Making room for God to work in your life requires both a humble attitude and an adventurous faith. We must first adopt the posture of Mary, magnifying the Lord and seeing ourselves as His humble servants. Then, we must act on His promises, stepping out in faith like Abraham’s servant, trusting that God will guide our steps and fulfil His word. By combining a reverent heart with a willingness to act in faith, we create the space for God to show up and write His signature across the details of our lives.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] Tonight, a little bit unusually, I want to join together two Bible passages that will add up to, you might not think they’re that connected at all, but will add up to answering the question as to whether or not we’ve learned the lesson to how to make room for God, how to make room for God to be working in your life. The first is on the screen as you see from Luke’s Gospel, chapter 1, verses 42, I think it is, no, it is 40 to 52, is that what we’ve got? 46 to 52. The person in mention there you wouldn’t have imagined being chosen actually to the prosecutor sermon that’s about making room for God, but it’s Mary. It’s not Christmas time, it’s just that this storyline really struck me about the great truth that there are some people who live out their lives and have no understanding that there’s a God involved.

[00:01:16] And in the storyline of Mary, probably the man who owned the inn, they didn’t let her have a room to have the baby, but at least let her get into the stable or with the donkeys and the cattle would be the opposite of Mary. But even Mary herself was unaware of just how she was doing something right that we can emulate that certainly makes her probably of all the persons the Bible gives us a picture, is someone that’s certainly made room for God. Listen to how she speaks, my soul magnifies the Lord. We’re listening to see what it is in her that succeeds in making room for God. My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour. Now she’s talking about God, God in general as Jewish people did. They didn’t have very much understanding of the Trinity, though there’s evidence in their writings that they could have done, but no, just God. And she is one who had room for God in her personal life

[00:02:30] because she was someone who believed in God and obeyed God. For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. Talking about a humble estate and then his servant, if you read other translations they would put in the words, they’re made servant. So the description of the person that she was culturally was not someone at all advanced in honour and position and authority. She was a made servant and God has looked on the humble estate of his made servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed. She’s realised something’s happening in her life has got God in it and it’s going to have a big consequence about her and the fact that she’s going to one day be recognised as blessed. There’s something happening to her that’s probably beyond her understanding at this moment of time. For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant and we’re beginning to see one of the characteristics of people who make

[00:03:43] room for God. It has to do with your attitude. And your attitude is one that doesn’t see you as the big time cheese or the person who’s got all the abilities to make it occur. But your attitude is one that sees you as someone who is the lowest, a servant of that God. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed. It’s going to have a big impact. For he who is mighty has done great things for me. It’s a fantastic storyline that we’re tracing through here in her discussion. She’s discovering what’s going on around. I don’t know at what stage this is when the angel’s already spoken to her or whether the baby’s already born. I’m not sure. Luke one will have to look that up later. And holy is his name and his mercy for those who fear him. The attitude, by the way, when the Bible talks about fearing God, it’s not like a trembling because you’re afraid of an awesome thing that will hurt you. It’s a respect wording for those who so respect him that they

[00:04:58] wouldn’t want to step out of line from his authority. His mercy is for those who fear him. And when you allow yourself in Christian growth and in taking on board the need to commit yourself to obey the scriptures and you read it to see what the scriptures are asking you to do, when you’re a person who fears God, then you’re one of those who’s God’s blessing from generation to generation, it shows up. He has shown strength of his arm. The attitude of a person that makes room for God is because you’re aware of him being so capable. You don’t make your plan saying what you’re going to do, but you bring the matter to him and you let him work out his plans. You trust in his great strength, the strength of his arm, not your own. He has scattered the proud and the thoughts of their hearts. See, that’s what happens if you want to make room for God. Don’t make yourself a little hero, but let God be the one that you revere. He has brought

[00:06:10] down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. So the first thing to do if you want to make room for God is to take a position before him in first and probably before others as well, just to be a person that makes room for God to act. Don’t make it that you’re planning your life based on your great plans, but make room for God by reverencing the fact that he is the mighty one and he’s the one that brings all things to pass. You can make lots of decisions. You’re not meant to make none. I’m not talking about us becoming inert. I’m talking about the attitude that we have, to recognise that the working of God behind the scenes is just so enormously the thing that makes it all come about. And by so having that attitude, you’re going to to make yourself a person that has room for God to step in. The second passage I want to use is one, now this one I’ve never preached on, this Mary

[00:07:18] passage before, but the second passage is probably one of my favourite places to preach from, not the favourite, but one from the Old Testament. If you’ve got an EFSV Bible in front of you, page 17 in Genesis 24 is where you’ll need to have it there. I think our person behind Letitia will be able to follow the versings, but there’s a big chapter. We’ll see what happens to Letitia. But it’s about Abraham when he’s old, although he’s not the person in the story line who examples for us what it is to make room for God. It’s not because of being someone who is just recognising God, someone submissive like the maid servant that Mary was, who when told of all that was going to be going on for her, said, let it happen as you want. Basically she gave room to God to do what were his plans. In this particular case, there’s another ingredient that’s being introduced to how

[00:08:20] you get to be a person for whom God turns up and God works. It has to do with, I think, achieving his promises. Much of the Christian life, as you read it and understand it from the New Testament, is one where we are meant to keep in step with the Spirit. We’re meant to walk with God. We’re meant to be people who bring things to him and try and discern what he wants us to do next, rather than us making our plans. It’s normal, on average, what to be expected of people in general. They often do form in their minds, if not specific plans, but they have directions to go and hopes to achieve and things to do. What makes a person someone who makes room for God is when you seek him as to what he wants of you. In your seeking to walk with him, there’s times when he gives you promises, and those promises you trust in him to fulfil. It’s the question of faith. You know how faith

[00:09:29] is a big deal in the New Testament, the great faith chapter that’s found in the scriptures. The book of Hebrews is really big on faith. It’s rather interesting if I can just diverge for a moment. In the great chapter on faith, in the book of Hebrews, it’s got a little verse that you won’t fully understand if you just take it immediately as it sounds in our English translations, but there’s a verse that says about God that if any person would come to him, he must first believe that he exists, and that the next part is that he is the rewarder of those who, in some versions read it well, and they put diligently seek him, because the actual meaning of the original is just that. Those that seek out to see what God wants them to do, they seek him, want to find him, those who diligently search for him. Coming to be a person who believes in God is something that happens when you seek after him, you shall seek me, and you’ll find me when you

[00:10:39] search with all your heart, the Bible says. That verse is actually talking about the fact that if you really want God to work in your life, you need to be of a search after that so working. To be a person who values highly having God do something and having his signature written across it. It’s a fantastic thing when in your life and things are going ahead and something happens and you suddenly recognise the Lord’s handiwork in all the details and understand that he wrote his signature across what was going on. Have you ever had anything like that happen to you? I want to tell you it’s the normal Christian life. It’s the Christian life that shows us what you can have happen. But the reason why I think a lot of people don’t actually have any recognition or got nothing to say if you ask them about what do God do for you is they basically live their life according to their plans and in those plans they left themselves the one that had

[00:11:53] to make it happen. Now this story long we’re going to look at shows that there is a place for our initiative. I’m not trying to make a case for sit down say God you do it all and just do nothing. I think that’s a way to miss God turning up because there is this second aspect, the first one was our subservience to him and reverence for him as we saw in Mary. But the second point I’m bringing out is that there’s a place for believing his promises. You don’t get to believe his promises very often if you never read them by the way. But if you make it your personal ambition to be somebody who walks with God and use that by using the scriptures for a start that you regularly make yourself open to God speaking to you through the scriptures. It is amazing if you give yourself to be someone who regularly reads in the scriptures, there’ll be times when things hit you, where things speak to you. The bible is that sort

[00:13:02] of book that when you really use it to search after God he loves it. But if you’re a person in a sort of plans your own way and you’ve got the idea you’re going to do this and go and do that. That’s sort of what we all do a little bit. I used to have silly little teenage plans for my life and God took me in altogether different direction from all of them. I’m glad he did because the way that he did take just had written across his signature and time and time again. One of the lecturers when I first went to Baptist College talked about his background, where he decided he wanted to get a higher degree so he could come and be a lecturer like he was one of our lecturers. He almost starved when he went overseas to get this higher degree. It’s only recently Australian places can offer you, in Christian things, higher degrees. But his was a time when if you really wanted to get

[00:14:03] a divinity degree and be trained to teach in a college, you had to go overseas, England or America or somewhere. And he went with his family and he told us he just about starved. He’d heard some stories of people who took trips by faith and God provided for them. He decided this is what he wanted to be and do and he went and nothing turned up. I had that ringing in my ears when I started at college because I also had in mind that I should go overseas. I have some academic qualifications I gained from so doing in the United States. And when I first went over there, I had the strength of my bank card to go on to buy a ticket and go. And I just said, I think Lord you’re leading me to do this and I’ll trust you for the money. And everywhere along the line that happened. I got letters from US cities where I knew nobody and nobody knew me with money inside.

[00:15:11] I have people who helped me out along the way. I had things that occurred. Someone from the latest church I’d had a crusade in here in Brisbane, people followed me because I left their church and went overseas. They sent me with letters and said they were sitting in the bus or whatever it is and God told them to send the funds. If you find a promise and step out on it, it’s a dicey matter because you might misunderstand the promise and I think all of us have a little bit of difficulty in understanding the will of the Lord and knowing what he’s saying. But there’s a place to step out in faith. Sometimes it’s your stepping out in faith by way you discover that it was the right step. A few of my steps I’ve discovered. No, maybe it wasn’t the Lord’s idea totally, but thank goodness he rescued me. But I want to say that until you become a person who’s willing to be adventurous,

[00:16:15] in what you seek to do on his behalf, as best you’ve so far discerned his purpose for you, start acting on it and see where it leads you. It’s fascinating, so to do and discover that something opens up. I had to take that attitude to all of my social personality because I was very much an introvert and very much would hang back rather than be experimental. Very much not assert myself. I was someone who needed to learn how to be experimental with God. Sometimes you might misguess what he wants you to do. I’ve sometimes gone to talk to people about Christ because I felt the Lord was burdening things so to do and I didn’t necessarily always get the leading right. But be experimental with God because he’s wanting you to trust him in his leadings and in the experimenting you trust him to step in if you’ve got it wrong. So I left Brisbane, my bank card alone, I had a bit

[00:17:36] of money that turned up. I go over, I was in Dallas and Texas and with some of the money that I got I have always wanted a car. I’ve always loved cars and while I was there I managed to see an advertisement and an old lady was selling a second hand Pontiac Catalina, big 400 inch cubic motor, only done about 30,000 miles and that became my car. I had the great joy of a better car in America than what I left behind in Australia. It’s amazing. God knows I like cars and I got a crash hot one. I shouldn’t use that word crash because after finishing at one university and graduating I had no money left but I still had my car. I couldn’t bear to sell it straight up and I found in my pigeonhole I went to clear out that means your post office box you have at the institution and there was for me a scholarship for a conference on discipleship for six weeks in Kentucky and it was going to be totally

[00:18:48] free for me, probably very expensive if you ever had to pay for all the food involved in going and all the big time speakers they had and so I said right I’ll go but I had no money, nothing for petrol. Another student met me then in the post office and said yeah I know you’ve got a scholarship, I’ve got one too he said to Kentucky he says and I want to go on home, this is the end of the semester, he was to go to the east coast who was home but he says I can go on the way to Kentucky but I’ll tell you what can I ride with you, that’s their talk about catching a lift. Can I ride with you and he says I’ll pay for the gas. He didn’t know I had no money in my pocket, if he hadn’t said that I couldn’t have gone. Well we went there we had six weeks, fantastic time, and at the end of it he then said to Cheerio. We didn’t say Cheerio, they don’t say that. He said goodbye and off he

[00:19:45] went to Alabama where his home was and I’m looking at my car. Just before I left, cleaned up my room, went to leave, someone put American $50 under the door. I said, oh, where will that take me to? I was calculating the petrol costs. I think I can make Chicago. I knew up at Chicago there was this museum in evangelism. I wanted to see it was in Wheaton College. So I headed that direction, arrived at Wheaton College, had no money left. They had a scheme that you book yourself in as a student and the bill comes later. So I booked myself in for another master’s degree, this time in New Testament, just to get room and board. And the dean of the college called me in and he says, Jim, we know who you are and we’ve decided to send you back to Australia. We’ll pay for the airfares because the Graham Crusades were going to be and Leighton Ford, Billy Graham’s brother, was to be having some Crusades and

[00:20:51] he said, we’ll give you an internship from our college and they’ll teach you about evangelism. So I get to come back home to Brisbane where Leighton Ford had a Crusade. He had three others around Australia and I went to all of those and God did all those things. That’s actually when I met Michelle because in the first place I stopped, I rang up, actually Darrell’s brother. He was living in Sydney and he was an old friend of mine and I says, I’ve got to come down to Sydney and find my own board and can I come and stay with you? He was glad for me to come. But when I arrived, he says, oh, Jim, he said, I’m talking to the pastor, he’d become the deacon in charge of outreach and talking to the pastor about my coming. The pastor said, well, I’ve been so busy for the three weeks of going every night to the Billy Graham Crusades, this is in Sydney. He said, I’m so tired, can you

[00:21:49] get Jim to preach on a Sunday night? So the final Sunday afternoon meeting of the Graham Crusade was over and I’m at the church, I got to preach and then I packed my bags and went back to Brisbane ready for the next step of this internship. It would have been over in Milwaukee, I had to go next. But the phone rang and Glenn, that’s Darrell’s brother, was on the phone. He says, Jim, I’m sitting in a deacons meeting and we’ve just discussed that we don’t believe the Lord has finished the evangelism. Three weeks of Billy Graham, you’d think that would be enough actually, but he said, but we’re starting a mission of our own at our church and all the people we took who haven’t yet responded will work on them. Come on down and I just decided not to bother going to Milwaukee, I just sit in the crowds and watch the big movement going on, but this time I’d be the preacher of

[00:22:44] my own little crusade. And I went down there and they kept extending it. And we got engaged in the last of the four months of that crusade. And I had a bit of a dwelling on, if you make room for God, he doesn’t do things by halves. If you trust in his promises, but you’ve got to believe him by faith, you’ve got to be prepared to take a step out in faith. I’ve had to apply that to being a personal witness. It’s one thing to preach, I’m quite familiar with that. This is not what I’m doing tonight, difficult for me, because since I was 17 I’ve known that was my thing to do. But personal witnessing was something that you’ve got to learn. I’m still being taught about this and every now and then, in fact I’m telling you this last few weeks I’ve had some fresh lessons from the Lord where there were scenes that I’d be a bit cautious of and dodge. Started in Mount Omni, walking down amongst the various

[00:24:01] things when you go down the aisles, and there were these businesses that try and sell you things on the way. And a girl reached out, well she didn’t grab me physically, but she pulled me in to listen to what they had to say, sell. She went on selling and whatever. Then she said, I’ll put your name down to go into town because I’ll give you a special thing. She was selling cosmetics and she thought I needed some. Don’t say anything. She said, I’ll give you something to go. And I thought, what if the Lord is in this? So I let that happen. It happened this week. I went in and there was a woman there who in her 40s or 50s, I couldn’t tell, but she was doing all sorts of things. But what she wanted to do was to sell me something for what was going for $5,000. I didn’t buy it. She was giving me a big discount, which I knew was a silly nonsense business a little bit because the $5,000 was a very big figure to be selling this radiation thing

[00:25:09] that would make your skin so wonderful. But she was like the one that got me in the aisle. They were from Israel. And as we got talking, the one in Mount Omni, I said, you know, I love people from Israel. She’s looking at me. I says, yes, because Jesus was a Jew. And I had a good talk to her and we had some of her selling and trying to on me and some of my telling her about Christ. And even though that was, she put my name down for the scene. And when I got into the town, the person there was someone who actually is not a Christian but does believe in God. It’s what got me thinking about that verse. He who would come to God must first believe that he is. And then I looked it up in the Greek and realised that the last part of it actually has got more there than you realise. It says, and not only believe that God exists, but diligently searches to find him or diligently searches, seeks after him. Some of the languages, if you look it up in Hebrews, doesn’t quite bring

[00:26:21] out that what it’s really saying is that if you want to look for God, you will find him. But you’ve got to be diligent to look. That’s the promise. If there’s anybody here tonight and you don’t know whether you’ve made at home with God yet or not, if you’re prepared to search it out, find out what the Gospel is, read the scriptures, people will tell you, you know, look here, look there. Find out for yourself what is the promise of God. God has made in that Hebrews verse a promise to you that when you diligently search for him, he’s going to be found by you and you’ll become someone who’s come to know the Lord. That’s a promise. If you want to know how to be someone who makes room for God, find his promises and seek to stand on them or do whatever the promise asks of you. Anyway, I haven’t got going in the storyline, but I’ll sum it up quickly. This is Abraham who has a son called Isaac. And verse 2, Abraham said to his servant, he had a very trusty servant, to put your

[00:27:35] hand under my thigh, that’s so he can get him to promise something and he could feel whether the man’s sincere with where he put his hand under his thighs, custom I had. Though I may make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites. That’s somewhere back from Abraham’s come. But take a wife for my, get the next little bit, for my Isaac. The servant said to him, perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to this land, where Abraham had journeyed to. Must I then take your son back to the land from which you came? He was from the Ur of Chaldees, wherever that is. Abraham said to him, see to it that you do not take my son back there. The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my kindred and who spoke to me and swore to me, promise of God to Abraham, to your offspring I will give this land, the land he’s now in which

[00:28:42] is the land of Canaan. He will send his angel before you and you shall take a wife for my son from there. You see there’s a promise. In this case it’s to Abraham and the servant is going to be leaning on it. It’s one of the ways that you become a person that makes room for God as you search out his promises and then seek to stand on them and trust them and make your life a matter of obedience to the promise to believe. If the woman’s not willing to follow you then you’ll be free from this oath of mine, he says to the servant. Only you must not take my son back to there, where they’re from. So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham and his master and swore to him concerning this matter. Then a servant took ten of his master’s camels and departed. I like that because a man is knowledgeable of how to get around back in the eastern part of the world. In those days taking a lot of camels and a lot of water

[00:29:50] and food is something to do as a prepared way to go. So this is not a stupid man and nor is finding God working in your life and having God in your life, it’s a matter of you being stupidly doing Christian things. It’s a matter of using your common sense at times and this servant has got all those camels. And he took the ten of his master’s camels and departed taking all sorts of choice gifts, because it was accustomed back then when you arrive somewhere you give gifts. He’s prepared himself for what is culturally appropriate. And he arose and went to Mesopotamia to the city of Nahal. And he made the camels kneel. They had to kneel down outside the city by a well of water at the time of the evening. See he’s quite a clever man and he knows what happens at evening time in those ancient places when the young women came out to draw water. And he’s got to find one for Isaac. And the

[00:30:49] time when women go out to draw water and he said, oh Lord God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today. Now he’s not doing this in the strength of his human, I’ll get it done because I’ve got a great personality or I’ll get it done because I’m experienced. No, he’s doing it prayerfully because he knows the success depends on God answering a prayer as he trusts in the promise God gave to Abraham. Behold I’m standing by the spring of water and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. Let the young women to whom I shall say, please let down your jar that I may drink and who shall say, the one right one will say drink. I will water your camels. Let her be the one whom you have supported appointed for your servant Isaac. So not only is she to give her a drink to this man, but she’s also to water all his camels if there’s 10 of them

[00:31:48] and they got those big humps to fill up with water, this is not a little job of getting water up from the well that this girl is willing to do. So it’s really extraordinary. This is not a test where you make it, let the next person coming in the door going to be my wife or my husband, not quite like that, where you can never tell whether it was a total coincidence or not. He’s going to be sure that God is behind it all. But I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my Master. So you’re in the business of testing God but not in the way that you say a little word or two and then take circumstances to be enough and don’t think about it anymore. Before he’d finished speaking behold Rebecca, who was born to Bethuel the son of Micah, the wife of Nahor, these are all relatives, and Nahor’s, Abram’s brother, came out with her water jar on her shoulder. The young

[00:32:47] woman was very attractive in appearance, a maiden whom no man had known. And she went down to the spring and she filled her jar and came up. The servant ran to meet her and he said, please give me a little water to drink from your jar. And that’s custom that she could do. But she answers, drink my Lord. And she quickly let down her jar from her hand and gave him a drink. And when she had finished giving him a drink, she said, I will draw water for your camels also. I love this story. Until they have finished drinking. That was a big thing to do. So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough and ran again to the well to draw water. And she drew for all the camels. The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether the Lord had prospered his journey or not. And one of the features of getting God to work in your life is when you’re prepared to look and see if his signature

[00:33:56] is written on it. If it really is him, not just you giving a, well, I’ll treat it like God’s in it. No, do it in a way that you know he is. When the camels had finished drinking, the men took a gold ring, weighing half a shekel and two bracelets for her arms. He decked her out, weighing 10 golds of shekels and said, please, tell me, oh no, he did that to her. He put all this stuff on her. Please tell me whose daughter you are. Is there room in your father’s house for us to spend the night? Now he’s got some servants with him, but this is Eastern hospitality that they were accustomed to have. And she said to him, I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Micah, whom, she says, she bore to Nahor. And she had plenty of straw and fodder and room to spend for the night. The man bowed his head and worshipped the Lord and said, blessed be the Lord, the God of my master, Abraham,

[00:35:03] who was not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness towards my master. That’s true. It’s God promising the master and he’s going to fulfill the promise. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way. Now here’s the bit I want to underline. If you want to have God showing up, you’ve got to do something in faith. And when he shows up, it is because you trusted him and let the trust be on a promise. The Lord has led me the way to the house of my master’s relatives, kinsmen. Then the young woman ran and told her mother as household about these things. I won’t read the rest of the story, but the girl says she’s willing to go and she takes her back and eventually is married to Isaac. And the family that produces the Jewish nation has been provided by God. Now this is in the Old Testament. It’s not quite the same as Mary, but let’s go back to Mary. What did she know? Very little. I think she’s finding out she can

[00:36:14] have a baby. She already knew that. Going with Joseph up to where the taxation was to be done, you know. But she’s trusting the Lord. And when she gets there, she’s still calling God her Saviour. I imagine that she’s going to one day find out the little baby that she gave birth to. It’s her Saviour. But because as we were learning this morning in church, God through Jesus has done what’s necessary to save us. And the reason why it’s God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that God in his entirety is because the Bible says that all the fullness of God dwelt in Jesus physically, in his person. In Jesus, he’s not just a third of the Trinity. He’s a Trinity, coming out an expression as the one that God the Father said. And in this morning’s service, I was talking about the fact that we’re all sinners because of being kicked out of the garden, the sin that God has kicked out of the garden of Eden. We were the rejects. We were looking at a

[00:37:30] verse that talked about the fact that God is going to make a new humanity, and a new humanity is going to be baby Jesus. And when you come to Christ and receive him as your Saviour, you not only get the forgiveness of sins, his death in the cross has earned for you, but you get him bringing God to you, making you one with him. It’s the chief way you get God in your life as by coming to Christ. And as you walk with him in humbleness and trust in his beliefs as you learn, be a person of the book. This is the book. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a modern translation or not. Well, actually it does. You need one that’s more accurate than a modern translation, but sometimes they’re helpful to understand some of the points. You can hear my bias there. But get the book and believe the promises. Read it regularly and you’ll find that God will give you promises that are just for you. And as you trust in them, you experimentally

[00:38:39] discover it might be it was a lovely hymn that you read in the Psalms and so you said, oh, I’ll believe that. Well, I’ll trust in that. Well, more than just that it’s a nice Bible passage that speaks of lots of true things. There’ll be times when God personalises the reading of the scripture to you. There are times when he speaks and sometimes, this is a mystery. This is a mystery. Sometimes he takes a passage that has an obvious meaning that you can discern, but God will apply it in ways that you didn’t expect him to. To give you an example, when my parents got the move to come here to Queensland, we were in South Australia in Adelaide, and I was first year university and my older brother and sister were still learning their ways. And my dad was really worried about leaving me mostly in Adelaide on my own and he prayed about it, but he felt the Lord was really telling him he had to come to Queensland. He became the

[00:39:43] principal of our college. But God gave him a verse. This has always amazed me a bit because what the verse said, how God spoke to my dad, wasn’t exactly how the words read, but the verse was, when my father and mother forsake me, then will the Lord take me up. That’s David speaking. And it’s really a promise for an individual Christian in trouble because they kicked out the door or something difficult happened. And excuse me, it’s a promise that God is giving to look after his people, but God spoke to my dad because he’s worried about me and what, you know, I failed a few subjects in my first attempt at uni. And anyway, I won’t tell you all the reasons why he might be worried about me, but he prayed, how can we go up to Queensland and leave Jimmy, as they used to call me, down there in Adelaide. And God gave him that verse. What God said to him was, if I have to leave him, if you have to leave him, I will look after him. While they were up in

[00:40:53] Queensland, a revival movement came in the church I was attending. I was in the centre of it where the Spirit of God worked and we had some amazing things happen that are the source of why I’m standing here today and I came eventually to Queensland but I came as someone who had found my ministry and had found how to walk with God and my dad that promise was fulfilled the way the Lord gave it to him which wasn’t exactly how if you read the verse he didn’t you know read it like an accurate translation he read it as how the Lord talked to him. Can I ask you the question do you get God ever talking to you through the Bible? Was that not your experience yet? Make a practice of reading it. There’s all sorts of things when you regularly give yourself to sit, we call this sitting under the Bible.

[00:41:55] Sometimes if you go to theological college they make you sit over the Bible where you learn all the things that you say it says. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about sitting under the Bible where you say Lord this is your word, speak to me today if you will. Sometimes nothing comes through but every now and then when you give yourself committed to be a person of the book, meaning that you know what it is to always go back to see what God says and you take it to be the Word of God. I can’t answer all the apologetic questions. I’ve had a lot of education to answer some. I can’t answer them all or necessarily convince everybody of what I do know but I want to tell you that when you believe the book and you’re a person who sits under it there is a power that

[00:42:53] turns up. It is a source of real ministry. It’s the Word of God and it speaks to you and it speaks through you. It treats you with encouragement. It helps you understand other people. It’s a fantastic thing. Sometimes sitting at home in our family, talking to Michelle, we will find something of the scriptures that enlighten us about what we see in the church actually but also in the people, the relatives of ours and people for whom we have responsibility to bring the gospel. There’s something more to the scriptures than just intellectual things and you’re hearing that from someone who is an intellectual but I’m not actually just an intellectual. I’m someone who loves to listen to God and if you want to be a person that makes room for God, quit being the big expert. Be like Mary

[00:44:00] and magnify the Lord. Trust in him and take the position of a humble estate and you’re the maid servant or man servant. Take that role because you want God to step in. He’s an enormous God and if you make room for him to exercise being that God in your life, he’ll turn up and do it and he has given us the scriptures. There’s one way he communicates. It’s not the only way but one way he communicates and so take a regular position for putting yourself, as I would, under the word. Meaning Lord if you say something to me, I will listen. There was a young boy, I finished with his illustration, whose name was Samuel. You might guess I could have made this my third story line but the message would be too long. But Samuel was in the temple when God spoke to him. What did he say? Speak Lord, your servant is listening.

[00:45:11] Your servant is a humble attitude. Speak Lord is your recognition that it’s his role to lead and you’re asking him to speak to you and that you’ll be listening and to listen to God’s direction is how you make room for him to act in your life. Let me pray. Heavenly Father I thank you for this message. It’s moving me. How to make room for God in your life. Help us to learn. Lord I thank you for teaching me not to run away from some social scenarios and I’m not phased anymore as once I was because I trust you to be at work in my life. Thank you for the illustration of Jonathan, son of Saul, friend of David. Got surrounded by the enemy and do you know what, Lord, you remember what he said? What did he say? The enemy is all around us. Let none escape. To have that adventurous belief that you would be his helper. The enemy is all around us. Let none escape. Father help us to be people who by faith make room for God to act in our lives. I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.