God's Unexpected Ways — Michael Catt

It's an honor to be here today and to be a part of this worship service at the Brooklyn Tabernacle. The music today has woven into what I want to talk to you about this morning. God's unexpected ways.

God’s Unexpected Ways

Has God ever thrown you a curve? I have a friend of mine who pitched for the Yankees and the Mets, but pitched most of his career with the Montreal team. And his best pitch was a slider. And I asked him one day, how do you set them up for a slider?

He said, I throw heat and then I throw them a slider because they're expecting one more fastball. There have been times when God has thrown me a slider and a curve and when I swung at it, I missed badly.

God ever done that to you? Where you were in a mindset, you had a preconceived idea of this. This is the way God's going to answer this prayer. This is the way that God's going to work. This is the way that God's going to move.

This is the testimony that I'm going to have as a result of all this. And all of a sudden, God does something different. And it surprises you. It may shock you. It may knock you off guard. It may cause your knees to buckle.

But there are those moments when God does things differently from the way we anticipated. We expect him to come in like a tidal wave and he just creeps in like the tide. We're looking for a conqueror to ride in on a white stallion and liberate us and he shows up in a stable as a baby.

We're longing for the mighty rushing wind to blow through our midst and he speaks in a still small voice. One thing about the Lord is you can't predict how he's going to work. I know this, sometimes God doesn't ask my opinion.

He has not allowed me to serve on the advisory board of the Trinity yet. He doesn't let me give him advice. You know, there are moments in my life as a pastor and as a brother, there are moments in my life when I would just like God to let me tell him how to do things for about five minutes.

That's all I want. I could fix a lot of problems in five minutes that he seems to be slow in fixing. If he would just give me five minutes and and God just sometimes has to sit me down and say, son, I don't need your help.

I did fine before you got here. I'll do well after you're gone. I don't need your help. But we get these preconceived ideas about how we want him to answer our prayers, how we would like him to judge our enemies.

I mean, you've got those verses in Psalms that you circle and go, yeah Lord, that one right there. I got somebody right there. In fact, you wrote their name in the side of your Bible. Act, Lord, and I'll praise you for it.

And God doesn't act like I want him to do in this cookie cutter, microwave theology of the day. Sometimes he takes longer. And sometimes he works differently than I would have anticipated him working.

Unexpected Biblical Examples of God’s Sovereign Plans

And you look at the unexpected ways that God worked in the Bible. Think about Abraham. God finally fulfills his promise. He gives him a son. And one day Abraham's out talking to the Lord. And the Lord says, Abraham, I got something I want you to do.

Yes, Lord, what's that? You know, I've got a child to promise. We're going to be beyond number. You can't even count our people. I need you to take that son to a mountain and I need you to kill him. Now, Lord, that wasn't in the biography that I was writing.

Or Joseph. You got to think that when Joseph was thrown into that pit, that he wondered if God had forgotten him. Moses, Moses, who sees the oppression of his people and he acts in his own way. And God has to send him into the wilderness for 40 years to get his attention so God can use him the way he wants to use him.

Or Joshua. Here's a man who's a warrior. He's ready for battle. And God says, I want to give you a plan for how you're going to conquer this walled city. You're going to walk around it. That doesn't sound like a good plan, God.

They've got weapons and arrows and we're just a wandering people. That doesn't sound like... Shouldn't we scale the walls? No, you don't need to scale. But you might want to have a band practice before the end of the week.

Job, blessed of God, never knew the conversation that went on between God and the devil about have you considered my servant Job? You know, I'm one of those people that if God wants to brag on me like he brags on Job, I'm going to ask him to brag on somebody else.

I mean, I don't want to go through what Job went through. Simon Peter, here's the right hand guy. Here's the leader of the disciples. Now, he makes mistakes, but here's the guy that is going to be the preacher at Pentecost.

And Jesus turns to him in the last days of his ministry and says, Peter, Satan has desired to sift you. And I've prayed for you that when you return, you'll encourage your brothers. You know, Peter probably wanted to say to the Lord, Lord, let's get this sifting straight.

You let the devil have permission to sift me? I sure did. Wouldn't it have been more to your glory if I could have skipped that test? Think about Paul. He must suffer many things for my sake. If we were honest today, and you are because you're in church and you have to be honest in church.

But if we were honest today, we would like a different path. We would like the path where we can wave a magic wand and all our problems go away. And the folks that tell us that God wants you happy and healthy, and yet you stood by the side of a loved one with cancer.

You've walked into a jail. You've been on the streets. You know the situations where you said, God, how are you going to use this? And we need God's perspective on how he's going to use these events in our lives.

You know, I had a friend who used to say, Lord, I'm surprised you've got as many people that follow you as you do, knowing the way you treat some of us. I wouldn't choose some of the things that God has taken me through.

There are unexpected ways that I see him working in the word, which helps me to understand the unexpected ways when he works in my life and when the lives of my friends. When I was 38 years old, I was speaking at the 20th anniversary of Truth in Orlando, Florida, and my wife and I were celebrating our anniversary.

Personal Loss, Adoption, and Surrender to God’s Plan

We were sitting down at dinner. I can still take you to the restaurant in Orlando. I can still tell you the table I was sitting at. I can tell you what the cars were parked in front of the restaurant.

And we had had this discussion off and on from time to time about whether or not I was adopted because it just seemed like I wasn't like my parents. My parents and I were just night and day different.

And Terri said, well, if you were, would you want to know? And I paused for a minute and I said, yeah, I think I would. And she said, then I need to tell you a story. And a lady had walked into her mother's flower shop to buy flowers and ask her mother who Terri had married.

And she said, well, she married a young man named Michael Katt from Pascagoula, Mississippi. By the way, when I found out the borders were open in Mississippi, I got out. And the lady that she was waiting on said, oh, I know who that young man is.

That was the first adoption that I handled as a social worker. And so at 38 years of age, everything I'd been told all my life, you know, you need to watch it. Diabetes runs in our family. You need to watch it.

Cancer runs in our family. All these words of fear that had been placed in my heart for 38 years were now false. And it rocked me. It angered me. A couple of weeks later, I got a phone call from Roger Breland.

He was in Hawaii with Truth and he said, Michael, I don't have much time. The conversation was about two minutes. He said, I don't have much time, but here's what I know. God must love you an awful lot for you to be twice adopted.

Adopted by family and adopted into the family of God. I don't know how to explain my friend Ed Litton, who's a pastor in Mobile, who was sitting in his office having a meeting and got a call that his wife, Tammy, had been killed in a car wreck.

I don't know how to explain sitting in a restaurant in New York City in February of last year and getting a call while we're sitting around. We've traveled up here to see the last edit of Courageous and to give the final approval at an editing studio that's somewhere here in the city.

And we had just done that. We were eating and celebrating that the movie was done and now the film prints could be made and my phone rings and I noticed that it's the name of a lady that I know in Oklahoma City who's a news anchor and I picked it up and I thought, that's odd.

And she called and she was weeping as she talked to me and then she just handed the phone to the minister of music of the church. And I said, Keith, what is it? He said, the pastor's dead. He was riding his motorcycle and lost control and he died on the interstate.

I don't know how to explain that I walk into my office one day in Fort Worth, Texas when I was a youth minister and I say to my secretary, how are you doing today? She said, well, okay, we were kidnapped last night.

A few weeks later, we had just hired a new youth music minister and it was his first night to lead music with our young people. And I get a call about 1030 at night. In a random drive-by shooting, Cliff was killed.

A young promising ministerial student. And then I began to realize, God allows situations to come in our lives for several reasons. One, to bring us to the end of ourself. You see, there's too much of us in us for God to get all he wants in us and through us.

And so God has to bring us to the end of ourself. Then he has to bring us to the end of our fleshly reasoning. All those things I said earlier about how how God, you know, I could help God out and God says, you don't know squat, boy.

You know, nothing. You're not nearly as smart as you think you are. You can't see the design from beginning to end. And God does it to take us to the cross. And some of you are here this morning in a few minutes.

We're going to have a time of invitation and I'm going to invite you to come to the end of yourself and admit that you need Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. This room is full of people that came to the end of themselves, their way of fixing life, their way of dealing with their problems, their day way of dealing with unexpected ways, full of people that did that, but they came to the end of themselves.

And I guarantee you if we had time and go row by row, they would say it's the best thing I ever did. The wisest thing I ever did was to admit my foolishness of thinking that I could fix my life without Jesus Christ.

And God does it to get us to total dependence on the Holy Spirit. Because nobody struts in the presence of the Savior. And so I want to ask you to turn to Isaiah 45. It's a lengthy passage of scripture, but it's when Israel was in Babylonian captivity.

Isaiah 45 and God’s Unexpected Deliverance

And in this captivity, the Lord had promised deliverance, but boy, this is not the way they thought they were going to be delivered. Isaiah 45 and verse 1. Isaiah 45 and verse 1. Thus says the Lord to Cyrus his anointed, whom I have taken by the right hand to subdue nations before him, to loose the loins of kings, to open doors before him, so that gates will not be shut.

I will go before you and make the rough places smooth. I will shatter the doors of bronze and cut through their iron bars. I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden wealth of secret places in order that you may know.

Now remember, he's talking about a pagan king here. In order that you may know that it is I the Lord, the God of Israel who calls you by your name. For the sake of Jacob, my servant, and Israel, my chosen one, I have also called you by your name.

I have given you a title of honor, though you have not known me. I am the Lord, and there is no other besides me. There is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known me. That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides me.

I am the Lord, and there is no other. The one forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity. I am the Lord who does all these. Drip down, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds pour down righteousness.

Let the earth open up, and salvation bear fruit, and righteousness spring up with it. I, the Lord, have created it. Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker. An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth.

Will the clay say to the potter, What are you doing? Or the thing that you are making say, He has no hands. Woe to him who says to a father, What are you begetting? Or to a woman, To what are you giving birth?

Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel and His Maker, Ask me about the things to come concerning my sons, and you shall commit to me the work of my hands. It is I who made the earth and created man upon it.

I stretched out the heavens with my hands. I ordained all their hosts. I have aroused him, referring to Cyrus, in righteousness, and I will make all his ways smooth. Now look at what it says. He will build my city and let my exiles go free without any payment or reward, says the Lord of hosts.

Wrong Assumptions About God’s Sovereignty

Three things very quickly. First of all, wrong assumptions. Wrong assumptions. How could Cyrus be God's anointed? Because God's sovereign. He raises up and He puts down. He raises up nations, He puts down nations.

God is about to use a Gentile pagan king to deliver Israel from bondage. Now that's not the way they would have chosen. They would have liked God to raise up a mighty Jewish king, but that's not what He did.

They're praying for deliverance. They want to get out of Babylonian captivity. And God says, I'm going to answer that prayer, but not the way you expect me to answer it. I'm going to send Cyrus, my anointed.

And in verse nine, He says, woe to the one who quarrels with his maker. Have you ever asked God, God, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? How could you do this? Lord, how could you use them? You see, God does it in such a way that He's the only one that gets credit for it.

You see, we would like God to do it in such a way that we can take credit for it and then say, and Lord, we give you the glory. But God wants the credit and the glory for all that we do. And so God is using Cyrus.

Does it bother you? I don't know, pastor, I don't know if it ever. It bothers me sometimes that God blesses people that I disagree with. I think the King James says, ticketh me off. Does it ever bother you that He blesses people you don't like?

Now, Lord, I could give you a lot more glory if you do that for me than if you do it for them. You see, God sometimes operates outside of our comfort zone to stretch us and to squeeze us and to get us in a position where in desperation we cry out to Him.

God will operate outside of our tradition. You know, there are some churches that if it's not in the bulletin, you can't do it. I mean, it says right here, we have to do this right here. And God's saying, hello, trying to get in since something needs to happen here today.

But it's not in the bulletin, Lord. You're just gonna have to wait and give us notice before we print. Sometimes God operates outside of our theology. You know, we get raised in certain elements. And you know, when I was growing up, I grew up in a dead Baptist church.

I'm talking dead. No, I mean dead. You know, we started at 11 o 'clock sharp and ended at 12 o 'clock dull. And the church doors opened up and we gave up our dead. I mean, I grew up in a dead church. I never heard a sermon on the Holy Spirit until I was a teenager off at college.

I didn't even understand. I didn't even know, but I knew this. I read a book one day by Jack Taylor where he said, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I said, that's me. That's my life. There's gotta be more than this.

God's got to have more for me than just getting me to heaven. There should be some joy. And I'll tell you, if you said Holy Ghost in the church that I grew up in, there'd be a deacon's meeting. Now they'd gather to smoke before they did that.

They'd have to lift up a holy smoke to the Lord before they made a decision, men of whom the world was not worthy. But God, verse 12, He says, He's working. And you can ask yourself the question when you're going through a trial, when you're going through a crisis, God, why am I going through this?

You could ask the question that maybe one of the Jewish people asked. Lord, how could you use Cyrus? Just fill in the blank. Lord, how could you use and whatever it is that God is using in your life to conform you into the image of Christ?

You may have asked that question. Remember Gideon? Gideon's hiding out. You know, he's not a man who looks like a leader, acts like a leader. He's hiding out. And the angel of the Lord shows up and in the cat paraphrase, it says, Boo!

Hail, almighty man of valor. The Lord is with you. And Gideon says to him, Hey, if the Lord's with us, why is all of this happening to us? You see, we can make wrong assumptions about how God works and what God's doing.

Look at verse five. I am the Lord. There is no other. Besides me, there is no God. Verse six, the last part. I am the Lord. There is no other. Verse seven, the last part. I am the Lord who does all these.

Now, let me tell you what that says in the Greek. And in Hebrew and in Latin. It says, I'm the Lord. There is no other. And the reason he had to say it, in fact, he said it six times in this chapter. The reason he had to say it is because he knows people like me are so thick headed.

We need to understand. He's the Lord. I'm not, you're not. You know, we're not, we're not bucking for an open place in the Trinity here. He's the Lord. And there is no other. And when we make the assumption that we can be Lord of a circumstance in our life, we put ourselves in a position where we are actually idolaters.

Worshipping our mind, our abilities, our gifts, our skills, our decision making. Now, this is when he says this thing right here. This bothers me. I like the first part. Causing well-being. I like that.

And creating calamity. Don't like that. Forming light. Like that. Creating darkness. Lord, could we just get one side of that coin and not have the darkness and the calamity? Because the darkness and calamity, listen, you know why God does it?

To drive you to Jesus. To drive you to Jesus. So there are not only wrong assumptions, but there's wrong response. Verse 9. Woe to the one who quarrels with his maker. You ever ask for an audience with the king?

Lord, I've got a beef with you. The word quarrel means to strive or to argue with or to find cause against. Woe to the one who argues and quarrels and strives with his maker. Shall the clay say to the potter, what are you doing?

But we've all had those moments. We've all had those seasons. We've all had those times when it seems like our legs got cut out from under us. When we didn't know why God was allowing this to happen in our lives.

And we cried out to God as the clay saying to the potter, Lord, what are you doing with my life? Do you not hear? Do you not know? Do you not care? And can I tell you that I don't do much counseling. In fact, the last two people I counseled ran out of my office crying for mercy.

Because when I do counseling, they come in and say, well, here's my problem. I say, all right, here's what the Bible says. Well, I don't want to do that. Well, then I can't help you. Well, I just like to talk about my problem.

You've already talked about it. Here's what the Bible says. God's promises are true. God's word cannot be broken. Here's what God says. Now, that's what you need to do. Is there another pastor here I could talk to?

I just... I need to get somebody who will agree with me. You just have no mercy. You have no sympathy. No, here's what the word says. And listen, God didn't write this word to make you miserable. God wrote this word to give you hope.

Well, I'd just like to talk to somebody else. You know why people won't get saved in Brooklyn today? They won't get saved because they don't want to get saved God's way. They just want to think there's another way.

They want to think there's another God, that there are other options, that you get this corned beef hash spirituality that's going on in America today. You know, my mentor, Vance Havner, said, I don't eat hash at home because I know what's in it and I don't eat hash away from home because I don't know what's in it.

But we want these... I mean, we really have developed in America a Frank Sinatra theology. I did it my way. Well, as Dr. Phil would say, how's that working for you? It doesn't seem to be working. That's why you come to a church.

That's why you ask somebody about God. That's why you need Jesus because what you're doing is not working right now. So I don't understand why God would do that. God did that to get you here or to have an encounter with someone that needed to know Jesus.

Well, I want to tell you, I've made some wrong responses in my life. But then there's a walk in reverence. Verse six times, I am the Lord, there is no other. Verse 11, you shall commit to me the works of my hands.

Now, some of us hit moments in our lives where we say if the Lord's the potter, He must be all thumbs. But He's not. You see, you're marred and He needs to remake you. When you're marred, He doesn't throw you away and say, I don't love you.

I don't care about you. I don't like the way you look. I don't like your past. When you're marred, God says, I'm going to work on you and remake you until I can form my image in you. Someone went to a sculptor in Italy one day and he had a huge block of marble and they asked him, they said, what are you doing?

He said, I'm sculpting a horse. They said, how do you sculpt a horse? He says, very simple. You chip off everything that doesn't look like a horse. You know, when something hurts, when there's something you don't understand, when there's something that you think is unfair, when God works in an unexpected way in your life, when God throws you a curve, all God is doing is chipping off parts of your life that don't look like Jesus so that when you get to glory, you won't be shocked.

He wants to make you more like Jesus in this life so it's a smooth transition to the next one. I want you to just turn quickly to Genesis 45 and I want you to see something because I love the truth of the life of Joseph.

Joseph’s God-Centered Perspective on Betrayal

Remember, Joseph was sold into slavery. He was falsely accused. He was forsaken. He was forgotten, thrown into a pit, thrown into a prison, ended up in a palace. He says, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good, but I want you to look in chapter 45 and verse 5.

Look at what Joseph says to his brothers. Now, let me just say, if I had been Joseph and I had been in his position, I would have sat my brothers down right here behind me in the choir loft and I'd had a little talk with them.

Yeah, I remember, you're the one that grabbed me by my right arm and you're the one that grabbed me by my left arm and you're the one that tore the coat off of me. Let me talk to you about how you treated me.

But look at what Joseph learned from God. Verse 5. For God sent me before you to preserve life. Verse 7. And God sent me before you to preserve you for a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors.

So it was not you who sent me here, but God. Can I tell you something? Joseph got God's perspective on unexpected ways. Now listen, think about this. This ought to make somebody say amen. If Joseph had not been sold into slavery 17 years before, his brothers would have starved to death and the covenant would have been broken if he hadn't been sold into slavery.

Now, mark it down. Only God can take your setbacks and turn them to your salvation. Only God can do that. Only God, I am the Lord, there is no other, can take your sin and wash it white as snow. Only God can take bad news from a doctor.

Some of you that were down here praying earlier this morning that have a son that's wayward or a daughter that's out of the will of God or you've got family members that are not believers or you're going through a financial crisis.

Only God can take these moments and use them for His glory and only in looking back can you say, I can see God in that now. I didn't know, I didn't understand, but I had to act by faith. Manly Beasley used to describe faith this way.

I love this definition. He said, faith is saying that it's so when it's not so because God said it's so, so it will be so. You know, faith is not wishful thinking. Faith is hope in God's Word that when God says whoever wants to come, I'll save them.

Whoever calls on my name, I'll hear them. I want to end with this. My friend Tom Elliff is one of the godliest men I know. He's the president of the International Mission Board. He oversees 5 ,000 missionaries in 140 countries across the world.

Spiritual Protocol in the Face of Cancer and Crisis

In 2007, his wife Jeannie got cancer. Now, he had a house that burned in Oklahoma and he had a house, and right after they got that rebuilt, their house was destroyed by a tornado, so he lost his house twice.

He was a missionary. He and his families were missionaries in Zimbabwe. Somebody tried to sabotage their vehicle. They had a daughter that was severely burned. They didn't even know if she would live.

They had to come back from the mission field for medical treatment for them, and Tom is now head of our missions organization. In 2007, Jeannie got cancer. In 2009, it returned. After she had been pronounced cancer-free, the cancer came back in December of 2009, and this is what my friend Tom wrote on December 9, 2009.

As some of you may already be aware, we received word yesterday that Jeannie's cancer has returned. That piece of news cast us briefly into a turbulent sea, but the ensuing hours have given us our spiritual sea legs, and we are looking ahead now with the confidence that Christ is at the helm of this ship.

As Preacher Halleck used to say, God is running this show, and I get a kick out of reminding people about that. Still, as we meet with various specialists in the days ahead, Jeannie and I felt it would be good for us to review the spiritual protocol we established for this journey when it began back in January 2007.

Our physicians, of course, will clearly outline the desired physical protocol for dealing with the cancer and subsequent recovery. We like to share with them our spiritual protocol, and here are the guidelines that we follow.

Number one, in everything, we will seek to glorify the Lord. Number two, our hearts will rest in Him, not in our circumstances or in doctors' reports. Number three, our adversary will be given no ground in this.

Number four, our desire is that this would bring us closer to God and to each other. Number five, we will purpose to be a blessing to each other and to others as well. Number six, we will not be afraid to ask God some serious questions as we pray for healing, but as Manly Beasley used to say, he may not answer, but if he does, we will know how better to cooperate with God.

Seven, we will continue to believe that God's plan is for us to live long and fruitful lives and face each day with zeal for God, love for Him, and a positive dose of gratitude and good humor coupled with great Christian music and heavy doses of the Word.

Number eight, in all things, Christ will have preeminence. Nine, we will order our steps according to what we perceive is God's counsel, letting Him show us which sources are providing it and which are not.

Ten, we will seek to learn all that God has for us in this walk of faith and use what we learn to the glory of God and the benefits of others. Eleven, we will continually stand guard against faithlessness or any ungodly attitude.

And then the last one, we will pray for those who attend to our needs in this hour and for others who now find themselves with their own painful, perplexing, long-term problems. And as Jesus said, do not worry about your life.

Invitation to Trust Christ Beyond Circumstances

Would you pray with me, please? In just a moment, we're going to have a time of invitation, and as we do, I'm going to invite you to come and cry out to Jesus. The pastors will be here. You may need to talk to someone today about coming to Christ as your personal Lord and Savior.

You've tried to fix your life, and you're in a mess. You may think you just decided to show up today, but God led you here. God led you to this place, to this room, in this hour, for you to meet Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior.

It may be that you're here today and you're in bondage or you're crippled by fear or anxiety or uncertainty or doubt or a thousand other things because you can't figure out what God's doing right now.

You don't have to figure it out. You just have to trust and obey. God doesn't owe us an answer or an explanation. He didn't give us explanations. He gave us promises to stand on. And so while we stand and while we have a moment of invitation, I'm going to invite you to come to Jesus, to come to Jesus for salvation, to come to Jesus for healing, to come to Jesus for His sufficiency.

Just come and just allow God to work in your life. Maybe you were down here earlier, but today you just need to pray with somebody. You need somebody to help you. You need someone to encourage you. So I'm going to ask us all to stand if we could, and you just step out and come.

While we have some music, you step out right now and come to Jesus. If you're in the balcony, if you're in the back, they'll let you out. They'll let you through those seats. Just come. Allow God to speak to your heart.

Allow God to work in your life. See Him above all others, above your circumstances. You may be saying, you know, I'm doing pretty good under the circumstances. God didn't intend you to live under the circumstances.

He intended you to live in victory even in times of trial and hurt and pain. Come to Jesus. Let Him set you free. Let Him heal your broken heart. Let Him be the almighty God, the restorer, the equipper, the sufficiency that you need today.

Let Him do what you can't do. Come to Jesus.