What's up, everybody? Come on, let's go.
My name is Pastor Dave. I'm the middle school director
here at RES, and God is good all the time.
Let's go. A few weeks ago, I took my
youngest, Kevin and Tashi, who are five and three, to the
trampoline park, and they were going nuts in there.
I couldn't pull Kevin off of the stuff, and it was hot in there.
And Toshi comes up to me and she's like, dad, I'm thirsty,
like, OK, let's go. So I grab her and I walk just
around the corner and I'm picking her up and I'm holding
her and she's drinking. And then I hear that
indistinguishable call of your lost child, dad, like, oh, Tosh,
Kevin's looking for us. And then almost immediately,
with fear and tremble, and I could hear the tears in his
voice, he calls out again. All right, Tosh, hurry up, let's
go. We walk a few steps around the
corner and I can see Tosh, I mean Kevin with a staff member
now holding him, obvious tears coming down.
But he had heard me. I had called out to him.
I said Kevin, now he's looking for me.
He's not crying, he's looking around.
Where's my dad? I walked closer and I called out
again. Kevin and the staff member sees
me but just keeps looking, looking for Kevin's father,
holding my son back, not letting him go to who he knows.
Kevin knew instantly as soon as I called out to him because he's
my son. We've spent thousands of hours
together. The staff member, an adult,
somebody more intelligent, more maturity, more experience,
couldn't recognize me at all, looking for somebody who looked
more like Kevin. The the difference wasn't
intelligence, wasn't capability. It wasn't that she couldn't
figure out. She just didn't have the
relationship we have. That's exactly what we're going
to learn in our text today. When God feels distant, when God
feels quiet, when it feels like He's not communicating with us,
know that recognition comes from relationship.
That's our big idea for today. Incredibly, God has given us a
primary way. He builds relationships with us.
He speaks through his Word, which is alive.
It's active. Hebrews 412 tells us the word of
God is living and effective. It's not just ancient text on a
page. No, it's God actively
communicating with us today, right now.
The primary way you build relationship with God and learn
to recognize His voice is by feeding on His word.
Feeding means three things. Reading it, considering what it
means, and lastly, taking action, applying it, dealing
with it in your life. Think about that, Kevin.
How did he learn to recognize my voice?
By spending countless hours with me, listening to me, responding
to me. That's exactly how we recognize
God's voice through his living word.
So if you have your Bibles, open them up or being John chapter
10, we're going to read from his word and remember, this isn't
just historical text, historical information.
This is God speaking to you today.
But let me ask you, do you find it hard to hear God's voice?
Have you had a decision that you just needed God to speak into,
that you just desperately wanted direction, that you needed God?
So you reach out to God and pray and say, God, what do I do in
this situation? How am I supposed to handle
this? What is?
What is your will for me? What am I supposed to do?
God, give me direction. Then a thought enters into your
mind and you wonder, was that me?
Did I just make that up? Did I answer my own question?
Is this my desire? Is this what my heart wants?
Or God, was that you? Did you speak to me?
Was that the Holy Spirit pressing upon me?
Or maybe maybe it was something else.
Maybe it was that bad burrito I had the other day.
This is the struggle every believer faces, learning to
distinguish the difference between the voice of God and all
the other voices competing for our attention.
Wouldn't it be incredible to know exactly what God wants you
to do? To be able to hear from God?
Imagine if you could ask him for directions and you could get a
super clear answer. Have you ever been driving
somewhere and you have your your GPS on your Google Maps and then
suddenly it cuts out? You're in unfamiliar territory.
Maybe it's getting dark, Maybe you don't know where you're
going, but you think you do, but you rely on all everything on
Google Maps and then suddenly it goes dark.
I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, my anxiety
goes through the roof. Which way do I go?
Am I going the right direction? Did I miss my exit?
I would give anything to hear that voice say in 500 feet, turn
right, or even recalculating route something.
Just give me something. That's how many of us feel
spiritually. We're trying to navigate through
life's big decisions and we're desperately wanting to hear
God's voice, desperate for a clear direction.
God, should I? Should I take this job?
Should I move? Should I get married?
Should I have kids? Should I forgive them?
Should I say something or stay quiet?
Wouldn't it be incredible if you could ask God, ask him any
question and get a really clear answer, like a spiritual Google
Maps? God, what do you want me to do?
And then in that calm, clear voice, the voice that we've
heard many times, it says in faith, step into that new thing
or wait, I'm working on something else for you, or stop,
go the other way. But here's what happens often.
We're going through life. We think we hear something, but
we're not 100% sure. God, Was that your voice or is
that just my own thoughts? Was that the Holy Spirit
directing me my emotions are are my emotions taking over what's
happening here? Am I am I justifying what I
really want to do or gotten? Is this your will for me?
So let's read John chapter 10 verse one.
It says truly, I tell you, anyone who doesn't enter the
sheep pen by the gate but climbs in some other way is a thief and
a robber. Sometimes we are so desperate
for direction, longing to hear from God, that we're willing to
listen to anything to anyone, to any friends, even our bad
friends. The friends that give us we know
we they give us bad advice. We'll listen to fortune cookies.
We'll listen to our hearts. That's the worst of all, by the
way. Or like in verse one, we'll
listen to false teachers who sneak into our lives.
Verse 2, the one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the
sheep. The real shepherd, the legit
shepherd is Jesus. He's not sneaking around.
He's not playing funny business. In fact, the whole story of who,
of why and how Jesus is going to come to earth and to save us was
told hundreds of years before it even started.
Jesus is not trying to trick you and I into following him.
In fact, he's laid out a plan that seems kind of bad to some
of us. Jesus given the title the King
of Kings and the Lord of Lords, but he's not the king that
forces you to follow him. A king who's come to earth as a
humble servant to live a sinless life, a life of grace, teaching
of kindness, teaching of love, showing what actually looks
like. To do that, finish with me,
verse 2. The one who enters by the gate
is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens it for him,
and the sheep hear his voice. That's us.
We're the sheep. He calls his own sheep by name
and leads them out. That is incredible.
Jesus calls us by name. He speaks to us individually.
Think about that. God is so good that He wants to
be there for you and you individually.
He wants to guide us. He wants to give us directions.
Isaiah 3021 tells us whenever you turn to the right or to the
left, your ears will hear this command behind you.
This is the way. Walk in it.
Jesus is there for us. He's leading us.
Recognition comes from relationship.
He is the one who actually wants to know and does know you
personally. He calls you by name.
This isn't just some giant blanket statement that God loves
the world. It's personal.
He sees you. He understands you with all your
talents, with all your traits and even your trials.
God's not here building robots. He's building relationships.
He knows exactly what's going on in your heart.
He knows the stuff you're proud of.
He knows the stuff you're ashamed of, and he knows the
stuff you're trying to hide. And get this, he still loves
you. He loves you fully even during
all of that. Verse 4 And when when he has
brought all his own outside, he goes ahead of them, the sheep
follow him. Why?
Why would the sheep follow him? Why would we follow Jesus?
It says because they know his voice.
They never follow a stranger. Instead, they'll run away from
him because they don't know the voice of a stranger.
At first, the thought of hearing God's voice seems impossible.
It's not impossible, it's incredible.
Then it becomes recognizable and familiar and then discernible.
About four years ago at my previous church, I was asked to
shut down youth group. Shut it down or change it
significantly. Let me tell you, our youth group
was blowing up in numbers. We had 75 to 100 students
showing up every Wednesday. Doesn't that sound amazing?
I agree, it was amazing. Students would skate into our
parking lot, we'd hang out with them, we'd love on them, we'd
give them water, we'd tell them the gospel, and eventually,
eventually they started inviting their friends back.
And then all of a sudden, we had this explosion of skaters at the
church. Let me tell you, there's nothing
wrong with skaters or skating. In fact, the church we purchased
rails, we purchased ramps, we set it up so they could skate
there at the church. We loved having the students
there, but we connected to a group of students that were
hurting, that had parents in their lives, that were just
adults, really. No parenting happening.
Kids who lived from couch to couch, who never went to school,
who always had a vape that had weed or nicotine in it.
Kids that brought significant issues to our church.
You get me. Eventually that group grew to
twice the size of our normal Sunday congregation and we
continue to share the gospel over and over, week after week,
we would share the love of Jesus Christ of these students.
So when the time came, when the statement came at me that it is
time to shut down youth group because the students were just
totally out of hand, I was livid.
How could we shut down youth group?
This is all they have Shut down sharing the gospel.
This is insane how I I was so angry, I was so mad.
Every emotion in me was firing off.
I wanted to yell, I wanted to quit.
I cried my heart. It was broken for these lost
kids. I was given two weeks.
Shut it down or change it significantly.
I had no idea what to do, so I did the only thing I knew what
to do. I went to the sanctuary where
the 100 kids would be and I got on my knees.
I prayed, I prayed, I prayed, and eventually my knees got so
tired I just laid there. I asked God, what am I supposed
to do? Give me something, God.
Give me direction. This doesn't feel right, God.
Eventually, I picked myself up off the floor.
I walked out of that room with no answers, silence, no
explanation, no direction of what I was supposed to do that
night. We had youth group and like
always, a ton of kids showed up so big that we had to split up
our game. We split it up into four groups.
We had the high school boys, the high school girls, middle
school, and quickly we ran the boys through the through the
game and then we sent them straight to the sanctuary as
quickly as possible. Next we sent the girls, sent the
other half and I was, I was walking out to go to the
sanctuary like I always do to do our lesson, share the gospel of
Jesus Christ. I get to the leader who's in
charge of making sure that every one of those students goes from
point A to point B and he looks at me and he says they all left.
What? What do you mean they all left?
All of them? He's like, no, well, not all of
them. There's probably about 10 to 15
kids are normal church kids. And at that moment, the Lord
spoke to me, not audibly, but he said in these words, Dave, I
know you love those kids. I know you love them with all
your heart and so do I, but they're not here to learn about
me anymore. And he told me I'm going to do
something that you can't do. And he gave me a vision of a
hand gently wrapping around students and leading them off
the church. Grounds that following Wednesday
was our last Wednesday all the students gathered like normal.
I shared the gospel one last time and then I let them know
youth group as you knew it is over.
They were in shock what it's done Wednesday night, it's done.
I told them if you have any desire, just a tiny inkling of
desire to learn more about God, to get connected with God,
something with God to show up at church on Sunday morning.
I will personally connect you. We'll start small groups.
We'll do something that will guarantee that we will continue
your focus towards God. But if you're not, if you have 0
interest in God, let's say goodbye.
When I said that, about 30 students stood up.
They got in a line and they proceeded to give me a hug,
shook my hand and said goodbye and the rest of them just walked
out back doors. The room had gone from this
energetic massive amount of kids.
She just a few of us leaders in this darkened room.
Am I call to God? Show me what's going on in my
failure to see how hard it was for me to let these kids go,
that my leadership already knew what God was working on because
these students were not even here for God that night.
There's a detail that I didn't learn about till later.
One of my leaders was so angry, just like I was.
He was in the back of the sanctuary, pacing back and
forth. He was calling out to God.
God, if this is really you, God, this can't be you.
God, prove to me. Prove to me that this is really
your will. Show up.
God do something. The rest of us leaders were
standing in the front of the sanctuary, kind of in sorrow.
Then I heard a familiar voice, a voice of a young lady who had
been in the group for a long time.
She said Pastor Dave and I looked up and she just walked
through the back doors. She said, sorry I'm late.
Oh, seriously, You don't know what just happened.
You have no idea that we just change everything.
Before I tell her anything she says, I just want you to know
that my friends here are not good for me.
So I haven't been coming to youth group for the last couple
of weeks and I decided on my own that I'm just going to come to
church on Sunday mornings. I couldn't see it, but God was
working in all of this. He was working through the
toxicness. I couldn't cut through it.
And yet here He was proving to me that He is in charge.
He is working. He's dealing with all of this.
God actually wants to be our spiritual Google Maps even more
than you want to hear from Him. He's not playing hide and seek
with the plan for your life. He's not trying to make it
difficult for you to try to figure out what you're supposed
to do. Wouldn't it be amazing for you
to clearly hear the voice of God?
You can, but it comes from a relationship with God.
It comes from experiencing God. It comes.
What First Corinthians tells us is it comes from having Christ
in their life. 1st Corinthians 214 says but people who aren't
spiritual can't receive these truths from God's Spirit.
It all sounds foolish to them, and they can't understand it,
for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit
means. The spiritual person is someone
who receives the Holy Spirit and sees life through God's lens.
But we don't start off this way. Romans 512 tells us that
therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man,
death, through sin, in this way death spread to all people
because all have sinned. You see, we are all born into
this world spiritually dead, full of sins, full of issues.
But we don't have to stay that way.
Romans 58 tells us God proves. He proves it his own love for
you and I for us that while we are still sinners, Why are we
while we're still enemies of God?
Jesus died for you and I and God gives us a simple yet heart
surrendering instruction to deal with this.
Romans 10/9 says if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord
and believe with your heart that God raised him from the dead,
you and me and anybody who does this will be saved.
You must surrender to Jesus if you want Christ in your life.
The truth he has to give, the direction that he promises.
You have to surrender to God. Jesus died and he raised from
the dead three days later to offer you freedom from sin,
freedom from shame, a new life with God in control as your
spiritual guide. So today, if you'd like to
surrender to God, if you're willing to ask him for
forgiveness, for salvation, right now, I want to give you
that chance. So if everybody could please bow
their heads, close your eyes just for a moment, just so you
can focus between you and God, I'm going to give you an
opportunity to talk to God. I'm going to give you an
opportunity to accept Him. You can repeat these words or
say something similar, but this is just between you and God.
Jesus, I know I am a Sinner. I know there's all kinds of
stuff in my life that shouldn't be there, and I cannot save
myself. I want you to save me, adopt me.
Adopt me into your family. Jesus, I surrender everything to
you. I receive your promise of
forgiveness, your promise of adoption, your promise of
eternal life and guidance. Lord, please be my Savior.
With nobody looking around, if you prayed that prayer for the
very first time today, would you be brave enough to raise your
hand? Thank you, I see you.
You can put your hands down in Jesus name, Amen.
All right, if you just committed your life to Jesus for the very
first time, welcome to his forever family.
In just a moment, we're going to respond to the word of God.
And during that time, there's tables on the back corners that
say I've raised my hand. These tables have people that
are going to congratulate you. They're going to love on you.
They're going to give you a Bible.
We want to take the next step with you in your journey with
Christ. And I want to give you a couple
application things that you can do in your life that will help
you hear from God. If I told you to wake up
tomorrow morning at I was going to say 3, but ain't nobody's
doing that at 5:00 AM to just pray to God and then just be
quiet for a few minutes that God will speak to you.
God will actually hear you. You will hear him.
A lot of you would do it. You would be excited about it.
You would be talking to your friends about it.
Hey, I'm going to do this. It's pretty cool.
God talks to me. He's real, He's alive.
He actually answers me. Well, here's the thing.
The Bible says that the word of God is alive.
It deals with our everyday situations.
Even more incredible says that the Scripture is God breathed.
It says that His word is a light, like a flashlight that
opens your view, guides us, and gives us direction.
Sometimes the reason that we can't hear God's voice clearly
isn't because he's not speaking. It's because we built barriers,
barriers between Him and us. How often do we read His word?
We read what it says, we think about it, and we say, hmm, I
don't think that applies to me. That seems like kind of a lot of
work. God calls us to treat our
marriages as the covenant they are, yet we treat them as
contracts to be dissolved when our expectations are not met.
The Bible calls us to get rid of bitterness and to forgive
others, and yet we can't imagine forgiving somebody else.
We can't let them off the hook for what they did.
Deep down, you know the things that God is asking you to deal
with. Sometimes we're asking God for
steps 234 and five, and he's still waiting for us to deal
with step #1. Application number one is to
live in dependence. Dependence.
Our culture heats that word dependent.
Such a bad thing, but it's obvious we are dependent on God.
He even calls us to be dependent on Him.
So fulfill that dependency by being in His Word.
A few weeks ago we talked about abiding in God's Word to let it
soak in, to be in it. So dedicate time with Him.
Maybe it is 5:00 AM, maybe it's 5:00 PM, but find a time to be
in His Word. Open it.
Let the truths of it come alive. Shape your mind, your character,
your path. Let it allow you to step into
directions that you don't really want to deal with.
It will start to answer your questions.
Maybe you're thinking, I don't know where to start with this.
I don't know how to read the Bible.
Read John with us. It's 1 chapter a day. 21 days
later you'll have more than you even started with.
And don't worry about understanding what it says.
You'll understand a lot, but you won't get everything.
That's OK. Just read it like you're getting
to know a person because that's exactly what you're doing.
Application #2 Don't do it alone.
I can't tell you the amount of times our men's group have
opened the Word of God. And then we were open about
what's happening in our lives. And I can't tell the amount of
times that we threw out bad ideas into the group and allowed
others to speak into it or spent a week praying about somebody
else's idea or decision or thing that's going on in their lives,
only to have a discerning voice of God come back and tell us,
no, they shouldn't do that. This is a good thing, having
people in our lives. This saves us from a lot of bad
choices. If you don't have people like
that in your life, start small. Find one person who loves Jesus
more than they love making you happy.
We would love for you to join any of our community groups.
Pray over the things in your lives.
Be real together. Any of our staff, any of the
leaders, anybody at the checking tables will help point you
towards that. Lastly, application #3 pray
about everything. Seems simple, but it's really
not. Do you have God on retainer just
waiting to use Him at the most pivotal, pivotal moment?
This is the perfect time to use God.
Or are we giving Him everything? There's things in our lives that
we don't know how to deal with God.
I don't know how to deal with the emotions of my preschooler.
God, I'm worried about money, but I don't want to seem like I
don't trust you. God, I hate my job, but I don't
know what else to do. God, I'm attracted to somebody
else, but I shouldn't be. We need answers, but we don't
dare say it out loud, let alone tell God or tell wise counsel or
tell our godly friends. But that can stop today.
Our prayer team is coming up right now not only to pray with
you, but to stand with you as you come before the Lord with
something that you have never talked to Him about.
So as the music starts, come forward.
Please stand. Pray as the Lord leads you.