Often in life there are a lot of things going on around us. A thunderbolt over here, a ray of sunshine over there. And we're so busy reacting – we don't have time to step back, survey the landscape and ask ourselves – what is God up to here? What's He trying to say to me? Back in February 2007 a German woman, Ewa Wisnierska was competing in the paragliding competition in NSW in Australia. The winds were from the south and so she and most of the other competitors therefore headed north. Now there was a thunderstorm brewing towards the north but if they could only get through that before it formed well, they'd be well on their way. She could see the band of clouds hadn't fully formed yet, so there she was, hanging off a paraglider, trying to skirt around a small cloud when all of a sudden the clouds merged and she found herself smack bang in the middle of a powerful thunderstorm. Rain, hail, lightening, winds and she's on a paraglider. She had misread the signs. Now the problem with clouds for a paraglider is that clouds mean lift. The storm rocketed her upwards at 20 metres a second. Up and up. Nothing she could do to slow it down, the updraft was just too powerful. 3,000 metres, 4,000 metres, 5,000, 6,000. Now at 7,000 metres we run out of oxygen. No one survives. 7,000 metres, 8,000 metres, 9.000 metres almost 10,000 metres – 10 kilometres above the earths surface. Frozen, unconscious, in the minus 55 degree Celsius, oxygen depleted stratosphere dangling from her paraglider. She glided there in a slow turn until suddenly the weight of the ice on her paraglider caused her to plummet several thousand metres. Then, miraculously the paraglider snapped open again with a jolt, waking her up. This was the most extraordinary experience, really a miracle. No one has ever survived something like that. Can you imagine how she felt when she came to? She's been sucked up into that thunderstorm, she was covered in ice, barely able to move, aware that she was in a precarious life and death situation. Still in the storm that could snuff her out as, by the way, did another competitor that day, from China who had been only a few hundred metres away from her. Even in this barely conscious state, knowing the mistakes that had put her there in the first place, knowing that she only had one chance of survival now that the storm was weakening, and she was more on the edge than the middle, she did the one thing she knew how to do she put herself into a downward spiral. With everything she could muster she created that downward spiral and she survived to tell the most extraordinary tale. In fact a week later she was back in the air again with the very same paraglider. I watched her being interviewed. The one thing that she said was this, along these lines. She said, it was a race we were all trying to win. We saw the storm coming but everyone headed towards it. I followed them. The thing I've learned since then, she said, was that next time I will read the signs for myself and make my own decisions about going or pulling out. Now that, that is a piece of wisdom that really struck me between the eyes. We're talking this week and next week too, about hearing God speak. If God is God how can we hear Him speak? So far this week, we've seen that He speaks through His Word the Bible. And we can rely on that because that's our bedrock, our foundation. God never contradicts Himself whatever else we may hear or see or feel. What He says in His Word is the truth and anything that contradicts that isn't the truth. It's as simple as that. We've seen that He speaks to us as we spend time in prayer and in thought, quietly with Him. And we've seen that He speaks to us through anointed, inspired preaching and teaching. What we're looking at today is signs. God speaks to us through signs as well. And one of the things that we're taught in His Word is to read the signs. Luke Chapter 12 Verses 54 to 56 Jesus also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, 'It is going to rain'; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, 'There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time? Now, here let's get right into the context. Jesus was talking about the fact that they've got the Son of God right there in front of them under their noses and they just don't get it. But the word "signs" or "signs" appears 180 times throughout the Bible. Sometimes we're talking miraculous signs, but other times they're not miraculous and almost exclusively these signs are pointing to God and what He's doing and who He is. That's the whole point of the signs. They point to something. Jesus, the miracles did. John in his gospel refers to them as "signs". Jesus was and is the Word of God, God speaking to us about who He is and what He's up to in the world. Now so often there are signs in our lives but either we miss them altogether or we misinterpret them. I wonder how often people look at all that's going on in their lives, the storm clouds rolling in, and ask themselves, "I wonder what God's up to?" Have you ever been travelling through a situation, something difficult and complex, and you don't quite know the whole picture or how it's going to turn out. And all of a sudden there's a flash of lightening over there and the thunderclap that follows. But over in a different direction is a ray of sunshine, of hope. See most of us, we can look up at the sky and see that the weather's changing but we ignore what God's saying to us about what He's up to in the things that are happening around us. So here is what I do. When sometimes feel a little bit fuzzy and they're not quite clear, I take time to get quietly before God. I pray for a bit of wisdom and insight. And then I just look at the different things that are going on and I think about them prayerfully. "God, that event, what does that mean? What should I do with that? Is there anything you are saying to me through that? Or this person, what he said or she said, do you mean me to take notice of that?" Once we were having problems selling our house when we'd already bought another one. Not something we'd done out of hubris we had felt God leading us to downsize and downscale and we really felt this was God's will and stepped into this in faith. So we bought the new house before we sold the new house. And way before things became difficult a wise, experienced real estate agent quipped to me, "I always tell people, don't panic, it'll sell eventually." I thought nothing of it at the time, but when things got tight and difficult and settlement on the new place was coming and the old place wasn't selling, time and time again God brought passing comment back to my remembrance and spoke to me through it and gave me peace. It might be something you saw in a movie or TV or a thunderbolt or a ray of sunshine, you know, sometimes God will give us insight through those things. He expects us to read the signs. He says so over and over again in His Word. Is that like reading tea leaves? No, no! It's about looking at all the stuff that's going on around us through God's eyes, getting still with God and listening to what He's trying to say to us. So often God's speaking and we're not even listening. I really encourage you to get still before God, think about the different things going on and ask Him what He's trying to say to you. Ask Him for His wisdom and his insight and His guidance. He never holds it back. It's a process of learning. Learning to discern what God is saying and when it's Him talking versus when it's our flesh. One thing I always come back to is this, that God never contradicts Himself. That's why we can be absolutely certain that anything that contradicts God's Word hasn't come from Him.

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