Walking with God is not a once-a-week experience — it is an every day reality. But knowing that truth raises a deeper question: how do we stay responsive to Him in the ordinary moments of life? Jesus did not merely give us doctrine; He revealed The Way — a distinct path marked by asking, obeying, lifting others in prayer, and seeking the Father’s direction continually. The responsive life is not complicated, but it is intentional. It is the daily choice to follow His leading rather than our own thinking, to seek His will rather than assume we already know it, and to walk in step with Him instead of walking ahead of Him. Because the question is not whether God is speaking — the question is whether we are responding. And that’s our focus in this episode: How to Live a Responsive Life with God on this week’s Light on Life.

This Week: Ask before you move. Obey when He speaks. Lift others in prayer. Seek Him with your whole heart.

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Accept the Challenge

Each week’s podcast contains a call to action. The Word of God will not produce in your life unless you put into operation.
This weeks call is:

Ask. Obey. Lift. Seek.

This week, choose responsiveness over routine.

Start your day by asking God what is on His agenda. Obey promptly when He nudges you. Lift people in prayer as they come to mind. Seek Him with your whole heart.

Remember this: Don’t just believe in The Way — walk it.

Join the Conversation

Each week’s podcast also contains a question designed to encourage testimony. Testimony is vital to a believers life. We overcome by it (Rev. 12:11).
This week’s question is:

Question: In which area do you need to become more responsive — asking, obeying, lifting others in prayer, or seeking God’s direction?

Share: Identify one step you will take this week to strengthen your everyday walk with the Lord.

Remember: God is speaking. The question is not whether He is leading — it’s whether we are responding.

About Emery

Emery committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ over 49 years ago and has served as both a full-time pastor and an itinerant minister. Both he and his wife Sharon of 44 years emphasize personal growth and development through the Word of God. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is both the focus and the hallmark of their mission. Read more about them here.

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Podcast Notes:

• Well again, welcome.
• Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you today that you are an ‘every day God.’ We love that about you. We want you in every way in our every day life. Show us your ways that we may know You. Teach us your paths that we might understand You. Renew our minds by your Word and by Your Holy Spirit in us that we may walk out your will. We ask these things in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

To Walk in the Responsive Life: The Everyday Concept and The Responsive Life

• Last week we laid some foundation.
• The Jesus life is not lived occasionally.
• It is lived every day.
• God structured His way around daily mercy, daily provision, daily strength, and daily growth.
• We saw that dominion is not a one-and-done transaction.
• It’s illegal to use faith once and for all when dealing with the devil.
• In the realm of dominion, faith cannot sit idle — because until the adversary is finally removed, the authority Jesus restored to us must be actively exercised in the daily situations we face.
• We saw that obedience is not a Sunday activity.
• It’s a twenty-four hour walk.
• But here’s the question that naturally follows:
• If walking with God is an every day reality, how do we stay responsive to Him in those every day moments?
• Because it’s one thing to know we should walk daily, it’s another thing to walk ’The Way’ responsively.
• To live responsive is to obey when He speaks, to ask before we move, to lift others as He prompts, and to seek Him for direction in every step.

To Walk in the Responsive Life: Know ‘The Way’

John 14:2–6 (ESV) — 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

• What’s under discussion here is the term ‘The Way.’
• Now this terminology ‘The Way’ is something powerful.
• Walking in God’s way is not just pretty words.
• ‘The Way’ was the identity of the early Church.
• This Jesus thing that happened in the first century with His death, burial, and resurrection wasn’t a movement.
• It was ‘THE WAY — It was the ONLY way.
• Do you understand this?
• It wasn’t a program.
• It wasn’t a new fad that tickles for a moment but fades from memory.
• This Jesus Walk was ‘The Way.’

Acts 9:1–2 (ESV) — 1 But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

• Did you hear that? — The Way was their name.
• Psalm 18 says, “This God—His way is perfect.”
• The early Church put legs to that Psalm.
• They believed ‘The Way’ was a distinct path.
• A defined walk.
• The Jesus Way — the Jesus Walk is not a mixture.
• The religious element of the first century wanted to mix in Old Testament sacrifice into ‘The Way.’
• The religions of the world are trying to mix in their way and let’s just have a conglomerate Way.
• When you mix ‘The Way’ with anything else, you create confusion.
• Some pray with faith laced with unbelief — it doesn’t work.
• Some pray while telling God how He ought to fix things.
• That’s not ‘The Way.’
• A mixture always produces a mess.
• Paul was on the road to Damascus to persecute Jesus followers.
• God changed Paul’s way to ‘The Way’ in blinding fashion in Acts 9.
• This change is called the new birth.
• It’s a Jesus is Lord change, a highway transfer to ‘The Way.’
• Six times in the book Acts this Jesus life is formally called ‘The Way.’
• Even unbelievers called it that in the early.
• Felix, a fundamentally corrupt governor had accurate knowledge of ‘The Way.’
• The world of the first century knew there was an uncompromising path Jesus followers walked.
• Somewhere along the line, we stopped calling it ‘The Way.’
• But the Bible never stopped calling it that — men did.
• We lost something when history switched from the way you walk to a label called Christian.

To Walk in the Responsive Life, Ask

John 14:6 (ESV) — 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

• You must have a ‘The Way’ mindset, like Psalm 18:30 says.
• There are three components to this: The Way, The Truth, The Life, that’s what Jesus said.
• They interact with one another.
• We need the truth of God’s Word AND we need God’s direction for that truth.
• You cannot just head out alone with truth.
• We need to pray for kings — that’s the truth but what do we pray? — that comes by direction.
• That comes by asking.
• Asking God is part of God’s economy — it’s part of ‘The Way.’

Jeremiah 33:3 (ESV) — 3 Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.

• The word ‘hidden’ is the one we want to look at and with that thought, here is the Definition of the Day.
• Hidden means cutoff, inaccessible, not capable of being reached or grasped, or lofty.
• Hidden things in God cannot be taken by storming the gates with self-effort.
• You find these things by asking.

Matthew 7:7–8 (ESV) — 7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

• God’s way works by asking.
• It doesn’t work by just knowing truth.
• It’s The Way, The Truth, The Life.
• These are not separate.
• Take Jesus as your example.
• If anybody could have walked His life according to truth and nothing else, it would have been the Son of God.
• I mean Jesus is the truth — that’s what He said.
• But truth is always qualified by asking.

John 5:30 (ESV) — 30 “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

• Isn’t that amazing?
• Jesus, who is The Truth, said, “I can do nothing on my own. I must seek His will.”
• The Way plus The Truth produces The Life.
• But truth must be directed.
• And direction comes by asking.
• And with that thought, here is the Illustration of the Day.
• When Hudson Taylor was laboring in China as a missionary in the 1850s, he already knew what the Bible said about the Great Commission.
• He didn’t need another verse to convince him that the gospel should go into all the world.
• He already believed that.
• But, when, where, why, and how?
• China coasts were stocked with missionaries.
• Taylor knew that — that’s truth.
• The vast interior provinces had none — that was true as well.
• Taylor knew the Bible said, “Go.”
• He knew people were perishing — He knew the command — all
• But what he did not know was how?
• Was he to remain where he was?
• Was he to start something new?
• Was he to step out without financial backing?
• So instead of moving impulsively on what he already knew, he did something powerful.
• He prayed — For months.
• Taylor didn’t talk to people about his plans.
• He did not gather support and try to make it happen based on the truth of a Bible verse.
• He asked God for direction.
• Taylor tarried in prayer and waited on God.
• As he prayed, the burden for China’s unreached interior grew stronger in prayer, not weaker.
• It was in that season of asking and waiting that his calling clarified into what became the China Inland Mission.
• What’s the point: He already knew the Bible but he still asked for direction.
• Knowing the Bible does not eliminate the need to ask for ‘The Way.’
• We need to ask, “Lord, what do have on the agenda today.”
• What should I pray about?
• The Bible says pray for kings, which ones?
• What do I pray?
• “What do You want to do? How do You want to go about it? What does obedience look like today?”
• The everyday responsive life is asking.

Ask Don’t Tell

• Now, we are great ones to tell God what He ought to be doing.
• We do that because we think that’s what prayer is supposed to be.
• So, we tell God what to do with medical situations — ‘Lord, I want you to bless the doctors, and give them wisdom.’
• We tell God how He ought to fix the government. ‘Lord, straighten this up, move this person out — we bind the devil, we loose the angels.’
• Similarly, advice pours from our lips to God about our children and what they aren’t doing and what they ought to be doing.
• Then we package a little bit of tongues in with this ‘advice giving’ and we say ‘Well, we prayed about it.’
• The disciples did this.

Mark 6:34–36 (ESV) — 34 When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. 35 And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. 36 Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.”

• Everything the disciples said was true.
• This was a desolate place, and the hour was late.
• Jesus didn’t side with their way because He couldn’t side with their way.
• Their way was not THE WAY in this case.
• If you keep reading this account of feeding the five thousand, you will see that the disciples would have never thought of handling this ‘feeding’ situation that way God handled it.
• Prayer is not just you telling God — it’s God telling you because you asked Him.
• The disciples should have said, ‘“This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. How do You want to handle this thing?”
• That’s effective praying.
• The responsive life is asking.

To Walk in the Responsive Life, Obey

• A lot of walking with God is responding to God with obedience.
• God initiates and we follow.

Romans 8:14–16 (ESV) — 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

• Know this about obedience.
• Every time God leads, your future is hidden inside your response.
• Two cannot walk together unless they agree.
• And with that thought, here is the Illustration of the Day.
• A minister shared a story along the line of obeying God.

Illustration: Benefits of Obeying God

• This minister pastored a small church during the Depression where the average salary was $1100 a month.
• He was only earning about forty dollars a month.
• One Christmas season, a young evangelist visited the church.
• After the service, as he was greeting people, the Lord spoke to his heart and told him: “I want you to give him ten dollars.”
• Ten dollars was nearly a week’s pay.
• He argued with God.
• He hadn’t even bought his wife a Christmas present yet.
• But the prompting would not leave.
• Finally, he obeyed and quietly placed the money in the minister’s hand.
• Later he learned the evangelist had five children and not a dime left for Christmas.
• That offering provided for the family.
• Soon afterward, another traveling minister unexpectedly stopped at the church.
• While the man preached, the Lord again spoke and said “Give him $12.50.”
• Again, the inward argument ensued — this was more than a week’s wages.
• But he obeyed.
• Later, the minister explained he had run out of money and could go no farther on his journey.
• That gift allowed him to reach the church where he would soon become the new pastor.
• About two years later, this same young pastor, who had given the $10.00 and the $12.50, was called to pray for a dying woman.
• As he knelt beside her bed, the Lord said, “Stand up and tell her she is healed.”
• He obeyed — and she rose from that deathbed completely well.
• On the drive home, rejoicing, the Lord spoke to him again.
• Please get this next statement.
• “I couldn’t have used you here if you hadn’t obeyed Me with that $10 and the $12.50.”¹
• Your future is inside your response.
• The responsive life is the obedient life.

The Everyday Responsive Life Is Lifting

• The responsive life is the lifting of people to God in prayer.
• I don’t mean prayer lists here.
• Prayer lists are great.
• But, how many times have you received a phone call from a person who is in ‘your world,’ and the conversation went like this: “I was just thinking about you?”
• It happens to everybody.
• Well, congratulations, you may have just missed an opportunity to respond to God.
• How do you know that it wasn’t the Lord who brought that person across your mind?

Philippians 1:3–5 (ESV) — 3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

• Every time the Philippian church came into Paul’s memory, he lifted them up to God.
• The responsive life is the lifting life.
• Here it is on an individual level.

2 Timothy 1:3 (ESV) — 3 I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day.

• Paul didn’t pray by lists — he prayed by memory.
• When Timothy came across his mind, he prayed for him lifting him up to God.
• Well, what if it wasn’t God that caused the memory to trigger?
• What if it was you?
• Well so what? — That person just got lifted up to God — it’s a win.
• But, it’s a loss if your only response is excitement when you were thinking about the person who just happens to call you.
• The responsive life is the lifting life.

The Every Day Responsive Life is the Seeking Life

• The responsive life is the seeking life.

Luke 11:9 (ESV) — 9 And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

• There is a seeking aspect to the responsive life.
• Why do we seek God?

1 Chronicles 16:11 (ESV) — 11 Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually!

• We seek His strength — we exchange ours for His.
• They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.
• That’s the seeking life in different words.
• We seek His Presence.
• Seeking His Presence means making it focal — It means monitoring it in your life.
• Presence speaks.
• Presence is life.

Amos 5:4 (ESV) — 4 For thus says the LORD to the house of Israel: “Seek me and live;

• Jesus followers should have it — it’s part of ‘The Way.’
• The great question is ‘how do you do it?’

Jeremiah 29:13 (ESV) — 13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

• You respond with your heart.
• You seek Him with all your insides.
• Deuteronomy 4:29 expands this even further.

Deuteronomy 4:29 (ESV) — 29 But from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.

• It’s not just your heart — it’s your whole being.
• The benefits of seeking are marvelous.

Hebrews 11:6 (ESV) — 6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

• Your seeking will never be in vain if it’s in faith believing.
• God rewards the seekers with the answer — the thing they are seeking Him about.
• Successful seekers ask questions and wait patiently and perseveringly for the answer.
• Mark those words: ask, wait, patience, and perseverance.
• They are all critical seeking components.
• And with that thought, here is the Quote of the Day.

“I never remember, in all my Christian course, a period now (in March, 1895) of sixty-nine years and four months, that I ever SINCERELY and PATIENTLY sought to know the will of God by the teaching of the Holy Ghost, through the instrumentality of the Word of God, but I have been ALWAYS directed rightly. But if honesty of heart and uprightness before God were lacking, or if I did not patiently wait upon God for instruction, or if I preferred the counsel of my fellow men to the declarations of the Word of the living God, I made great mistakes.”²

• Listen to the word sincerely.
• Grasp the word patiently.
• The will of God is sought by the teaching of the Holy Ghost, through the instrumentality of the Word of God.
• If you want to walk with God in His way, you must be absolutely in love with the Bible.
• How do you know you are in love?
• It’s easy — when you are in love with someone you want to be with that person every chance you get.
• How do you know you are in love with God’s Word, every chance you get, you are in it.

Acting On The Every Day Responsive Life

• So, how can we act on the truth we have heard today?
• First, start your day by asking.
• Before you begin your schedule, pause and pray: “Lord, what is on Your agenda today?”
• Practice immediate obedience.
• When you sense a nudge to give, speak, call, or act — respond.
• Your future is hidden inside that moment.
• Lift as you remember.
• When someone comes to mind, stop and pray for them immediately.
• Don’t dismiss it — respond to that remembrance.
• Seek God with your whole heart.
• Set aside intentional time to seek His Presence and His direction through the Word.
• Don’t rush it.
• Ask, wait, and listen.
• The responsive life is not dramatic — it is daily.
• And daily responsiveness is how ‘The Way’ becomes your way.

Closing Thoughts

• The responsive life is not reserved for prophets, missionaries, or revivalists — it is the normal Christian life.
• It is the daily rhythm of asking before moving, obeying when He speaks, lifting others when He prompts, and seeking Him with your whole heart.
• ‘The Way’ is not complicated, but it is uncompromising.
• It is walked step by step, moment by moment, in quiet dependence upon the Father every day.
• And when you live this way — not assuming, not forcing, not mixing — but responding — you will discover that ‘The Way’ truly does produce The Life.
• So, don’t just believe in ‘The Way.’
• Walk it.

Now Father God, thank you that your Way is not complicated. We set our hearts to pray along these lines — we are seeking you with all our hearts because we love you with all our being. We bless your mighty Name today in Jesus Name, Amen.

• This week, don’t just walk — walk responsively.
• Ask before you move.
• Obey when He speaks.
• Lift the people He brings to your mind.
• Seek Him for direction in every step.
• The Way is not a label you wear — it is a path you walk.
• Step into it daily.
• If this podcast helped you, consider sharing it with someone who desires to know The Way.
• You can find this and other podcasts at emeryhorvath.com.
• How to Live a Responsive Life with God.
• You guys have a great God week and we will see you next time for another edition of Light on Life.

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