"Knowing God" [IX]

~ Thou Our Guide ~

“Earnest Christians seeking guidance often go wrong about it. Why is this? Often the reason is that their notion of the nature and method of divine guidance is distorted. They look for a will-o’-the-wisp; they overlook the guidance that is ready at hand, and lay themselves open to all sorts of delusions. Their basic mistake is to think of guidance as essentially inward prompting by the Holy Spirit, apart from the written Word. This idea, which is as old as the false prophets of the Old Testament and as new as the Oxford Group and Moral Re-Armament, is a seed-bed in which all forms of fanaticism and folly can grow… What conduct of this sort shows is failure to grasp that the fundamental mode whereby our Creator guides His rational creatures is by rational understanding and application of His written Word. This mode of guidance is fundamental, both because it limits the area within which ‘vocational’ guidance is needed and given, and also because only those who have attuned themselves to it, so that their basic attitudes are right, are likely to be able to recognize ‘vocational’ guidance when it comes… [The] true way to honour the Holy Spirit as our guide is to honour the Holy Scriptures through which He guides us. The fundamental guidance which God gives to shape our lives—the instilling, that is, of the basic convictions, attitudes, ideals, and value-judgments, in terms of which we are to live—is not a matter of inward promptings apart from the Word but of the pressure on our consciences of the portrayal of God’s character and will in the Word, which the Spirit enlightens us to understand and apply to ourselves.”

“The basic form of divine guidance, therefore, is the presentation to us of positive ideals as guidelines for all our living. ‘Be the kind of person that Jesus was’; ‘seek this virtue, and this one, and this, and practice them up to the limit’; ‘know your responsibilities—husbands, to your wives; wives, to your husbands; parents, to your children; all of you, to all your fellow-Christians and all your fellow-men; know them, and seek strength constantly to discharge them’—this is how God guides us through the Bible… ‘Depart from evil, and do good’ (Psalm 34:14, 37:27)—this is the highway along which the Bible is concerned to lead us, and all its admonitions are concerned to keep us on it. Be it noted that the reference to being ‘led by the Spirit’ in Romans 8:14 relates, not to inward ‘voices’ or any such experience, but to mortifying known sin, and not living after the flesh! Only within the limits of this guidance does God prompt us inwardly in matters of ‘vocational’ decision. So never expect to be guided to marry an unbeliever, or elope with a married person, as long as 1 Corinthians 7:39 and the seventh commandment stand! The present writer has known divine guidance to be claimed for both courses of action. Inward inclinations were undoubtedly present, but they were quite certainly not from the Spirit of God, for they went against the Word. The Spirit leads within the limits which the Word sets, not beyond them. ‘He guideth me in the paths of righteousness’—but not anywhere else.”

“We dislike being realistic with ourselves, and we do not know ourselves at all well; we can recognize rationalizations in others and quite overlook them in ourselves. ‘Feelings’ with an ego-boosting, or escapist, or self-indulging, or self-aggrandising base, must be detected and discredited, not mistaken for guidance. This is particularly true of sexual, or sexually conditioned, feelings. As a biologist-theologian [O.R. Barclay] has written: ‘The joy and general sense of well-being that often (but not always) goes with being ‘in love’ can easily silence conscience and inhibit critical thinking. How often people will say that they ‘feel led’ to get married (and probably they will say ‘the Lord has so clearly guided’), when all they are really describing is a particularly novel state of endocrine balance which makes them feel extremely sanguine and happy.’”

“[It] does not follow that right guidance will be vindicated as such by a trouble-free course thereafter. Here is another cause of deep perplexity for Christian people. They have sought guidance and believe it has been given. They have set off along the road which God seemed to indicate. And now, as a direct result, they have run into a crop of new problems which otherwise would not have arisen—isolation, criticism, abandonment by their friends, practical frustrations of all sorts… Trouble should always be treated as a call to consider one’s ways. But trouble is not necessarily a sign of being off track at all; for as the Bible declares in general that ‘many are the affliction s of the righteous’ (Psalm 34:19), so it teaches in particular that following God’s guidance regularly leads to upsets and distresses which one would otherwise have escaped.”

“If I found I had driven into a bog, I should know I had missed the road. But this knowledge would not be of much comfort if I then had to stand helpless watching the car sink and vanish: the damage would be done, and that would be that. Is it the same when a Christian wakes up to the fact that he has missed God’s guidance and taken the wrong way? Is the damage irrevocable? Must he now be put off course for life? Thank God, no. Our God is a God who not merely restores, but takes up our mistakes and follies into His plan for us and brings good out of them. This is part of the wonder of His gracious sovereignty. ‘I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten… and ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you’ (Joel 2:25 f.). The Jesus who restored Peter after his denial, and corrected his course more than once after that (see Acts 10, Galatians 2:11-14), is our Saviour today and He has not changed. God makes not only the wrath of man to turn to His praise but the misadventures of Christians too.”

“Guidance, like all God’s acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us His way, that we may tread it; He wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safe home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God’s promise; that is how good He is.”