. If you’ve ever stood outside the door of an opportunity that involved, let’s just say consumer debt, you know what I mean by that? You’ve ever been tempted to buy some depreciating asset on credit because you cannot afford to pay for it with cash, and you did it. You opened that door and walked through it only to later regret it. Only to later pay more than double of what it was worth or only to later realize, you should’ve never bought it in the first place because you couldn’t afford it. If you’ve ever been there, no need to raise your hand or nudge your spouse, I get it. If you’ve ever been there, then you could’ve avoided that if you had just read the Bible. You could’ve because the Bible addresses the issue of debt directly and you would’ve known, this door of debt is not God’s will for you. It’s in the Bible!
How about this one, you’ll like this one. If you’re a student and you’ve ever disrespected your parents and I’m sure none of you have because WEC students are the best. They really are, I hear that from teachers all the time. When a student is wearing a WEC band, they can tell a difference in that student! But, if you ever stood outside the disrespect your parents door and wondered, is this God’s will, should I go through this door, then you should know that the thumb, the Bible makes it abundantly clear that it is not will. Avoid that door. In fact, the Bible says this, Exodus 20:12a MSG: Honor your father and mother so that you’ll live a long time… In other words, you walk through that door and they might kill you. This is good stuff and it’s all found where? In the Bible! The Bible answers the question, is this God’s will.
Now the thumb is the most important, you always start with the Bible, but the Bible is silent on a lot of issues. It doesn’t necessarily address every door you’re thinking about entering into and that’s where number two, Prayer enters into the equation. Now again, listen, if the Bible is specific and says do not do something or do something, there’s no reason to pray about it. The Bible is specific, after you become a Christ follower, you should go public with that decision and be baptized. So if you’re here today and you’re a Christ follower but you have never been baptized, bam, that’s a door you need to walk through. You don’t need to pray about it, that’s God’s will for you. But when the Bible is silent on a particular door, which job should I take, which house should I buy, what should I say to my kid about this topic or that question, that’s when you better be praying about it! Because prayer helps you know which door to enter.
Look at this, the Bible says, James 1:5 NIV: If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. Look, when we pray, it puts our hearts on the page with God’s heart. It’s us saying, God I can’t but you can. God I don’t know but you do. God I’m depending on you for the answer and I want to do it your way and prayer is the means of tuning our hearts to the right frequency.
When I was growing up, we had the old school radio. It wasn’t digital, you had to turn the knob and the closer you got to the channel the clearer the station sounded. You remember that, it was that way with rabbit ears too. We had some big old rabbit ears on our console tv. Those were the good old days. TVs were more than tvs back then, they were pieces of furniture baby! How many of you had rabbit ears on your tv? How many of you ever used aluminum foil on the rabbit ears! REDNECKS! I did, I remember it, and if you got a hold of those rabbit ears and got them adjusted in just the right direction and stood on one foot with your tongue hanging out the right side of your mouth, you could get the channel clear! But you better not sneeze!
Prayer is like that, it tunes our hearts to God’s heart and His will and His way and it gets your heart in the place to hear, number three, the middle finger, sorry! But number three is God’s Spirit. Ya’ll want a way to remember this, it’s kind of crass but I’m going to hook you up with a memory tool. You got the thumb, it’s the Bible, the starting place. You’ve got the pointer finger, prayer, pointing up to God. Then you’ve God’s spirit. God’s spirit is often represented by a dove, did you know that? A dove is a bird, so the middle finger is shooting the bird, there you go!
Ok, now look, if you’re a Christ follower here today, you need to know something: God’s spirit lives in you! That’s a bigger deal than you’re acting like right now, the spirit of the almighty, sovereign, king of this universe God lives inside of you! The Bible says it like this: I Cor. 6:19a NLT: Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives (say these next two words with me) in you and was given to you by God? In another place it says it like this, Galatians 4:6a NLT: And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son (where? Say it out loud) into our hearts… So God’s spirit is there, prompting you and leading you and directing you and guiding you. Do this, go there, say that, text her, pray for him, meet that need, apologize for that and if you’re listening and if you’re tuned in, God’s spirit will lead you through certain doors and away from certain doors – God speaks to us through His spirit. Sometimes you just know if you’re listening to the Spirit of God inside of you, this is the door I need to go through.
Moving to the ring finger quickly now, the finger with all the bling bling, ca-ching ca-ching. How do I know which door God’s hand is on? I’m looking at the Bible and prayer and listening to God’s spirit, and then God so often will show me through The Church. I put the church on the ring finger because the church is a beautiful thing and because the church is called bride of Christ. You get it? The bride on the ring finger?
Listen, the Bible says this about the gathering of the church, it says Hebrews 10:25 NLT: And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. The church is God’s chosen method to speak to you, to instruct you, to encourage you, and to involve you in His mission. Without regular, consistent, on-going participation in the church, you’re missing out on one of God’s most clear and deliberate means of showing you to the right door! I don’t know why you would choose to miss this right here. When I miss it, I really miss it…you know what I’m saying?
In fact, you should take a little challenge for me. We’ve got 8 more Sundays until school is out for most of us. So here’s my challenge. For the next 8 weeks, don’t miss a week of church. Now you’ve got options, because we have now have 4 campuses, so even if you can’t attend on a weekend in person, everybody can attend online on a Tuesday night or Thursday lunch break. So my challenge is this, for the next 8 weeks, don’t miss a week and watch and see if the choices you make during those 8 weeks are visibly better! I bet they will be because God uses His Church to show us His hand! The 8-week challenge – I like that. I’m going to make that an official thing at some point in the future. Maybe give you a little punch card and on your 8th punch you get a little gold star or a little discount on your offering or something!?
By the way, you know how else the church helps you? Through the church, you meet other people going in the same direction you’re going in life, and God will use them to speak to you about His will. I love this verse, it says, Prov. 12:15 NLT: Fools (remember that word from earlier right? Fools) think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others. Don’t be a fool. I pity the fool! Maybe you need to get in a community group or on a volunteer team so you can meet some people that God wants to use in your life.
We’re down to the pinky everybody! The pinky finger is the smallest and in my humble opinion, when you’re evaluating which door to enter, this one should be last one and have the smallest impact, only because this one is the hardest to interpret, and that would be number 5, Circumstances. Now undoubtedly, God uses circumstances. I can give you example after example in the Bible of how God uses circumstances, circumstances are an important aspect to discerning the will of God. If you’re experiencing the circumstance of unemployment, it’s probably not the right time to walk through a door that involves a big financial commitment. If you’re experiencing the circumstance of a new child and you still live in the one bedroom condo you lived in when you were single, it’s probably God’s hand opening the door for you to move on out to a bigger place. God uses all kinds of circumstances in our lives, but listen, we should always evaluate those circumstances according to God’s overall good plan for our lives!
Remember what we read last week? The Bible promises us that Romans 8:28 NIV: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. God can use the circumstances, good or bad, for our good…look at the circumstances of your life to determine which door to open.
The five fingers of God-that we can use to determine God’s will. I feel like I’ve helped somebody today…especially because some of you didn’t have this paradigm in your tool bag…you’ve just been making decisions off your gut and that’s a horrible way to make decisions about your life. Don’t go with what your gut tells you, go with where God’s hand leads you! That’s GOOD! Your gut tells you weird things after you eat taco bell. It cannot be trusted! Now this is really helpful if you’ve been going with your gut, but I want to just add one more thing to this drawing for some of you who have been following Jesus for a while and who ask questions about God’s will over every subject and every choice and every decision and I want to say something to you in closing. Stumusic21b If all you do is want to follow His hand, you’ll miss His heart. It’s like this, if all I ever do is ask Tabitha what she wants me to do next, like that’s it. Ok Tabitha, I vacuumed the floor. What’s next? What’s next? What do you ant me to do next? And day after day I look to Tabitha for directions but never look to Tabitha for a relationship, I’m missing something in my marriage right? God wanted me to tell somebody here today that directions and guidance are good, but love and intimacy are better. Maybe you need to stop stressing over which door and stop focusing on the hand, and start focusing on His heart. Get to know Him, know His character and his person and his desires, know His heart, and you’ll see His hand! It’s better to know God’s heart than His hand and His heart will always lead you to His hand. I wonder today, if you’re here facing a decision, and you need to know God’s will, I want to pray for you. PRAY!
