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Red Light, Green Light: Hearing God’s Direction Through Peace

How do you know if you're supposed to take that next step? Change careers? Move cities? Or just stay put? In this episode of The Branches Podcast, we talk about the role of peace as the "umpire" in your decision-making process. If you've ever felt unsure about what God is saying, you'll learn how to recognize divine peace and make confident choices. With real-life examples and scripture from Colossians 3, this message will help you stop second-guessing and start moving in alignment with God’s plan—one step at a time. 🎧 Topics covered: What peace feels like (and doesn’t) Why some desires are preparation, not destinations The difference between being led by numbers vs. peace What to do while you wait for clarity Get ready to stop settling and start stepping into God’s greater plan for your life—on the peaceful path He’s prepared for you.

SEASON 01EPISODE 04

7/28/202417 min read

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the podcast. The Branches is a podcast where it's our goal to really just help you live a life of purpose and fulfillment as you learn how to recognize and answer the callings of God during each season of your journey. This is the kind of life that each and every one of us should be desiring and hungering for.

You know, settling for less than the greater things of God is not in your best interests. But in order to step into the greater things, we must know and understand how to do it. And then once we know and understand, we must take action and do what we know to do.

It's not enough to just know and understand. We must also be a doer. It's not enough for you to know and understand that you need to brush your teeth in the morning.

You actually need to get up and go in the bathroom and put some toothpaste on that toothbrush and get to scrubbing, right? Amen. We'll all be thankful that you did, praise God.

Your coworkers will be grateful that you were a doer and actually got up and brushed your teeth. Now, I laugh at that, but how many of us know and understand what we need to do in a certain area of our life, but we're still not doing it? Would you admit to that?

And hey, no judgment from me. We're all on this journey together, but that doesn't mean we're just going to give up and quit trying. You and I, we're marching on, and we're learning how to do what we need to do and go all the way in the plans of God for us.

Now before we get into today's teaching, I want to pause here for a minute and emphasize the importance of the content that we've already covered in the first three episodes. Obviously, for time's sake, I can't go back and reteach those lessons on every single podcast. But in short, we've been talking about your purpose, and we've been talking about your calling, and how it's important to understand the difference between the two.

We talked in detail about what your purpose is as a born-again believer, and then we also took the time to talk about what a calling from God is. What's a calling look like? And this was some important stuff that we covered in those first two sessions.

And then in episode three, our last episode, we hit on one of the major keys to you living a life of purpose and calling. We talked about the power and the importance of your choices. Until you can take ownership of the fact that you have a role to play, if you want to walk in the greater things of God, your journey will be a constant struggle.

And the reason why is because God has set you up on this earth with a free will. You are not a robot. You can choose what you're going to do during your remaining days on the earth that you have left here.

You can choose what you're going to do. God's not going to make you do anything. You can choose if you'll do the things that God's planned for you or not.

And you must recognize that your choices matter. And what you choose to do will have consequences. But let me give you some good news before you get down on yourself here.

Here's the good news. Even if you've chosen wrong in the past, like all the rest of us here listening have, you can start making good choices from this moment forward. And all of us, we must get to that point, that point where we say, OK, OK, I'm done.

I'm done doing it like this, and I'm ready to make a change. Let me just tell you a little bit about my journey and how faithful God has been to me, even when I was at some of the lowest points as a human being. So 14 years ago, I found myself laying in a bathtub on an early spring morning.

It was a Saturday morning, I remember. And I was laying there in this tub with my head underwater, counting my heartbeat. You know, when you put your head under the water and you're quiet, you can hear your heart beating.

And so I had my head underwater. I'm counting my heartbeat. I'm thinking I'm dying of something.

And I had just come to the end of my rope. My mind was just so tormented with anxiety and fear and panic that the thought of going on like this, it was really just overwhelming. My dad had died in a car wreck when I was younger, and at the time, I didn't realize how bad it messed up my thinking.

But I remember laying there, just coming to the end of myself. I was so exhausted. Have you ever been there where the anxiety, the fear, the panic?

It just, it's exhausting to deal with. And I remember praying out to God and asking him for help. I said, God, I surrender, either help me or kill me.

Because I just can't do this anymore, right? And God, there's no way. There's no way that this is the life you died on the cross for me to have.

This is not the life that you designed for me to be living. There's no way this is as good as it gets for me. You paid too much for me to live like this.

Now, I was already born again. I was a believer. I believed in God.

I believed in Jesus, and I had asked him to be my savior. But I was a Christian who was letting the enemy just punch me right in the face every day. I was just getting beat up by my own self and by the enemy and his camp.

But it was in that moment that I heard the voice of instruction from the Lord. Now, I didn't hear an out loud voice, an audible voice, but on the inside, in my spirit, I heard these instructions. And I heard, son, I will lead you out of this, but it's going to happen by taking one step at a time.

It will happen by making one good decision, one good choice at a time. And praise God, he was true to his word. He led me out, just like John chapter 10 tells us that he will.

And if you think about it, think about this, if we're honest with each other here, if we're being transparent, how did I get into the position that I was in, where I was laying there in that bathtub just wanting to give up? Well, I had made one bad choice at a time, one bad decision, and a series of bad choices, a series of bad decisions made consecutively like that, will have you walking in the wrong direction. And that will lead you to a place that you don't want to end up at.

And if you find yourself in a place that you know you shouldn't be right now, how did you get there? If you're having an affair on your spouse, or if you're being deceptive and you've been lying to someone, or if you have an addiction issue, how did you end up in that position? Well, you made one bad choice, and then you made another one and another.

Either that or someone else made bad choices that affected you personally. And I know that that does happen. People around you can make bad choices that influence your life.

Other people's choices can impact you for a season. But even with that, there comes a point, there's going to come a point in time that you must move past that. And you must get free from what somebody else did that influenced where you find yourself today.

It's time for you to take ownership of your choices and your decisions. You can't blame the choices of somebody else your whole life because it's not going to help you. You can stay in that low place where you're blaming everybody else for your problems.

And that may be a true deal. You may be justified in blaming somebody else. I'm not trying to lessen that.

You may be justified. Somebody may have done something to you that led you in a terrible direction. But at some point, blaming them for your problems isn't going to fix where you're at.

If you'll take ownership of your choices and realize that your choices influence where you're at in life, then you can come out. Listen to me. Either way, whether it was by your choices or someone else, you can make a decision right now that from this moment forward, you're going to do your best to make choices that line up with God's leading in your life.

“And I promise you, if you'll do that, you'll end up in a totally different place and a totally different level of living. Then you can even wrap your mind around right now. As the Holy Spirit leads and you keep following, you will start moving in a totally new direction and be well on your way to your promised land that God has prepared for you.

Amen. And I can testify, that's my own testimony. I'm still going, I haven't fully arrived, but I left where I was at.

Thank God, I got up out of that bathtub, and I made a decision, okay, we're going to start taking one step of faith at a time. So again, go back, that was kind of summarizing our first three episodes, and I said that to say this, go back and listen to those prior teachings here on the podcast. If you need a refresher, or if you need to get caught up with this, because you're not going to get all of that teaching down in your spirit just by listening to it one time.

There's messages that have impacted my life that I've listened to tons of times. I just kept listening to them until they got down in my spirit to the point that it changed the way I think. And then once my thinking changed, it changed the way I act and the way I do.

And so, again, go back and listen to those, re-listen to them, because today we're just going to keep moving forward, and we're going to keep adding more to what we've already covered. So here's what I want to talk to you about today. Let me ask you this question.

How do you know if God is calling you to do something? You know, we've been talking about you answering the calls of God for your life during this season. How do you know for sure if God's calling you to do something?

How do you know if God's calling you out of your current place, and He's calling you into something new? Or how do you know if you're already in the place that God's called you to for this season of life, and you just need to stay put? Is there some kind of indicator that God gives us to let us know the answer to that?

Is there a way to tell for sure? Yes, there is. There is something.

There is a thing that will always be present if you are in your calling for this season. And that exact same thing will be missing if you aren't where you're supposed to be. And here it is.

The thing that will either be present or missing is peace. Peace is the indicator that God gives us as his children to help lead and direct our steps and our decisions as we advance in the plans that he has for us. Let me give you some scripture here on the podcast today.

I'm going to read just one verse of scripture here, but I'm going to read you several different translations of it, because these different translations help us get a better picture and wrap our mind around it a little more, I think. So our scripture is Colossians 3 verse 15. The Amplified says, Let the peace of Christ, which is the inner calm of one who walks daily with him, be the controlling factor in your hearts, deciding and settling questions that arise.

To this peace indeed, you were called as members in one body, and be thankful to God always. The NCV says, let the peace that Christ gives control your thinking, because you were all called together in one body to have peace, and always be thankful. The NTFE version says, let the Messiah's peace be the deciding factor in your hearts.

That's what you were called to within the one body, and be thankful. I like this one. The GNT version says, the peace that Christ gives is to guide you in the decisions you make, for it is to this peace that God has called you, together in the one body, and be thankful.

Listen to this one. This is the last one I'll read you today, and we're going to dive into this one a little bit more. But the AMPC version says, let the peace, which is the soul harmony, which comes from Christ, rule or act as an umpire continually in your hearts, deciding and settling with finality all the questions that arise in your minds.

In that peaceful state, to which as members of Christ one body, you were also called to live and be thankful, giving praise to God always. I played baseball growing up, played basketball and a little football. So this version stands out to me because it says let the piece act as an umpire for you.

Let that piece decide and settle with finality all questions that arise in your mind. You know, when I played baseball, there would be an umpire standing behind home plate, and I was a catcher. So this umpire would stand behind me.

And as the pitcher pitched the ball, he was the one that would call strike or ball, right? He officiated what was going on. Well, this scripture tells us to let peace be like that umpire.

So if you're sensing that God might be calling you into a new career, for example, what do you need to be looking for to help you know for sure that he's actually calling you? The answer is peace. Peace is what you need to be checking for.

Do you have peace in your spirit that this is the right thing to do? And if the answer is yes, then I would encourage you to take that step of faith towards that leading. Now, if you don't have peace in your spirit, what's that a sign of?

Remember, peace is like an umpire telling you if it's safe for you to advance forward or not. So if there is no peace, what does that mean for you? That means don't go.

Do not advance forward. My wife, Tara, is a real estate photographer, and when we moved to our new town about a year ago, we had total peace about her continuing to drive back and forth and taking care of her clientele of realtors that she had built up over the years. And so that's what she's been doing for the past year now.

Now, in the natural, this really makes no sense for her to keep driving back and forth like this for the amount of money that she's making. I mean, there's a big city, Springfield, Missouri, 15 minutes away from us, where she could find a job. She could find a job making way more money.

She could have a nice, consistent paycheck and maybe some paid vacation and paid holidays and some benefits and all of that. All of that would seemingly be a blessing to our family and to her. But here's the thing.

Listen to this. Every time we've asked God about it, there has been no peace about changing what she's doing yet. We lack peace about making a change, even though it seems to be a no-brainer for someone who's just looking at the numbers.

But friends, the Bible doesn't say to be number led. Numbers aren't what you and I are to put our faith in. Numbers aren't what God said is to be our umpire.

What's to be our umpire? Peace. Peace is our umpire.

Now, as you follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and the spirit of peace, there will be times that what you have peace about doesn't make sense to your natural understanding, to your natural mind. Your natural understanding may say one thing, and the peace of God says something different. Can you see that?

Being led by an opportunity isn't the same as being led by peace. Being led by money or pay isn't the same as being led by peace. Being led by a good deal isn't the same as being led by peace.

It may be a great deal on paper, but if you have no peace about acting on that deal, don't do it. Don't do it. Now, on the other hand, if you do have peace, you better act.

Even if it may seem like it's not such a good deal. We aren't deal-led. We are Spirit of God and peace-led.

So, how do we know what the peace of God feels like? How can you sense the peace of God? How can you recognize His peace?

You know, it really is something that you will learn to recognize as you start growing in your relationship with God and living a life of purpose, like we talked about in episode one. As you start yielding to peace in your life, it will become more evident to your spirit when you have peace and when you don't. So, some of this just comes from walking it out and experiencing the difference between having peace and not.

I've made some choices in the past that turned out bad. And then later on, I could look back and realize, I realized, man, I didn't have peace when I initially made that choice, but I didn't pay attention. I didn't listen.

Or maybe I didn't know and understand how important the peace of God is at that point. And I'm sure we've all done that, all of us. I'm sure we've done that, haven't we?

Have you ever done something and then later on, you say, man, I knew, I knew I shouldn't have done that. That was the Spirit of God and His peace trying to lead you in what you should do or shouldn't do. Now, I've also made some good choices that were led by the peace of God, and as I've kept growing and advancing, over time, I learned to sense the difference and recognize the difference between a decision that was being led by peace and one that wasn't.

If you can picture a tub of butter, maybe a tub of country crock butter or something, and if you were to take a hot butter knife and slide it through that butter, it would just be a smooth sensation, wouldn't it? There wouldn't be any resistance. It would be smooth.

That's the sensation I get when the peace of God is present in a situation in my life. When I ask the Lord if we should do something, if he's on board with it, there is a sense of there being no resistance from him. It's like a green light to move forward.

But at the same time, if you took that butter knife and you tried to cut a stick of wood with it, there would be a ton of resistance, right? It's not smooth. And that's the sensation I get when I'm missing God's peace in something.

Maybe it's something that I want to do, or maybe it's something I'm thinking about doing. And when I think about it, there's resistance. And that's what it feels like right now when I talk to God about terror getting a new job.

It's like there's an uneasy feeling or a resistance, more like a red light than a green one. Now, here's the thing. That could all change tomorrow.

The reason Tara and I may not have peace about it today is because the job he has prepared for her, it isn't even available yet. Can you see that? That's why it's important to keep checking in with him.

How about now, Lord? Is this week the week for Tara to pursue something? Next week might be the week when we do have peace about it.

So, you just keep knocking, you just keep asking, you just keep checking in with God, and you wait on that peace. Now, remember in episode 2, I told you that a calling from God often starts with a desire. And we sense that God is going to call Tara into a career that's closer to our new home.

And the reason why we sense that He's calling her to that is because He's given her a desire for that. But oftentimes that desire, it's just the beginning phases of a calling. He will use those desires to help give you clarity on what to be looking for, and what to be preparing for in the days to come.

That way, when the calling does come, you'll be ready. Tara will be ready when God calls her to her new job, because He's been paving the way for her to take that step of faith in peace when the time's right. Now, could she go out and get work tomorrow that was less than God's best for her?

I'm sure she could if she chose to settle. But we aren't settling out here in the wilderness somewhere. You and I, our families, we're going to go all the way to our promised land.

And some of you need to hear that right now. You know, you may be believing God. You keep asking Him for something.

Maybe it's a career or a spouse or clarity on what town you should be in, or a church family, whatever it may be. You keep asking, and you have a desire, so you know God's preparing you. But some of us, we need to recognize that it's in the waiting time that you can be getting prepared.

And so if you don't have your answer right now, you can get quiet with the Lord and ask Him, how can I be preparing right now to be ready for this? You know, looking back on my life, a lot of the steps of faith that I took were steps of preparation. Preparation time is never wasted time.

So I would encourage you to do that. If you've been waiting on an answer from the Lord, ask Him what you can do right now to get ready for that. You and I, we will learn to make choices that line up with the peace of God.

And when we do that, our steps will be ordered, and the God who delights in the details of your life will be glorified in this process. Amen? Amen.

I want to give you this in closing today. Luke chapter 1, just hear these words. Luke chapter 1 says, because of God's tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who set in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.

Friends, you can live a life on the path of peace that your heavenly father has prepared for you. There is a peaceful path available. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you so much for peace that surpasses all understanding. And as we walk out these steps of faith in the current season that we're in, Father, we ask you to help us recognize clearly what your peace is on and what it's not on. Father, help us to be sensitive to your Holy Spirit and the spirit of peace that guides and directs us.

If we're trying to make a decision that your peace isn't on, Father, reveal that clearly to us. Help us to start recognizing where your peace is at. We can't be money-led.

Just because it's a good opportunity, that doesn't mean it's the right one for us. We can't be pay-led. Just because a job is going to pay us more, that doesn't mean it's the right one for us.

We can't be good deal-led. Just because it's a good deal, that doesn't mean it's the right one for us. But Father, you do give us good deals.

You can pay us more money. You are a God of increase. And so help us as you give us opportunities to step into greater callings.

Give us the discernment to recognize your peace on the things that you've placed before us. And as we do, we'll take these steps of faith, led by you, led by peace, and we will advance, Father. We thank you that we will advance to your glory.

In Jesus' name, we pray, amen. May your journey be led by the Prince of Peace from this day forward. I'll talk to you soon, but until next time, be blessed.