Welcome to the Lansdale Life Church podcast.
If you're seeking a closer relationship with Jesus Christ, this podcast is for you.
Thank you for joining us today.
All right.
Lord, we thank you that you're the life giver.
That we can fellowship around you, not a personality or a cult
or an idol
or a job
or things that are nefarious to our spirits, but, Lord, that we can rally around and enjoy your presence.
Thank you for teaching us, Lord, to live by your principles,
to love you, to follow you, Lord, all the days of our life.
So we pray, Father, as we get into the teaching tonight that you'll open our ears.
Help me articulate what I think you have given me.
And that you would be glorified tonight, above all, in the name of Jesus. And everybody said, Amen.
All right.
Very interesting subject.
All of us probably know the story of Balaam.
We can identify with a lot that has gone on in his life with regard to
back and forth and up and down, but what I'd like to do is maybe bring a little bit of a different perspective
to what happens when God controls our human intentions.
what I'm going to do in this outline, like I usually give you, is I'm just going to read
excerpts from it so we can get through it without dwelling on it. And all that I'm reading is just the red print.
So Baloch, which was the king of Moab,
seeks help from Balaam, asking him to curse Israel.
Isn't that interesting that a diviner
can curse God's
loving nation.
He seeks
help from Balaam, and
the elders of Baloch
bring messages with payment.
And the Lord forbids him to curse Israel, as was asked by Baloch.
And Balaam refuses to go to Moab, and he sends them home.
And Baloch sends more princes with greater promise of reward, and Balaam again consults God.
God allows him to go, but only to speak what he commands, and of course that's blessing.
The next elements are God's anger burns because Balaam goes with selfish intent.
The angel blocks his path three times, the donkey sees the angel, and then turns aside each time.
And Balaam strikes the donkey. God opens the donkey's mouth to speak.
Balaam's eyes are opened. He sees the angel with the drawn sword, and the angel permits him to go.
And Balaam again greets Balaam
at the Moabite border. And Balaam then
can only speak what God puts in his mouth, and Baloch offers sacrifices.
So my question to you is this. What happens when a person tries to follow God outwardly,
but holds on
to the selfish desires that are inside, as Balaam did?
What's that look like? What happens to that person ultimately when they will not relinquish that control?
They will not yield to God.
What ultimately happens?
Disobedient. Okay, is that all? Just being disobedient? Is there more to that? Is there a path?
You wreak havoc on your own life.
So how do we do that?
We're born of the Spirit.
We come into the love of the Lord. We follow the Lord.
The Spirit of God is dwelling in us, and
as we turn away,
what happens to the Spirit of God in our life becomes less influential. We're not listening.
He's there. He wants to speak, but we're not yielding. So eventually,
as that happens, what do we end up with? Destruction of the Spirit within us.
Now, I'm not saying death. All I am saying is that we can be, at some point in time, callous enough,
unyielding enough that the Spirit just is dormant in our life.
So consequently, we then have a commission
to look
for God and everything that we do. So let's graphically put this out. So what happens
when ultimate destruction comes?
Obedience becomes
self-hearted.
Outwardly,
everyone appears to be faithful, yet inwardly, they are negotiating with sin.
You know, you're playing with it's not too bad, whatever.
Spiritual vision then becomes clouded.
Can't see. Can't see clarity. It becomes easy to make personal ambition,
mistake personal ambition for God's will, because you're not seeing the Spirit.
And then they open themselves to compromise, so you see how it begins to drift. So inward desires,
for gain, can twist one's purpose in life.
See, we all started out with the same deal.
We want God, and then all of a sudden as we progress, these things lose
their traction. The loss of spiritual integrity and peace becomes common in that life.
You cannot serve both God and self without tearing your spirit apart.
And then eventually destruction follows and then happens. When we hold on to selfishness, and that's what it is,
the kingdom of self versus the kingdom of God, we risk losing the very blessing that we sought to preserve.
Why I say these things is basically this. It says in Matthew 6, no one can serve two masters.
Which is it? Which you're going to choose?
Now, if you're starting in the orange column,
it's not so bad because you can still maneuver and you can hear, but as you progress in
selfishness, you end up losing the very spirit of God that you came to the Lord in the first place.
So we have this decision and choice.
So let's get back to Balaam.
And he was a diviner from Pothor.
So let's set some background for you.
Pothor was located in the heart of Mesopotamia.
It was a region that was steeped in divination, astrology, omen reading, which is basically predicting the future.
You ever see, do you ever go down the road and see these palm reader hands, you know, they'll read your palm, you know.
I wonder, you know, when I see the lot with cars in it, I know that people are resorting to that.
And that's the only thing that they feel that they have.
So Pothor represented the worldly center of occult wisdom.
This was the Mecca center, a system of religion that mixed the truth about God with false spirituality.
So there was a mix there.
This area had prophets and seers who combined pagan divination with reconciliation of a supreme deity.
Now, in our mind here in Chrysodom, it's hard for us to get a hold of that dualistic approach to what they walked in.
But Pothor shaped Balaam's understanding of that world, a man of spiritual insight, but with corrupted motives.
He was there for the take.
Remember, he was asked to do this.
He refused because God said no.
And then all of a sudden, look, we'll give you more money.
Balak sent more princes, promise of success.
And consequently, he did yield.
So he was trained to hear the Gods, but in his greed and ambition, he tried to use the true God for profit.
And that was not uncommon in those days.
Balaam's character is this, he was a diviner for the higher who acknowledged Yahweh's authority, but practiced pagan forms of spiritual manipulation.
So he was for the higher.
That was very common in those days.
Balaam was not an Israelite.
He was not a priest and he was not a prophet of Israel.
He was an outsider asked to do this.
So my question now arises that what does Balaam's life teach us how our environment can shape us?
Think about your environment.
Think about how you were raised.
And if you were raised in an environment like that without God, the high probability is that you would be influenced greatly.
How many?
Go ahead.
I was just going to share that one verse, that bad company corrupts good morals.
You know, and just thinking of who you hang out with is who you become like.
Yeah, great influence.
And you think it's a friendship basis.
My, my father used to tell me, you know, you can't run with those guys.
Why?
What's wrong with that?
You know, I soon found out.
So consequently, there is a price to pay for that.
So what else?
So we, we hang out with people that influence us suddenly, directly, indirectly.
What else?
How does that begin to shape our thinking?
We think like those individuals that we assimilate that information because our mind is always going.
We assimilate it.
And after a while we are directed and convinced oftentimes that that way is the right way.
You know, I used to street race when I was young, my father used to tell me, you shouldn't do that.
So I'd go out and do it anyway.
And I almost had an accident one time.
And that was enough.
The axle came out of the back of my 37 Ford and I was racing down the road and the wheel and the axle went, went ahead of me.
I thought, oh, and the car started to go like this.
Oh, Lord, my father's speaking to me.
So, you know, I, I soon gave that up for a little bit.
All right.
The surrounding circumstances feed temptation.
We reflect what we stay around.
Jill, you did a very good job on that one.
And God's voice can be drowned out by our surroundings.
So now let's look at the internal battle of this fella.
We know he's conflicted.
He wanted to do something for hire.
God came to him, he visited him, and yet he has these desires.
So there was a disregard for God.
This is a statement that does affects most people, most men.
When men go against their conscience with strong passions and brute force of their
will within prevails over the principle of rationality.
Let me read that again.
When men go against their conscience with strong passions, the brute force of their
will within prevails over the principle of rationality, right versus wrong.
You know, I'm going to do it anyway, and I'll be successful.
You will that into existence.
Greed, Balaam saw with his eyes the authority of God.
He absolutely was forbidden to curse Israel for the sake of a reward.
He thought he wanted to do that.
He was drawn because he had that environment to pay for what my services are.
And he had a strong inclination to do these things.
Very strong.
Lord, let me go to the Lord.
Let him go.
He at least acknowledges God in the situation because of his conscience.
And again, remember God speaks to us through his word, which then influences
the spirit for direction, which influences our conscience, which helps us live rightly.
But the conscience that he had, he was dealing with these equivocal situations,
absolutely denying to curse Israel.
He wouldn't do that, but he was not totally hard and callous to the impressions
of God because he talked with God.
God told him these things and passion then overrules his reason.
The state of Balaam's mind was this.
He wanted to do what he knew was very wicked in his heart because he was
going to get paid for it and contrary to the express command of God.
And this is the dilemma.
How many have ever been in the, in, into the middle of a decision?
Is it the Lord?
Is this, or do I want this or is it me?
Well, there's a conflict within.
Here is a very conflicted man under a deep sense of God's having talked with him,
but yet persisting in his wickedness, he resisted his inward checks and
constraints, the conscience speaking to him.
So again, the question that I ask is how do we recognize when our conscience
conflicts with God's spirit rather than aligned with it?
How does that work?
How do we recognize that when our conscience is conflicted?
Ah, good hand.
All right.
Uh, one big way is if we don't feel at peace in the decision.
That's, that's a very good, that's one of the signs he, he came for what?
Righteousness, peace and joy when we don't have peace, we don't have the Lord.
Yeah, right.
Okay.
Anything else?
All right.
Oh, yes.
When you have the, when you have the immediate doubt, like right away,
your consciousness is kind of telling you.
And then the more you think about it, you can sort of start to change the way
your conscious, conscious thinks.
So that's what, yeah.
So, but when you have that initial thought, like, Hey, maybe I shouldn't do
this, you should act on it kind of right away.
That's very good because what we tend to do is suppress it.
And then when it comes up again, we suppress it.
And after a while, like I said, if you do that long enough, that,
that voice won't be there.
Yeah.
Good, good stuff.
All right.
The idea that Balaam wanted to do these things is not uncommon.
Second question.
What does the inner conflict reveal about the nature of the human heart?
The nature of the human heart is what dark.
Oh, I have a loving heart.
Yeah.
That's because God gave you opportunity to walk in that understanding.
But in each man's heart, there is darkness.
And what we do, we allow God to come in and slay that and we live in purity.
Okay.
Now Balaam had a deceitful heart.
We know that, but first Balaam suffered from self-deception.
He thought he could serve God and greed at the same time.
That's what his thoughts were.
He knew God's will, but kept asking and hoping that God would change his mind.
Oh, come on, God.
Did you ever ever argue with God?
Oh yeah.
You know, Lord, I want to do that.
Don't do it.
Second, Balaam was double-minded because he was torn between two masters.
His inner conflict came from believing this illusion that he could serve the two
masters.
And third, he was hypercritical.
His outer mask tried to maintain the illusion before others.
He showed faith outwardly while concealing compromise within his own heart.
Jesus, while on the earth, called out the hypocrites.
Their eyes were blinded and their hearts were darkened for the love of sin.
And I just brought out several things.
I'll read them quickly to you in keeping the Sabbath, the hypocrites, those that
were in the rabbinical service, but without mercy and love of, and love of
God in religious washings for the appearance of holiness in long prayers,
without drawing near to God within their heart.
And this really gets you in going to the Passover to be purified while they
determine that they would shed the innocent blood of Jesus.
So they were very hypocritical and he called out them as such in being
forbidden to enter the Gentile judgment halls, which they didn't go in.
They urged a heathen governor to crucify the one they know was innocent.
Go ahead, you do it.
You take care of it.
Think about this.
Judas the Iscariot was also very wicked, but walked with the disciples
with no suspicion of his deception.
Isn't that something?
And he was deceiving himself as well.
And you know, that's played out very much in the, in the, uh, the
movie that we all saw, what was the name of that?
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, right.
So proverbs four 23 says above all else, guard your heart for everything
that you do flows from it.
So how do you guard your heart?
You protect it from corruption, idolatry, and those things that cause
you to be led astray and the heart or the thoughts, the desires,
and the motives and the will.
So we're, we're going back and forth in this issue.
Now here's interesting.
Balaam is such an example for us that the new Testament talks
about him several times.
It says in second Peter two 15 and 16, Balaam is again, condemned
as one who loved the wages of unrighteousness, but was rebuked by his
donkey used an example of false teachers driven by greed.
So let's look at the focus of that greedy false teachers love money over obedience.
That was nothing new in the new Testament.
So there was a carryover human life is what it is.
The second one is Jude one 11 mentions the error of Balaam for profit,
comparing him to those who corrupt truth for personal gain.
The focus then, and that is the corrupt religious motives with that
profit driven heart.
Again, that division.
And then the last one in revelation two 14, it says Jesus rebukes the church
in Pergamum for following the teaching of bail who led Israel into idolatry
and immorality, and the focus of that is spiritual compromise, trying
to mix the compromise with faith.
So that's what we have question.
How can we know God's voice, speak his works, his words, and still be
corrupted and be, and be compromised?
How can that happen?
Go ahead.
Let me give you the mic.
So everybody here's, how can we know God's voice, speak his words, and be
corrupted and compromised wall.
You can know God's voice doesn't necessarily mean you're following it.
You know, you can speak his words.
It doesn't necessarily mean you believe it.
And then that enables you to great.
We can't see people's hearts.
Can we only God can do that?
You know, Danny here, you know, he, we, we, we know that, that, um, Danny
was one of the two, two, I guess, individuals that I, uh, I met.
Early on and, uh, hope that God works in your life and in doing so, I see
you develop and grow and I mean, that's wonderful that you're doing those things.
Yeah.
All right.
Um, what else?
All right.
God sometimes answers our careless prayers and wishes.
You think about that.
There are no greater dangers than that of God answering a man according
to the desires of his heart.
I'll give you an example of that.
In business, I had one organization I started out with.
I developed that into two separate organizations under the same umbrella.
And there was a third organization that I thought would be advantageous
to our business scheme and a model of what we wanted to do.
Uh, the opportunity came out because the, the, the particular company didn't
have enough management skills and, uh, sales.
So I thought, okay, this is an opportunity of bargain.
So I prayed about it and I asked my wife about it and she said no, but
I wanted to do it.
And so here comes this guy, you know, in light of all these
things in front of him, you know, and I prayed about it again.
You know, the Lord, I believe he didn't want me to do it.
In fact, just looking back now, I know he didn't.
So I went ahead and did it and boy, did I pay for that thing.
It took me about a year and a half to turn this thing around.
And if anybody knows about business, there's capital investments that
you have to have to sustain your payroll, your inventory and so forth.
And it was very difficult to work out of that, but boy, did I
learn a lesson in just a practical sense.
When God says, don't do something, don't do it because it was a financial
drain for a period of time.
So in looking at life, and I think we can all exemplify with these things
in some form or another, when you want to do what you want to do.
So in Ezekiel 14, four, it says this, tell the people of Israel that if they
sinned by worshiping idols and then go to a prophet to find out what I say,
I will give them the answer their sins, desire and deserve in scripture.
It says this in Psalm 106 15, he gave them their request, but sent
leanness to their soul so he can let you go down this path a bit.
First Samuel eight, Israel demanded a King and God listened to their voice,
but warned them of the consequences.
The King will take your money.
He'll take your young people for soldiers.
He'll tax you and so forth and so forth, but they insisted they wanted a King.
So God gets displeased with us, but in his mercy, he bids us go and
enjoy what you feel you want.
Let me see and hope that there is a lesson to be learned there, even
though our conscience is speaking the truth.
First Kings 18 21, Elijah's challenge.
How long will you waver between two opinions?
So we have this again, identification with Balaam.
What is the difference between God's sovereign will and his permissive will?
Now we get into dangerous territory.
What, okay.
Just brought to mind about King Hezekiah and he was a good King.
And God came to him and said, okay, it's time for you to get your affairs
set in order because you're going to die soon.
And he pleads with God, please don't let me die yet.
I'm not ready to go yet.
Please let me live.
So God said, okay, but this is where we need to learn to trust God, even
in things like that, because during the time that he had extended life,
Manasseh was born and Manasseh was the worst King of Israel ever.
Wicked, wicked, wicked.
And that never would have happened if Hezekiah's life had not been extended.
Anything else come to mind?
See, when you yield to God and walk in his providence, his sovereignty,
you fulfill God's desires, whatever they may be, your ministry, if it's
prophetic, if it's teaching, whatever the case may be.
When you walk in the permissive will of God, he'll let you do those things.
And some interesting elements of life will come to you that will reconcile
what he wants in your life.
But you have to go through difficulty to get there or opposition,
whatever you want to call that.
So there's the desire that God has for you.
And the desire will be fulfilled when you give yourself to him.
And then his permissive will will allow what you want to happen.
And he'll work through that individual.
Now, what did I learn in that situation about taking that other company on?
I learned that unless God speaks definitively to me, I won't do anything
else as far as expanding the business is concerned.
And I was then safe when all that happened and understood I learned the lesson.
So I would hope that we all learned the lesson in the sense of what it is
that God wants, another question, how can we discern whether God's
yes is a blessing or a warning?
How do we do that?
What's that look like?
All right, let's first examine the motive behind our request.
What is the motive?
Is it going to be me or is it the?
What's the motive?
James four, three, you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly
to spend it on your own passions.
Another one, test the results against God's character and word.
What's that look like?
First, John one five, God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.
And Danny would talked about the idea of peace blessing aligns with God's
holiness, truth and righteousness.
The warning is it leads toward compromise, worldliness and sin.
So you can begin to see the evidence of these things as they unwind before you.
Observe the inner fruit, peace or restlessness.
Is there chaos in a situation?
Have you ever gone into some people's homes or situations and oh my gosh,
there's chaos all around.
You know, the peace of God isn't there Lord.
First thing I do is I want to get out, but you know, if he's called you there
to be, to be a missional example or a proclaimer of his love, you work
through those things, but you soon know and understand that the peace of God
is something that affirms or helps us affirm where we are going.
So one story comes to my mind about the story of Abraham and Sarah.
When God said that, you know, through your, uh, uh, there's going to be a child,
you know, but they want to do their real and they have the, um, the other
child, I forgot the name of the Hagar as well.
Yeah, but God blessed him too.
But, but the promise was, uh, Isaac, Isaac, Isaac, he went up and down, didn't he?
Can you imagine telling the King that this wife that you, that you
took is not your wife.
I mean, he went to, he went to terrible lemmings.
Yeah, there was, I can imagine, I wonder what that conversation
between him and Sarah were like, you know, I don't know.
A very good example to me as a woman that we're supposed to ultimately
trust God and obey our husbands and allow them to make their mistakes
because God is still in control over them.
And so whatever happens, it's not our responsibility.
It's their responsibility before God.
And they're the ones that are going to reap the chaos, but we have to trust
God above all, even our husbands and just be obedient to them as they
are under God.
Learning that lesson is extremely important in the co-equal situation.
You know, if, if, if you as a man and men basically are lazy by nature,
don't bother me, just leave me rest, give me peace.
And when your wife gets frustrated enough, she'll want to jump in.
And eventually if it's not worked out, she'll become the leader of the home.
And that's upside down.
So consequently, it's for us and the requirement to leave the home, to
understand what priestly ministry is in behalf of our wife and our children.
And you are right.
If change is going to happen, it's going to happen with me first.
So whomever you are, woman or man, you make the change and let God begin
to work in their life and he surely will because you are obedient.
And I've seen many situations where, you know, they, there's one individual
that we had worked with for some time.
She just couldn't get the idea that if she left go of the reins, that
things would fall apart.
And I said, if you do that, God will honor you.
And she left go of the reins and things fell apart.
But the man eventually understood his position in life to be the leader
of the home, to understand what he had to do.
So that's a difficult lesson, but it has to, it has to be learned
in the kingdom of God.
Watch the outcome over time.
Proverbs 10, 22 says, the blessing of the Lord makes rich and he adds no
sorrow with it and what's the blessing.
It leads to lasting fruit, growth, wisdom, and joy that glorifies God.
And what's the warning?
It brings regret, loss, and being spiritual barrenness to our souls.
All right.
Let's take a look at some principles that we have worked with now.
The principle basically is this.
God cannot be manipulated by human schemes.
That's unequivocal.
There's no if, ands, or buts about that.
The application for us then, again, attempts to use God for selfish
gain always fails no matter what it fails.
God may allow our plans to move forward for a time, but in the end, it
always brings frustration, exposure, and loss.
So that's one principle.
The second principle is this.
Spiritual gifts require obedience more than talent.
And that was the fallacy of the charismatic movement.
And of the Jesus movement years ago, it was the personality cult that
often was elevated above because of supposedly the gifts in these
individuals, but the application is that spiritual gifts require moral
integrity and a heart purity waiting, wanting to serve God.
A person may be gifted and yet lack integrity without a pure heart.
The gift can become distorted and misused.
That's why it's so often when it's when the Bible talks about not putting
responsibility on young men until they get seasoned to some point in time
in their life where they can handle the, the, the calling of God.
Another lesson, God can use unexpected means to achieve his purpose while
protecting his people, such as Balaam, the donkey in Israel, he can use
anything if he wants to get that particular point across to you.
Trust God's sovereignty, not human schemes.
Don't resort to something.
Well, Lord, I waited long enough.
If you don't act in the next 24 hours, I'm going to do.
You know, that's not, that's not the way we do.
Sometimes, you know, the Lord could give us the answer like that, but
does he seldom he does because there's a waiting process and an
understanding process of who you are in God to bring you to some point of
trusting him and that is patience and understanding and waiting for him.
You know how I pray for an intercede for people.
I don't, I don't ask the Lord to do now.
I just pray for that individual and begin to say, okay, God, open the
windows of heaven for them.
Or in some cases I feel Lord, whatever it takes to bring them.
And we have some of those that we pray for.
Lord, don't bring destruction to them, but if you have to bring
hardship, bring them to the Lord.
So consequently, trust in God's sovereignty, not human schemes.
Even when our circumstances appear chaotic or people act unjustly,
God is still in control.
Don't forget that.
You know, what we see with our eyes, is it necessarily what's going on?
It's the spiritual battle behind that, that is again, part of the
process that has to be worked out.
He uses human failures and opposition to fulfill his will.
I had a situation that was interesting.
I, I had been working with one individual in, in Meadowwood and he's
in his mid to late eighties and he was a traveling vagabond, all his
married life, he did installations for Sperry Univac and he used to go
country to country with his team.
Didn't spend a lot of time at home and very successful.
And we had been dialoguing back and forth for about a year and a half.
And he said not so long ago that he really felt that he needed to
get closer to his wife.
And I said, you know, you're blessed.
I said, even to think that you should be doing that as a Christian,
he was a new believer now.
So we talked about that and I gave him pointers about how he should be
interested in, in the things that his wife does and, you know, make
conversations and he says, I'm not much of a conversationalist.
I said, well, you know, you need to get, get on with that and begin to do it.
And then he called me and I know when he calls, he said, John, we have to meet.
So this was about four weeks ago.
And, and I just, I said, Lord, I said, make this thing happen.
And he needs to talk these things out, not in front of his wife because
she's a non-believer.
So I give him, you know, kudos for that.
So I, I make mention of this last Sunday in our small group that please pray
for, and I won't mention the name man's name and I don't know who prayed or
whatever prayed, but, but Monday night I got a call, it was Jean.
He said, can you come over?
I said, yeah.
He said, Pat's not here.
I said, okay.
I said, I'll be over.
So I put my shoes on, walked over there and we had a blessed time in the Lord.
Just reinforcing again, those things and those providential issues that come
about that God leads you and God brings opportunity if you're walking in his will.
Okay.
Even spiritual insight can be corrupted by the love of reward.
When our motives are mixed, even clear revelation becomes clouded.
Sometimes the love of reward rather than, uh, whether it's money, recognition,
influence, or favor can twist the way we interpret God's word.
And the last one, then God's plan is unstoppable.
Prophecies and blessings will come to pass despite opposition.
When God says something, it's going to happen.
Be rest assured of that.
And the presence of opposition doesn't mean God's promises are in danger.
It often confirms that his hand is at work.
So let's take a look quickly at Balaam and the issue with the
sword and the angel's hand.
Let me read this numbers 22, 22 through 31.
God's anger was kindled because he went, meaning Balaam.
The angel of the Lord stood in the way as the, as the adversary against him.
When the Lord opened Balaam's eyes, he saw the angel of the Lord standing in
the way with his drawn sword in his hand.
And he bowed down, meaning Balaam, his head and fell on his face.
Question.
What does this drawn sword in Balaam's life teach us?
What might that be?
Yes.
I have demonstrative warning, right?
It's not that subtle in there.
It's graphic.
It's there.
It's a, it's a stark warning that you're living in dangerous territory.
You're going the wrong way.
So in light of that, God had to use Balaam's donkey, spiritual blindness
as a result of a divided heart before God.
We said that God's mercy is shown in his warning before destruction.
And again, fear alone cannot save only the repentance and surrender can save.
So then why did God open Balaam's eyes?
Why did he do that?
There's the goal.
Gail.
I think it was God's way of showing grace to actually let him know why, why he
couldn't move forward because God was trying to stop him to keep him from
doing anything further that was wrong.
And he was putting that defense there against him.
And finally he let him see what that defense was to stop him.
So the stark warning came.
He didn't understand why he beat his donkey.
The donkey was wise, Balaam wasn't.
God opened Balaam's eyes and it is at that moment then God exposed Balaam's
spiritual blindness to Balaam, which was caused by self-deception and greed.
Balaam only saw the truth of his error after his eyes were opened.
He said, Oh my gosh, he reacted to that.
Now this is the lesson for all of us.
God can use anything, anything, anything, or anyone to get our attention.
And if you'll notice the progression, it becomes stronger and stronger and
stronger while we are in that dilemma, that inward turmoil, he'll let you
go, he has a rope around your neck, he'll reel you in when time comes.
But the idea that he wants to get our attention is always forefront because
he loves you, he doesn't want to destroy you.
Balaam was a pagan seer whom God temporarily used to pronounce his truth.
Think about that.
He wanted a curse, but he couldn't, and he blessed the nation Israel.
Question, has God ever spoken to you in different and odd ways in the past?
Now, if you tell me that his donkey spoke to you, I will be impressed.
How has God spoken to you in different ways?
What's that look like in your life?
I mean, I'll put myself out of the limb.
Normally, God gives me in the intentions of what he wants as an impression in my heart
and my spirit, and then I yield to that.
But there are different times that I have seen visions of what God wants, and they
are cherished because he outlines very definitively A to B to C to D, but not
always, he speaks in the innermost concepts and recesses of the heart.
So I have had visions.
There was one particular time when God spoke to me audibly, and it was cherished.
My wife was failing in her MS fight for health, and we lived in a very large house,
five bedrooms, three beds.
It was, you know, the dream house that we had built.
And it was not affordable with one income.
You know, when we moved in and my wife said, we have to buy drapes, I thought,
Oh my gosh, all these rooms, you have to, we spent thousands of dollars in landscaping.
And it was interesting.
And as she got to the point in time where she could not work, the Lord
told me, you have to move.
And what he said is just move.
So I said, okay, what's that look like?
So I hunted around for a house with no steps.
Can you imagine that?
No steps.
There was one house in Montgomery County that was about four
miles from where we lived with one little three inch step.
Then I put a riser up on that so she could get her wheelchair in and out.
And that house was pink.
That house had carpet on the kitchen floor.
That was terrible.
The, the plastic flamingos in the bathroom were falling off the wall with
green tile on the floor and my wife couldn't see through that.
She started to cry.
It's just what we're going to come down to.
I said, I can fix all this stuff.
The walls were 13 inches thick and it was a good house.
It's just the characteristics of what happened.
So we started to rip that thing apart.
And before that I said, okay, this is, this is what God provided for us.
Yada, yada, yada.
So the story goes on and, and what I did, she had roses.
She said, well, what about my roses?
She had long, long stem roses.
She loved them.
They were out in the garden about, I said, we'll take care of them.
So settlement came, it was November.
I said, Oh my gosh, what do we do with these roses?
I said, I would move them.
So I went around to Home Depot, all the outlets, and I brought frozen potting soil.
And by that time it was cold.
So I loaded it in the truck, came home, hacked it all up, made a flower bed, went
over, dug the roses up, brought them back.
And she said, Oh, she said, now I feel at home, but she didn't like the green
flamingos or the, or the pink flamingos in the green floor.
So we started the bathroom first.
But the idea here is when God spoke, he understood what my needs were because at
that point in time, she was working part time and she just couldn't keep up
because of her disability and moving from that situation, taxes high, you know,
all the stuff that goes with this down to this little house.
And it was, I think 4,200 square feet or 3,800 square feet down to 1200 square feet.
Yeah, it was a little house.
It was pink on the outside too.
It looked like a Bermudian house.
That's a, the next thing I did the summer is paint it.
But you know, we came to understand that that's what God's providence was.
And we made it our home and things changed so that one word changed our
entire environment and life move, but that's the only time now, what else did
God interestingly do for you in your life that was new and different or something
unusual, if anything, I mean, I, maybe not.
Dottie, what's that going to put you on the spot?
I am.
I just don't can't think of any particular one.
I'm sorry.
I just can't, uh, no, nothing comes to mind right now.
Just impressions on what God, okay.
Yes.
I would say, uh, through unbelievers, you know, like people who wouldn't realize that
they're even being used by God to tell me something and they don't realize that
they're part of a message from God.
And, uh, you know, it's really peculiar, you know,
yeah, depending on thinking of a couple of different scenarios.
So it could be a rebuke, like here's this pagan telling me something that I know is
from God and he's telling me to, you know, he's rebuking me through this person or,
or just other things that are just making it real clear.
Cause he's done it a lot of times.
You wouldn't think that you would think that that would come
from a fellow Christian.
Right?
Yeah.
That's good.
Yeah.
Kind of like him using a donkey, right?
Yeah.
You can get away with it.
But not, were you the donkey or was it just anything else?
Any thoughts?
Yeah, go ahead.
Um, he, God has used his word a lot of times when I'm reading and I'm questioning,
I might, while I'm journaling, I might be asking for an answer for something or
confirmation, and, um, I sometimes find it's, um, a word like, like the word go,
you know, and you see it three times, you know, and, and it's like, it gets
impressed that the situation comes to mind right away and I wasn't even thinking
about it and so he'll use this word.
All right.
That's good.
One more.
That's our own little thing.
Here we go.
No, but, uh, also, no, another one is like really when like situations happen that
like sometimes like you see, like you've been like wanting to know what direction
to go in and suddenly you see like doors closing and you realize like, well, I
don't want to fight this because maybe this is God saying, go this direction.
And you realize, you know, I don't want to like force.
I don't want to like push it and try to get my way in that because obviously
this is God saying, I don't want you to go that direction, you know?
So I guess circumstances, you know, business wise and otherwise.
Yeah.
Why didn't I know you when I went for the third business, huh?
You told me anything else?
Yes.
I just thought of something, uh, years ago, I think it was just as I
became a grandmother, I think it was, it was many years ago.
And, um, I remember a girlfriend and I, we were saying, our grandmother's,
what are we going to do?
And I just really, uh, I just, it was like the Lord told me that I was
to really, to just now, I had time.
I had now to surrender my life and totally give my life to the Lord.
And, and to let him just really, uh, uh, begin to, uh, do a new work in me.
And I didn't really obey.
I didn't listen enough.
I just saw, well, it'd be nice.
Maybe I, what I, what I thought I would do would be to maybe do
something different than him.
And I wanted to, so I started a business.
Yeah, I started a business.
Well, what, no, where do you, well, you know what?
It ended up that it was, that's what I got convicted of after five years of it.
And, uh, yeah.
And I tried the thing that was so weird.
It wasn't weird.
It was really rebellion.
I'm trying to myself and I confess this.
I tried to cover it up with giving to the poor works.
I did.
And I should have taken that time more for studying in the word and doing
things that God was calling me to do at the intro for five years.
And finally at the end, it really did.
I had to just repent and say, Lord, I really, all these years, I really
didn't do what you called me to do.
Well, boy, I listened to that these days.
Now I tell you, yeah, it really, uh, opens your eyes.
Yes.
Yes, go ahead.
So a couple of years ago, I was doing an interview for a job and I didn't
know if this was the job for me, if the Lord wanted me there and I just
prayed and I was like, Lord, like show me a sign.
Like if this is a job you want me to be at, um, like, so my football
number in high school was 71 out.
So I was like, show me the number 71.
And they were like, so we have a couple of numbers of parking passes
for you to choose at, and they gave me the option of 70 and 71.
So I was like, okay, that must be, this must be the job that I'm at
for this season.
So, and that was definitely one time the Lord spoke.
Yeah, situations, environments, anything else?
All right.
Yeah.
Scale.
Do we have time?
I'm in four minutes.
I'll be over, but okay.
I'll try to make it brief.
So years ago, this is like eight, eight or nine years ago.
Um, I had been down to visit my grant, my grant, my son, and I,
in the process I was visiting with my grandchildren and my one granddaughter
who was about 16 at the time was going through a real hard time.
And she was going through depression and everything.
And I was just really, you know, I was like, what can I do to help her?
What can I do besides talking to her?
And then I came home and a friend of mine had her daughter was going
through a series of depression.
And so I'm like, okay, Lord, what should I do?
What should I do?
What can I do to help these young women?
And he said, get a certificate in counseling is like this voice audibly in my head.
And I was like, what, what are you talking to me?
And yeah, the next thing I knew I was going to seminary and getting
a certificate in counseling and, but the Lord did it.
I couldn't have done it because it had been over 40 years since I'd been to
school, but it was just the, yeah, the Lord, if he really wants you to do
something, he will really impress it on your heart and he'll even sometimes
speak it to you, but yeah.
How many times did he have to do that once?
All right.
That's good.
Yeah.
All right.
Okay.
What have you?
Um, years ago, my friends and I were going to go down to the city to celebrate
Christmas and we're going to visit, um, the Christmas village in, um, the
city hall, like Dilworth park.
And the plan was to go, go see the village and then go get some meat.
And I'd tell my friends, now I'm really hungry.
All of a sudden I just got hungry.
My appetite kicked in.
I really need to eat.
Right.
And they were like, no, let's let's have some fun.
No, I got to eat.
I'm so hungry.
We go get food and we find that we go back to the, the Christmas village after,
and it was all shut down and we're asking the vendors what happened.
And there was like a shooting and I think, I think God spoke through
my, my appetite saved my life there.
I mean, it's, isn't it wonderful that you can see the hand of God in these
things, you know, if you take this as a secular event outside of the church,
oh, that's happenstance.
That just happened.
It, things like that don't just happen.
God's providential in everything.
The movements of Balaam through his issues in your life, eating, he
speaks in the practical to you.
He doesn't pull something out of the ethereal that you have to debate on.
You were, your stomach started to growl, right?
And turn hungry nuts.
Good.
Very good.
Anything else?
All right.
I think we got a couple lines here and then we'll finish up.
All right.
Balaam looked, was looked upon as an extraordinary person whose blessings
or curses were thought to always be effectual.
And of course they weren't.
But a gifted person is not necessarily a Godly person.
Understand that spiritual gifts, insight, or power do not equal
righteousness or true obedience.
It can be deceptive application.
We must not confuse spiritual ability with spiritual maturity or faithfulness.
Don't look at the outside.
Look at the heart.
Balaam story becomes a spiritual warning throughout the whole new Testament.
In his life, which represents a symbol of spiritual compromise, greed, and moral
corruption is an example to all of us who claim to serve the Lord.
So Lord, we thank you for discussion tonight.
We ask Lord that we have learned something about your scripture.
Father, it's interesting how you speak in the old Testament and the
principles are brought forth and exemplified in the new Testament.
What continuity you have, Lord, in the lives of our brothers and sisters and
what inspiration and stories that were there, Lord, they're just not stories,
but they're examples, Lord, of your living, active impartation and guiding
of people, Lord, drawn into the new Testament.
And Lord, we thank you for each heart in here tonight that we're followers of you
and Father, bring your revelation to us.
Let us not ever be in a situation where we have Balaam written on our forehead
that we're compromising and yet on the outward side, we're acting spiritual
and doing the things we think are right.
Father, keep us with a tender heart and a pure heart.
We pray these things in Jesus name and everyone said, Amen.
God bless you.
Thank you for coming.
Thanks for joining us at Lansdale Life Church as we praise God and discuss his word.
Don't forget to join us for worship live Sunday mornings at 10 a.m.
Eastern on YouTube.
Be blessed and have a great day.