School

A one-shot, you never kind of never know what to do. And so this is sort of like throwing a dart. Uh, for some of you, I’ll probably sort of like throwing a dart. Uh, for some of you, I’ll probably miss the target. Others of you, I might. So I don’t know, but I felt this is what I want to talk about today. So if it fits where you’re at, that’s great. It’ll fit sometime in your life, that I can guarantee. Okay? It’s a simple topic: How to know the will of God. Okay? How to know the will of God.

I want—I’ll start off by saying 95% of the will of God is known. Many times we talk about the will of God; we don’t take that into account. But 95% of the will of God, it’s like an iceberg. Most of it’s underwater. 95% of the will of God is uh, who we are, not what we do, not where we go. It’s who we are. And, of course, the scripture is full of uh, counsel for us in terms of the kind of person we’re to be. Uh, and if you are in the will of God in terms of who you are, uh, there’s going to be a certainty that you will be where God wants you to be and you will go where God wants you to go. So that’s always the first concern, but that’s not where I’m going to go today. I’m going to talk instead about the location or directional will of God. When you’re 95% in the will of God and you’re faced with decisions of what to do next, uh, how do you—how do you go about making that choice?

Uh, this message really comes out of a lifetime of experiencing this and a lifetime of looking at how the Lord, uh, through the spirit guided people in the book of Acts. So I give you five—five ways to directly know the will of God. Uh, the first way is one I would like to have—it’s supernatural revelation. Supernatural revelation. All of a sudden there’s light, bells, and whistles. You know there’s the Saul of Tarsus, Acts 9 experience. There’s the Moses burning bush experience. That’s a wonderful way to experience the will of God. Um, or if supernatural appearances don’t go—maybe an angel could come along and suddenly appear and tell us what to do. Um, but I’ve discovered, uh, in looking at the scriptures that appearances or manifestations require still the response of faith. For example, the Apostle Paul when he’s described as having the uh, the vision of the Lord, Acts chapter 9, verse 4 says he fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” But when he recounts that experience years later to a mob at the footsteps of the Antonio fortress in Jerusalem, he says, “My companion saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to them.” In other words, people heard sound but did not hear the articulated words. Only Paul heard the articulated words. So when he gets up off the ground after having fallen from his horse, he looks around and says, “Did you hear what I heard?” And they say, “No, we didn’t. We—we heard some noise.” So Paul’s response still required faith. Even if you have a divine manifestation or an appearance—and uh, I’ve always wanted that kind of direction in my life, but I have discovered that uh, those who have had this kind of call in direction subsequently suffer greatly. Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Paul, you name it. So, I decided that it was okay at 77 years of age. Now, I don’t necessarily want that anymore. The Lord still wants to do that, but I know that, you know, experience out of the grass is waiting not too far away. So, I’m not worried about that anymore in my life. And the Lord did not tell me to go write a novel either. That’s covered by another thing here in this message.

Um, when I was in college at Evangel, I had a friend who locked himself in his dorm room for three days, fasted and prayed, and told God to show up in those three days or he would not serve him anymore. God did not show up, and he was—my friend was true to his word. So, he failed to understand this principle that appearances require faith and you can’t demand an appearance. It’s God’s initiative. As for a direction from an angel, uh, if you look at the angels in the book of Acts, you’ll discover they do not give lifetime commissions. Their—their direction is a limited direction. For example, the angel tells Philip to get down on the road to Gaza. Um, and an angel appears to Paul in a storm in Acts 27 and says, you know, everybody’s going to be saved on the ship. Angels are especially useful in jailbreaks. Um, there are—are two of those in the book of Acts, Acts 5 and Acts 12. And of course, um, in a storm as well. So, um, supernatural—the closest I’ve ever come to supernatural visitation probably was an experience of vision in the Evangel College Chapel in the year October 1970. We were in the midst of a tremendous revival on campus. I had just returned from full seminary with a bachelor’s degree. I was 29 years of age. Uh, I planned to stay at Evangel campus pastor for my entire life. I’d been only back a few months. We had two little children at the time, and we were—when we got in our little uh, tin can result and left California across the Arizona border, I looked at my wife Joel and I said, “We will never raise our kids in California.” And um, that October in the middle of that revival one evening I looked across the chapel. All the kids were praying at the end of the service, and I saw in the distance a vision of an artist rendition of Christ on the cross, and I felt um, an overwhelming sense—George, look around. This is going to be your place of ministry much longer. It was so powerful that I couldn’t shake it, but at the same time I didn’t want to tell anybody about it. I didn’t tell my wife about it, only to find out uh, some months later that that was the same month a broken church—and when I say broken, it had gone through church split—it was down about 60 people in California had begun a week of prayer fasting for a pastor, and that happened to coincide ultimately with the call that God put on my life to leave something I felt secure and go to uh, California, which in those days was much safer than it is now, but California has gone absolutely bonkers uh, in their government, but that’s a whole another story. Okay? If you’ve been to California, you know that. There’s not much humor here uh, today, so sorry I got political there for a minute. So supernatural revelation—that’s—that’s what I look for first. Does God appear to me or whatever?

Second is worship. There are various components of worship. There’s prayer, there’s the word, and there’s corporate seasons of worship. Um, prayer, for example, one of the key moments in the whole life of the Christian church is in Acts chapter 10 when Peter in Jaffa goes up on the rooftop to pray and has a vision of the men coming from Caesarea by the sea. And often what I like to start tours in the Holy Land by—by going to that spot in Jaffa and saying, what would have happened had Peter missed this time of prayer and had been prepared for these three guys who would begin to take him into the world of the Gentiles, which means us. Um, Jesus prayed before key moments. He prayed before the call of the 12. In fact, Luke tells us he prayed all night before he called 12. He’d told them to pray. I always thought that probably the people that made the final cut—because Jesus had more than 12 disciples. We know he had 70, and there were 500 even. So how—how did you get in the final cut? My—my theory is that when Jesus told them to pray, he himself went to pray, and when he came back he found 12 of them were praying, and suddenly they made the cut. But he spent all night in prayer. Uh, he prayed before the transfiguration, uh, which is a nighttime event. He prayed before Calvary, “In thy will be done.” He was not—when we often use that prayer—that saying in prayer, “Well, your will be done.” Jesus knew what the will of God was at that moment. So he wasn’t praying to find the will of God. He was praying to do the will of God. That’s, I think, an important distinction. Uh, sometimes we find out God’s will through—through prayer. Uh, sometimes maybe a scripture just lights us up. There—there was a Moravian practice of opening the Bible and letting your finger fall on a text. And I do not recommend that as a way of finding God’s will because inevitably I wind up on a text like Exodus 22:18, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” And that’s not necessarily God’s direction for me uh, today. But one of the persons in our missionary history that actually did that was Lilian Trasher. She had gotten on the boat to go to Egypt. And I don’t, you know, I’d love to tell the whole story. It’s a long story. Uh, but I’ll just zoom in on the segment where she was on the boat with $50 in her purse. No promise of publicly support, no missions agency backing her, but she through unique service of circumstances found herself there. She had been on the boat a few hours, which she’d—she’d lost believers. I kind of think they were Arabian pythons, because Arabian pythons had this practice. And they told her to open her Bible and see if God would confirm to her her call. And so she let her Bible fall open, and her finger landed on Acts 7:34, “I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down now to set them free. Now come, I will send you to Egypt.” She said, “In this unmistakable way did God confirm my call—His call on my life.” And good word for the next 50-plus years she served in Egypt. Did incredible work.

Uh, I experienced that when we uh, at the founding of Royal Family Kids Camp. It was 1985. Uh, we—we had felt as a church that we should do a camp for abused children. There were 37 kids that we had been able to sign up through Orange County social services that were from uh, foster parents. And that night uh, that—that Sunday night, we called the workers that were going to be at the camp beginning on Monday forward to pray for them. And while we were in the middle of praying for them, uh, the um, somebody began prophesying. I thought they were prophesying. I did not realize it was a quote from scripture. That’s how well I knew scripture at the time. And it was a quote from Isaiah chapter 58, which says, “And if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will arise in the darkness and your night will become like the noon day. The Lord will guide you always. He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land. He will strengthen your frame. You’ll be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.” And then this tremendous phrase, “You will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up age-old foundations. You will be called repair of broken walls, restore streets with dwellings.” Wow. There’s no more—no more broken wall than what has happened with abuse and neglected children in this country. And there’s no greater need for restore of streets with dwellings than the restoration of kids, and I have two granddaughters that are examples of that. Um, since that time over 100,000 kids have gone through Royal Family Kids, and it was just such an amazing confirmation of God’s word in that—in that genesis moment, that creative moment, that birth of ministry that has helped change the lives of tens of thousands of young people. So sometimes in prayer, sometimes—and as you walk the streets this week and praying, who knows what the Lord will put on your heart? Who knows what will happen as you open God’s word and somehow a verse will leap out at you and confirm or suggest maybe something. There’s also corporate seasons of worship. For example, Acts chapter 13, while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the spirit said, “It was the okay; now’s the deployment moment. Get going,” and that’s the first missionary journey starts as a result of the leadership of the Antioch church being in an atmosphere of corporate prayer and worship when the spirit says, “Get going.”

I have to in this context put in a word about personal prophecy as kind of a sub-subset because um, this has been an area where sometimes people have sought uh, to know God’s will in their life by going to a prophet and the prophet saying, “Yeah, thus saith the Lord.” Um, I want to—I want to walk through an experience in Paul’s life that helps put a context for how to use—if somebody comes to you and says, “The Lord has shown me that you’re to do—you’re to marry Joe, or you’re to marry Mary, or you’re to go to Timbuktu”—how to assess that. Okay, so let me walk quickly through these scriptures. Acts 19:21, Paul decided to go to Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. He was—he was at Ephesus at the time. He decides he’s going to go to Jerusalem. Okay. That’s—that’s number one. Then Acts 20:22, Paul compelled by the spirit, “I am now compelled by the spirit. I’m going to Jerusalem.” So first he decides; later he says, in to the Ephesians elders, “I am going, compelled by the spirit.” Then Acts 21, verse 4—the kicker—when he comes to Tyre, which is a T-Y-R-E, the prophets there, through the spirit, they were called not to go to Jerusalem. And you notice the conflict right away. Paul said, “Compelled by the spirit, I’m going.” The prophets of Tyre say, “Through the spirit, don’t go.” And then that’s followed in Acts 21:11-14 with—with the seasoned prophet Agabus coming over to us; he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand them over to the Gentiles.’” When we heard this, we—and the people there—pleading with Paul not to go to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I’m ready not only to be bound but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said—and said, “The Lord’s will be done.” Do you notice suddenly here Agabus did not tell him not to go; he just told him what would happen? So what happened with the prophets at Tyre? They did something I’ve seen happen in Pentecostal circles. They kept speaking through the spirit after the spirit had quit speaking. The message of the spirit was continuous: If you go, you’re going to wind into trouble. But the prophets of Tyre got a little bit of their human feelings involved. And um, you know, it reminds me of a story—one of our churches in South Florida years ago. Guy stood up in the middle of the service and said, “The Lord told me to run into that wall over there.” And he gets out of his seat and on a dead run, crashes into the brick front wall—interior wall of the church—and collapses in a heap on the floor. And the congregation, you know, collectively gasps, and finally kind of gingerly rallies himself, stands up, looks sheepishly back at the congregation and says, “While I was down there, the Lord told me not to do that anymore.”

Looking at Paul’s example, therefore, personal prophecy could either prepare you for something God is going to confirm to you, or it will confirm what God has already shown you. Personal prophecy is never directional; it’s preparational or confirmational. So, be careful of that as some prophet comes along and tells you God’s will for your life. The third way God guides us is circumstances. That’s how Matthias in Acts chapter one was chosen to replace Judas rather than Joseph Barabbas, who was also called Justus. They cast lots. In other words, they flipped a coin. What a crazy way to choose the 12th apostle. But they were basing this really on the thumb of the high priest. The two stones—one side was glossy, one side was flat—and one—the people got one direction. The priest would pull the thumb out of his pouch, and if it landed up on the glossy, it was yes. If it landed on the flat, it was no. If it was mixed, it was cast the lot again. Or Proverbs put it this way: “The lot is cast in the lap, but the decision is fully from the Lord,” Proverbs 16:33. So circumstances brought Matthias into the 12. Circumstances brought Stephen to the fore because there was an argument in the church over some of the widows; the Hellenistic widows were being neglected, and that necessitated a need for deacons, and Stephen becomes then promoted to be the lead deacon. So it was a circumstance. Don’t tell me that church trouble always results in defeat. It can result in some very good things. It can produce deacons. Really, they were good things. Some pastors don’t think so, but I’ve always thought deacons are great. Uh, there was—through circumstances, Paul um, diverted his plans to go with his legation bringing an offering to Jerusalem. He was in Corinth. He—he heard about—he was told about a plot on his life. So he sent the others on ahead, and he went up to Macedonia. And in Macedonia he picks up this person who was always identified by the personal plural pronoun “we.” It happens four times in the book of Acts. By process of deduction, we come to the conclusion it was Luke. And so Luke then joins Paul and—and they come to Jerusalem for Paul’s two years in prison, by the sea. Luke is traipsing around the countryside, interviewing the eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry and sits down and writes this third gospel and the book of Acts. Had there not been a plot on Paul’s life, averted his travel plans, Luke would have missed out on that experience in Paul’s life, and we wouldn’t have the third gospel or the book of Acts, and we would jump from John to Romans and wonder what happened. So it was circumstances.

Um, when I was eight years of age, I was diagnosed with nearsightedness, wearing glasses. Um, when I was about nine years of age, within a matter of several weeks, I broke my glasses three times playing basketball. And my father was a pastor of a small church. And he—he said to me, “George, you’re going to have to quit playing basketball. Stay on the perimeter, but don’t go for the rebounds or anything, because I can’t afford to keep buying you glasses.” So, as a result, I began going to the library and checking out books. And I really believe that part of my interest in history and part of my interest in literature and reading resulted from the fact that I had the circumstance of a dad who told me, “Uh, I can’t afford to keep buying you glasses.” It was glasses that got me out of athletics. But that’s probably a good thing because I’m clumsy anyway. It was a circumstance. Last May, I was driving from Springfield to Topeka—or to Wichita—to do service for the 100th anniversary of the Kansas district. It was Sunday morning. I started out early, and all of a sudden at about—I think it was around 9:30—I noticed the sign, “Fredonia, 60 miles.” I thought, “Oh my word, Fredonia! I haven’t been there since I was 23.” It was a significant moment in my life. I thought, “I wonder—I wonder if I can make it in time for church.” And you know, when you’re—when you’re a former general superintendent, you walk into a smaller church. It’s kind of awkward. People—you know, it’s just awkward because people don’t know what to do with you. And so um, I actually drove around the parking lot. I’m kind of a shy person. I actually drove around the parking lot about three times before I decided to go in. I actually drove around the block, I should say. And finally I went in, sat in the back. The pastor recognized me, was very gracious, and asked me to say a few words, and I said, “You know, the last time I was in Fredonia, I was on my way to Pennsylvania. I graduated from seminary. I didn’t know what I was going to do after seminary because in the Assemblies of God we have no placement system. We have ecclesiological Darwinism, which is random selection of survival of the fittest,” and uh, so I had managed to borrow a couple of 16-millimeter film challenge films, which were brand new, and I booked meetings from California all the way to Pennsylvania, up through Wyoming, down through Kansas, up—up back through uh, through Ohio, and then on to Pennsylvania, and my largest meeting was for Seminar Rock Pers, Hasty, and uh—and I was going to go from Fredonia, Kansas, to Little Rock, and then from Little Rock to Jonesboro and skip Springfield. I didn’t want to come back to Springfield because all my friends were gone that I’d gone to college with. And at the last minute before leaving for seminary, I got a letter from David Hasty canceling the meeting—that was before, you know, email—I mean, so—so I—when I was in Fredonia, I knew to get to Jonesboro I had to go to Springfield. I thought, “Ah, I don’t want to do that.” Uh, but I took—I was in my little Volkswagen. All my earthly belongings were in my Volkswagen, including a big 16-millimeter projector, which I know you don’t know what that is. And um, so I—in Fredonia, I preached that Sunday. I got in the car on Monday. I came to Springfield. I came on campus—Evangel was all still very rural then—walked into the administration building. I think the library was up. Walked into the administration building. President Ashwood was there. Walked down to the dean’s office—Dr. Williams’ office. He was sitting at the secretary’s desk, and I said, um, “Hi, Dr. Williams.” He said, “George, what are you doing here?” I said, “I’m on my way—I’m doing youth ministry this summer.” He said, uh, “What are you doing this fall?” And I said, “I really don’t have any plans yet.” He said um—he said, “Well, how would you like to teach?” I thought, actually, you know, by letter two or three times and you said I don’t have experience. How do you get experience? Somebody give me experience. So, so I said, “Oh, I really like that.” He said, “Well, I just had a vacancy come up.” He said, “I need—I need another teacher.” He said, “You just graduated from Florida. I’ll hire you. Go in—go into my office and here—fill out this application. You’re hired.” That is literally—I was single at the time. That fall, I met my wife Joel and asked her to marry me two weeks after our first date. Got married two months later, and we lasted 53 years. Uh, so far anyway. But I look back, I thought, you know what? It was a circumstance of a canceled meeting that—George is my son and Evan is my daughter, and you know, life happened. It’s crazy. So, don’t underestimate circumstances. True. You know, I call—instead of calling them coincidences, I call them providence—providence rather than coincidence. Uh, so okay, so supernatural revelation, worship, circumstances. The fourth way uh, is confirmation of other believers. Confirmation of other believers—that’s how Timothy was called. Paul picked him up at Lystra and said, “Hey, you know, I’ll interview you; come along with me.” Of course, Timothy had a degree. That’s how John Mark, you know, got restored from Barnabas. We have John Mark because uh, somebody saw the potential in him and called him forward. I’ve come to the conclusion there’s no such thing as a self-called person. It requires the confirmation of others. I think back, you know, when—when James Bridges sat in my office shortly after I had assumed the office of general superintendent and said, “George, I—I—I think I want to retire at the—at the end of March, and the person God put on my heart was Dr. Clay.” And then a few months later, uh, when there was a vacancy in the office of general secretary, I stopped by uh, on a Friday morning uh, Jim Bradford’s office at Central Assembly and asked him—they were—they were called through the confirmation of others. Uh, every position I’ve had in life has been through the confirmation of others. And you’re in your position because somebody said, “Yeah, you have the talent for this job.” So, don’t underrate what other people are telling you. Also, sometimes um, you have to overcome what a person doesn’t really believe in you. I love my dad. My dad was a hard worker. He was a missionary first and then a pastor of small churches, and—and as a kid I was very shy.

And I, I remember when, but I had a call to, to, to min to vocational ministry. And when I got ready, when I graduated from high school at Central High School, I, I told my dad I wanted to go to Central Bible College, because that's where you went in those days if you were what, called to ministry. And my dad said, "No, you're going to the new school that the son of God has opened, Evangel College, because you'll get, you can get a degree that'll help you for a profession so that if you fail in the ministry, you can teach school." So, so anyway, but that, that also was a good thing, because uh, Evangel made me aware of a larger world of academics and from there I needed ministry of preparation. That's how I wound up in seminary. You know, that's, that was a very good combination of circumstance and confirmation.

Fifth way, and I've got to pretty much wrap it up: Personal choice. That's the fifth way of knowing God's will. Uh, it's what Luke demonstrates when, in chapter one of his gospel, he says, "Many others have written, and I firstly interviewed witnesses," and he says, "It seemed good to me also." In other words, I'm going to sit down and write this because it seemed good to me. Didn't have any bells, lights, and whistles. Nobody told me to do it. It seemed good to me. And Acts chapter 15:36, at the beginning of the second missionary journey, Paul says to Barnabas, "Let's go back and convince the brothers." No, let's do follow-up for it. Just made sense. So he does something very common sense-oriented.

When I was pastor of one mission commission, I had Morris Williams, um, who was at that time very director, field director, regional director, I guess was now the term regional director for Africa; great missionary. I said to him, "My brother, Brother Brothers, you've been a missionary for 25 years. How did you get the call to be a missionary?" He looked at me and nearly floored me. He said, "I never had a call." I thought, "What? What?" I mean, you're a leader in the AWM. You never had a call? He said, "No." He said, "I never had a call. I just read in the scripture where Jesus was taking volunteers, so I volunteered." I thought, "Oh my goodness, wow." So sometimes choice can, can play in. I really, you know, some people get so spiritual. They're walking down the grocery store and say, "Oh Lord, tell me, do I buy Wheaties or do I buy Cheerios?" And I almost hear the Lord say, "I don't care. Just make up your own mind here." Uh, be careful on this whole subject of fleece. A lot of people say, "I use a fleece." I just remind you from Judges chapter 6 that Gideon used a fleece even though he already knew the will of God. He was trying to get out of it.

Uh, what you want to do. Well, Proverbs 16:9 says, "In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his step." That's good. We plan, but God determines. What you want to do and what you ought to do need to line up. There have been times I wanted to do something and couldn't do it because I ought not to do it. I was going through, we were going through a stretch of early growth in the church I was pastoring in, and another church heard about this young 32-year-old red pastor, and they were uh, three times as large, twice the salary, and they had a pipe organ. I've always dreamed of pastoring a church that had a pipe organ. And so I went and talked to the board. They wanted me to be a candidate. I wanted to with all my heart. And the Lord inwardly, I felt, you know what, if you leave this church, you're going to leave a mess because it's not ready for you to leave, and you can't leave. And so what I wanted to do, I couldn't do. And sometimes that happens. Proverbs 20:24, "A man's steps are directed by the Lord." I think the key factor is walk through the open door. God doesn't do a lot of provision in advance. Whether it's the manna or the feeding of the 5,000, he tends to do a step at a time. And I've learned that there are sometimes long periods of silence and doing a little of God. God, like the wise man started out, and then the star disappears. You just go in the direction you last saw the star.

Which brings me to my favorite poem in life: "Plot on, blot on, plot on, blot on, plot on." Second verse is "Plot on, plot on." One thing I did, this is not scriptural, but one thing I did in terms of personal choice. I early on, I faced a very major decision of leaving the campus pastor individual taking this church. And I finally came to a decision. I finally came to a decision because I didn't have any divine manifestation, and circumstances were conflicting, and advice was conflicting. And so I finally said, "Lord, I really want, I believe I want to do this, but I'm not exactly sure. So I am going to fast for 4 days. And if at the, and if I have, and you have four days to tell me in some way not to do this, but at 6 p.m. on Wednesday night, this was Sunday morning, 6 p.m. on Wednesday night, I'm going to call that church and tell them I accept the vote to be their pastor. And anytime during these four days, if you want to stop me, you have to do that. Otherwise, I'm going to go ahead with this. And I, and my bargain with you is if at any time I break the fast in these four days, I'll just, I'll not go, because I don't have what it takes with spiritual strength to pastor that church or build a church in that community." And it was amazing in those four days, uh, how the Lord brought circumstances to bear to confirm uh, the call. So at 6 p.m. on Wednesday night, I, um, I called the church and told them I was coming, and then I immediately headed for George's Steakhouse on Glenstone and had the best steak and baked potato I've ever had in my life to this day. But it was, it was a way of testing, you know. So, I'm not saying to you to do that, but sometimes if you are really at a major crossroads, it would help to just add to that major fasting to confirm the choice that you've made.

Um, often decision is not just based on one of the five ways I've told you, but a combination thereof. Always look for peace in your relationship with God. Peace on the inside. Psalm 31:3 says, "Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name, lead and guide me." And that's our prayer. The Evangel team's going to come back and do one more worship song for us. But it's been a joy to be back with you today, and I hope this is useful in your life as you make decisions. I don't know. You know, when you, when you're asked to speak and it's a kind of one shot, you kind of never know what to do. And so, this is sort of like throwing a dart. Uh, for some of you, I probably missed the.