Live Free with Josh Howerton - Clarity of Closed Doors | Ep. 138 | Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

As Pastor Mike wraps up our series on discovering God’s Waze, he emphasizes the importance of keeping God's perspective, knowledge, and affection at the forefront of our lives. By pursuing His character and desires, we allow God to guide our choices, ensuring that we become the right person in the right place. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.combe. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, welcome to the Daily Drive. I'm Mike Bro and grateful. We get to spend a few minutes with you learning about God and how he wants to guide and direct our lives. Now, we've been talking about this for a few weeks now, and today we're going to wrap all this up. But before we move on to something new, I want to remind you of our foundational principle about God's will for our lives.

God's will is so much more about who we are than what we do or where we go. God's will is so much more about who we are becoming than what we do or where we go with our life. Now, he does want to lead us to the right places, but he wants to shape our character, to make us more like Jesus, so that as he leads us to the right places, we will be the right kind of people in those places. Well, the last few days we've been unpacking some different ways that God gives us leadership and we have some decisions to make. I've been talking about four ways that God speaks and guides. As we're out there wisely pursuing the passions that God has put inside of us, we need to run every decision through the filter of God's work. word. We say, I really need to hear from you on this God, and God says, I've already given you a direction about this. Just follow the wisdom of my word. It will be a lamp for your feet and a light

for your path. A second way is through the presence of his person. The Holy Spirit of God prompts and guides and points and encourages and convicts and comforts and speaks to us all throughout the day. And as you follow his voice of leadership, even in the little things, especially in the little things, you end up in unexpected places being used. for the glory of God. Last time together we talked about how God speaks to us through the Council of Close Spiritual Companions, how it's vital to have great people in our lives

who love God and love us to process decisions with because whoever walks with the wise becomes wise. And one more today. And I don't even know exactly what the caller or how to explain it, but I'm just going to refer to it as the convergence of circumstances. The convergence of circumstances. Many of you know that we lived in Southern California for eight years. Man, love the people there, love the weather there, love the ministry that's going on there.

Hate the traffic. I mean, there are places on the freeways where the 101, the 405, the 134, the 110, the 5 all converged in the same place. It is crazy. But in my life, I've discovered that convergence is actually a good thing. Sometimes when you're looking for direction, you look back at your life. You look around at your life. You look at certain conversations. You look at past experiences, chance meetings, family situations, passions, personality type, giftedness, new opportunities, and they all seem to be merging, converging into one lane. A couple of weeks ago, we saw this

in Joseph's life. It starts with a dream. Then his brother's beat him up. He's thrown in a pit. He sold as a slave. Potipers house where he sharpens his administrative skills. Potipher's wife makes a false accusation, he's thrown in prison, he's put in charge of all the other inmates, and there's more dreams, Pharaoh has a dream, he gets a job offer, I mean, it's just convergence, it's like Joseph's going, I think I'll take the job. So you ask, what opportunities are there? What doors does God seem to be opening? Are there doors behind me that seem to be closing? How is my past experiences seem to prepare me for the direction that I sense God is leading me? How does this match up with who I'm becoming?

How does this all align with my gifts and my personality and my passion and my family? You know, I'm glad that they pretty much did away with those painful American Idol auditions. You know, they would show up, dreaming of, and longing for Hollywood. They had delusions of greatness and fame, misguided passions, they had misguided people in their ear, and then they sing. Oh, man. And the door gets closed, even slammed in their face. And then as her talking with like Ryan Seacrest in the life,

They're crying and saying, This is not going to stop me. I know I can sing. This is my dream. And if you dream it, you can be it. And I'm thinking, no, you can't. You can't sing. I mean, I have a passion for basketball.

I love it. Always have. Always will. I can play pickup game after pickup game. I can sing. I believe I can fly. But the truth is, I can't. I can't even jump over a phone book.

And the NBA doors seem to be closed to my life right now. Sometimes when doors keep closing, sometimes it does say persevere. But a lot of times it says go another way. It's possible that God did not put that desire or that gift mix in you. Sometimes God will say to you the doors are closed, that relationship doors close, that career doors closed, that new house door is closed. Maybe it wasn't some big sign written across the sky, but every single door is closing. If that's the case, that's when you start the process all over again,

where you go back to God and say, okay, God, I just lay it all before you again. Maybe the reason I'm standing here pounding my head against this door is because it really is my agenda, my plan, my will. Because I've been so obsessed with what's next that I've neglected you right now. So I just want to start this whole thing all over again. I just want to delight myself in you and do what you want me to do with my life. And until you open those doors, I will just trust in you, relax in you,

and wait on you to move. on the other hand sometimes a door opens and you walk through it and then something happens to affirm the direction you started walking and then another door opens and you walk through it and all the circumstances

seem to be pointing this is it and you're pursuing the passions that God has placed within you you know I have found that peace is a huge prompter I think the Holy Spirit will give you a sense of peace about the direction he's leading you or he will take away that peace about it now I'm not talking about a lack of faith

I'm not talking about being afraid to take a step, but there is sometimes this feeling in the pit of your gut saying, hey, hang on, red flags here. There have been times I've been excited about an opportunity, thinking, man, that would be so awesome, even mashed up with my gifts and my passions, but I felt no peace about it. Or Debbie has prayed about it and thought through it and says,

I just don't have any peace about this either. I don't have the time, but I could give you example after example of moves that we made. One of the ways God speaks is through peace, and a lot of times, at least in my life, there has been this unifying sense of calm and peace in our family. I remember when we were praying about moving to Las Vegas to plant that new church I told you about, we wanted to make sure that our kids, who were 11, 8, and 5 at the time felt good about it, too. So we had a little family meeting about it, and our daughter, who was 11, said, even though I would miss our family so much, I've been praying about this,

and I feel like God's telling us to go. God has given me peace about it. Our son, who was in the fourth grade, comes home from school one day, so, you know, today I couldn't help but think about Psalm 46 where it says, even though I'm afraid, I will trust in you. I think God's saying you need to go. Our youngest son looked at all of us and said, I don't hear nothing like you all are crazy.

But we felt peace as a family, and we made that move. We could see all the circumstances converging, and we had this deep, unexplainable peace. We sensed God was saying, I know you're scared. I know you're intimidated. I know you don't understand how all this is going to work out, so just trust me and take a step of faith. Again, peace is not the absence of fear.

It takes faith to step out into the unknown. Peace is that deep assurance that God is in this, and he will walk with you through this new challenge in spite of your fear. As you delight in him, asking for wisdom, run it through the filter of his word, get good counsel, stand back, process the decision, and see how all the circumstances might be lining up,

how all the doors seem to be wide open, and a sense of peace begins to settle your heart. You step out and you go. Here's a verse. This really helped me through some tough decisions. Isaiah 30, verse 21, whether you turn to the right or the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying,

this is the way. Walk in it. And as you're walking through the door on the left, and as you're moving and trusting the surrendering and leadership of your life to the wisdom and love of God, the one on the right starts to open, and your heart will hear the soft prompting of the Holy Spirit, this is the way. Walk in it. My prayer for you is that your heart would fall in love with God, and you would make him the joy of your life, that you would desire him more than just his answers,

that you would surrender to his better view, his bigger wisdom, and his deeper love. And if you pursue his person, and you start moving toward the passions that he's put inside of you, If you run decisions through all these filters and you start moving toward where he's leading you, you know what? You may just end up being the right person, in the right place, being used for his right purposes. I pray for you every day. I'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in today.

For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out? For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint.comte.combe.