How to be Led by the Spirit

Following Jesus was never meant to be powered by human strength alone. In this teaching, Pastor Luke invites us to rediscover the everyday adventure of being led by the Spirit — trusting God's promptings, tuning our hearts to His voice, and moving from self-reliance to Spirit-dependence. This message unpacks what it means to live as responsive, Spirit-filled people in a distracted world, where intimacy with God fuels bold steps of faith and lasting change.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

I'm going to share a little bit from the scriptures and we're going to talk about a little bit about the Spirit of God and how the Spirit of God leads us in our lives. So I just call this message walking with the Spirit or Learning to Be Led by the Spirit of God. And we're going to jump in. Are we ready? We good? Okay, let's do it. I'm going to read from John chapter 5. So it's great to get out of the book of Luke every now and then. And so we're going to read John today. John chapter 5. This is let me just preface this with if you are newer to faith, this is a wild story. Okay. This is a little bit of a funny story, but I believe it has some beautiful truths in it. Okay. After this, there was a feast of the Jews. The Jews love their feasts, I can tell you. They love a good party. And Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now, there in Jerusalem by the sheepgate, a pool in Aramaic called Bethesda, which is on, which has uh five roofed uh colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed, so people who haven't a really rough go of it. One of those men who were there, he had been an invalid or couldn't walk for 38 years. And when he saw Jesus, when Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he'd been there for a long time, Jesus looks at him and he says to him, Do you want to be healed? Yeah, that seems honestly a little bit rude. Come on, Jesus. Saying to the sick guy, Do you want to be healed? And then the sick man answered him, Sir, he doesn't say yes or no, he leads with this, Sir I have no one to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up. We'll circle back to what that's about. And while I'm going there, another steps in before me. And Jesus said to him, he didn't even bother engaging with that, he said, Get up, take up your bed and walk. And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and he began to walk. Go, Jesus. So the environment that this man is in, he's surrounded by people who are in the worst kind of situations. His environment is really shaping his reality, his way of thinking of what is possible and impossible, what Jesus can and can't do. But Jesus is bigger than his environment. Jesus is more powerful. Jesus steps into his environment and he doesn't come under the environment. He says, This is how it's going to be. So he's in a culture, in a situation where victimhood is the norm. I have no solutions, I cannot get ahead, other people can get ahead, but I cannot. There is no way for me forwards. This gives very little space for God to work in your life. If you're constantly telling God what he's not allowed to do and what he cannot do, it doesn't give him much room to work. But Jesus seems to overcome all of this because of his great, great love for this man. This question maybe even seemed a little bit offensive. Doesn't that seem like an offensive question? If I went to a hospital and said, Do you actually want to get healed? That actually seems a little bit, I mean a little bit rude. But Jesus is looking deeply into the longings of his heart. It would have been easier for this man to stay on the mat. In some ways, it's his life was very difficult, but he had become accustomed to his pain. Have you ever been in a painful situation where you just get used to your pain? And it's almost more difficult to change than it is to stay in your current situation. Better the devil I know than to risk change and need to step in faith. What if God doesn't come through? What if I try and I fail? What if I look stupid in front of all of the other people and everyone says, especially we are experts at this in Australia, say it'll just say toll poppy syndrome, all of that stuff. We are we are experts in it. But he didn't realize that he's talking to God, and God is not under Australian culture or any other culture, any my my house culture, God is above that. Um he doesn't realize what he's talking to God, not the fake God that he was waiting for. Now, when you read this story in some translations, it talks a little bit about how the angel of the Lord comes. That's not talking about when we talk about Jesus and the God that we worship. It's not talking about Yahweh, it's talking about a different God. God is not a sadistic God who loves to play games with people who can't walk. Is that is that okay, everyone? That's not our God that we're talking about. That's talking about a different thing that he's put his trust in and it hasn't worked. Now he's meeting God, God, like real God, Jesus. And it's about to change his life. This man's clothes would have been marked as a beggar, his mat would have been in his entire life. But as he obeyed Jesus that time, get up. Can you just imagine that moment when Jesus says, get up? He he could have he's he's probably thinking, Jesus, I I can't, I can't get up. Reality check, I can't get up. That's not really a thing for me. And Jesus just says to him, get up. Again, seems a little bit rude, but Jesus is speaking deeply into his heart, and that one act of obedience sets him free and changes his life forever, because when he gets up, he is completely healed. And can you imagine the possibilities in this man's life that have just opened up for him? Maybe to go home and to hold his children again, maybe to love a wife, walk to the store, join the run club. This man's life is about to change forever because of one moment with Jesus, one moment in faith. And it's easy to read these stories and just to put them to the side but and and think that's different for us today. But I just want to say that same Jesus who healed that man is available to you today. That same Jesus is walking here today, outstretched arms, looking deeply into your life and saying, What do you want deeply in your life? Not a new iPhone or that what do you really, really want deeply in your life? God wants to interact and come and sit in that with you. Um my environment shapes me so much more than I maybe would like to uh admit. My culture shapes me. So many things are shaping me. In my family, growing up, I grew up in quite a I'm the youngest of 11 children that has shaped me. Um they would they would say I was a spoiled, I was a spoilt child. Not true, but uh you know, the youngest. Um some people are nodding. You are the youngest child, obviously, as well. You know, the oldest children get all the responsibility, the youngest children get, you know, um, you know, certain things. Um who's the youngest child here? Come on, give us give us a shout out. Okay, I see you. Your whole role is youngest children. Just watch out over here. Um, who's the oldest child? Yeah, the responsibilities. Okay, you they're the responsible ones. Okay. Middle child, the forgotten middle children. Just pray for them. Just put your hands on them. Just pray for them. You're loved. You're loved. It's okay, you're loved. We love you here. Well, in my family, there was a lot of always a lot of drama, always a lot of craziness going on in the family, and uh, a lot of violence in my family. Um, I've shared this many times. You know, most of my brothers were in prison when I was growing up. And so there was a lot of fear, a lot of fear in my heart, a lot of insecurity. That environment that I grew up in shaped me in more ways than I realized that it had. That it really affected the way that I saw people, the way I saw the world, the way that I thought was possible and impossible was shaped. I I um came to church as a young teenager and met Jesus, it changed my life. And the church environment that I came into was so polar opposite to my family's environment that it from that point on that began to really shape and change my life. That environment changed me because I saw for the very first time in church um couples loving each other. I'd never seen that before. I saw people um interacting without beating each other up. That was a that was a new thing. I was a little skeptical at first. We'll see how they go. But over the years, there just no one was punching each other up. It was incredible. And uh so many of the things in church that that became normal in my life shaped me in such a good way. I then um moved to Japan when I was 18 years old, and the environment there shaped me again. I moved into a boy's house when I was 18. Lisa was at that same time in a girl's house in the same city in Tokyo, we were there at the same time. Shout out. Uh, and it was an incredible environment because it I had to grow up really quickly. I I suddenly I was 18, I was living where I had to pay rent, I had to clean and cook and go get a job as an 18-year-old. I had to do some adulting, and it made me grow up really fast because people held me accountable to my attitude. We had to be out of the house by 10 a.m. in the morning, no sitting around sulking at home, get out there, go meet people, get into the world. It was an environment that kind of kicked me up the butt to go and do something with my life. That was a very helpful environment that really shaped me. It was a healthy environment where people held me accountable to reading the scriptures, being in prayer, um, meeting new people, and that has really shaped my life so much. I'm talking a lot about environment. Your environment that you choose to place yourself in will shape your life. It will, and where I consistently place my life in environments, it will have an impact on my life. That's why I believe that being a part of church community is really important because the environment does shape me. It does. Um, it naturally over time gets into my life, and being a part of a healthy environment is really good. But an environment is a great foundation, but God's the way that God leads us goes even deeper than this. It affects me deeply, but this is just the beginning. The Holy Spirit has a plan for my life. Do you believe that God has a plan for your life? Lots of people nodding, saying yes. Do you believe it's a good plan? That would be an another level. Do you believe it's a good plan that God has a plan? It's a good plan. Um the Holy Spirit wants to lead you, the Spirit of God wants to interact deeply in your life. How does he do that? Um, the Holy Spirit is not like um Star Wars, a force somewhere out there to control. Um, he's not the simply the universe that seems to always agree with everything that I say. Um, it's amazing that how that works. Uh, and is just committed to giving me my wish list like a Santa Claus. It's it's none of those things. The Holy Spirit is described as a person who I can know. The Spirit of God is someone that I can know, and He is leading me. And He's leading me, He puts desires in my life, He interacts very deeply with the desires of my heart, and He's able to lead me in profound ways. Jesus described it like this in John chapter 15, verse 26. He says, I will send you the helper. He calls him a helper, which is a very similar word to the word wife in the Bible, by the way, um, from the Father. The helper is the spirit of truth, meaning he's not trying to trick you, he is leading you into the truth. It was his work to help Jesus' followers understand God's truth. Um, in other translations say that he is like an advocate. Some of the people do here do advocacy for different things for people. Advocate or the word defender. He's the person who will stand next to you and defend you. Like some people have this idea of God being the one who is always telling you you're bad. Okay? When they think of the voice of God, they think, Yes, I did the wrong thing again, I'm bad. Well, Jesus describes him as this advocate who stands with you and actually defends you. He's the one saying, No, this is my child, this is my son, this is my daughter, and he rebukes that voice or stands against the voice of the enemy that tries to get you to feel like you are worthless. That's the voice of the spirit is incredibly encouraging in my experience, incredibly um empowering and lifting. It this word is actually a lawyer word, like someone, like a lawyer who stands next to you defending you. Be careful not to see everything as as a law court of the way that you look at God, but it is this is one of the pictures that Jesus used. Um this is really powerful. So, how does the Holy Spirit change us, though? How does he lead us? How does he change us? There's two things I want to talk to, and then we're gonna then we're gonna pray, okay? Two things I want to talk about. Number one, it's breakthrough experience moments, breakthroughs, like powerful moments. That's that's one way that God leads us, and the other way that God leads us is through slow process. Both of these things at the same time. Fast breakthrough moments, slow process. Both working at the same time. And we see this all through the Bible: radical encounters with Jesus, powerful experiences with God. And this is what I would love our worship night on the on Good Friday to be a powerful experience with the Spirit of God. And there's many stories in our church of people having powerful experiences with God. We don't tell them all, but I can look around this room and I can tell you today, it's people here having powerful experiences with God that have marked and changed this life. I remember as a teenager, um, I was in I was actually in City Point Church for a youth conference, um, Planet Shakers Youth Conference there, as I think I was a 16-year-old, and we're sending this song, Send Me I Will Go. You know the song? Keep going? You want a few more bars? Okay. That's all I remember of it. Okay, I'm not I'm not a good singer. Don't, you know, some of you looking very judgy, but calm down. Um, and I remember I'm singing this song, Send Me, I will go, and there's 4,000 other teenagers there. Send me, I will go became a reality in my life because I had a I had a I had a moment with God where God said back to me, will you go? And I said, Yes, I will go. And we were all 4,000 of us were singing, I will go. But I got on the plane and I went to Japan just a short time after that. It was a call from God that marked me, changed me, and led me into moving country, leaving everything behind, and planting churches in another country. That's a moment with God that can mark you. Have you ever had a moment with God that's really affected you and changed your life? Because that's the kind of moments you can have with God. I believe we will have that. I remember praying and seeing glimpses as a as a 16, 17-year-old of um uh of churches being planted and leading churches and having dreams and visions about the kind of churches that could reach the next generation. And I remember having visions of this and writing them down, and and it was before anyone ever talked to me about being a pastor, the Holy Spirit spoke to me about leading churches. That was God. That was God. I remember my brother had an incurable um disease called Crohn's disease, it's one of the most excruciatingly painful diseases you can have. I remember him screaming in bed at night. We had we had we were in the same bedroom growing up, and he would scream and scream and beg for help, and there was nothing could do for him. He was in so much pain. And I remember coming to church one day, and there was a speaker, and he stopped in the middle of the message and he says, How about we just pray for people to be healed? And my brother stood up and he said, I felt this fire, it was I can only describe it as fire in my guts. I felt a fire in my guts, and I knew at that moment my Crohn's disease was gone. And I went back home and we went to the doctor because as we often took him to the doctor to be checked, and the Crohn's disease was completely gone. He he ate everything after that ice cream, just and and still to this day is completely free of a disease that is incurable. That's an encounter with God. That's who we worship. That's this Jesus that we are talking about. He will do that for you. He will do. I can I can go on, I can tell many of these stories, many, many of these stories. I but I'm I need to keep moving and finish this. But so he has these big moments, and also he has this daily process of walking, walking, walking with God that is also changing my life. And we can't have one without the other. My parents had amazing experiences with God. Stuff that they had my parents had experiences with God that would blow your mind, like unbelievable experiences with God, especially when I was a baby, and then had no process, never didn't go to church, had no one to help them, and still were a mess. My family was a complete mess. They had moments with God, but no process. We need both of these things. In fact, I often say to my children, they're saying, I'm bored, and I'm saying, what a blessing. What a blessing. You don't even have to work. That's incredible. Wow, what a what what a blessing to be able to come to church and not every single week is like the greatest Sunday you've ever. It's the bigger it's good. This is solid. Good, good, it's like a input, like a brick. Just like a brick on a house. Not like a we built this, built like just this is a brick. That's good. That's that's a good thing. Is that is that okay, everyone? It doesn't have to be. I don't feel the pressure to be like, that's the best message I've ever heard. I don't feel that pressure ever. Um, just a brick. Just we'll keep building the bricks. And we'll be doing this for a very long time together. Some of you look more excited about that than others. Okay. Galatians chapter, let's go back to the Bible. Galatians chapter 5, verse 17, it says, For the flesh wants to go against the spirit, and the other spirit and the spirit wants to go against the flesh. They're opposed to each other so that you can't do what you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit, you're not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious. Let me read them in a moment. But have you ever noticed that there's this battle going on inside of you? I want to do the right thing, but I keep failing. I don't want to do that thing, but I keep doing it. I keep struggling, I keep going back like a dog, dog licking its vomit. I keep going back to my mess. That's in the description of the Bible, so I'm sorry. Um I keep going back to the mess even though I hate the mess. Have you ever had that struggle inside of your life? Yep. Some people think that Christians are like perfect when you say the magic prayer. No, there's a struggle, and whatever you feed becomes stronger. If I feed the spirit becomes my capacity to obey God becomes stronger. If I feed my flesh, the concept of flesh is like this, whatever's decaying. You know, sin is decaying, it's killing me, it's it's it's it's slowly breaking apart, it's distorting, it's um, it's breaking apart. Its ultimate place will be death. That's the ultimate path of sin, which is placing anything above God. Okay? The opposite of that is living into the spirit. The spirit is life, brings life, leads to life, and ultimately leads to renewal and new creation. It's two opposite paths that are constantly trying to pull me into themselves. They are such things as fornication, uncleanness, I don't even know how to say that word. Ly sentienness. That doesn't sound good. Umotry, sorcery, hostility, strife, jealousy, bursts of rage, selfish ambition, um, factioness, divisions, uh, moods of envy, drunkenness, wild partying, and sim and similar things. Okay, not a great list to be described as. I hold you, I told you before, and I tell you again, people who do such things won't inherit God's kingdom. What does that mean? God's kingdom is the way that God does things. When it's the way that God likes to work in someone's life, when he is the king and everything is happening the way that God wants us to happen, that's the kingdom of God. The people who are living like this, they're not entering into the kingdom of God because that's not what God wants. That's not the way that God's leading. But the fruit of the spirit, um, notice it's the works of the flesh. Like that's hard work to live like that. Like it's a very stressful, nasty, hard life to live that first list. And notice he says it's the fruit of the spirit, meaning the natural results. You don't have to work hard for it. It's the natural overflow, is love, joy, peace. I love this one. This is uh in different translations. Great heartedness. He's got a good heart, that guy. Good heart, really good heart. Um, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. There's no laws that are opposed to these things. Imagine if I said about you today, Mikey. Mikey is a guy full of love, joy, peace. He's got a great heart, kindness, generosity, faithful, gentle, and he's full of self-control. That's a pretty good resume. Yeah? Who thinks we need some more of that in our lives? Imagine if that list was about me. In an anxious world, I've got peace. In an outrage world, I've got joy. In a self-indulgent, selfish world, I've got self-control. In a be your own boss, you get you, you get yours. Well, it's faithfulness. I'm faithful. Meaning if I do it, if I say I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. I'm faithful. In a tolerant world, unless he voted for the other guy, of course. Love, because love is much more difficult than tolerance. Tolerance is a low standard. That is not a Christian standard. Our standard is love. We go well beyond tolerance to I can actually love my enemies. Come on, that's crazy. That's that's Christian 101. That's what Jesus taught. The issue is not that the Holy Spirit is not with me. And if you know Jesus, if you've invited Jesus into your life, the issue is not that the Holy Spirit isn't within you. Maybe my issue is I am saying a quiet no to God every day. When you see people blow up and do crazy things, my experience is it's not a big blow up, really. It's a hundred little no's. And then an exposure of that. I've been saying no to God in my life, who's been slowly but surely trying to get me to repent over a very long period of time, and then one day it goes bang. That's really the reality. My simple little yeses to God keep me on the path to life. Beautiful life, eternal life, which just starts right now. So here's the good news: the more time I take to hear the voice of God and respond to it, the easier it gets to say yes to God and no to the flesh. This is a practice thing, yes? The more I do it, the more I want to do it, and the more I experience the life-giving power of it. Um, the Bible calls this sowing to the spirit. Richard Foster, one of the great fathers of the modern spiritual formation movement, says it like this Spiritual disciplines are a means of receiving his grace. They allow us a space to ourselves before God so that he can change us. By themselves, they can do nothing. Reading the Bible in and of itself is not not the ends. It's the means to the ends, it's not the ends. Does that make sense? Um they can put us in a place where something can happen, something can be done. They're a means of sowing to the spirit, they are God's means of grace to us. So every time I sit with God and I pray and I spend time in the scripture, which is my lifestyle, it's what I do each day, a little bit of time in the scripture, and a time in prayer. Every time I sit at the feet of Jesus, you know, you have to be kind to your spouse, like that's a good thing. Um, what the spirit does is the work of the spirit over time makes the things that used to be hard, makes them into my strong hand. Like because I practice them, it makes them into my strong hand. I'm right-handed. And the things that used to be so easy are now actually becoming harder. I don't really want to do them, so it's like a there's a barrier between me and sin because my desire has changed. God is reordering my heart through submitting myself to him over and over and over and over, and he's changing me. That's the work of the spirit. Tim shared about this so well yes last week. Um just piggybacking on what he said. Like forgiveness. Let me give you an example. We're gonna finish in a moment. Forgiveness is Christian 101, okay, everyone? Christian 101. It's not a it's not like um, it's like under six footy. Like, is everyone chase the ball, you know. That's forgiveness, is that's what it is to Christianity. We forgive. I've made a choice very, very early on. I forgive everyone every day for everything. Every day. Not one day where we don't forgive. Not one. That's what I've decided. That's pretty hard, Luke. Well, no, I think what's harder though, what's harder than forgiveness is bitterness. Bitterness is nasty. Bitterness will kill you, bitterness will make you sick, will destroy you. Um holding on to nastiness will rob you of the life that God wants to have you. That's much harder than saying, I hate what's happening here, but God, you know way better than me, so I'm gonna let I'm gonna give, I'm gonna let you judge that because if I judge it, I know I'm gonna judge it wrong. I'm gonna give that one to you. So help me, God help me, help me to release to you. That is much easier than that ugly stuff. Much easier. This is what I learned. Last scripture, Galatians chapter um six, verse eight. This is the next chapter. Yes, if you sow to your flesh, you will harvest decay from your flesh, but if you sow to the f in the field of the spirit, you will harvest eternal life from the spirit. You'll get eternal life. You will. And my experience of God is this my experience of God is that He is incredibly, incredibly gracious to you through this process. So we're gonna go on a journey of learning how to be led by the Spirit of God. Yeah, we are, but it's a gracious process. I want you to be relaxed, okay? Just be calm. Some of us are afraid of this process because it's like if God is maybe gonna be harsh or beat me up or I'm not good enough, and all of that stuff, you need to give just just give that to God because that is that is not the Spirit of God. God will lead you graciously into his um amazing life that he has for you. Uh, he will he will he's much better than you thought. He's much better than you thought. So on Easter, Easter Friday night, we're gonna we're gonna have a worship time together. I think it's gonna be a really amazing time for our church. It's new for us because we've never done a worship event before. You know, we've done two songs on a Sunday, but we've never done a worship song, a worship before. But we have incredible people in our church, full of incredibly talented people, and um we want to do that, create space for you to really encounter something of God in our lives together as a church. Here's the cool thing though, here's my final part. We're gonna pray. Um, we're not gonna do it here, okay? Worship event is not gonna be here. Um, one of the cool things that we've been working on uh recently uh is we're actually going to do it at St. Andrew's Cathedral downtown. So it's one of the most stunning buildings in the city, it's one of the oldest buildings that we have, and it is when you step into it, there's a sense of awe that it is unbelievably impacting. And uh, we are gonna just fill that place um with the worship of God and powerful, a powerful experience in that space. So at St. Andrew's, um St. Andrew's Uniting Church, um, downtown, it's across the street from Central Station. Okay, so if you know that, on Ann Street, across the street from from from that. And um I cannot wait to um be there together with our family, invite our friends, and just experience God in a powerful way. Sound good? Amazing. Can I pray for you guys? Thank you, God, for what you're doing in our lives and the gracious way that you are leading us into your goodness. Uh, I just pray of every heart here. We'd be responsive that we would say yes. And um God, we just repent of those no's that we've been saying to you. Maybe we'll feel you leading us and and asking us to change and gently guiding us and we've been saying no. And I pray today, God, we'd say yes. So I want to just open up our lives to you right now, God. I want to ask you to come and fill us with your spirit. Um, help us to say yes to you. Help us. Help us to have confidence that you are leading us into your goodness. Um, help people here who maybe are struggling with sin, struggling with things that are really bringing them decay. I pray God you would strengthen their lives. Um, help them overcome. Give them your spirit, God, give them your grace to change.