"What Is Your Guide?" Brother Kenneth Ray July 29th,
2012 It says in Hebrews that our God is a
consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29).
Sometimes we say, “You’re going to Hell; you better get it right.” Sometimes we say, “God is good.” The truth is, yes, He is a consuming fire,
and yes, He is my Savior. Life is hard,
and sometimes it’s a struggle. Sometimes
I mess up, but I learn from my mistakes.
It’s a natural process. No, I cannot give my own public opinion
from the pulpit. There’s not a stamp on
here that you can read, but it’s on there.
The pulpit is not for your private interpretation, your soapbox… It is
for God’s Word, sound doctrine. Baptism
in Jesus’ name? That’s sound doctrine;
that’s in the Bible (Acts 2:38, Acts 10:48, Acts 19:5). The fact that we have missionary works in
Haiti and Sri Lanka, that’s in the Bible, too:
it says go ye forth unto all the nations, baptizing them (Matthew
28:19). That is the work that we have
been asked to do. But what I want to
talk to you about today is, what is your guide?
What is it that guides you in those actions that you do? Is it your own personal opinion? Did you hear it from someone else? Did you have a consensus, where a bunch of
you decided, “This is the route we’re going to go?” You can do that, right? That happens.
Did you get up this morning and just feel like, “Well, I’m going to jump
today?” Did you wake up this morning and
say, “Well, I’m in the Navy, I guess I might as well go to school; that’s what
I’ here for. I don’t really feel like
it, but...” It happens. Sometimes we’ll get what we call, a wild
hair, and we go do something. Or did we
get up this morning and say, “Lord, what would you have me to do today?” Did we seek God for the counsel about the
thing that was on our minds, so that when we have it rest upon our hearts, it
is on a good, solid foundation? Or did
we just blow by the wind? if so, then we have no foundation. These things are important to us as
Christians, or even as every-day life.
You know, I joined the Navy. Why
did I do that? I had to have a
reason. I am now currently a member of
the United States Air Force reserves.
Why did I do that? I had to have
a reason. I didn’t just wake up one day
and say, “I think I’m going to go join the Air Force.” You don’t just get up and say, “I think I’m
going to take up smoking.” I say that,
because when I went to Germany, I had a guy, and this sounds funny, and yet,
it’s not funny at all, and he said, “I think I’ll start smoking today.” That was his rationale. “Why did you do that?” “Oh, I just thought I’d try that.” That actually happened; this was not on
TV. Sometimes in the church, we decide
that I need to preach on this today, because someone did this, and you need to
hear about it. But, yet, did I take time
to talk to God today before I talked to you?
We all have our heroes. I have my heroes. When I was growing up, there were people
that, if they gave advice to that effect, then I was going to do it. They were my heroes. They were there for me. I had a teacher in school, and one of my
neighbors, that I went to for counsel.
Because they had value to me, I did what they said. Sometimes they told me something good,
sometimes they told me something that might have gotten me into trouble. They did the best they could, but in none of
those times was I at a stage in my life where I asked Jesus anything. I wasn’t
to that point, and maybe you’re not to that place in your life today, if you
visiting with us this morning. You may
be wondering, “I don’t really know about this talking to Jesus thing.” Okay.
I acknowledge that some people don’t really get into that kind of
thing. And maybe some of us have been
involved with Jesus for so long that we think we’ve got it down. We don’t talk to Him as much as we used
to. You know, I’ve done that a thousand
times before; I’ll just do the same thing again. That’s usually when people get themselves in
trouble. Have you ever had the
opportunity to watch one of those safety videos (and they are boring)? If you can stay awake, you will hear them
say, “I have done this thing a thousand times before.” It was just like any other time before when I
had done it. And yet, this time, half
your body is burnt to a crisp. Something
wasn’t like it always has been, if that happened. And, then, being guided, if you simply say,
“This is the way we’ve always done
it…” What do they teach you in the Navy about
when you go home, right after boot camp?
Everything is going to be the same except for … you. You’re the only thing
that is going to have changed. Your
friends are all going to be the same way as when you left, the town looks the
same as when you left it, but you’re going
to come back and they’re going to look at you and say, “You’re the one who’s
changed.” Well, in our Christian life,
everything around us changes all the time.
Tomorrow will not be like today.
The only thing that stays the same is Jesus. The same yesterday, and today, and
forevermore (Hebrews 13:8). He’s still a
consuming fire, and He’s still our savior.
It’s still a terrible thing to fall into the hands of a living God, and
He’s still the rock that we cry out to for our help. He’s arm is still not too short, and He still
will chastise His people, because if He doesn’t chastise you, then he said you
are one of His. None of that has
changed. And yet, I wake up some days
and I feel good, and I feel bad other days, because I have outreach. And the Source, our Spiritual Guide, calls
for us to either be up, or to be down.
Let’s look at this thing for just a moment: Everything that you do as a congregation
gets stuck on me, because I’m in charge.
If you do something awesome, I get a badge. If you do something wrong, I get this big
stamp on me. It reads “Ugly,” “Not Good,”
“Religious,” whatever. You say, “It’s
just my life, it doesn’t affect anyone else.”
Oh, but it affects the whole body.
Whenever you point out something insignificant, they look at the whole
fellowship. They don’t know the
difference between you, me, or anybody else; they just know that you’re part of
this body. If your feelings, your
emotions or your piousness or just your grumpiness is your guide; that’s not the
Rock. I do not get too old to be called and
guided by God. I do not get too old to
be useful to God. In twenty years, I will
not retire. I may not be doing the same
thing, but I will not be retired, and my shoes hanging up, saying, I have done
mine, time for someone else to do it. I
probably won’t be in the pulpit; I probably will have moved on from that in
twenty years. Twenty years, I’ll be like
sixty. You would be surprised what you
can do when you’re older if God is guiding you.
I watch the Olympics. I’m glad that one guy won a gold medal, but I’m
hurt that Michael Phelps didn’t win one.
I like Phelps. My wife jokes with
me because I like watching curling. There
are things that I will watch on TV that I would never watch if it wasn’t the Olympics. If the US is playing badminton, I’m watching
badminton. If the USA is curling, I’m watching
curling. If the USA is playing field
hockey, then I’m watching field hockey. They
represent my country, and the beliefs that I have. Do we support each other that way? Are we allowing God to guide us that way, to instill,
to impugn, to teach, at that moment, what God is guiding us to teach, or are we
just being the elder to the younger and keeping them in line? Are we adjusting with the times as they
change? Are we allowing God to guide us
in the here and now, or are we still using sliderules, sliding little dots to
count. Can we figure the square root
long hand? Can we do it if the
calculator is not present? You’ve got to
know the old ways, and the lessons that you learned, for God to guide you. You have to be able to apply them today, and
to do the work that it takes to get it done, and not always take a shortcut,
and not be able to function if you can’t.
You have to put the work in for God to use you. Those of you that work out, can you work out
once and look like Ah-nuld? no. And,
does it feel good? no. I’ve been running
and doing push-ups. It doesn’t feel
good. But when I score a 90 and don’t
have to do it again until next year, that feels good. When you’re guided by God, sometimes you do
things that just don’t feel good. If you’re
being guided by God to talk to a brother about something that’s wrong, you’re
going to provide some encouragement and a solution, too. If you see a brother in need, can you say, “He
needs something, and I can provide that something.” You can if you’re doing it by the Holy Ghost
and not caring about what anybody else says or anybody else does. Cream rises to the top. We should always be able to
acknowledge that all of the glory must be His, and it will be, if we have the
right guide. Sermon notes by Pete Shepherd |
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