Today we will turn to Romans 8:14, which is the theme of this camp. And since all the dear brothers who have been speaking in the last few days have already covered many points, I would like to return to this verse to make sure that when you leave this camp, if you can't remember very much else, this verse will be emblazoned, as it were, burned, etched into your mind and into your memory. Because there are few verses as important as this one. Every word of the Word of God is important, but some of them are crucial.
Now let's look at Romans 8:14 again: "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." Now this verse is easy to remember because it has the advantage of being very short. Some verses are quite long. "All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." I have quite a clear, quite a simple statement. But the importance of this statement lies where? Why is this sentence important? What do you think? We had several days to think about it. Well, obviously it has to do with this matter of being or becoming sons and daughters of God.
Now for those of you who are not very familiar with this kind of picture language of the Bible, it is important to tell you right away that to become a son or a daughter of God is what in other language means to be saved. You are not going to be saved unless you become a son or a daughter of God. And that is why the theme of this camp is vital for eternity. It is in this camp perhaps that you will establish a relationship with God that will last into eternity, because perhaps by the grace of God you will become a son or a daughter of God in this camp. We do thank God for those who this afternoon are going to be baptized, who are going to take this vital step of becoming a son and a daughter of God. So that is something very vital. I mean, there is no more important subject than this in all the world to talk about.
Now this is the first thing I would like you to be absolutely clear about in your mind: we are talking about your salvation. Now if you already consider yourself a Christian, the question now is to check whether you are a Christian in the light of God's word. You may think yourself to be a Christian, but are you a son or a daughter of God? Because sometimes the two do not coalesce. They do not cover the same ground. What some people consider to be Christians will not be considered Christians in God's eyes, in the light of God's word. You may think yourself to be a Christian maybe for years, but the question is, are you a Christian as far as the word of God is concerned, as far as God is concerned? Are you his sons and his daughters?
Now if you can't answer this question with certainty, then you are going to have problems with assurance. And the church is full of problems with assurance. They are always saying, "How do I know I am saved?" And therefore the only way to do this is to grab hold of some doctrine and say, "There, I believe this doctrine, therefore I am saved." I am going to show you that this is not the case in Scripture. Why? Because it says "as many as are led." It doesn't say "as many as believe this and that doctrine" will be the sons and daughters of God, does it? Look at the passage. It is not for me to invent some kind of teaching. It says here very clearly, as many of you as are led by the Spirit of God, only these people are the sons and daughters of God.
Now ask yourself this very simple question. If I ask you, "Do you believe that Jesus died for you?" I am sure most of you will say, "Yes, I do." "Do you believe that the blood of Jesus can cleanse away your sins?" "Oh yes, I do." "Do you believe the Spirit of God?" "Oh yes, I do." Let's change the question: "Are you led by the Spirit of God?" "Ah, ah, well, hmm." You see, suddenly the question becomes difficult to answer. All those other questions were easy to answer because it just had to do with a certain intellectual assent. But when we put this question there, suddenly we found it so difficult to answer. Now I don't know whether I am a son or daughter of God. And now you have an assurance problem. Now you become anxious. Now you are no more certain. Now you are going to have to ask a lot of questions. Your certainty has suddenly vanished.
It was so easy to answer those questions, isn't it? "Do you believe Jesus came into the Lord?" "Oh yes, that is." "He died?" "Yes, yes, yes." "He rose from the..." "Ah, I believe... My mother told me that when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. And my mother never tells lies. I always believed what she told me. Okay, of course I am a Christian." Now up to that point you are quite comfortable, right? "Are you led by the Spirit?" "Hmm." Certainly we can't answer the question anymore. Certainly we are not sure. Because it says "as many as are led by the Spirit, these are these." Not somebody else, but these are the sons and daughters of God.
So let's begin right away and see how crucial this question is. We are not talking about some high doctrine, something very difficult to comprehend that must be left to the theologians to figure out what that means. We are talking simply about what it means to be a son and daughter of God. Very simple. And we are then realizing that only those people led by the Spirit — now this becomes for us immediately some kind of problem.
Now let me also go to another verse, because I find it very curious how Christians like to pick and choose the verses they deal with. I am sure there is another verse about becoming a son or daughter of God which you have heard preached on if you have been a Christian for any length of time. You have heard it preached about quite a few times. But I wonder how often you have ever heard a message on this passage, Romans 8:14. Have you heard a message on this? If you did, you must have gone to a very good place and you better stay there. Because in all my Christian life, which is quite a long time, I have never heard a message preached on Romans 8:14. And yet this deals with salvation.
But they would like to pick other verses, which have the advantage, I would say, of being rather vague. And then you can say whatever you like, because if it is vague enough you can waffle. You know, some of us who were not so good in school in our junior days, we loved questions that were exceedingly vague. Why? Because you can just waffle whatever you like. We call it waffling. You just spin your yarns and pop all your rubbish there and hope that by some astonishing fluke, you might just happen to hit the right answer and pass the exam. And it seems to me many preachers do this. They take a text that is vague enough and then you just wander around the place, talk this and that, and at the end, nobody really knows quite clearly what was said.
Now, let's pick the verse that is often preached about. That is in John chapter 1. Oh, how the evangelists love this verse. And I'm sure you have seen this verse before. John chapter 1, verses 11 and 12: "He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, that is, who believed in his name, he gave power to become sons of God, children of God." Ah, now this is the kind of verse I can understand. I mean, it says you believe in him, and then I tell you I believe in him, and therefore I am a son of God. Now this is the kind of verse I feel comfortable about. You see? Don't bring in Romans chapter 8, verse 14, to confuse my mind. Just stick to this kind of verse. It says here, "as many as received him." And then you receive a free gift — who doesn't like free gifts? — and the Lord Jesus is a free gift. I receive a free gift, and hallelujah, I have become a son of God.
Unfortunately for them, I've heard this verse preached so often, but nobody seems to mention verse 13 at the same time. What? "Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Hey, what about that verse? Well, this one is getting a bit more confusing, isn't it? This is going into more difficult territory. Let's just stick with verse 12, okay? You believe in Jesus? Hallelujah, you're a child of God. Now we're talking clear, simple language.
So, how do you feel? Haven't you heard many messages on this? I'm sure you have. But now, be careful what we are doing with the Word of God. As our brother Jeffrey mentioned in one of his messages, he said one of the problems is that the Reformation brought salvation by faith, justification by faith, back into the church, and we praise God for that. But what it often fails to do is to tell us what faith means. And the result is that everybody is determined to interpret faith in any way they like. And most of the time, faith became simply intellectual acceptance. Because it says, "as many as received him." Of course, it didn't say here, "receive the doctrine about him." It says, "receive him." There's a world of difference between receiving some doctrine about him and receiving him into our lives.
When he comes in as king and master of our lives, that is another matter of faith. And when we want to talk about children of God, we better put these two verses together and understand the one in the light of the other. But to receive him — King of kings, Lord of lords — to receive him, not a doctrine about him, we can come back exactly to the same thing as in Romans. If he becomes king in your life, when you receive him, what happens? Well, you worship him. You follow him wherever he goes. He becomes, as in the Old Testament, the king who was regarded as the shepherd of the people. Yahweh was regarded as the king of Israel, and that's why he is also called the shepherd of Israel. The king led his people like a shepherd leads his flock.
And once we rightly understand what it means to receive him, we find that Paul is saying exactly the same thing as John. But many a preacher has reduced this matter of receiving him into something about believing intellectually in this and that. And so we have distorted the word of God. We have made it say what we want to make it say. We want to simplify it in such a way that all the cost, all the demands, the kingship of Christ, the leading of the Spirit — all this is removed. If the shepherd leads us, the Holy Spirit is our shepherd. He is, in the Bible, called the Spirit of Christ. Jesus, the king, our king, leads us.
In fact, the interesting thing too is that all these pictures of shepherd, king, and father are all combined together in one picture in the Old Testament. The king of Israel was regarded as both the father of his people, the shepherd of his people, as well as being the king of that people. In the same way, the Lord Jesus says all of these things to us. It has to do with an experiential relationship to him. Why do I stress the word "experiential"? Well, if you are led or not led, it is something of fact. It is not a matter of an intellectual exercise. We will come to this.
Now I hope we have spent enough time to see why this passage is vitally important for us, and why I am hoping that when you leave this place, Romans 8:14 will be etched upon your mind unforgettably. That you may go forth from here and never let it be said, "We went to some camp about being led by the Spirit, and frankly I had no idea what these people were talking about." Well, so help me God, I am going to make sure that you know what we are talking about, and that you are not going to have any excuses to say, "I didn't become a Christian, I didn't become a child of God. I was nominally a Christian, I didn't become a true Christian because I didn't know what these people were talking about." I know I have heard that phrase. But you are going to be very sure, I hope, by the grace of God, what this means.
Now, having seen its importance, let's begin at the beginning again. Being led by the Spirit. Led. What does "led by the Spirit" mean? Well, I am sure most of us here are students. We are not altogether intellectually dull, not altogether stupid. And so I hope that it does not require great intellectual perception to understand what "led" means. Led, putting it at its basic level, means that you are going somewhere. Now, I'll put it like this: if you are not going anywhere, you don't need to be led. If you are going to stay in one place, you don't need anyone to guide you anywhere. Are you going anywhere, or are you just stuck in the mud, as it were, in the mud of this world? Is this world your home, or are you going somewhere?
If you have settled down in this world as your home, you have no spiritual aspirations, you are going on no spiritual journey, then obviously you don't need to be led. You don't need a guide for this. When I was in China, as many of you know, I had all kinds of human aspirations. I wanted to become a military man and all this. And I found that when the Communists came, I had the choice of either joining with the Communists or I had to pick another choice, that is, to leave the country. And when I had finally sorted out the matter, thought through very carefully, I said I will give the Communist doctrine a chance. I will not reject it without at least having looked at it and having thought about it.
And so I got the two main things of Communist thinking. The first is the history of the Chinese Communist Party. And the second is the doctrine of materialism, the Wei Wu Lun, dialectical materialism, which sets forth the philosophy of the Communist ideals. And so I looked at both of these things and studied them very carefully. But having thought the whole thing through, examined the reasoning — and I was of course not a Christian at the time — I found the whole thing to be totally unconvincing. I found the history of the Communist Party very interesting, simply because I was able to learn quite a few things about the Communist Party, the way they functioned, the things they did. But when I looked at dialectical materialism, I was totally unconvinced. I regarded as much of the reasoning in it as fallacious, erroneous, misguided, and sometimes logically completely nonsense.
So finally I thought that I could not give my heart's support to this kind of notion, even though I was not a Christian at the time. And so I decided there was one way left: to leave, to get out of China. And that was easier said than done. So I took the train down to Canton, and then from Canton I had to take the train to the border near Hong Kong, and then tried to find a way out. But that's where the problem began. I didn't know the way out. I didn't know what paths were safe to take. I needed a guide. A guide to take me out.
You see, if I were not going anywhere, I don't need a guide. But because I had decided to go somewhere — if I had decided to stay and join the Communists and fight for that ideal, I would have stayed. I don't need to go anywhere. I don't need a guide for this. If you have decided to stay in the world, to live for the ideals that are in the world, to live for money and social status and all the things that pass away, then you don't need a guide. All this theme about being led by the Spirit has nothing to do with you. Irrelevant. Because you're not going anywhere. But if, like me, you decided that you are going out, away from the system, to go for a new lifestyle, you need a guide. That's what happened to me.
Now the second thing. The first thing then is that the need for a guide implies that you are going somewhere. The second thing — and the Word of God needs to be thought through very clearly, clear-mindedly, to understand what it's saying — is that it not only implies movement, but it implies movement into something that is new. What do we think? Well, quite simply: if I go to Montreal, I don't need a guide, because I know Montreal. In other words, if you stay in some place with which you are familiar, even though you are moving within that area that you are familiar with, you don't need a guide, because you know the path, you know the way, you know the road. A guide is needed only when you don't know the way to this new place.
For as long as I was in China, I didn't require any guide. But I needed a guide because I didn't know how to get to Hong Kong safely, through some of the secret paths that were then available. But of course, eventually in my case, I couldn't find a guide, because the Communists were shooting the guides when they found them. They would pose and pretend to be people who wanted to go to Hong Kong, and then when they were able to hire a guide — for which you have to pay quite a high price — and these guides came out into the open because they wanted the business, they found that the person who asked to be guided was in fact nothing more than a Communist agent tracking down the guides. And many were shot. And therefore, we couldn't find a guide.
But thanks be to God, the Holy Spirit is going to guide us. He is leading us into this new life. We don't know the way to the new life. And this means, if we knew the way, we could save ourselves. If I knew the way to Hong Kong, I don't need a guide. I could save myself. I could find my own way out. Salvation — if it were simply by our own effort, we don't need the Holy Spirit. What do we need the Holy Spirit for? If I know the way to the new life, I don't need the Holy Spirit. The whole point when Christians constantly speak of being saved by grace is that it is not our own effort. It means because we can't do this. We don't even know the way. We don't know how to get there. Nor do we have the power to get there.
So the Holy Spirit — being led by the Spirit — involves the full doctrine of grace. That's why it's so important. It is He who will show us the way. He will take us by the hand. And when there's a rough place we can't climb up, when we have not the strength to get there, He will lift us up and take us across every obstacle, every hurdle, every hill, every mountain, every stream that stands in the way, and take us to the land of promise. Now you can see how vital this teaching is.
The third thing is this: when we have said that we are led by the Spirit, we should at once observe that we are speaking about movement. And that means we are speaking about a dynamic. We are speaking about a power. We are speaking not about some kind of intellectual acceptance of this and that. Being led means I am moving forward. My whole person is moving forward. I am not sitting in an armchair and traveling to the land of promise, which seems to be what many Christians are doing by what they call faith. It seems to me that their so-called faith is more an exercise of imagination: how to get to the promised land without moving from where you are sitting.
So all you need is a comfortable armchair. Are you sitting comfortably? Open your Bible please. "Do you believe that Jesus came into the world?" "Amen." "Do you believe that He died for you?" "Amen." Now you can say it even more piously, more intensely. "And He rose from the dead." "Amen and Amen." And so without even moving from your chair, either physically or spiritually or in any other sense you like, you have arrived in the land of promise. You have become a son and daughter of God. I mean, this is really cheap travel. You can't beat cheap travel at this rate. I heard that cut fares going to Florida are only going to cost $99. But you don't even have to spend one cent. You just sit in that chair and, by some exercise of imagination — which is suddenly described as faith, exalted to the level of faith — you have traveled to the land of promise without having moved away from Egypt.
Wonderful. I mean, those poor Israelites in Egypt — the problem with them is they didn't have modern wise men in those days. They had somebody called Moses who understood only about the dynamic of faith, the movement of faith. He had not advanced to our powerful intellectual stage whereby you can transport yourself to the land of promise without having left the land of Egypt. I mean, better than that you cannot get. This is truly wonderful. I am really impressed with the kind of teaching that goes around these days. You can become a Christian simply where you are. Your lifestyle doesn't even have to change radically. All you say is, "You accept." That's it. "Raise your hand high please so that we can see it." "Praise the Lord, brother." "And this one, praise the Lord."
What are we talking about? Talk about false prophets and true prophets. You decide who is speaking the truth. I mean, I hope you have sufficient discernment. You tell us who is speaking the truth. Am I speaking truth or falsehood? Can we reach the land of promise simply by sitting there? You see, if accepting Jesus is purely a psychological thing, an intellectual exercise, you don't need any leading. Nobody has to lead you anywhere except that teacher who is going to tell you, he'll lead you in prayer. "I'm going to pray, you follow me." Okay, so you just follow him in prayer. That's all the leading you'll ever need. And you say, "I am a sinner, Lord." "Say after me." You say, "I am a sinner, Lord." "And I repent of all my sins." "Say it louder." "I repent of all my sins." Now you follow my leading. And without going anywhere spiritually or physically, I transport you into the land of promise.
Now I am saying this — it may sound funny — but brothers and sisters, am I exaggerating? Am I making a joke of this thing? Think of it. Is this the truth or not? Is this not what you and I have experienced when we were supposed to become Christians? And then realized that something must be missing in here. This can't quite be right. Now if you had any spiritual discernment, you felt some kind of discomfort. "I think something is missing." And you are right. Something was missing. Because to travel, to be led by the Spirit, means movement. There is a dynamic in there. This means you are going away from something to go to something else. You can't stay where you are. You are going to have to leave the old life behind.
The life that you enjoyed in Egypt is going to be left behind. When you travel, what do you do? Do you take your house with you? Not unless you live in a caravan. And most of those, I am told, can't be moved very easily either. No, no. What you do is you take your possessions — like the Israelites. They girded their loins. They left everything behind. They said goodbye to their house. They said goodbye to the land, their cattle. They left everything and off they went, following into the wilderness to the land of promise. So it is so difficult for the Israelites to get to the land of promise, and we can get there so easily, isn't it? And we say, "Hallelujah, Jesus made it so easy." Did he?
There are some of you who want to get baptized. And I ask you to read passages: if any man — in both Matthew chapter 10 and Matthew 16 — "will become my disciple, let him take up his cross and follow me." He didn't say, "Just sit there and believe in me." He says, "Follow me. Where I go, you are going to go." Discipleship. Christianity. Christianity always has to do with following. And as our brothers who were speaking before mentioned, if there is somebody leading, there has to be somebody following. If you are not following, you don't need anyone to lead. You are following Jesus.
But that takes us also to the next point. This is no rosy path, the land of promise. The way of life is narrow. And any preacher who ever told you that to be led by the Spirit is all a bed of roses is telling you lies. I am not going to tell you lies. I am going to tell you as it is. Nobody ever got to the land of promise without passing through the awesome, frightening wilderness. And neither are you or I going to get to the land of promise without going through that wilderness. Because there is no road between Egypt and the land of promise that does not pass through the wilderness. Not unless you are very good at swimming, and you can swim over the Red Sea, or you can swim around the Mediterranean — long distance, just a couple of hundred miles. Either you go that, or you go through the wilderness.
The Lord Jesus said — and that is the spiritual equivalent of what the Israelites did — just as the Israelites passed through the wilderness, so you and I are going to walk the road of the cross. "Take up your cross and follow me." Anyone who wants to make the leading of the Spirit sound like a piece of cake hasn't understood what Christianity is about. Doesn't understand what it means to become a son or daughter of God. That is why our brother Jeffrey rightly said it is like seeking a pearl, a treasure. And in order to obtain that pearl, it is going to cost you everything in the process.
You can't go through a wilderness carrying your house on your back. In fact, you can't go through anywhere carrying a house on your back, but even less in a wilderness. It is a very difficult road, a road which is made possible only by the grace of God. Only possible. You see, there are two problems here about going through a wilderness. First, you don't know the way through the wilderness. You saw some of those slides that brother Joe was showing us the other day. Look at that wilderness. It is a terrifying spectacle. It is bad enough just to look at it in the photograph. Wait till you stand there. And Joe said, "Oh, that day we were all very quiet." Indeed we were. The awesome sight of that wilderness — terrifying in its power, in its barrenness, in its fearfulness.
If we took you into the middle of that wilderness and dropped you there, and said, "I will come back in five days to see you," I think we will begin to get the idea of what it is to be left in the middle of that wilderness. No water. No food. And you've got to wander in there for four days. Think about that. Not to talk about forty days. Not to talk about forty years. The Christian life is filled with hardship and difficulties. And it is not for the timid. It is not for the weak. But only for those who are determined enough to seize the pearl at whatever price is involved.
Now let us go on, step by step, to make sure that we understand this thing very clearly. The next thing I want to say to you is this, to make sure you understand what it is to be led by the Spirit. As I said, I am anxious that nobody here is going to say at the end of this conference, this camp, "I don't know what it means to be led by the Spirit." I have talked to you now about the fact that it means movement, movement into a new direction. I have talked to you a little bit about the cost of it. But I am going to talk to you about one or two more other problems about Romans 8:14. And this problem is very fundamental.
Let me frame the question like this: how can I, who am carnal, who am sold under sin, follow that which is — or who is — spiritual? Let's grasp the problem clearly. We cannot solve any problem until we clearly grasp what the problem is. Let's put it like this in another way. The Holy Spirit is Spirit. If I am asked to follow this particular person, I can see the person. I can hear him talking to me, and somebody says, "You are going to go to Hong Kong. You are going to go through these paths out of China. These are dangerous paths. You might not get through unhurt or unharmed. You have got to follow very close to that guide, and here is your guide. Follow him." Oh, it is easy. I know the instruction now. I see the guide here. I see the man. I walk behind him. Easy. Well, at least easy in terms of knowing who the guide is.
But how do you follow the Holy Spirit? I can't even see my guide. I am going to follow a guide and I say, "Where is he?" "Here is your guide." "Where?" "Here." Well, you say, if I am going to follow my guide to Hong Kong, I can't even see him. How do I know I am following him? Put the question then very clearly as something like this: we have got to solve basic questions, otherwise we will never get to the root of the matter. If I am to be led by the Spirit, I have got myself to become spiritual. Because how can I, who am only used to seeing with my physical eyes, hearing with my physical ears, how can I follow a guide that I don't even see? I don't even hear him? Surely that is a basic problem.
Now, I think that is where we come to the heart of the problem for most of our people. Being led by the Spirit is talking unfamiliar language. That's why we rather talk about believing in Jesus and all this that we can still cope with. But being led by the Spirit is something that we simply cannot grasp. And that's probably why hardly any messages I have ever heard have been preached on the subject. Because perhaps the teacher himself doesn't know what it means to be led by the Spirit, and therefore he cannot properly expound this subject.
It seems quite clear that unless I begin to perceive the reality of spiritual things, then the spiritual world would only be something unsubstantial, something vague, something only a little bit higher than fairyland. And it's like saying, "Follow the fairy — as many as are led by a fairy." And you say, "Okay, you're really asking me to do the impossible. At this level none of us can be saved because you're asking me to follow somebody I can't even see." And so we're going to have to try and figure out some interpretation of this that will simply remove the meaning of it. No, no, we cannot do this.
That is why when we read John chapter 1, verse 12, I mentioned many people read the verse which says, "As many as receive Him or believe in Him become the children of God," but they don't bother to read the next verse: that those who are born of the Spirit of God, these are the children of God. Why does the Lord Jesus also in John 3 speak about being born of the Spirit? Because he says simply this: whatever is born of the flesh is flesh. Only what is born of the Spirit is Spirit. If you are born of the Spirit, you yourself become spirit. Now the Holy Spirit is Spirit. And when you are born of the Spirit, you become spirit. Now spirit following Spirit makes sense, because what is Spirit discerns what is spiritual.
That's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2 and 3: that the spiritual man discerns spiritual things. The carnal man cannot discern spiritual things. Now if you are carnal, if you are only born of the flesh, then it is quite clear that you cannot understand what being led by the Spirit means, because you don't understand spiritual things. And here we are talking about something spiritual. The only way you can be led by the Spirit of God is to be born first and foremost by the Spirit. That is, let the Spirit of God come into your life in such a way as to change you from being a person who can only think about physical things, who can only think about money, think about jobs, think about study, to whom all spiritual things are unreal, remote, vague — until the Lord so changes you that you become like the Apostle Paul who says, "We see the things which are eternal."
As he says in 2 Corinthians: "For the things which are seen, the physical things which are seen, are the things which will pass away. But the things which are not seen, the spiritual things, they endure forever." Now to the carnal man, such a sentence is nonsense, because to him the only things which endure are the physical things. The spiritual things can endure — they don't even exist for him. For spiritual things to become real to you, you are going to have to have your spiritual eyes opened. You are going to need a total transformation of your being.
Therefore, it is no use to talk about being led by the Spirit until God has done such a work in your life — hopefully at this camp — that suddenly spiritual things become real to you. The things that you have never seen before, now you can see. Paul speaks about spiritual things as though he was looking at them. As I often love to quote in 2 Corinthians 3: "We, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed from glory to glory." We scratch our heads: "We, with unveiled face, beholding..." I don't behold the glory of the Lord, do you? Do you behold the glory of the Lord, do you think? You say, "I don't behold the glory of the Lord." No wonder I can't be changed from glory to glory — I don't even see His glory.
Spiritual things, the glory of God, the reality of the whole spiritual world, is too remote to the carnal man. You can't talk about this; you can't cope with this. But — and this is the glory — if today you open your heart to Him, you accept Him (not a doctrine about Him), you let Jesus come into your life as King and Lord and Saviour, to set you free from the bondage of sin, something amazing, something that we can't comprehend, happens. Suddenly you find that the whole spiritual world begins to open up to you. At the first, the beginning for some people is still quite vague — you can see but not so clearly. For other people, they suddenly see the whole spiritual reality very clearly. Not with their physical eyes, of course, but with the spiritual eyes. Spiritual things become very real. And then to be led by the Spirit is no longer a big problem, because now you see spiritual reality. Do you see it?
But now you see, I have to deal with another method in connection with this. Many people who want to become Christians find that they cannot see spiritual reality, and therefore being led by the Spirit is too difficult for them. So they can solve the problem another way. They find some very spiritual Christians who follow the Spirit of the Lord clearly and with confidence and with joy, and you can see that these people are being led by the Spirit. So you solve the problem another way. You know that they are going to the land of promise; they are going on, being led by the Spirit. I don't know what it means to be led by the Spirit, but I know what it means to be led by a man. So the simple solution is: you are being led by the Spirit, you follow the Spirit, I follow you. We solved the problem. So you brother, you just follow the Spirit and I am right behind you. So one way or another, I am going to get to the land of promise.
We can describe this as either being led directly by the Spirit of the Lord, or we are being led indirectly by the Spirit of the Lord. We simply follow the person who is being led by the Spirit. So, Moses is following the Lord and I follow Moses and I am going to get to the land of promise. Of course, that didn't quite work out, because even Moses didn't get to the land of promise in the end. Notice that this lesson was made very clear in the wilderness: the Israelites didn't follow Moses, not in that particular way anyway. They followed the Lord. How? Each one followed the pillar of fire by night, the pillar of cloud by day. I mean, can you see two million people? They can't even see where Moses is. Moses is not some eighteen-foot giant striding in front and people can see, "Ah, there he is, we will follow him." They were not following Moses; they were following God. Everyone was following.
But they had one advantage. Of course, for the Israelites, that was easy for them. You had a visible cloud there. They didn't need spiritual discernment; they can see the cloud. But they were only going to a physical land of promise. And as the Lord Jesus said to the Israelites, "Your father ate of the manna in the wilderness and they died." And they also died when they got to the land of promise. But we are talking about eternal life. And this means that we are not going to follow what is physical, because what is physical will perish, just like those who were in the wilderness. What is spiritual abides forever.
The promises of God to the Israelites are all physical promises: long life, a land flowing with milk and honey — these are all physical promises. The promises of God to us are spiritual. And therefore we have to be born of the Spirit to follow the Spirit. So don't you think you are going to sneak into the kingdom of God by following somebody else who is going that way and so solve your problem. "I don't have to be spiritual after all. I just follow the right man and he will get me there." Unfortunately for you, you are not going to get there that way either. You are going to have to be led by the Spirit yourself.
So don't think you are going to smuggle yourself into the kingdom of God as an illegal immigrant, by climbing over the wall somewhere or sneaking behind the guy. And when the heavenly passport officer is checking the entrance of the guy in front, you sneak in behind him. You follow close to him like his shadow, and when he walks in, you slip in. No — "as many as themselves are led by the Spirit of God." Not following somebody else. Every person who is going to become a child of God, a son of God, a daughter of God, you have to be led by the Spirit.
Let me get this problem out of the way. Otherwise you might leave this camp and say, "I don't know what it means to be led by the Spirit, but I see some of these spiritual-looking guys around here, and I am going to follow behind them and where they go, I go. So even though I don't know what it means to be led by the Spirit, I know what it means to be led by them. And so somehow by hook or by crook, I am going to get into the kingdom of God." Well, let me remove this illusion right from the start. You are not going to get there unless you yourself are led by the Spirit.
You see, the human mind is very fascinating. It can think of all kinds of strange ways to deal with complex problems. And human beings are unfortunately rather like that. They see a charismatic leader, a powerful teacher, and they think, "Here is my chance. I think he is going the right way, so I will go in behind him." No, no. I have to disillusion you on that point too. You either yourself follow the Spirit of God, or you can't go anywhere. And I am not going to be among those false prophets who go into the wilderness and say, "You just follow me and I will take you there." I say, you follow him, and he will take you there.
Now let's come more specifically to the leading of the Spirit, as to the matter of how does the Spirit of the Lord lead us. Now some of this our dear brothers who preached earlier on have touched on. I would like to, as it were, gather the crumbs together after the feast. And even that can produce twelve basketfuls, enough to produce another feast. And I hope that the crumbs will help us to be fed also. Thank you.
# Being Led by the Spirit (Part 2)
Now, there are two ways in which the Spirit of God will lead us — at least two ways. There are more ways, but I won't go into too many of these. We'll talk about two ways: a general way and a specific way. What do I mean by general and specific? I mean that the Spirit of the Lord leads us in an overall direction, and then also He will lead us in specific details.
What do we mean by overall direction? First of all, just like the Israelites, they were led very specifically out of Egypt to the land of promise. That was the general direction everybody was going — to the land of promise. So every Christian, if he is a son or a daughter of God by the grace of God (and that is possible only by His grace), means that he is heading away from life as it is in this world, under bondage to sin, and he is heading to that eternal city, pictured as the city of God. He is going to eternal life. He is going into the life that is in God, where Jesus said, "I will go and prepare a place for you."
So that would be the general direction of our life. We are all heading towards life that is eternal in Christ. And what do we mean by the specific? The specific, of course, has to do with our day-to-day life, because in that general leading, we have every day to make decisions about this and about that, right? So you may all be traveling — and we may all be traveling like the Israelites in one great column of people moving in that direction — but we have every day, each of us, individually, to make decisions which are not necessarily the decisions that other people have to make at the same time. For example, you have to decide: am I going to go to this school or to that school? Am I going to accept this job, or am I going to accept that job? These become specific. Now, you are still traveling in the overall direction of going towards the kingdom of God, towards the New Jerusalem. But you have many decisions to make along the way. Which of these decisions should I make? So we are all being led in that direction, but we also need leading in these particulars.
Now, how can we receive His leading in these particulars? Since a lot has already been said about the general direction, we can say that the overall leading of the Lord comes to us, as our brother Jeffrey mentioned, from His Word. His Word, the word of God, gives us all the vital general principles by which we are to act. As He says, we were guided, say, by a principle of love. "Shall I adopt this person? Shall I help this person who is in need? Shall I help this person who is desperately in need?" I don't need any specific guidance for this particular decision. There is no specific guidance needed for that, because the Lord already said, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
And so the good Samaritan does not say, "Lord, this guy is dying here. He is bleeding to death. Do You want me to help him or not? If not, I will just leave him to bleed to death." For this kind of thing, you don't need to ask questions. General, overall instructions have been given. This guy is bleeding to death — you don't have to ask for guidance. You don't stand there for ten minutes to pray, "Should I help him? No, no, I am going now. Yes, yes, okay, I am coming. No, okay, I am going." Like some Christians, they go back and forth, back and forth, trying to make up their mind if it's the Lord's will or not. There are general instructions for such situations, as our brother Jeffrey rightly said. They have already been given. We just follow the general guidelines that have been laid down for us.
Of course, that is giving a very simple illustration. When we come to other particulars, it's not quite as simple as that. We are giving a very clear instance, clear-cut, easy to decide. But if you were to decide which college you are going to, that becomes a lot more difficult, doesn't it? Which principle guides in such a matter? Does the Lord want you to go to Toronto? Does He want you to go to Vancouver? Does He want you to go to — ah, which principle? Looking into the Bible, does it say somewhere, Vancouver somewhere? No, no, no, no. Vancouver? Maybe it says Winnipeg. It doesn't say Winnipeg either. No, I don't know where I'm going — not Winnipeg or to Vancouver. How do you decide? Which way are you going to decide now? Being led by the Spirit.
Now you tell me, what are you going to do about that? So you close your eyes and you say, "Okay, here's the map, and I'll put my finger on..." And suddenly you find your finger on the North Pole. Because to do that on a Canadian map is very dangerous — Canada goes all the way up to the North Pole. So you best not try this thing too often; you might find yourself in the wrong place. How do you decide? Very practical questions, right? So you're going to have to learn what it means to be led by the Spirit.
Now, how do you decide? I wonder how most Christians are going to decide. So they are waiting for something to happen. And out of the blue, somebody comes to you and you meet somebody from Vancouver. You say, "Hallelujah! You see, I suddenly met somebody from Vancouver. That must mean the Lord wants me to go to Vancouver." Is that right? Not necessarily so.
Our sister Dillis here knows very well the case of somebody called Charles in Wales, for whom I had a great love and concern, and I eagerly hoped that he would serve the Lord one day. And he himself had a desire to serve the Lord, and so he knew that I was in BTI, the Bible Training Institute in Scotland, and he had to make up his mind whether it's the Lord's leading to go to Scotland or not to go to Scotland, to go to Glasgow or not to go to Glasgow. And so he was trying to figure out the leading of the Lord. Should he go? Should he not go?
And so finally he plucked up all his courage. He got the application forms from the Institute, the Bible Institute. He filled them in, signed the forms, put them in an envelope, and he went on his way to drop it into the letterbox. And who does he meet on the way to the letterbox? The pastor of his church. "Charles, what are you doing?" "Well, I'm mailing this letter." "Ah, where to?" "To the Bible Institute." "But why do you want to go to the Bible Institute for?" "Well, I think it's quite good to get some Bible training, isn't it?" "Are you very sure it's the Lord's leading?" "Well, I've been struggling about this for some time." And somehow or other, this pastor — who I believe was not that much of a godly man, if I'm not entirely mistaken — put all kinds of fears and doubts into his mind.
And so Brother Charles, instead of dropping the thing into the letterbox, puts it back into his pocket and he walks away, taking it to be the Lord's leading that he should not go. After all, a pastor said that it's not necessary to go to a Bible Institute. I mean, what higher authority in this world in spiritual things do you have than a pastor? What higher authority? He did not know how to be led by the Spirit. It did not occur to him that even the apostle Peter said to the Lord Jesus, "Don't go to the cross. The cross is not for You. Spare Yourself this." And the Lord Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan." Don't think that because an apostle tells you not to go, therefore you shouldn't go. You see, that means how dangerous it is to follow the leading of a man, or to think that the Lord leads through this man or that man necessarily. You need more discernment.
That's why the Christian life depends on spiritual perception. Being led by the Spirit is no easy thing. The first thing that happened to the Lord Jesus after His baptism — you saw what happened in Matthew 4, verse 1 — the Spirit of the Lord led Him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil there. And don't think that when you are led by the Spirit of the Lord, the devil will not be there to stop you on your way. And don't think that the devil will not appear as an angel of light, because the apostle Paul says that even Satan will appear as an angel of light. And you are going along this way that the Lord is leading you in, and suddenly you see an angel of light standing in front of you. "Where are you going?" "Oh, the Spirit of the Lord is leading me there." "Look at me." "Yeah, I'm looking at you." "Do you see what I am?" "Yeah." "You look like an angel." "Right. I am an angel of light. Now don't go that way. I am an angel of light, and I'm telling you not to go." "But I thought the Spirit of the Lord was leading me that way." "Don't you worry. You look at me. I am telling you not to go."
Paul says, "If any man teaches you another gospel, or even if an angel comes to you and stands here and teaches you, you don't listen to him. Not even an angel you will listen to. Because I have told you the word of truth, and you are going to follow this way." Wow, you say, this is getting more difficult. Just when I thought that being led by the Spirit was easy, suddenly I have to contend with pastors and angels and other such things along the way. This is becoming quite frightful. Indeed it is. Yet to the path of eternal life there is no easy road. You've got to learn to become spiritual. That's what matters. That's what's involved.
Now, also don't imagine to yourself that you become spiritual simply by going to a Bible school or anything like this. Spirituality is the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. It is not some acquiring of knowledge of this and that from the Bible, but learning to submit your life wholly to the Spirit of God and to nobody else — in the first instance, to nobody. Just to the Spirit of God. And only when you have detected whether this person or that person is truly also living under the Spirit of God, then you might consider his suggestions, his advice, his words. But not until you have carefully examined whether he is a true or false professor of the faith.
Now, what do we mean then by specific leading? That is why yesterday — and it will save me some time now — when I spoke about the voice of God within us, by which He speaks to us through the conscience. It is most important that your heart is so open and so sensitive to the Lord that He can impress deeply upon your spirit, or speak to you in some way through your conscience, that you know for certain this is what the Lord wants me to do. "He wants me to go to Winnipeg." "How do you know?" "Because I was very quiet before Him. I shut out every other impression. I did not allow the flesh to raise its voice. I did not allow other distractions to come my way. I did not allow myself to make a single sound, and I focused my whole being towards the Lord."
How often have you done this, dear brothers and sisters? When was the last time you ever did this? Or is prayer for you a mumbo-jumbo that goes through, saying this and that, and reading this and that, and reading this daily portion of it? It is very good to read daily portions of devotional readings. But you are going to go nowhere until you know how to be totally silent and focused upon the Lord. There is no easy way to this. You, when you want to listen to a radio program, you don't just switch on the radio. You've got to tune in — tune in until you get the right frequency, and you concentrate on the frequency, and then you hear the sound coming through to you.
Nothing very mysterious about this, in fact. It is simply a matter of directing your heart and mind to Him. Looking to Jesus. You know, most Christians never look to Jesus in any real, any practical way. They think that looking to Jesus is again another one of these vague statements about just, well, believing in Him or whatever it means. Looking to Jesus means looking, focusing your attention on Him. And I don't mean with physical eyes. Your whole spirit focuses upon God.
I want to deal with this very practically. I don't want to talk about vague answers to vague problems. I want to be very specific about it. We are following generally in the direction of eternal life. But we have everyday important decisions to make. And our brother Wai was saying, it's like a chess game. You make one wrong move and you lose the game. How true. Some of us who play chess do that very well, isn't it? One wrong move and suddenly you find that all your soldiers are being taken away. Suddenly you find that you are being surrounded. Suddenly you have to raise your hands and say, "Okay, I surrender, I have no more moves." You made one wrong move and you are checkmated.
And yet, when you consider how vital is the Christian life, how much is at stake, I'm amazed how carelessly we live. If you want to make the right move, you're going to have to follow the Spirit. If you're going to follow the Spirit, you're going to focus your whole attention on Him. At the beginning you find it's difficult to do. In fact, it's impossible to do until you are regenerate, until you are born of the Spirit. Otherwise you can't — you can focus there all day and nothing happens. But when you are born of the Spirit, your spiritual perception becomes keen, gradually becoming keener. Focus quietly. Have you ever just closed the door? The Lord Jesus says, "When you pray, shut the door behind you." Close everything up. Now, sometimes we can't do this physically, I mean in a room, but we can still shut off all our senses. Most people cannot do that — they find it very difficult to shut out all other impressions and focus on the Lord when other people are here. If you can do that, you are a very advanced Christian. Most people have to go into a quiet place, shut the door behind them, and there learn to focus. Look to Jesus. If you want to be led by Him, you have to look to Him. "I will guide you with My eye." Look at Him. How can He guide you with His eye when you are not even looking at Him?
Now, only when you have done this will you begin to understand the reality that you are led by the Spirit. But don't go and ask the Lord — the relationship between the general and specific is very important. You cannot get general and specific guidance when you are not following Him in a general way. If you are not even a Christian, it's no use asking the Lord whether you should go to Vancouver or Winnipeg or whatever, because your whole life is not in tune with Him. What's the point of asking Him that? You can't treat God as you would treat a fortune teller. "Is it better for me to buy this house or that house? Which will be better?" "Is it better for me to go on this holiday or that holiday?" If you want that kind of information, I presume that that's why people go to fortune tellers. You cannot get guidance from the Lord until your whole life is moving in the right general direction. Your whole life is in tune with Him. You have left the world behind, the flesh behind, and you are going into the kingdom of God in that direction. Only when your life is in tune with Him can you ask for specific guidance.
There are many Christians who come to me and say, "I ask the Lord to guide me in this and that, and He never leads me." Of course He won't. Because after a few moments of talking with them, I realize that they have never received Jesus as King of their lives. They are not even going in the right general direction. Only when Jesus is King, only when you have turned your back once and for all upon the world — some people are willing to accept Jesus as King but not to turn their back on the world. You won't get any leading. Nobody gets to the Promised Land without leaving Egypt, as we saw earlier. You are not going to go into eternal life unless you turn your back upon the world, upon your self-centered life, and make Him the center of your life.
But when you have done all these things and you have now learned to focus upon Him, let me tell you, He will guide you in specifics. You don't have to close your eyes and put your finger on a map. He will direct you. He will lead you. Now, you can know — again, let me bring this back to the beginning, and we have to close now in a moment. Who are the sons and daughters of God? Those who are led by the Spirit. Don't kid yourself. Ask yourself very honestly: are you led by the Spirit? If you can't say with any degree of certainty that you are led by the Spirit, you best think again whether you are really a Christian on the biblical definition of it. It is vital that you think on it. God is the living God. He leads and guides.
In this time here, I don't have time to give a great many examples or details of this, but I can tell you, I preach this message with full conviction because I know it's true. I know the Spirit of God is real and He does lead if we are willing to follow. But many people are afraid of being led by the Spirit. Maybe one reason you are not led by the Spirit is really you are afraid. And it's amazing how many Christians are afraid of being led by the Spirit. Are you one of those?
I remember when we were about to leave the Bible Institute, many fellow students confessed that they dare not be led by the Spirit. Why? Because when they were leaving the Bible Institute and wondering whether they should go to the mission field or become a pastor somewhere, they were afraid. They would rather make their own decisions because then they can choose the spot they like. But if they wait on the leading of the Spirit, He might say, "I'd like you to go to the center of Africa, to the Congo, the jungles of the Congo, preach to the pygmies." "Oh, Lord, Lord, I don't mind going somewhere else but not there. I'm very sensitive to the heat. And mosquitoes do really bother me. And of course, I won't talk about the low standard of living. I mean, I know Christians shouldn't think about that. But, you know, there's also the fact that I don't speak the language, and the cultural differences, and so on." The reasons go on. We are afraid to be led by the Spirit.
And this means we run into another very dangerous problem: selective leading. What do I mean by selective leading? It means I say, "Lord, will You tell me what is Your will? And then when You tell me Your will, I will examine Your will and decide whether I'm going to follow it or not." Now, if You tell me to go to Vancouver — well, Vancouver is a nice city, you know. Nice scenery, the air is good, you have the beautiful Rockies there. Ah, Your leading is to Vancouver? Okay, I go to Vancouver. But then suddenly it says the leading is to Yellowknife. "Yellowknife? Where is that? Yellowknife? I haven't heard of this place." And then you discover it's way up there in the Northwest Territories — it's freezing cold. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't think I would like to go to Yellowknife. Not enough people there, you know, to talk to. I'm a very sociable person, I get lonely very easily. I think I still prefer Vancouver."
What does selective leading mean? We want the leading of the Lord only to know whether that leading suits me or not. If it suits me, I go. If it doesn't suit me, I don't go. Well, let me tell you, that's one reason why many people are not led by the Spirit — because the Spirit of the Lord knows that all you want to do is use Him. And you can't use the Spirit of the Lord. He cannot be exploited by anyone. You either follow Him unconditionally, or you are not going to be led.
Now, until the day you say, "Yes, Lord, I am going to follow You with no ifs and no buts, I follow You unconditionally" — you know that the road is going to be tough, and that's why you got scared, and you are not so sure you want to be led by the Spirit, even if you know how. Now, here we are dealing with all the crucial questions of being led by the Spirit of God. Be very honest with yourself. Are you prepared to follow Him wherever He will lead you? If your answer is, "I am not sure," that means He will not lead you. And we put it to you very simply: He will not lead you until the day you say to Him, "Lord, I will go wherever You want me to go. I will do whatever You want me to do."
And then suddenly something chokes in your throat. "What if the Lord says to me, 'You know this nice fat job you've got? Give it up.'" "Lord, not so fast. I can witness to those people that I am working with." "Give it up." "No, no, no. You see, these people look up to me. And my witness in this place is very vital to Your ministry." "Give it up." "Lord, not so fast, please. I still have better reasons why I should stay." You see, are you sure you want to follow the Spirit of the Lord? Let me tell you this: you are not going to become a son or a daughter of God by any other means than by being led by the Spirit. And He might just lead you to do the one thing that you are scared He is going to ask you to do. Are you sure you want to be led by the Spirit of the Lord? Think on it carefully. And don't say, "I sincerely tried to follow the leading of the Spirit and He never led me." Let me tell you this: He will absolutely lead you. Unless I am a liar, unless the word of God is a liar, I say to you, He will lead you. And nobody in this camp — not one of you — will leave this place without being led by Him if you will follow Him unconditionally, with no ifs and no buts.
God — if you dare to say that, and I challenge you — if you dare to say today to the Lord, "I will follow You wherever You go, with no conditions laid down on my part, even if it means I have nowhere to lay my head, so I will follow You." Remember, somebody said, "I will follow You wherever You go," and the Lord said, "Do you know what you're saying? Do you know that I have nowhere to lay My head? Do you know that this world is not My home? Do you know that this world is not where I'm staying? I'm moving on." When you know that, then you say, "I will follow You wherever You go." Will you go wherever He leads? You sure?
Know that God is real. You many times ask, "Why is God so real to somebody, and He's not real to others?" Those who are led by the Spirit of God — God of course is real to them, because they are being led by Him. They experience His leading, they know His ongoing work. That's why He's real. There's no secret to this. I can tell you, if you want to know the secret, it's simple enough. Commit yourself unconditionally — through thick or thin, through wilderness, or through the Red Sea, or through anything else — to follow Him. By this time next year, if we meet again, you'll say, "God is real. I have followed Him for one whole year. Unconditionally I have followed Him, and have I ever seen that God is real." Check me. If you have done these things that have been said today, and you commit yourself totally to following Him, if by this time next year He's not real to you, I invite you to come and give me a beating up, and say, "You are a liar, you are indeed." No. You said that if you follow the Spirit of God, God will be real to you. And I followed Him for one whole year, hundred percent, and look at what happened to me — I ended up in the ditch. You have every right to be angry if that were so, and beating me up would be the least kindness you could do to me. Speaking the truth is what the matter is all about. God will lead you into exciting ways.
What is more, let me say one more thing before we close. Remember what I said at the beginning: to follow Jesus means to take up your cross and walk behind Him. Where was He going? He was going to Calvary to lay down His life. If you take up your cross and follow Him, where are you going? You are going to go to Calvary and lay down your life. This time you can't die for your own sins. But as He laid down His life to secure our salvation, so we lay down our lives to pass on that salvation which He secured for the world. That means when you are led by the Spirit, you enter into a new lifestyle. You no longer live for yourself; you live to pass on life to others. You become a channel of life. And when you do that, He will guide you.
Will He ever guide you! You know, the Spirit of God, just as God Himself, loves us in a way that you and I cannot even begin to comprehend. I beg of you to understand it. He loves you even as you sit there at this moment with a love that you cannot begin to comprehend. You think your husband loves you? You haven't seen anything yet. God loves you with a self-giving love that no husband could ever love you with. Do you think your father loves you? You haven't seen anything yet. God loves you with a love that no father could ever give his child. Or you think your mother loves you? You haven't seen the love of God yet. I wish you could understand the love of God. He loves every person so intensely that He wants each person to come into eternal life. He is not deliberately making it hard. The road will be hard because the world will oppose us, not because God wants to grind us. Satan will oppose us, the flesh will oppose us. I say to every one of you being baptized today, you are going to face a lot of conflict and opposition because the world will rise up against you. But it is through these difficulties that you will experience His grace and His love in a way you never knew before.
Let me share with you just briefly again what I from time to time like to relate — one of my earliest experiences of being guided, being led by the Spirit. Because this instance showed me just how much God loves a person. Some of you, as I said, I have mentioned this account to before, and if you have heard it, then please bear with me. But many of you will not have heard.
I remember this very strikingly because I was in London in those days. And I lived up in the north, in a mission home in the north of London. And one day I was going to sit down to do my studies. And I have often said to you, God will speak to you often at the most unexpected moment, when you are not psychologically prepared. That's how you know that God speaks to you. And I was just about to sit down to do my studies when the voice of the Lord spoke to me very clearly: "Get up and go to the central YMCA." And I looked at my watch — 9:30 at night. I said, "Lord, it's getting late. And London is a very big city. By the time I get there, it could be well near 10:30 at night." And the Lord said, "Go." So I got up and I went. I got on my old motorcycle, started it up, and off I rode down to central London, which is where the central YMCA was.
And on the way riding there, I was saying to myself, "Why does the Lord want me to go at this time of night, and I have to go to school early in the morning? What is all this about?" And as the Lord led me there, I was just going along trying to figure it out. And then I thought, "We have some people in our church, some of the students living in the central YMCA. Maybe these are the people who have spiritual problems." And I was riding on, pondering what this was all about. And then I was thinking: "There was this brother there, and there was that brother in the YMCA, and maybe the other one." I didn't notice last Sunday when I saw them that they had any problems. "What's happening? Where does the Lord want me to go?"
And when I got there, I was looking for these brothers, thinking that this must be the reason why the Lord wanted me to come — to figure out what it's all about. And I met this brother in the YMCA and I said, "You got any problems?" He said, "No, I have no problems, I'm fine." I said, "It must be the next guy." So I went and looked for the other fellow. "You got any problems?" He said, "No, why are you asking me? I'm fine." "What's happening here?" So I went for the next guy. "You have problems, right? You've got to be him — it's only you're here in the middle of the city at this time of the night." And they were asking me, "What are you doing here?" I was afraid they were going to ask me that question, and to say to them, "You know, I've been led here by the Spirit of the Lord." You know — they sort of look at you. "What did you say? Led here by the Spirit of the Lord?" Even today, few Christians know anything about this.
But look in the book of Acts. Read in the book of Acts. The Lord said to Ananias, "Do this and do that" for the apostle Paul — he wasn't an apostle yet — "Go and baptize him. Lay your hands upon him that he may receive the Spirit." And Ananias said, "Lord, this man has been persecuting the church." He says, "Don't be afraid. I have a purpose for him." Who is Ananias? Do you know who he is? Do these things in the Bible really happen, or is it just so many words? The Spirit of the Lord was giving specific guidance to Philip. Specific guidance to Ananias. He gives general guidance to the whole church, but He was giving specific instructions. And He says to Philip, "Go into the wilderness. There is somebody there, the Ethiopian eunuch, who needs help. You go out there and talk to him." Are these things real?
And so there I was standing in central YMCA — and I'm sure brother Jeffrey and brother Dennis know central YMCA in London very well. We used to have our church services in the chapel up there. And I was standing in that big lounge down below. I don't know what you call it, lounge or something — it's a place to sit. I was standing there, and there were several people who lived in the YMCA standing next to me and still asking me, "What are you doing here?" I hadn't figured out the answer to this question. But then I focused again my heart upon the Lord. The Lord brought me here. What am I doing? And for a time no answer was coming. I continued to tune in to the Lord — our spiritual radio, remember? Tune in to the Lord.
And as I was standing there, the Lord said, "There is the man." And I looked in that direction, and I saw a man coming through the door, coming into the YMCA. I had never seen him in my life before. "That's the man. You talk to him." So I had come after all not for those people that I thought might have problems, but for that man coming through the door. And so immediately I went to this man whom I had never seen in my life before, and I said, "Can I help you?" And he said, "Yes." So our conversation began to develop, and gradually I learned that he was a professor from Taiwan, and that he was at a conference in Geneva for a United Nations conference. I began to realize that he had come to London just for a couple of days. So he would be in London only for those two days. And his heart was one who was crying out to the Lord for somebody to lead him. And he was a man much older than myself, and so I felt it was only appropriate that I would conduct him to the pastor and let the pastor help this man who was nearer his own age.
And this man came to the Lord the next day, yielded his life, and he said, "Isn't it amazing? The Lord led me from Geneva to come here. I'm here for two days, and the Lord has granted to me the very thing that I have been seeking. Isn't it amazing? I was led down from north London to come to central London, to be perfectly timed by God's own timing, to meet a man as he comes in through the door. The Lord says, 'There is the man, you speak to him.' He is the man who would be in London for only two days. He would be led to the Lord, enter into newness of life, led by the Lord in specific ways." Do you think this is remarkable? The Christian life is amazing.
And you say, "How do you..." God is real! When I tell you this, how can I tell you — how can God not be real? That is my problem. Is God real or not? How can He not be real? If you are led by the Spirit like that, how is He not going to be real in your life? You say, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, okay, maybe you are one of those super-Christians. I mean, I am one of those ordinary people." Thanks be to God, God never loved people so much as ordinary people. That's why, I think, someone said He made such a lot of them. He wants to lead you. That's what it says here in Romans. I didn't say that. It's the apostle Paul saying that.
Let me give one more brief account and I have to close. How am I standing here in front of you today? God opened the gates of steel that could never be opened by any human power and brought me forth. I arrived in Hong Kong penniless, because we were allowed, I think at that time, to take out twenty Chinese dollars. That's all we were allowed of Chinese currency to be taken out of China. And by the time I paid for my train fare down to Tsimshatsui — for those of you from Hong Kong, that's the railway terminal down there — by the time I paid for that ticket, I was virtually next to nothing left. And the Lord was leading me on to Europe. To Europe! The other side of the world! How do you go there with nothing in your pocket?
She was kneeling in prayer before the Lord, focusing her heart upon the Lord, being led by the Spirit. And the Lord said to this very simple old lady, "Get up and go to Hong Kong." This elderly lady had never been outside the United States in her life. And going to Hong Kong was like going to the moon. I think if you asked her where Hong Kong was, she'd have trouble finding Hong Kong on the map. And the Lord sent her to Hong Kong. You know what He sent her for? Somebody was coming out from Shanghai and going to Hong Kong. That person was me. He brought her there with one specific task: to send me on to Europe. And I often wondered, why is it that there was nobody else in Hong Kong who was listening to the voice of the Lord, that He had to send somebody from the United States — one simple elderly lady?
What He sent was not a pastor, but a humble, ordinary woman. And you think you are very humble and ordinary? Thanks be to God, He speaks to people like that. This woman was no Bible teacher. She had never been to a Bible institute. She had never had any kind of accomplishments spiritually or otherwise in her life. But she had one thing: she listened to the Lord, committed to follow Him hundred percent. And all through the word, the Lord was able to speak. It's not that God doesn't want to lead us; the problem is He can't find people who are there to listen.
And she came over to Hong Kong, and she came to Hong Kong, waited before the Lord, and the Lord pointed me out to her and said, "Here is the person. You see that he gets to Europe." And that's exactly what she did. And the details of this are fascinating in themselves, but I have no time to go into. She sent me on to Europe. She asked me to buy the ticket to Europe, and the next day after I left, she returned to the United States. We did not maintain contact after that for very long. She finished her task before the Lord, and that was it. I can't think of this — somebody comes from Shanghai to Hong Kong, somebody comes from Portland, Oregon, across the Pacific to Hong Kong, to send you on. And you say, "Is God real?" Have you some way to explain this? Can you, if you study psychology, can you explain this thing? Can you figure it out? Amazing, isn't it? Instance after instance of leading, of protection.
Brother Jeffrey shared yesterday about how the Lord protected him. I was driving to the crossroads near my place. You see the stop sign — four-way stop sign. I came up to the stop sign, and as everybody knows, whoever comes there first will go across first. I came up to the stop sign. I saw this great bus coming down. I saw on the other side there was no traffic. There was just a bus coming, and the bus stop is right in front of the stop sign. I reached the stop sign well before the bus. I was going to accelerate, and the voice of the Lord said to me, "Don't move." I was just going to press the accelerator. I held back. I stopped. And the next instant, that bus — that huge bus — went right across the crossing without stopping. It didn't stop at the bus stop. It didn't stop at the stop sign. It tore right across. And suddenly — I don't know whether the bus driver was dreaming — halfway across the crossing, he slammed on his brakes. The whole thing was screeching and made big black tread marks on the road. He pulled to a halt. He realized he had missed the bus stop. He had missed the stop sign. Think of it — if I had gone forward, being hit by... how heavy are those buses? Three or four tons of steel going at thirty-five miles an hour. I would have been reduced to pulp. Amazing how the voice of the Lord said, "Don't move." As clear as that. "Don't move." I didn't move forward, and in the next instant the bus went tearing past. How much He loves us. How much He cares. It's so wonderful. And you say, "Is God real?" You tell me. If you walk with the Lord, you are led by the Spirit, you know the answer. I say: walk with Him for one year, totally committed. Come back next year and tell me: is God real or not? You tell me.
That's the challenge that this verse poses for us: "As many as are led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God." Ananias was no great spiritual giant. The Lord spoke to him. I don't mean He will speak to you every day just to satisfy your curiosity. You say, "Lord, are You there? Sing me a song, then I'm sure You're there. Maybe clap Your hands if You don't like singing so much — just clap Your hands and I know, ah, yeah, He's there." He's not there to satisfy our curiosity. If you're just curious — and the intellectuals are all very curious about this and that — He will not speak to you to satisfy your curiosity. But if it's to save your life, if it is to lead you to the salvation of someone else, if He is to lead you because you want to follow the path of eternal life, He will speak to you then. And may you know Him, may you be His son and His daughter by His grace.
Let us pray.