One of the adventures I had as a young man as a 18year-old was I climbed Mount Wilhelm which is the tallest mountain in Papa New Guinea. My father was a pilot. You can see there on the screen a small green patch that’s the airirst strip kegle Sugall and so we flew into that just parked the plane at the end of the airirst strip you know like you do and headed up the mountain. We walked to the base camp, spent the night, and then we set out a.m. in the morning cuz the goal is to get to the summit for sunrise. When we got to the top and we turned around and we were heading back down, and we looked out where we had come, we could see the lake, which was down where the base camp had been. And uh uh me and my friend said, “It seems crazy that we had to walk all the way along this ridge and out and around 5 to 7 km when the base camp is just, you know, straight ahead. And so we decided in our great 18year-old wisdom that we would shortcut back to base camp.” And so we set out, left the guide, left the oxygen bottle, and headed straight down uh the mountain side there. Uh it started out okay. When we started, we could see that it was it was accessible to get down, but we certainly got some points where we were questioning there. There hits a point, as you can imagine, a point of no return where you just think it’s a lot more work to get back to where we’re supposed to be, then keep on going. But even as we got down the worst bit of it, we came across this marsh land that was just like it looked it actually looked like smooth grass and we’re like, “Oh, this is the easy bit.” But as we stepped into it, we sunk into this like deadly freezing cold water up to our knees and we tracked the last little bit. When we got back to base camp, everyone else had been there for a few hours by then. And uh and our shortcut turned out it wasn’t the best shortcut. And so we were cold, we were wet, we had spent all this time uh lost in the mountains of uh Wilhelm. What’s even crazier is the next week we had heard uh on the news a story of two hikers who ventured off on their own at Wilhelm and didn’t come back alive. And uh it just made us realize a little bit of I mean it was 18. We didn’t think we were that stupid about it, but it made us realize a little bit of the danger we were in. There’s times in your life where you want a guide, right? There’s times where you might feel like you can do it on your own. There’s times in life where you want a guide. There’s times in life where we we feel like we know where we’re going and then we get in too deep. There’s other times where it feels like we’re managing pretty well. One of the questions for us as we think about uh the the interaction with people and God is uh how does God guide us? Is that there an idea of God guiding us? Certainly as we read the Bible and we hear stories who people who seem to have really clear guidance from God and there’s times where we would think wouldn’t it be great if I could get that I just know exactly what I need to do or maybe the question is even more than that. Maybe the question is what what is the point of it all? Is there any point in making significant decisions? Is it just do the best you can for this life and hope for the best? just try to be uh nice to others, make leave the world a better place than you found it, or is it just random and we’re really just at the mercy of the laws of science and the way things land? The message of the Bible is far more profound than just randomness and nothing. The message of the Bible is that there is a God and that he has significant purpose for your life. That he calls you to something. Paul who lived at the time of Jesus writes this to church uh he says for we are God’s masterpiece for he has created us a new in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. We are God’s masterpiece. And so the call for us as we think about God guiding us is to not waste our life to seek that purpose. And it’s never too late for us to want to seek that purpose. There was a story about a woman who was 104 years old and she was asked the question, what’s the best thing about being 104? And she said, the best thing about being 14 is that there’s no peer pressure. That I can I can be the person I want to be. It’s never too late to be the person God has called you to be. And so, we’re going to look at that question. How does God guide us? And uh I I said that at the Alpha course, I think, is one of the best introductions to the Christian faith uh in the world. I think it’s phenomenal. We’ve already seen a little bit of the video clips. I will do a bit of talking. We’ll watch some more of the videos. But I think the framework that it gives us on how does God guide us is such a helpful framework that I’ve used this through my life at different points ever since I heard about it a long time ago. So five uh they’re called the five CS’s things that start with C and S. Uh five CS’s. The first one is commanding scripture. This is what the Bible says about scripture. Psalm 119 verse 105 says, “Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.” Commanding scripture is a way that God guides us. I’ve often heard it said, “What does a 2,000year-old plus book, what could that on earth have to do with me?” And you can understand that thinking, of course. But if we are to believe etern an eternal God exists and I believe he does and if the message of the Bible is that he’s been gradually revealing himself to humanity and that’s what we see through the Bible that there is a progressive revelation of God that has happened all the way up uh to the time of Jesus. So, if there’s a God and he’s eternal and he’s been progressively revealing himself, it makes sense that what that eternal God has revealed himself would be a timeless revelation, right? If he’s the eternal God, then it makes sense that even something he revealed about himself a long time ago could still have relevance to us today. But is it is important for us to remember that scripture has messages that were given to specific people at specific times and then other parts of scripture are messages to all people for all time. Right? And so there’s there’s stories we see where someone was told one thing and we don’t necessarily take that thing that they were told and said, “Well, that needs to apply to all of us.” No, that might be a specific message to a specific person at a specific time. But there’s definitely other parts of the Bible that do apply to all people for all time. And all parts of the Bible are useful for us because they tell us the story of God’s plan of salvation. And they tell us more about who God is. And so we don’t just abandon parts that might be have been for specific times, but we in we understand them in the context of of where they lie. Let me give you this simple illustration to um to help explain that. Imagine there’s a imagine there’s a prince who is kidnapped from his kingdom and he’s taken away to another kingdom and he’s in captivity and the king is setting in place a plan to go and rescue the prince. But in the meantime, as he plans his as he makes his plan, he starts sneaking letters in to this prince. And imagine these letters this prince reads that they they give him hope. They give him encouragement. They help him build a relationship with his father. But also the king is setting about helping train his son to be the prince he needs to be even though he’s not currently living in the kingdom under the king. But he takes the opportunity still to train this prince in the way he needs to go. So he might say things like you need to you need to respect people in a right way even as you live in this prison. You might find ways to respect your prison guards and respect humanity. Uh and he might give them commands guidance like that. Now imagine the king’s son, the older prince comes and frees the younger prince, brings him back to the kingdom and he’s got all those letters that were written. Now, it’d be crazy for him to then read those letters and continue to live out those letters as if he’s still in prison, right? He would have to read those letters in a different way. And yet, he may still hang on to them because they have taught him how to live the way the king has encouraged him to live. And it has helped reveal things about his father that helps him understand his father more. We see a similar picture with the Bible that the first uh largest part of the Bible the first bit the Old Testament gives us that story of God’s salvation and through the story of God’s salvation God is revealing parts of himself. And we want to be careful as we read that that we read it through the context of what what it is in the time that it is given to us. And so there’s parts of the Old Testament that reveal things about God and there’s commands given to God’s people in the Old Testament that are looking forward to the day of rescue. But when the day of rescue comes, it is a fulfillment of that plan. And so it’s crazy for us to still live entirely as if we’re in the prison when we are now in the kingdom. And that’s the picture we get from commanding scripture that there’s places where the Bible uh clearly leads us, but we want to read it in in certain context of what it is. In fact, I think that verse uh that we’ve got on the screen there is helpful in one sense because it gives this picture of what it often feels like for us. That is a lamp to our feet. It’s often been described to me uh in that imagery that uh this might be depicting just the light on your feet. It’s not kind of depicting the whole way ahead and what path you have, but just each step take the next right step. And sometimes that is all we get as we think about how God will guide us. Uh sometimes the the the clearest picture is not what we should do but what we shouldn’t do where we shouldn’t step. That’s certainly my experience as we went up Mount Wilhelm that we could see very little other than what was right before us. And you just put the light there and you work out where that next step is and where you shouldn’t step. Sometimes that’s what commanding scripture looks like. But there’s another picture we get in the Bible of the usefulness of the Bible and and that’s the picture of looking to the horizon. That is the picture of lifting our eyes beyond what’s immediately in front of us and look to the future. This is another um verse that the Bible talks about guidance and it says let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. And then it says we do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. That is sometimes the picture of the Bible is that we are looking to Jesus and his example and we’re looking to follow him and we might not know the exact steps that we need to take. We might not know the pathway but we know where we’re going. Also the Bible points us to our primary calling. our primary calling, the the good thing that God wants to call us to. It’s not necessarily the question of who you should marry or what job you should get or what you should do in a specific situation. The primary calling we have is relationship with God to be united in Jesus. That is the purpose of our life and that gives our life meaning and the Bible points us to that and as we read through the Bible it will help us dig deeper into that and that will be a framework that will help guide us. But if that’s our primary purpose there’s a secondary purpose that comes with it. If our primary purpose is to love God, then the secondary purpose that flows on that is to show that love to others. If I go back to that verse we read before uh in Ephesians, it says, “For we are God’s masterpiece. He created us a new in Christ Jesus.” And then it says, “So we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” This is the message of the Bible. Not that we’re saved by doing good works, but that we’re saved for doing good works. That this is a purpose to love God and let that love flow on to others. And so, there’s certain decisions we have that the Bible might be really clear about. And there’s questions that some questions we don’t need to be praying and asking God. Some of them are really clear. You don’t you don’t need to pray and ask God, should you pay your taxes this year? The answer is you should. In fact, the Bible even says that we should do what’s right by the law that is above us. You should pay your taxes. There’s a story of a man who uh wrote a letter to the tax office. Dear sir or madam, I’ve become a Christian and I’ve found that I cannot sleep at night. So, here is the $100 I owe you. P.S. If I still can’t sleep, I’ll send you the rest. God does call us to live in a certain way and to serve him in a certain way. So, I want to encourage you as we we round up that first point of commanding scripture. if you’ve never tried reading the Bible. Last week at Alpha, we talked a lot about um how to read the Bible and why to read the Bible. But I would like to point uh this again. Um this is a little resource called the word onetoone. Now this is predominantly designed actually to read with someone. Um but the word onetoone, we have a whole heap of these books up the back and if you’d like one uh just take one after the service. You can also download the app uh which is free and also PDFs online that are free. The word onetoone takes you through the gospel of John uh in the New Testament at the beginning of the New Testament. Well, not the very beginning but towards the beginning of the New Testament and it’s a very simple little resource. Um on the left hand side it has a couple of verses from John and on the right hand side it has some explanation on how to understand that. And so this this book is just John chapter 1 and it just goes through uh some simple readings and processing um it’s the beginning of John. So it’s it’s introducing Jesus and who he is. So, it’s a great place to start if you’re thinking about reading the Bible. Those are available up the back or on the app or online. It’s called the word onetoone. If you would like to read them through with someone, uh we can we would have someone on our team that would love to do that with you. Uh, and I’d also encourage you that we’re going to be launching a another alpha program in August, and I think it’s a great way to unpack some of those ideas. Commanding scripture, I we start with commanding scripture cuz it’s so significant. It is the primary way that God reveals himself to us. And as we look at all the other ways that God might reveal himself to us, we want to keep coming back to do they align with the scripture that God has given us. The first one is commanding scripture. The second one we will move through them a little bit quicker. But the second one is compelling spirit. If we are more than physical, if we have a spirit and then God’s spirit, the Bible tells us speaks to our spirit. In fact, one of the languages the Bible uses is that when we put our faith in Jesus, God’s spirit comes to live in us. There’s relationship through God’s spirit. Paul gives an example um when he’s uh he’s feeling like God’s spirit is calling him to go to Jerusalem. This is what uh he writes. And now I am compelled by the spirit to go to Jerusalem. I don’t know what awaits me. There’s a picture that if God’s spirit dwells in us and unites with us, a couple of things happen with that. One of them is that uh God’s spirit unites our desires with his desires. This is one of the great challenges of figuring out what God wants in your life. One of the great challenges is we have our own desires and we know that sometimes our own desires don’t align with God’s desires. So how do you know if this is God’s desire or it’s our desire? Well, we we will put it through the scripture framework and see if it’s something that aligns with scripture. But also we might use some of the other frameworks to see if it aligns with what God is telling us. God unites our desires with his desires. I uh I heard a story once. It was actually a teacher of mine when I was in lower high school. She told a story where a man came up to her. She was single. Man came up to her and said, “God has told me I’m going to marry you.” And she said, “That’s funny. You forgot to mention it to me.” It’s possible that we have our own desires that are not aligned with God’s and we want to be careful of that. But also God does unite our desires with his and that is a prayer that we can pray not just as we pray God guide me but pray God lead my heart to your heart. when uh my wife Susie and I were uh in early days of uh dating and and getting married, um she had gone to Africa for a short-term mission and really felt like she wanted to become a teacher and go back to Africa and uh I had grown up in Papa New Guinea on on the mission field and I really felt called to Western Sydney. And so she says she started a prayer and the prayer was may God align our hearts together and God answered that prayer and we are in Western Sydney and she genuinely has a heart for Western Sydney. God unites our desires with his desires. But also we need to learn to recognize his voice. You know that when someone rings you who is a close friend or family member, you recognize you can recognize their voice straight away by someone you know really well. The same thing is true with God that his spirit might lead us but we need to learn to recognize his voice. Not an audible voice that we would hear but the desires that he draws us to. We need to listen to his voice. Uh you don’t go to a doctor, kind of list all the things that you want that are going on in your life and then say, “Thanks, I need to get that off my chest.” And leave. You wait for the doctor to give you a a a diagnosis, a pathway. The same thing’s true as we think about God guiding us, that it’s not just we pray and and tell him all the things, but we need to start listening. And we do that through these different ways. Through commanding scripture, through a compelling spirit. The third one is through Christian support. Let’s watch the video. The third way God guides us is through advice from other Christians. And that’s what’s special about church, to be part of a community of other Christians where we can help one another. In Proverbs, it says, “The wise listen to advice.” And I’d encourage you to search out the people who have wisdom and experience and listen to their advice and make an informed decision. Ultimately, of course, the final decision is yours. But it’s wise to seek advice. So, how do you know when it’s God speaking to you through the spirit and through your friends and not just you thinking what you want to? Of course, it’s possible to make mistakes or misinterpret what we’ve heard, but the Bible helps you to test whether what you’ve heard is right. St. John says, “Test the spirits to see whether they’re from God.” So, first, is it in line with what the Bible tells us? Second, is it strengthening, encouraging, comforting? Does it promote love? If it’s not loving, then it hasn’t come from God. Third, do you feel a sense of God’s peace about the decision? Paul writes, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart.” So, if you don’t feel peaceful about it, then it’s probably not right. The fourth way God guides is through your common sense. Now, you don’t lose all your logic and reason when you become a Christian. You are still you. God’s promises of guidance were not given to save us the problem of thinking. The Bible tells us the general will of God. We know, for example, that singleness is a high calling. Jesus wasn’t married. But in general, marriage is the norm. But the Bible won’t tell us who we should marry. You have to use your common sense and ask yourself, well, are we compatible? It’s the same in career decisions. You know, sometimes after people come to faith, they sometimes wonder, should I leave my job? Well, St. Paul says, each of you should retain the place in life that the Lord has assigned to you and to which God has called you. Each of you should remain in the situation which you were in when God called you. God has called you to that job for a purpose. So the general rule is stay exactly where you are until God calls you into something else. And whatever God calls you into will be something that suits your temperament, your your personality, your education and skills. And you can ask yourself, well, what do I like doing? What are my gifts and passions? And what can I do well? And the final way that God guides us is through circumstantial signs. Sometimes we’re faced with a really difficult decision. We might say to God, I don’t know which direction to go. I don’t know whether this is the right relationship or not or this job is right or I don’t even know whether this is the right decision or not. Well, Proverbs 16:9 says, “In your heart, you may plan your course, but the Lord determines your steps.” And Psalm 37:5 says, “Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him and he will act because God can shut doors or he can open doors and the key is to commit the decision to him and then trust him with the results. So we need to watch the circumstances but just not put too much weight on them. Sometimes we need to persevere in spite of the circumstances. That’s the framework that I have found helpful over the years that God guides us through commanding scripture, through a compelling spirit, through Christian support, through common sense, and through circumstantial signs. I think when you’re really faced with a difficult decision and you’re looking for God to guide you, it’s easy to kind of we really want to hear that still small voice. We want to really see the things that align that are going to tell us where to go. And sometimes that’s not how it is. More often than not, some of those things God might guide us through, but more often than not, we uh keep doing the next right thing in alignment with his scripture and our purpose for our life. But I think God does uh interact with this world in a way that all things work together for his good and we do see things that align. Let me tell you just a a small story. Not one about me making a decision in my life, but one about God really affirming a decision in my life. When I uh the first career I kind of went into, I uh studied computer multimedia. I was going to make my millions as a web designer. Uh you know, at the the start of the millennium, uh we survived Y2K and so now the internet was the future. And I was going to make my millions as a as a web designer. came to Sydney from Queensland um with that hope, but I had no contacts. I had no uh portfolio. I had no experience and I couldn’t find work. And a friend of mine said they were going to go to Bible college. And I thought that’s always something I had been open to uh studying the Bible more. And so I thought that’s kind of it’s not going to hurt. It’ be a helpful thing to do. And so without really knowing where I was going, I just said, I’m going to commit this time and and study the Bible. And so I I embarked on that. A number of things fell into place that just really made me feel like that was where God had called me to be. Uh the first one was when I looked in my bank account, I had just enough money to pay for the first semester. Um which was I still had questions about what happened after that, but I could at least start. Uh so I had money for the first semester. A friend called me uh had heard I was in Sydney called me um from my previous life in PNG and I was living in Black Town and he called me and said I’m living in Quaker Hill and I’ve got a spare room if you want somewhere to stay. And so uh right nearby where I was there was a place to stay. Uh the church I visited that Sunday when I went to Bible college, they said, “I think that church is looking for someone to do youth ministry in a paid role.” And so I called that church uh the next day and met up with the minister and he gave me a job to be a youth minister in that church. These things really fell into place that made me feel like this is where God wants me to be right now. And it doesn’t always work like that. And we don’t always have that kind of clarity, but I do think God does work that way. And I think we will see some of those things in our life when we’re looking for guidance. Uh we want to be really careful. We’re not using those things to justify the decision. We want God to lead us towards. But that God that we’re genuinely looking for God to guide us because he has called us to a purpose. A purpose of glorifying him. And he wants that from your life. It’s not just random or nothing, but that God wants to call you to his good purpose. We’re going to finish with one last video. It’s a story of another man who uh went on some of that journey himself. Often as we look back, we can see that God can use our mistakes. And goodness, I’ve made so many of them. God didn’t put me in prison. I did. God didn’t make me get two divorces. I did. But he’s helped me all the way all the way through it. You know, dysfunctional parents, alcoholics, thrown out when I was 15 through an argument with my father. U moved into a squat with a with a gang, got in trouble with the police, ended up with a prison sentence. Came out of there, joined the army at 21. Uh, two marriages, two divorces, almost an alcoholic from being bullied at school to joining the army boxing team and being a bully in a uniform. My mother died. Um, I hadn’t seen my mom since I was a kid. She got ill. She had cancer. My mom and dad were both heavy smokers and heavy drinkers. Uh, a long story short, again, she got put into hospital. I had about 10 days with her and she died. She had a massive sort of um tumor and uh and just fell asleep in my arm. And that was a catalyst for me really to um to start thinking about stuff. And that set me on a journey. And then shortly after that, friend of mine said, “You’ve got lots of questions. You should probably try an alpha course.” You know, 16 years in the army. I’ve jumped out of airplanes. I’ve done rifle courses. I’ve done milit I’ve done courses on everything. I’ll do a course on God. And I remember just sitting there listening to these talks and I thought, do you know what? I’d never heard any of this stuff. It was all completely new to me. And uh and I prayed and my prayer was if you’re up there and all this stuff is true and you can make me a better man, you can make me a better character, you know, you could make me hopefully a faithful husband, a good father, someone who people would like, then you know what, let’s go for it. And then things started to change. Really weird stuff was going through my head. You know, I thought I’ve lived with my girlfriend eight years. Maybe we should get married. We talked about it and we got married. Prayed and got my son back in my life who left when he was three. He’s now 36 living with us. And now I’ve got a 18year-old daughter who’s gorgeous. I mean, if you’d have told me, you know, a few years ago that I would be a vicar in the Church of England, I’d have said, “You’re completely crazy.” It was the furthest thing from my It wasn’t even in my mind. I still have to pinch myself at times. So, I’m working with people now who really I’ve been around most of my life. A lot of people I can relate to. I work with the homeless, those affected with mental health issues, those in prison, those coming out of prison through a charity called Caring for Exoffenders. and I was presented with an MBE for for me which I think is really exciting for working with ex-offenders. And to be honored like that is is extraordinary. And it’s what God says, I have a good and perfect plan for your life. Plan to prosper you and not to harm you. Plan to give you hope and a future. And he says that he will never leave us nor forsake us. And and that for me is what what keeps me going. Often it’s as you look back on your life that you see God has been guiding you. He has a purpose for your life. And as you read the Bible, as you listen to the spirit, as you talk to friends, as you think and watch, your life has a purpose. And you’ll make a difference. And you’ll have a greater impact than you probably ever realize. And one day, God will say to you, “Well done. You’ve reached your destination.