MK040 Sermons
Let God Judge (Audio)
making good decisions and even better than that, being able to make wise decisions. And I gave you a series of questions to consider that might be helpful for you when you're navigating this journey of making wise decisions. But the reality is is sometimes decisions have to be made in the moment. And sometimes when we make that decision in the moment, we realize, you know, I have to make this decision in the moment. We might even take a step towards that decision and all of a sudden, internally, there's this sense that, oh, I'm not sure that's right, I'm not sure that's a good idea, oh, there may be even something bad about this decision. It's like a yellow flashing light inside that reminds us and sometimes that can happen even when the voices around us are saying, no, that's a good decision or even conventional wisdom says that's probably the best option. And we're still like, no, there's something just not right about that. Yesterday, my son and I were at the Penn State game along with my father-in-law and beautiful day to be at a game and game was close to the first half, they blew him out in the second half. And so as we were leaving, we were following some directions that one of the guys Ben had given to us here and to avoid traffic, I always try to avoid traffic. And so if you've ever been to a Penn State game, you know, all about traffic. So I was trying to avoid the traffic and so he gave us this route and we were taking this route. And as we started down the road, my father-in-law was driving and I was kind of navigating. I said to Daniel, I said, why don't you pull up Google Maps, just take a look at it so that while we're driving, we have a sense of where we're going. And as soon as he did that, it said, make it left here. And so we made a left and I was like, oh, I don't think that's right. And he's like, but dad, this is where it says to go and this is going to be the best way to get us there. And I said, but I just don't think that's right. And so we pulled off, we found a spot to turn around and I said, I think we need to go back. So we went back and even in the infinite wisdom of Google was telling me I should go that way. I decided to go a different route because something inside me said that's not the right way to go. But everything around me said, go that way. And there are times in life when that happens. And maybe you can think of a moment recently where you've been in that moment of decision that split second and you made a decision, you might even take a step down that road the wrong way. And something has said, no, stop. Maybe you've been taking an exam and your eyes roamed during the test and you saw an answer on someone else's paper and you stopped and you realize what you're doing. Maybe you began a dating relationship with a guy or a girl and all your friends thought you would be great together and you got in this relationship and everybody said that would be a good match for you and you got in just as you got into it, you're like something inside that this is just not right, there's something not right here. Or maybe you're married and you began and you're in conflict with your spouse and as you're in that conflict with your spouse, you began to connect with someone else who you're not married to at the office, an old friend and you start to entertain thoughts about that and have some online conversation and you just stop and you're like there's something not right about what is happening right now. Maybe you took a new job and it looks good. It was a great opportunity, an opportunity to step up, do some things you've never done before, try some things you've never tried before and everything said that should be a great opportunity but when you stepped into it, you suddenly realized there's something not right about this. Maybe you're about to sign on the dotted line for that new car or upgrading the house and everybody says your account says you're dead load, you can handle it, your job can handle it, all the numbers work out and everything seems right, the family wants to make that move and as you're just about you're like I'm not sure if I want to or should do that. You don't have a lot of time to ask questions, you don't have a lot of time to pray and talk to God and be quiet with God like I encouraged you last week, you don't have a lot of time to get advice from friends, you have to make a decision in the moment in that split second, what are you going to do? This morning we're going to look at the store, we're going to look at David and if you haven't been here with us, we've been in a series entitled "Unlikely Hero" and David was faced to make a split second decision and in that split second decision, David actually made a decision and took a step towards a down a road that wasn't a good road but he paused in the moment and changed his course and if you haven't been with us, we've been in this series this fall looking at this man named David who the Bible describes as a man after God's own heart, a man who there was something about his life and his character and the way he'd lived life that reflected the heart of God, that reflected God's wisdom and God's insight and God's discernment and that was true in David. It's hard to figure out sometimes how David came to all of that because we don't have a lot of evidence about how he got there, we just know he was roaming around the hillsides taking care of some sheep, he had this amazing encounter when he defeated a bear and a lion with his bare hands and then somehow God miraculously used him to wipe out the 9 foot, 9 and a half foot giant Goliath, he then got appointed to this military positions of being in charge of a battalion of men and they won victory after victory after victory after victory and yet in spite of all of this, the king of that day was insecure, the king of that day was jealous, the king of that day was filled with rage and he said, "I don't want this guy taking my throne even though it was very obvious that David's pole numbers were going up and saws were dropping like a lead balloon." He was so intimidated and he was so insecure around David that he said, "I got to get rid of this guy." Two attempts to take his life put David at the top of his most wanted list and that's where he's faced with making a split second decision. And regardless of where you are out on your faith journey this morning, I think the reality of this truth we're going to talk about affects all of us, affects all of us because we're all faced with these and some of you today may be living with regret because of a decision that you made in the moment. And what are you going to do next time one of those faces you? If you have your Bibles, if you would turn to 1 Samuel 24, 1 Samuel 24, if you have a Bible, if you don't have a Bible our guys have some of them and they'll pass them out to you, the page number and the Bibles they're passing out is going to be on the screen. 1 Samuel 24. And just to tell you what's been happening in the story of David up to this point right where we're at, David had Heena's troops say, "Who are his troops?" David basically went and was hiding out in the hills of Judea. And the best way for us to get a sense of what the hills of Judea are is the topography would be very similar to Afghanistan where you hear about mountain ranges and a lot of caves all throughout these mountain ranges. That's what the hills of Judea, not as big in terms of mountains but similar layout. And so David and his men were hiding in these hills, Saul was trying to find him and he had spies out everywhere spying on David trying to find out where David was. He was right on David's heels in the last chapter, he was closing the gap, he was on the hillside right behind him and then their enemies, the Philistines attacked and Saul got called away to fight another battle. That battle's over, he's now after David again and so he's pursuing David in the desert of Engedi and he gets a report where David is and Saul is on his way to find and capture and kill David, that's what his plan is. And as he's on his way to do that, Saul must have had a little bit too much coffee that morning, I'm not sure what happened or maybe it's tea in the Middle East, I don't know, but he had to take a potty break and the Bible tells us that, it says it in a nice way. He had to go relieve himself and chapter 24 verse 3, it says that Saul went in to relieve himself and amazing how the Bible gives us some of these weird details, isn't it? So David, Saul goes into this cave to relieve himself and he's a commander in battle and so he likely has a helmet, probably a breast blade, a shield, some outer garments, probably his sword, he's got to set all that stuff aside and just go take care of his business. And in the midst of this story, what you discover is that as he goes about and does this, David and his men were hiding in the exact same cave. Now what are the odds of that, I mean imagine David's men, they hear something rattling around in the front of the cave, they're like oh it's an animal, no it's not an animal, they hear something clanging, that sounds like a sword, who is out there? And so a few of them start to kind of creep to the front of the cave and as they're creeping in the front of the cave, their eyes get really, really big, they're like oh my goodness, you're not going to believe who's in the front of the cave, they go back to the other guys in the back, they're like man if we were playing the lottery, we really should, today would be the day to play, you know? I mean we just hit the jackpot, our mortal enemy, you know the king of the land is chasing and hunting us down, he's there and by the way he's kind of in a very precarious position right now so we could take advantage of him and there wouldn't be much he could even do about it. He could even through God in the mix, look at this verse on verse 4, it says this is the day the Lord spoke of when he said I will give your enemy into your hands for you to deal with him as you wish. They basically said to David it doesn't get any better than this, there's no actual record of God saying this, now maybe he did I don't know but that's the way they spun the story, they spun the story why that this was a great opportunity was right there in front of him, don't miss the opportunity that's right there, look what God has dropped into our laps. Someone says to me John you won't believe this business opportunity that just got dropped into my lap or she said yes, he said yes, I can't pass this up, God has to be in it, it's too good, it's too good and that's what they were saying, God has to be in it, it's too good for God not to be in it. And in terms of conventional wisdom, killing Saul made the most sense for David at that moment in time because it was going to reduce David's risk of being killed, wouldn't it be? I mean this is a guy hunting David down, if he's not around it's going to reduce his risk of being killed. David has already been anointed and told you're going to be the next king by the way so he knows God has plans for him to be there, maybe he'll just speed things up a little bit. He's going to reduce the collateral damage, if you remember the story a couple of weeks ago Saul went in and wiped out a whole community of priests and their families, everybody. So Saul's not on the scene, there's likely less of that going to happen, there's plenty of reasons that he should do this. If you don't kill Saul, do you think he's going to stop chasing you? Maybe not, his men saw God's hand in this, his men knew that God had anointed David, his men knew that Saul's time was coming to an end, it was going to run out and they said let's just speed up the clock a little bit faster. And there he was in that moment, a split second decision, what was he going to do? You know the truth is, the truth is in moments where decisions are made in a split second like that. There's something true, excuse me, there's something true about those decisions. They're not emotionally neutral, they're emotionally charged. Decisions in the moment are not emotionally neutral, they are emotionally charged. We've all had that haven't you, where you plan to go in and spend a certain amount of money and that's all the money you are planning to spend but there was a great deal and if you buy two you get one, you're only going to buy one but if you buy two you get one free and you save all this extra money and you're like oh I wasn't planning to do that. What happened? Your emotions got in the mix, right? While we went to the game my wife and daughter in mother-in-law went out shopping yesterday and my mother-in-law, her words to me when we got back in she's like man your daughter can get me to spend more money than I ever plan to spend, you know. Granddaughters can do that sometimes, you know this would look great, you know when this looks great why don't you try this on and but that's what happens when our emotions get involved, right? How many times have you gone into a conversation firmly convinced that this was the decision you made and you're just going to communicate that and in that moment when you're about to communicate that decision someone says something that pushes a trigger in your heart where you suddenly feel rejected, where you suddenly are driven to please people and you're like ah I can't do it and you backpedal and you change your mind what happens? Your emotions get engaged in that decision when they happen in the moment. Emotionally driven decision making rarely leads you down the right path. It rarely leads you down the right path. So where did it leave David? If we can put verse 4 back up on the screen and take a look at that, where did it leave David? Look what David did. It says he crept up unnoticed, saw it and see him, you know usually don't pay attention to what's going on around you when you're taking care of business you know and he cut off the corner of his robe like it was laying a little ways away and he whacked off the corner and he went back and then what happened to David? What happened to David? In that moment he realized something's wrong. In that moment it's as if that yellow caution sign jumped out that it was a blinking at him and he said there's something wrong. There's something wrong because conventional wisdom would have him serve up Saul's head on a platter, defeat this enemy that was chasing him all over the countryside, be anointed as king, take into the seat of power and set this country on the course that God had plans for them. That's what conventional wisdom, that's what his soldier said the time was right for. And yet something caused him to stop in his tracks. Look at the next verse, verse 5, "David was conscious stricken for having cut off a corner of his robe." You think come on he didn't even pull out his sword you know he didn't even go toe to toe with the guy he didn't even threaten him all he did was just take a little piece of the robe off but something inside of David's spirit stirred up and said there's something wrong about this decision there's something wrong with this right now. David saw something as men didn't see and he had a sense of clarity to strike through the uncertainty, to strike through the pressure, what everybody was saying to say there's something not right about this. There's something not right about this. In verse 7, or excuse me, verse 6 he says to his men, "The Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my master that was anointed or lay my hand on him, for he is the anointed of the Lord." With these words David sharply rebuked his men and did not allow them to attack Saul. They were ready, they were poised, as soon as he gave the word they were going to cut off the exit from that cave and they were going to take that king down. That's what was prepared, they were preparing to happen and David said no it's not going to happen, it's not going to happen. What caused David to say no? What caused him to put a stake in the ground and say no? I was reading in a book by Andy Stanley entitled "The Principle of the Path" and he mentions three things that might have gone through David's head as he thought about this decision. Three things. The first thing is he might have thought about the law of God. What does God say about this? Well God says that you don't kill, you're like well wait a minute he's in battle. David obviously killed in battle before Huttony, yeah we know he did. He did previous and he would in the future. But at this moment he said this is not right, there's something not right about this. Maybe it was the principles of God which are not necessarily the black and white, this is what God says, but David had the sense that God had put Saul in this position of power and authority. Even though David was waiting in the wings, he knew his time was coming, he just had this sense that it's not my place to take him out. And he uses these phrases like not to touch the hand of the Lord's anointed. He just had the sense that God had put him there and it was not his job to remove him. Thirdly he suggested it could be the wisdom of God, could be the wisdom of God, could be just living with the results of his choices, choices have consequences. So choose wisely as something that I say to my kids all the time. And so what would have happened if David would have taken Saul's life there, likely would have chased the armies away, likely anointed as king, but that would have been part of his legacy, that would have been part of his story, that would have been part of what he was known for. But what did David choose to do, look in verse 8, it says, "David went out of the king and called out to the Saul, my Lord my king, when Saul looked behind David, bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground." David kind of let Saul go out, he let him go out a little ways and then he got out and he called out to him. And then he demonstrates humility and honor to an incredibly dishonorable man. And this just goes to some of David's character that we've been talking about all along. I mean this was a guy that was hunting him down, this was a guy that was taking his life, attempted to take his life, but he said, "You are the king, even though I don't agree with you, even though I think you are wrong, even though I think you are lunatic and out of your mind, I am still going to respond to you with honor." And that's something that God calls all of us to do, especially people of faith. And sadly people of faith, especially today in our current political climate, have not done that. They've not figured out what does it look like for me to disagree with someone, to be involved in the political arena and debate the issues intensely with principle, and yet treat the other person with honor. Even if I don't agree with their choices and decisions, the Bible calls us to do that, calls kids to do that with their parents, it calls us to do that with people in authority over us, calls us to do that with our political leaders, and David demonstrates that here. It doesn't mean you don't disagree, it doesn't mean you don't debate the issues, not at all. You do those things with passion and intensity and clarity and intelligence in a way that's articulate, but you treat other people with honor. Look at what David says to Saul in verse 9, he says, "Why are you listening to everybody?" He says, "David's bent on harming you. This day you have seen with your own eyes how the Lord delivered you into my hands in the cave." David's agreeing with his men. Some urged me to kill you, but I spared you. I said this, "I will not lay my hand on my Lord because he is the Lord's anointed. See my father, look at this piece of robe in my hand, I cut off the corner of the robe but did not kill you." See, there's nothing in my hand to indicate that I am guilty of wrongdoing or rebellion. It's as if David had a sense that if he would have taken this action, even though everything around him, everyone around him said, "This is what you should do," that the story of his life would have included some components of this, someone who rebelled against authority, someone who took action into his own hands, and he said, "I don't want to be known by those things." Look at, he says in verse 12, "May the Lord judge between you and me, and may the Lord avenge the wrongs you've done to me, but my hand will not touch you." Is that word that word "hand"? I used it all over again. He said, "Everything around me says, 'I should do something right now, but there's something inside of me that says I shouldn't, and so I'm going to step back and pause, and I'm going to turn this one over to God, and let him take care of this, and I'm not going to do it myself." Just think about what that looks like in your own life, in your own journey. I like to take charge, I like to get things done, I like to move things forward. It's hard for me to step back and say, even though everything around says, "Go, I'm going to say pause, and I'm going to say, 'God, you do something about this one.'" That's what David did. He goes on in verse 14, and he says, "Against whom are you coming out? Who are you pursuing? A dead man? A dead dog, a flea?" He said, "May the Lord be our judge, and decide between us. May He consider my cause and uphold me, may He vindicate me by delivering me from your hand." David just says, "I am not going to be the one who's going to take advantage of this situation, even though everything around me says that I should." He stood out as a man of principle, a man of character who refused to break the moral law, refused to violate the principles of God, and he was wise enough not to go against the wisdom of God in this situation, because what would have happened if he would have taken Saul's life? That would have been part of his legacy, and David clearly knew that was not in his hand to do that, as evidenced by how he treated the man who thought it was doing David a favor and took Saul's life later in his life. But those decisions we make in the moment, even we have a chance to step forward and make that decision, they can shape our lives, and they can become the story of our lives, and they can become what our destiny is all about. When I was in high school, I played basketball, and I was a big basketball fan, and during the time when I was in high school in the Maryland area, there was a basketball player by the name of Len Bias. He played for the college team, the University of Maryland. He was one of the best athletes that had ever played basketball at that college. His junior year, he led the team to the conference title, and they got further in the NCAA tournament than they'd ever gotten before. He got drafted by the Boston Celtics, and he was going to leave college a year early. So for any kid that played basketball in the Maryland area during that time, Len Bias was like he was the bomb. He was the guy that everybody looked to, and everybody followed. And I remember the day my dad came, he came into the kitchen, my brother and I were there eating breakfast, and he said, Len Bias died last night, and I was like, what are you talking about? He was a 21 year old kid at the top of the world. I mean, he just got picked by the Boston Celtics to be the number one pick in the draft. I said, when the world happened, he said, I don't really know, but this is the reports that I'm hearing. And as a story came out, a kid who never partied, didn't do anything to mess up his body because he knew how gifted of an athlete he was, never drank, never did drugs. He went to a party that night, and he took one hit of cocaine, and it took his life. It took his life. And that became the story of his life. A decision in the moment became his legacy. A decision in the moment. A moment of passion, a split second decision becomes your legacy, a moment of temptation, a split second decision becomes your legacy, a moment of anger, a split second decision becomes your legacy. There's a lot of things we can do in our lives day in and day out, decisions we make day in and day out, but sometimes it says split second decision that we don't have a chance to think about, that that can be what defines us. And David had a split second decision in that moment either to listen to the voice of his men or to listen to the voice of the spirit inside of him. Listen to this truth that Stanley says in his book that's going to come up on the screen. He says this, "One can never accomplish the will of God by breaking the law of God, violating the principles of God, or ignoring the wisdom of God. One can never accomplish the will of God by breaking the law of God, violating the principles of God, or ignoring the wisdom of God." There's nothing more agonizing or heartbreaking to me in the job that I have than when I sit and talk to someone and they say, "I want to do what God wants me to do." And they tell me it's something they're going to do and they say, "That's not what God says." They're like, "Well, it just feels right in the moment and it makes me happy." I'm like, "But that's not what God says." You can never accomplish the will of God by breaking the law of God, violating the principles of God, or ignoring the wisdom of God. Saul seems to recognize that there's something true about David. There's something true about this young man, about the character of this man that was markedly different than him. Look what Saul says in verse 17. He says, "Is that your voice, David, my son?" He cried. And Saul says this, "You are more righteous than I am. You treated me well. I treated you badly. You have just now told me about the good you did to me. The Lord delivered me into your hands, but you didn't kill me." Listen to what Saul says in verse 19, "When a man finds his enemy, does he let him get away unharmed?" He said, "What you did makes no sense. Nobody would do this. Nobody would." He says, "May the Lord reward you well for the way that you treated me today." He says, "I know you're going to be king." He said, "Please don't destroy my family when you are." So ask yourself the question, "What enabled David to catch himself? What enabled him to pause in that moment, even when he took a step down that road and his troops were right behind him, and they said God was with him to stop and change direction?" Well, I think there's a theological truth that allowed him to make that shift. The Bible says that God's spirit was upon David. And the Bible says earlier that God's spirit had been upon Saul, but God's spirit had left Saul. And then you see Saul doing all these weird, crazy, bizarre, embarrassing, humiliating things. God's spirit's nowhere on the radar with Saul, but God's spirit is with David. The Bible says that when you place your faith in Jesus, when you begin a relationship with him, that the spirit of God comes in as a part of your life. You say, "John, isn't that just my conscious awareness, my moral sense of right and wrong? Doesn't everybody have that? I believe they do, because I believe the image of God is in everyone who's born. And that gives us this moral awareness that there's something right or wrong." But the Bible says that God's spirit takes that to another level and says if God's spirit is a part of you, if you are one of my sons and daughters, as we sang that song, if you have placed your faith in Jesus, that God's spirit now gives you the awareness, not just of a moral right and wrong, but of what God's truth is. And when you're doing something that violates God's truth, it waves a yellow flag inside, it blinks a neon light and says, "Stop, pause, reconsider where you're at right now." There's some verses that tell us how to have a more of awareness about God's word along with God's spirit. Joshua 1-8, someone who lived a little bit before David and Saul said this, he says, "Keep this book of the law, always on your lips, meditate on it day and night so you may be careful to do everything I've written in it. Then you'll be prosperous and successful." Say, "How do I know the law of God? How do I know the principles of God? How do I know the wisdom of God?" One of the ways that we know that is by knowing what this says. And you're not going to know what it says by not looking at it, by reading it or listening to it, or bombarded with information these days and you have to decide, "Am I going to let this truth become part of what comes into my ears on a regular basis and my heart and my mind?" Joshua says to meditate on it, that's just to think about it over and over again. And I don't know what you have to do to do that. I see some of you, you have verses of Scripture written down, you have them on your dashboard or sometimes you have them in your house on your mirrors when I've been to your homes and you have to find a way to do this, you can put it on your phone, you can put it somewhere, you have to remind yourself of God's truth, but you have to do more than that because it's not just enough to think about it, to hear it and think about it. Those are the first two stages when we learn something new. You know the next stage is you have to write it down, you have to write it down. And some of you are writing things down this morning and that's going to help you to remember what you're hearing today. But there's another step beyond just hearing it, thinking about it, writing it and that's talking about it. You have to talk about it. Some of you do this in your small groups where the first part of your small group you say, "Let's talk about what John says, what John said on Sunday morning. Is there something that connected with you, is there something that made sense, is there a question that you had and you have a conversation about it and that truth is becoming real in your life." It's what's going to become a part of your life so that when you go to take that step and there's something that's just not right, you're like, "I know there's something not right. I can't quite put my finger on it." It's because of that truth that you've heard that's sung deep into your heart and you're saying, "Now I'm going to live by this." You say, "John, can't God's Spirit just interrupt my, can't God's Spirit just get my attention?" Yeah, He can, He can, but He often does that through the truth of what God's Word has to say that's become part of our hearts and part of our minds. It's not just enough to hear it. It's not just enough to memorize it. I know lots of people that know lots of Bible verses and they memorize lots of Bible verses and they've been in programs where they memorize lots and lots of verses and they can spit those verses back, but if they don't listen to the Spirit of God when He says, "Stop, it doesn't matter how much you've filled your head." That's the starting point. As you think about these decisions and these three elements that we've talked about this morning, the law of God, the principles of God, the will of God, I want to give you a couple questions for you to walk away and sit with this a little bit more. The first one is on the law of God, does this violate God's truth? Does this decision that I'm making, this thing I'm out to do, does it violate something that God specifically says? There's things in the Bible that are black and white that's, there's not debate about those things. Black and white, Bible says, "Don't lie." It doesn't grade the lies. It doesn't say white, black, blue, yellow, it says, "Don't lie." Bible says, "Don't commit adultery." There's some things that are pretty black and white in the Bible. Bible says, "Don't have any other God in your heart other than the one true God." And so those things that are black and white, those basic truths about marriage and relationships and money and sex and authority and parenting that are black and white, do you have those truth in your head that you know what those are? The second thing is the principles of God and these principles are a lot more difficult to understand because they're not black and white. The Bible doesn't tell you should you date this person or this person. The Bible doesn't tell you should I pursue this career or this career. The Bible doesn't tell you should I go to this event or this family gathering and this family. The Bible doesn't tell you those things and you're going to need principles from God's Word. You're going to need truth from God's Word that you've sat with and you've talked about and thought, "How do I do that? How do I do that? So how do I tell the truth in such a way that I don't make things worse? Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. But how do I do it with grace? And that comes through having conversations about God's Word. So I know how do I take this black and white, well it's not black and white, it's granny, it's fuzzy, it's purple, I don't know and do something about it. The question to ask yourself is on the screen, "Well this take me someplace I'm going to regret." If I keep going down this road, if I don't stop right now, am I going to regret where I'm going to end up? And the last thing is the wisdom of God, the wisdom of God. And ask yourself this question, "What story do I want to be told of my life? What story do I want to be told of my life? What do you want to be known for? What do you want your kids and your grandkids to know you for? What do you want that story to be about? Do you want that story to be of someone who's swept away by emotion and they just can't help themselves? Do you want this story to be someone who is kind of always on edge and anger is just right there and you never know when they're going to blow up and everybody's on eggshells? Do you want that story to be one of someone who's unwilling to hold a grudge and you better not cross that person because you know what's coming? Do you want that story to be of someone who they just have to make everybody happy? That's what their life is and or someone who just follows the crowd. They can't make any decisions on their own or someone who people say, "Why do they keep making bad decisions over and over and over again?" What do you want the story of your life to be about? You know as I thought about David and I constantly find myself wondering, "How did he have this capacity?" because there's a good possibility, this is a guy in his early 20s. I think medically they tell us that you're a frontal lobe that's not completely formed until you're 25 so your ability to make good decisions. My daughter reminds her brother that she's closer to that than he is all the time right now. See this guy had some stuff cemented into the heart, into his heart and life that when he was in that moment and he had to make a split-section decision and he even started going down the wrong path, he said, "No, I'm going to listen to the spirit of God. I'm going to change the course of my life because I don't want that to be the story that gets told." And so God's will for your life is something that will always line up with his law, his principles and his wisdom and you can never accomplish his will by violating those things. In a moment we're going to go to prayer and as we go to prayer I want you to think about a couple things. Some of you are thinking back two times in your life where you had that moment to make a decision and the light was blinking yellow and you blew past it. And today you live with the regret of those choices and decisions in your life. And maybe you need to say to God, "God, I didn't listen to you. I didn't listen to that caution light in my life. And you need to make this a time of confession before him." Some of you are standing right there. You have a decision right in front of you and maybe this message this morning is that blinking light that's saying, "Don't go down that road. Don't go down that path. You will live to regret it and it will tell a story you do not want to be told of your life. Maybe you don't have something you're looking back on. Maybe you don't have something you're standing there in the moment. But maybe for you you want this to be true of your life. And so your prayer is just simply a prayer of surrender and saying, "God, I want this to be true of my life. I don't have any big decisions right in front of me. I don't have any flashing, yellow lights. But I want my life to be marked by someone who listens and pays attention to your law and your principles and your wisdom." So I'm going to invite you to bow your heads with me and just quietly in your seats there. Talk to God about where you're at right now and listen to what he has to say to you. [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] God decisions are not easy for us to make and sometimes we take a step down the wrong path and we know it. And it's at that moment in time when if we have a relationship with you and God's spirit is in us that that yellow light comes on and says, "Cautian ahead, need to pause." In order for those that are wrestling with that today or regardless of the conventional wisdom, the voices of others, let them know, listen to your spirit. And for those who have, may they be able to say, "God, I blew past it, but I don't want to do that again." I respond to you in my life this time and for others, God, that want that to be the truth of their lives, the story of their lives, about a legacy of their way, but a legacy of God's way. God, help us to do that because we can't do that on our own, in your name we pray. Amen. As a band comes forward to lead us in a song to close, I hope this song can become all of our prayers, no matter where we're at in our journey, that we have the capacity to be willing as you're going to hear a little bit later in this song to say, "God, I want your will and I want your way." No matter what, Johnny. the way.