Friday, October 1, 2004
The best time to go to Long Beach Island is off-season. It's this beautiful stretch of land off the New Jersey coast. It's about 12 miles long and not very wide. You can see the ocean and the bay, actually, on either side of you. It's got this one long main street, and when you're there off-season you see this long string of traffic lights as far as the eye can see. Oh, but listen, during the season - like the summer - it is slow going on that street. I mean it's bumper to bumper people, cars, and red lights. I hope you're not in a hurry to get to the beach or get back to your house, cause it is going to take a while in the summer. Off-season, though, you can drive and you can hit this string of green lights and never stop.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A String of Greens."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Galatians 5. Verse 18 says this, "If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law." God's referring here to this incredible internal guidance system He's given us in the person of the Holy Spirit of God, who gives us a steering mechanism toward what God wants us to do. Verse 25 goes on to say, "Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." Well, that's easy. Step wherever the Spirit steps. That's what he's trying to say obviously. This tells us that God is leading us, but not in quantum leaps, just in little single steps. All those little steps, doing what you know is God's will for now - for today, that's what makes up this huge tapestry that we call "God's will for my life."
There's one way that He leads you. It's called green lights. Your mission is to start driving in the direction the Spirit seems to be leading, even if you don't know where the whole road goes. You start driving in that direction and you don't wait until you have all the answers about where you're going to end up. You say, "Well, I would like a little more information." But God's will comes this way: you take a step, see a step. Take a step, see a step. So you take that next step and if you hit a green, you keep going until you see another green. If there is a string of greens, you keep going. If there's a red, you stop.
God has a variety of green lights. Sometimes there's just this divine pull, that unexplainable pull toward a certain choice. There're Biblical arrows as you read in God's Word daily and you record it in a journal, and you begin to see a pattern. I've often seen it as I have gone back through my spiritual diary and I've seen God leading in a certain direction through certain verses. And then also there're those instincts that you feel most consistently when you're on your knees talking to God about it. Those are the internal green lights.
There are outer green lights, too. Circumstances can confirm what you felt on the inside. Maybe other people could be used. These things will point the same direction as the internal greens do. When God gives a red, don't make the mistake I've made sometimes and keep driving. You stop on the red. But as long as God has given you green lights, don't let fear, don't let uncertainty make you stop. A classic example in the Old Testament is when the Jews were on the edge of the swollen, flooded Jordan River trying to figure how to cross into Canaan Land, and God says, "You step in the water and it will part." I'd have said, "Hey, I've got a better idea. How about the water parts and I step in." God says, "Uh-uh, you take a step and then the waters will start to part."
Keeping in step with the Spirit - going where the green lights are, and when He turns the light green, inside you, around you He's saying, "Now step here." Follow God's green lights and relax in the knowledge that anywhere your Savior is asking you to step - He has already stepped first to get it ready for you.