Recap and Introduction to Remaining Keys

Let’s go back to the two scriptures that we opened with and just look at them again. Acts 20:28:

“Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has raised you overseers to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood.”

I pointed out that Paul directs their attention first to their own selves and then to the flock. If we do not take heed to ourselves, ultimately we will not be capable of shepherding the flock. And then in 1 Timothy 4:16 Paul again uses the same phrase but in the singular addressed to one man, Timothy.

“Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine.”

Again, the message we teach is important but our own lives are primary. So it’s take heed to yourself,then to what you teach. “Continue in then, for in doing this you will both save yourself and those who hear you.”

If we don’t succeed in saving ourself, it’s problematical whether we’ll save those who hear us. So I shared yesterday out of my own background and experience ways in which I feel we need to take heed to ourselves, things that we need to watch out for. I believe I shared three.

The first which I probably made the greatest emphasis upon was Cultivate hearing God’s voice. And we traced, I think all through the scripture, how in every age and dispensation God’s ways of dealings with man may vary in some respects but the one ongoing unvarying requirement is to hear God’s voice. I think that has to be cultivated. I think we have to cultivate sensitivity to hear and discern the voice of the Lord and to distinguish it from other voices. Sometimes I’ve felt that the Lord has spoken to me but I wasn’t absolutely sure. Sometimes I thought it was too good to be true. And one of the tests that I have come to have confidence in is, "Does it remain, is it permanent? Or does it just pass out of your mind?" So I have a pending file that I put some things in and I can say that things that the Lord truly spoke to me he may have spoken 40 years ago but they’re just as fresh and just as vital today as they were when he first spoke them. I think that’s one test. What the Holy Spirit writes upon our hearts is eternal.

The second suggestion I had was pray things through before they happen.

And the third is walking in your calling. Be very careful not to step outside the bounds of your calling.

That doesn’t mean that God will always keep you in the same precise area. I think if you’re faithful he will enlarge you. But make sure that it’s God who is enlarging you. I quoted that very simple statement from Exodus 23:31 in the New American Standard where God says I will fix your boundaries. Since I’ve moved back to Jerusalem, it’s been very clear to me that I needed to find out the boundary that God had fixed for me there. It’s very easy in a place like Jerusalem—and that’s not the only place—to dissipate your energies doing all sorts of good things and helping all sorts of people but not walking within the boundary of your responsibility.