First, check the soup.

Steve Brown:
First, check the soup. I’ll explain, on this edition of Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
That was Steve Brown. He doesn’t want to be your guru and he’s not trying to be your mother. He just opens the Bible and gives you the simple truth that will make you free. Steve is a lifelong broadcaster, author, seminary professor, and our teacher on Key Life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. You know something, I just realized that I’m doing Tuesday’s program. And on Monday where I usually pray, I forgot to pray. And you’re thinking, well, you’re, some kind of teacher you are, you forget to pray. You’re probably not even saved. Yes, I am. At least on Tuesday. I got reminded. And so, if you will excuse me and forgive me for not praying on Monday, I’m going to remedy it and repent and pray on Tuesday. And I can hear the angels saying, well, it’s about time. So, let’s pray. Father, forgive me for forgetting. And you do, and I praise you for that. Father, we do come into your presence so glad that you invited us and that you’ll never kick us out. And Father, even if I forgot, you oversee the teaching that goes on in this broadcast. And so, we pray for the teacher, forgive him his sins cause there are many, we would see Jesus and him only. And we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. So, there I feel better. We were talking about spiritual gifts and we spent over a week, in fact, a long time talking about spiritual gifts from the first few verses of Acts 16. And we’ve seen a number of things, that it is exclusively reserved for believers. If you’re not a believer, everything that I’ve been teaching over the last few days is not relevant to you. We’ve seen, there needs to be obedience, you can’t sit there, you’ve got to do something, that the body of Christ is involved in understanding and pointing out spiritual gifts, that being a cheerleader for people in the church is important, that church is a place where when you go there, they have to take you in and even love you. We’re seeing how that operates within the body of Christ and when the spiritual gifts, whatever they are, are operating on the part of the people in the church, god does neat stuff. Now, before we turn to the next text, we’re going to be talking about how you know God’s will. Before we turn to that text, there’s one final thing that you need to know about spiritual gifts. I want you to note that the checkpoint for gifts is the result and the Fruit, Acts 16:5.

So, the churches were strengthened in the faith and they increased in numbers daily.

When people asked John Wesley, how he knew the people who were coming to his meetings were serious. He said, you don’t, you have to check the fruit. Now, of course, there are exceptions to this, sometimes God will put you in a place and nothing ever happens. There’s a story about a missionary who had been serving in a third world country for over 20 years and he had one convert. And somebody said, why didn’t you leave? And he said, because Jesus wouldn’t let me leave. I would have cause I expected so much more to happen than what happened. Was he called of God? Oh yes, he was. Was he using his spiritual gift? Oh yes, he was. But there’s an exception there, there wasn’t a lot of fruit, but most of the time there’s fruit, Billy Graham and I miss him a lot, was he using his gift? Oh yeah, and I’m a product of that. I came to Christ because I listened to what Mr. Graham said. And so did millions of others. Mr. Graham was one time urged to run for president of the United States and he laughed and he said, no, I’m not gonna step down from what God has called me to do and do a pedestrian job like that. God has called me. One time, Mr. Graham was at a church that I was serving and after the service, he said a couple of nice things about my sermon. And I said, Mr. Graham, I’m going to call you sometimes and have you say it again cause that makes me feel so good, coming from a preacher like you. And he said, oh Steve, I’m not a great preacher. God hasn’t called me to be a great preacher. I’m a great inviter. And that is my gift. And then he told me, and it was so like Dr. Graham, he told me a story. I think it was in Sweden, where he had a crusade and the headlines in the newspaper the first morning after the first session of the crusade mentioned a Pentecostal preacher in the city. And it said, so and so would’ve done better. So, Mr. Graham knew what his gift was and he utilized it and God used it in an amazing way. So, you check the soup. Somebody says they’re a gifted chef, try the soup, see how the fruit works. See what happens, same in church. Yes, if you’re properly using the gift of teaching, people learn, check the students. If you are using the gift of being an elder and a leader in the church, is the church growing under your leadership? If you have the gift of preaching and teaching, are people falling asleep in your sermons? Check, see the lives that changed and the differences that are made. Check the soup. Okay. Let’s move on to the next text, the next few verses in Acts. And we’ll spend some while, not in necessarily this particular text, but in some of the ideas that are Biblical that come from this text. So Luke says, after we talked about Timothy and we saw the spiritual gifts, Luke says.

And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go to Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing, beseeching him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” And when he had seen the vision, immediately he sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

All right. When you read that, the first thing that you think is wow, men and people are always talking about knowing God’s will, that’d be a good way. You have a vision. Somebody you never met appears in your vision. He’s obviously from another country and he says, come over and help us. Man, I would be packed before the hour was over and heading for Macedonia, but it doesn’t always work that way. Does it? I mean, sometimes it’s just not that clear. I’ve often said, God, you, if you show me what to do, I’ll do my best to do it, but if you don’t show me what to do, I’m just going to sit here cause I don’t know. So, the question that immediately comes to mind is how do you know God’s will? How do you determine God’s will for your life? Now, I’m going to show you some things, that you get directly from this text, but we’re going to go to some other places too. Maybe the question that we get the most here at Key Life is how do I know God’s will? And, so I’m going to spend some time Biblically to check on how to know God’s will, sometimes in a vision, the way the text talks about. Sometimes knowing that there’s a big need in the text we’re talking about, but the Scripture has more to say about it than that. And so, we’re going to take some time, we’re going to go in some different directions and look at the five basic ways of knowing God’s will. First, you know God’s will from Scripture, which clearly reveals God’s will in its pages, II Timothy 3:13, no 16 through 17 says this.

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

You start in the Bible and I’m running out of time. And we’ll talk about it more tomorrow, but you start in the Bible. And you think about that. Check your Bible. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
And thank you Steve. More from Acts 16 about spiritual gifts tomorrow. Do make sure you join us, wouldn’t be the same without you. So, a few weeks ago, our friend Pete Alwinson sat in for a week here on Key Life. And man, what a blessing that was. That’s why I’m excited to tell you about something special we’re doing, we’re offering a CD featuring a sermon from Pete. It’s called The Father You Need. In this talk, Pete talks about our need for a father and how even the best fathers still make mistakes. So, where does that leave us? Actually, it puts us in a great place because Jesus can connect us with our heavenly Father, the Father we ultimately need. You can get that sermon at no cost just by calling us at 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also e-mail [email protected] to ask for that CD. If you’d like to mail your request, send it to

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