We’re faced today with a dazzling array of choices. There’s a superabundance of options. I read that in the average US supermarket there are 48,750 different items to choose from. But more isn’t always better.
In 2000, psychologists Sheena Lyengar and Mark Lepper published a remarkable study based around their Jam experiment.
One day they showed shoppers in the supermarket 24 varieties of gourmet jam. If you tasted the jam you were handed a coupon for a $1 off the price of the jam.
On another day, the shoppers were given only 6 varieties of Jam. They wanted to see if less choice would result in fewer sales. So they counted the coupons redeemed.
What’s interesting is that the bigger display, with more jams, drew in more people. It was more interesting than the smaller one - but they were less likely to buy the jam. More choice isn’t always better.
Sometimes there is so much choice that it becomes difficult to make any choice.
And life can be a lot like that - we are faced with 1,000’s of choices every day. So how do we know we make the right choice? And the answer to that perhaps lies in understanding your purpose in life and trusting God to guide you through all the choices that you have to make.
It’s been said the two greatest days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.
It doesn’t matter how you feel, or what people tell you. They can tell you that you are worthless and useless. They can ignore you and trample you down. But the truth is, you were created on purpose for a purpose, and your life has significance and potential.
God has ‘Good things’ in store for you.
That doesn’t mean that as a Christian your life will be perfect and you will get everything right - far from it! We all deliberately ignore instruction and God’s leading. But the Good News is God’s purpose for you is bigger than your mistakes.
In the video, they use the analogy of the Sat Nav - the GPS guidance system on your phone. Once it knows where you want to go - it plots out a route for you. When you make a mistake or choose not to listen - it very patiently recalculates the route.
Of course, this analogy breaks down. We are not dealing with an app on your phone - but are dealing with the Living God. But He knows you, He knows your purpose, and He knows the plan that you should head down. And when you get off track, He will patiently get you back on course (that’s the beautiful thing about forgiveness).
This is the main way most Christians find that God speaks to them. It’s certainly true of my life. And this is one of the reasons why it is so important to read your Bible regularly and pray as you do, asking God what He is saying to you and helping you to understand how He is guiding you.
It talks a lot about the purpose of your life and helps you to understand why God created you. This is not necessarily who you marry or how many children you should have but it does talk a lot about your primary calling - to be in a relationship with Him and to love other people.
And the Bible helps you to understand some of the key tenants of Christian living. You don’t have to pray about whether or not you should pay tax for example, because the Bible tells you to do that.
By being a student of the Bible, and reading it and understanding it you find that God will guide and lead you into all the Good (and quite often, hard) things that He has for you to do.
A man who’d just become a Christian wrote to the Inland Revenue like this. He said: ‘Dear Sir, I’ve just become a Christian, and I’ve found that I cannot sleep at night. So here is £100 that I owe you. PS: If I still can’t sleep, I’ll send you the rest.’
To be a Christian is to be led by the Spirit of God. There are over 100 verses in the Bible that talk about this - here’s just one of them:
Romans 8:14
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.
The Holy Spirit leads us and guides us, but how does He do that? Well, I can tell you the longer you walk with Him, the easier it because to recognise the leading of the Holy Spirit, you start to understand His voice.
If we were in a crowded room, full of people talking but my wife walked in and called me name - I would not only hear her despite the group of people but I would also recognise her voice. This is true because we have been married for over 20 years.
As you pray and read the Bible, the Holy Spirit speaks to you. Most of the ideas that I have had for my life, from running my businesses, starting a church plant, or even what city to live in have come about as I have prayed and as I have read the Bible.
You see, He - the Holy Spirit - gives you desires to do things, it's part of how He leads us.
For the longest time, I never wanted to lead a church, never wanted to be a Church Pastor. I actually wrote a blog post several years ago about it - about how I thought being a church pastor was the hardest job in the world! That’s what I thought. I was happy to lead my companies - but I didn’t want to Pastor. I didn’t want to have to deal with all the needs and all the emotions of people. I didn’t have the patience for it.
But over recent years, the Holy Spirit began to speak to me about this very thing, and that started as I studied the Bible. I felt His promptings and so I prayed about it and as I did, my desire began to change. So now I love what I do.
In the video, Nicky talked about how he and Pippa were given a prophecy in 1989 - and it is only now beginning to come true.
Sometimes the Spirit gives us impressions. For example, when I pray certain people may come to mind, so I pray for them. Sometimes I will get an impression of what to pray for, and even ways to encourage them.
'Saints' is just a posh word meaning other Christians. This is about the counsel you get from those who are wise in Church and who know Jesus. For me, this often is through Sharon. It can also be through friends, or church leaders, or people in my small group.
I have a group on my phone that I will text or call when I need help to figure out the next steps, to understand where God is leading. So when I felt the Holy Spirit prompt me about starting a Church, I talked it through with various ‘saints’ to get their counsel. You see, the Holy Spirit doesn’t just talk to me but He also talks to others too.
Ultimately, we are responsible for our own decisions, but it is amazing that I don’t have to go through it alone, God has placed people around me that can help.
1 John 4:1
‘… test the spirits to see whether they’re from God…’.
How do you know if the prompting that you have, or the advice you get from a friend is really God speaking to us? How do you know it isn’t the devil? How do you know it isn’t the pizza you ate last night?
The key test is to ask yourself is: is this in line with the Bible? If the answer is no - ignore it. God does not contradict His word.
I remember being in a meeting once and I was praying for a man in the room. I felt the Holy Spirit impress on me to say something to the man, and I was really shocked by what I thought I heard: I believe that the Holy Spirit is telling me that you are married, but that you are having an affair with another woman. I’d never met the man, nor did I know anything about his life. This was quite a harsh thing to say to the man.
I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to say: and you need to end it.
But the man that I was praying for looked at me funny. He told me that he was indeed married and that he was indeed having an affair with another woman, but that he didn’t need to stop it. He had prayed about it and thought that God said to him that it was OK.
But the Bible is very clear - don’t commit adultery. You don’t have to pray about that. I don’t think it was God telling this man that it was OK. I think this man was convincing himself of something that wasn’t true to justify his actions.
He failed to test his belief against Scripture.
In the video - they say that “God’s promises of guidance don’t save us the problem of thinking.” In other words, use the mind that God has given you.
“There’s stuff in here that will tell us the general will of God. So we know from the Bible that singleness is a high calling, that marriage is the norm, but this book won’t tell you who you should marry. It’s no good saying: ‘Lord, who should I marry? Oh, Ezekiel. I don’t know many Ezekiels!’ It’s common sense…are you actually compatible with that person?”
God has given you strengths and abilities, gifts, and talents. You have character and qualities, a unique approach to life. All your experiences are unique to you. And God will often use this to guide you.
“Work, job, career: that’s your primary ministry, is your job in the workplace. And what Paul says is: stay in the job that you were in when you were called. Don’t just leave your job when you become a Christian. God doesn’t call us out of things; he calls us into things. And that’s the moment to leave. Unless, of course, you’re doing something like – unless you’re an armed robber: then you do have to leave straight away! You can’t do that gradually! But generally speaking, stay where you are.”
God is working for your good. That’s who he is. It is part of His nature. He can’t help Himself. All that has happened to you - God can use for good. Your past, the mistakes, that bad, the horrible - God can redeem and turn to good. Nothing is beyond Him or His grace.
When I thought about starting a church in Liverpool City Centre - the building where I thought we should start wasn’t available. That door became closed to us.
We can trust Him, we can trust His purpose for our lives, we can trust Him to guide us and leaders through the 5Cs. Every now and again, as you journey along with the Lord, you will stop - turn around and look at where He has brought you from and what He has taken you through. You’ll be amazed and it will strengthen your faith.
Holy Spirit, be our Guide I pray. Continually lead us and guide us in to your plans and purposes. Amen.
This is a great book by Loren Cunningham - it's a very inspiring story.
This is a recording from Derek Prince. He is a well-known theologian and goes into a lot of depth in this multi-part video series.
This another great, practical book from Mark Battersea. If you prefer video, he has some great stuff on YouTube
