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God’s Gracious Guidance is a Given

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The Lord will guide you always; He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.

Isaiah 58:11 NIV

In the middle of a chapter which is all about cause and consequence, “if” leading to “then”, this verse stands out as a promise. A gracious promise, a ‘given’ without any requirement on our part.

And it is true — there are countless stories told about how, looking back, God’s providential guidance was working in someone’s life. They didn’t have any real and personal faith (it often comes later) and they don’t remember praying. Yet the signposts appeared for them.

There is much more guidance going on, than we ever give thanks for.

But it starts with the Lord. The whole premise of what is promised is that the Lord does the guiding and the refreshing. This is His hand in our lives, not fate or fortune, not chaos or chance. And as we recognise that He is both ‘for us’, and ‘there for us’, we pause our busy lives and turn to Him. And find Him.

The good news is that the Bible here is saying that God is constantly guiding us and enabling us to grow. And the even more good news that it implies, is that in the moment we praise Him for who He is and thank Him for being there for us, we can ask for more. We can be guided more certainly — because we are now seeking, and listening, and expecting, and discovering that there is a partnership.

It will not be long into this journey of discovery that we encounter Jesus. Who is He? God’s unique Son who took on the flesh and blood form of living like one of us but doing it perfectly and lovingly. We may explore the Bible and read that Jesus is the perfect representation of God — as He taught Himself, “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father”.

Jesus holds out an offer to us, not just guidance in this confusing life with all its burdens and difficulties. He offers to take that weight away, saying that His burden — what He requires from us — is not a heavy religious framework but a relationship that is light and comfortable by comparison.

By believing and trusting Him, our sense of divine guidance becomes a new start into life with a spiritual dimension — a life that goes on and on and grows in depth of experience.

It starts by receiving the simple truth the Bible gives us: “The Lord will guide you always…”

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For reference:
Isaiah 58
John 14:9 and context
Matthew 11:27-29
Hebrews 1:3
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Be courageous

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A silhouette evening view of Table Mountain, above Crickhowell, Mon., Wales

… Joshua told the commanders of his army, “Come and put your feet on [your enemies’] necks… Don’t ever be afraid or discouraged,” Joshua told his men. “Be strong and courageous, for the LORD is going to do this to all of your enemies.”
Joshua 10:24-26 NLT

The Lord’s word that came through Joshua was not about what they must DO, but how they were to BE. “Be strong and courageous…”.

Where preaching has been minimised, in traditions which give greater priority to sacramental practice than hearing God’s word, it has often been replaced with a brief homily. The homily generally takes the form of exhorting hearers to do better, whatever the gospel passage for the day is about. That’s more about man’s effort than God transformative grace.

Jesus enables us to be different. The sense of BEING new creations, learning to live in a new identity as disciples of Jesus helped by the new spirituality brought by the Holy Spirit, is foretold in the Gospels (and in the OT).

But how this new way of BEING is experienced, comes mainly from the Acts narrative and the letters to the churches written by Paul and others.

That’s why we need all the three perspectives: God’s overall purpose in the OT, Christ’s mission as set out in the four gospels, and the Holy Spirit’s enabling of that mission learned from the NT letters.

The OT points to Jesus’ coming, and the gospel accounts point to Pentecost, the life of the Spirit and Jesus’ return.

Joshua’s words were good news to his hearers: and for us, they form part of a harmony, like the bass line of the Good News ‘melody’ which we are part of, as those who have made a choice to say ‘no’ to the old independent life and belong to Jesus.

“Be strong and courageous” points to Jesus as the One in whom we get our strength and courage. So as Christians we are able to “be strong and courageous” by turning to Jesus as our Lord and relying on Him.

There is a longer version of this post Be courageous — Fresh Bread Today with a story of how this was done by the early believers, giving us a model we can follow.

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Belonging

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Image credit: Ian Greig

It is God who enables us, along with you, to stand firm for Christ. He has commissioned us, and He has identified us as His own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first instalment that guarantees everything He has promised us.

2 Corinthians 1:21-22 NLT

Becoming a Christian is a transition, to a new identity and a new life stretching on into eternity — and a new belonging, a new sense of ownership.

Paul described it as being Christ’s slave. That doesn’t sound appealing to our ears, but some bond servants were well treated and looked after.

A previous generation knew about being “in service” as a career option. To be such a servant in the grand residence of one of the aristocracy was as close as we get to that sense of ownership. This was the age of duty, and personal freedoms came second to serving the needs of the household. But to “belong” had its own security, together with the honour by association of being identified with a high-ranking family.

It was the age of duty in another way. Many people did a spell in one of the armed forces. This kind of service was respected. There was a discipline and the needs of the service came first — as is still the case for a posting in the Royal Navy, assigned to a ship for three years and at sea for nine months at a time. However, the uniform spoke of both the duty of belonging and the honour of belonging.

On making the decision to make Christ our Lord, we are given a uniform that identifies us as belonging to Him. That is part of our spiritual authority — the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, the helmet of salvation. Paul used the picture of a Roman legionary that was familiar to people of that time. The uniform cannot be seen with human eyes, but it is plain as a pikestaff in the connected spiritual realm. We have no rank and no title on earth, but we are championed by every angel in heaven and feared by every demon belonging to the devil’s dark realm.

Christians also recognise fellow Christians. There is a spiritual bond, a one-ness in Christ, that celebrates our belonging to Christ, never mind what stream or denomination or worship preference we hold at the time. Christian unity and fellowship flows across man-made party lines.

He anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit.

That seal of ownership cannot be described or pictured, but it is real in another way that every born-again Christian can recognise. This is the fellowship, the koinonia so valued in the early church and also the communion we celebrate in sharing bread and wine — belonging to each other because we belong to Christ.


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Tangled up in our opinions

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This is Part 2. See also Part 1 that leads into this.

He mocks proud mockers but shows favour to the humble and oppressed.

Proverbs 3:34 NIV

To have Christ enthroned in our lives means unseating the pride that sat there before. And pride is keen to display its splendour — through us expressing and insisting on our opinions.

What is your story about coming to know God personally? You may remember, as I do, the struggle that went on in trying to make a response to the Good News. I came up with every reason I didn’t need to be born again, from the hypocrisy evident in the church (fair reasoning ) to my ritual initiation and living in a country that espoused Christianity as its established religion (false reasoning).

The point is, the “I” in me — my ego — didn’t want to bend and defer. Until it did, and then I saw a whole lot I hadn’t been able to see before. Not quite a window into heaven, but certainly turning a light on in dark room and being able to see where things were.

We all start by being guided by ‘our science’ — led what we know. It’s a fair starting point, but not a good continuation. The Christian move should come easy because we get a lot of practice at it. We take an early decision that we have come to the end of what we know and what we think. Only then, and prayerfully, will real wisdom get the upper hand and change our perspective.

The Lord is gracious to the humble…
God’s grace and favour flow to the meek…

Proverbs 3:34 in The Passion Translation

God has grace and favour for those who are His. Divine Holy Spirit-inspired wisdom is part of that grace and favour. We can get God’s leading in a situation but it absolutely depends on us needing it. And we can’t make that case convincingly while we are still trying out what we think we know.

I knew a man who could not ask for directions. If he was lost, on a country crossroads where all the roads look the same, He would avoid passers by and try every way, then come back, before looking for a map.

That’s like us with God. We try every way, rather than ask Him, or see what Bible verse might pop up to be a map to us. It’s easier to just try what you know, but it’s quicker and better to be humble, and ask.

The essence of what keeps us from knowing God is independence, and He calls it sin. Once we realise we were MADE for relationship, and it’s a lie that it is restrictive and keeps us from satisfaction — we ask, and we receive.

Putting paid to the lie

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Image credit: Ian Greig

For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

Psalm 100:5 NIV

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV

Why should we look to God, at a time like this? Because He is good, therefore He can be trusted, and He makes ways we didn’t know existed

THOSE OF US who have walked with God for a time in this unlikely relationship — Almighty holy God with accident-prone ordinary man — take the opportunity to remind ourselves again that the essential nature of the God we belong to, is that He is good and He is loving — and therefore He can be trusted. Utterly. These verses remind us that He is loving in a way that doesn’t keep a score when we are less than loving in return, and He is still there for us when our trust has proved to be shaky.

These become, not just words of truth but words of praise. Why would we turn to praise at a time like this, when hospitals are struggling and so many have lost loved ones prematurely?

It is because praise is not limited by what we experience or feel, because it is an expression, not of how we are, but of how God is. He is good. He is loving. His kind of love is not fickle or conditional, but something we can rely on as unchanging, no matter what.

If God is all-powerful and over the situations we are so concerned about, and He is good and loving in that supreme power, we want to recognise that He is always working for our good, always attentive to our cries for help, always doing what He does best — saving and delivering. How much of that do we see coming through? How much of a daffodil pushing up do we need to see before we praise His creation of a daffodil?

Praising God for His goodness is also our dismissal of the lie that God sends hardship. A lie that cannot stand up and which is not entertained, a lie that’s exposed and dismissed, has been disarmed. It no longer has any destructive power. It has been named for what it is. And our choice to believe and affirm who God is, and how He is — what He is like — is our best strategy in the warfare against the misinformation the enemy is attempting to spread.

This is a time for Christians to share the hope they have in God, the confident expectation that He will bring us through. Why would we hope that? Because we know Him, and we know He is good, merciful and forbearing of our many faults.

Why would He do this? Because of Jesus. He made a way for us, warts and all, to have a personal and intimate relationship with God who is pure and holy. And to know that He loves us, likes us and enjoys our company!

It is also a time for Christians to rise up with one voice to praise God for who He is, and to declare that we trust Him for the deliverance, and more, that we know He is bringing through the present difficulty. To praise Him, even, for the many who are turning to Him at this time and finding that He is exactly what His word says He is.

To praise God because He is good, and therefore we gladly put our full trust in Him.

Prayer

Lord God, I come to You in deep gratitude for Jesus, His self-sacrifice for me, the deepest possible expression of His love for me, taking my guilt and shame and enabling me to know You — and I praise You.
I exalt You above all and declare again that You are good and that Your kind of love endures forever and is steadfast without limitations. You are able to bring Your good out of our desperate situation and need. You are working Your good plans and purposes where we see signs of them — amazing advances of science giving us good remedies in a tenth of the usual time, and medical professionals finding strength beyond themselves. I praise the answers to our prayers for leaders and all in authority, and I recognise that every good call they make gives glory to You. I refute the lie that there is anything about You which is harsh or discriminatory.
You are Almighty, You are strong and also loving. Everything about You is good, and I declare my trust in You. To the glory of Jesus, Amen.

• For an alternative reflection and prayer, see this post on www.glowweobley.com