Week 41 Sunday
Week 41 Sunday
The Way Is the Way of Guidance
Psalm 16:7-11
We come now to the question of guidance. The Way is the way of the God-guided life.
Usually people are guided by one or more of these things: by what others do, by chance happenings, by superstitious beliefs, by impulses, sometimes by conscience, and occasionally by God.
But the one who is on the Way is on the way of God; God has direction of that person’s life. How does God guide? Obviously, God must guide us in a way that will develop spontaneity in us. The development of character, rather than direction in this, that, and the other matter, must be God’s primary purpose. God will guide us but won’t override us. That fact should make us use with caution the method of sitting down with a pencil and a blank sheet of paper to write down the instructions dictated by God for the day.
Suppose a parent were to dictate to the child minutely everything to do during the day. The child would be stunted under that regime. The parent must guide in such a manner, and to the degree, that autonomous character, capable of making right decisions for itself, is produced. God does the same. When our daughter was married, I wrote her, “I hope I shall never be in the way and never out of the way.” I would be there when needed.
And yet, having said that, I hasten to add that the guidance of God is more intimate than God standing by in case of need. It is willing cooperation. God gives us autonomy, and then we deliberately choose to cooperate with God as the managing director. God has the first, middle, and last word; and we are glad to have it so, for God’s will is our highest interest. “Thy hands made and moulded me, to understand thine orders” (Ps. 119:73 Moffatt). We are inwardly made to “understand” and to do the “orders” of God. And when we do them, we are free—free because fulfilled. Guidance then is guidance into our highest development and achievement. It is also guidance into liberty, for when we do the will of God, we are free. The will of God is always our will at its best.
O God, I come to you to be guided, for I know in your guidance is my only goodness and my only greatness and my only gladness. So I come to submit my way to your Way, to align my will to your Will. Guide me. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I no longer belong to those who “take bypaths of their own, badly made” (Jer. 18:15 Moffatt); I am under God’s guidance.
Week 41 Monday
God Guides in Seven Ways
Psalm 25:9, 12, 15; 32:8
The will of God is our freedom and our fulfillment. How do we find that will?
We believe that God will reveal the divine will, and hence will guide us, through at least these ways: (1) the life and teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Scriptures, (2) the collective experience of the ages through the church and society, (3) the counsel of good and intelligent people, (4) opening opportunities and needs, (5) heightened moral intelligence, (6) conscience, and (7) the Inner Voice.
Sometimes God will guide us in one of these ways, more often by a conjunction of them, which is safer. But a caution is necessary. Do not expect guidance to be as explicit and plain as two plus two equal four. There will always be a degree of probability in any of this guidance, for that degree of probability puts adventure and daring into life, and it is at the point of adventure and daring that we grow. Guidance must be sufficiently clear to act upon, but never so clear that an act of adventurous faith is not required. The act of adventurous faith is the growing point.
(1) God guides us through the life and teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Scriptures. This is God’s general guidance. For in Jesus we see the nature of God and Reality revealed. There isn’t a thing in Jesus that isn’t in Reality, and there isn’t a thing in Reality that isn’t in Jesus. Here the Mind of God came into embodiment. In any situation, look at Jesus and do the most Christlike thing you know, and you will never go wrong. God will never, and can never, guide you in a way that cuts across the Spirit of Christ. He can never because he cannot act against his own nature. Suspect any “fancy” guidance that isn’t Christlike. For instance, a girl had a dream that linked her life with the life of a man who was ineligible for marriage. She was prepared to give up her job and follow the suggestions coming out of that dream. But that dream was obviously from her subconscious mind and, if followed, might have let her down hard.
O God, I see that I cannot do other than the Christlike thing and remain in your will. I want your will, so I ask you to guide me according to Jesus. Then I will be safe and assured. I do not ask you to do something you cannot do. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “I will instruct you and teach you what is the road to take; I will give you counsel, O humble soul” (Ps. 32:8 Moffatt).
Week 41 Tuesday
Guidance through Collective Experience
Acts 13:2-4; 15:28
We pursue our study of guidance. We said yesterday that God cannot guide you in any way that is not Christlike. Jesus was supreme sanity. There was nothing psychopathic about him. He went off into no visions, no dreams. He got his guidance through prayer as you and I do. That is, he got his guidance when in control of his faculties and not when out of control as in dreams. I do not say that God may not guide through a vision or dream, but if that it will happen very seldom, and it will be because God couldn’t get hold of our normal mental processes to guide them. For God is found most clearly and beneficially in the normal rather than in the abnormal. And Jesus is the Normal, for he is the Norm.
(2) God guides us through the collective experience of the ages through the church and society. There is a deposit of experience being laid up in the church and society, experience as to how life works and how it will not work.
It is possible that both the church and society can become tyranny to the soul when they assume to control the destiny of the individual. We cannot turn over our conscience to the church or to society. The state recognizes that and gives the right of “conscientious objection.” It thereby acknowledges that God is supreme and not the state. If the state is not supreme, neither is the church. And for the church to say that unless you obey its decrees you are damned is an insufferable arrogance that has become blasphemy.
While we reject an overlordship of church and society, nevertheless God may guide us through them—guide us, but not override us. God’s guidance frees from the tyranny of church and society, and yet makes us free to use any guidance we can get through them. Someone has said that “every man is a prisoner of his date,” but a God-guided man is no longer a prisoner of his date, and yet he is free to take from his date anything relevant and contributive. God guides through the church and society to the degree that the church and society are guided of God. “Copy me, as I copy Christ,” said Paul (1 Cor. 11:1 Moffatt), and it is sound advice—and Christian.
O God, I want to know your will and to follow it. If you have any word to speak to me this day through the church and through society, let me take that word and follow it. But give me discernment to hear your word amid the words. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Whoever reverences the Eternal, learns what is the right course to take” (Ps. 25:12 Moffatt).
Week 41 Wednesday
God Guides through Opening Opportunities
Acts 16:9-10; 1 Corinthians 16:8-9
We continue to look at the methods of God’s guidance: (3) God guides through good and intelligent people. Note that I link “good and intelligent.” I would not trust the guidance of a person whose intelligence is not linked with goodness. Intelligence not linked with goodness is no longer intelligence; it is learned ignorance. Also, be sure the person who gives advice is intelligent as well as good. Unintelligent goodness is not a safe guide either.
(4) God guides through opening opportunities and needs. You are now a Christian, and a Christian is one who cares. As you get into closer touch with Christ, you will care more and more for everybody, everywhere. You will now see needs not hitherto seen. Your sympathetic imagination will be quickened. You will project yourself into other people’s situations, and you will see and feel from their standpoint. Dick Sheppard said, “Christianity does not consist in abstaining from doing things no gentleman would think of doing, but in doing things that are unlikely to occur to anyone who is not in touch with the Spirit of Christ.”* You will be guided to see needs to which the unguided are blind or obtuse. The Spirit will create a concern in you where others are unconcerned.
Perhaps you can apply the fourfold method of science in getting guidance through an opening need or providence: first, study of the problem; second, unconscious incubation; third, emergence of the solution; fourth, verification by experiment. Study of the problem means to gather all the information possible. Unconscious incubation means that you may get guidance through the subconscious mind. “He gives to his beloved sleep” (Ps. 127:2) is more correctly translated, we are told, “He giveth unto his beloved in sleep.” God speaks through the subconscious in sleep. You awaken in the morning and all is clear. The emergence of the solution may come through conscious or subconscious processes. When it does come, try it out, verification by experiment. If life approves of it, go on with it. You will find that life will approve only what Life approves.
O God, open my eyes to see, to see the needs around me. I promise that I will give myself to meet these needs with all I have and am. For I want to be guided into something that takes me and my energies and my love. I will follow—lead me on. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “The hidden issues of the future are with the Eternal our God, but the unfolded issues of the day are with us” (Deut. 29:29 Moffatt).
*Widely attributed to H. R. L. Sheppard (1880–1937), Dean of Canterbury.
Week 41 Thursday
God Guides through Mental Processes
Mark 12:29-30; Luke 12:57; 2 Timothy 2:7
We continue our consideration of the methods of guidance: (5) God guides through heightened moral intelligence. Perhaps this is the most general way of guidance, and perhaps the safest and most beneficial to character. For the end God has in view must be the production of the kind of character that will autonomously see the right and do it. Jesus said, “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?” (Luke 12:57 CEB). The highest kind of character is that which spontaneously takes the right attitudes. Someone has said, “No man is safe in a crisis unless he has carry-over forces of accumulated habit.” He spontaneously does the right.
Take the case of Peter being led out of prison. An angel awakened Peter, led him past the first and second guards, through the iron gate; “and after they had gone through one street, the angel immediately left him. Then Peter came to his senses. . . . When he grasped the situation, he went to the house of Mary” (Acts 12:10-12 Moffatt). Note that the angel led him past difficulties that Peter could not surmount unaided, but the moment they arrived at the place where Peter’s intelligence could take over, the angel left him. He got guidance—so far! To have guided Peter beyond that point would have weakened him.
A good deal of thought regarding guidance would have insisted that the guidance be continued clear up to Mary’s door, where a pause would have been made to see if there was guidance as to whether the latch should be lifted or not. That kind of guidance weakens character. And more, it often produces crossed wires. For if guidance isn’t forthcoming in the minutiae, then it is often manufactured, unconsciously of course, out of the subconscious.
God will guide us, but only so far! God guides us up to the point where we grasp the situation as Peter did, and then heightened moral intelligence can take over. Just as God uses guidance enough to show us that God is there, but not too much to weaken initiative, so God works miracles, but sparingly. God’s self-revelation is not a magical but a moral revelation. Just enough miracle to fortify the moral.
O God, my Lord, I thank you that you are making out of me the kind of person who will react to the right by habit. Make me that kind of a person more and more. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “The meek will he guide in judgment” (Ps. 25:9 KJV).
Week 41 Friday
Guidance through Conscience and the Inner Voice
Acts 8:29, 39; 11:6-7
We come to another method of guidance: (6) God guides through conscience. Conscience is a capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, but what it distinguishes as right and wrong is determined largely according to training. Conscience can be trained to approve diametrically opposite things. I asked a Hindu once what would happen if he should break caste and no one should know it. He replied that his conscience would trouble him. My conscience would trouble me if I kept caste! Our consciences have been trained to approve diametrically opposite things.
Conscience, therefore, is not a safe guide unless it is trained at the feet of Christ and there taught to approve the Christlike thing. Paul says, “My conscience bears me out in the holy Spirit” (Rom. 9:1 Moffatt). A conscience corroborated by the Holy Spirit is safe. “Conscience,” says Huckleberry Finn, “takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides.”* And a small boy said, “I have something inside of me that I can’t do what I want to with.” Conscience is authoritative, but you must put Christian authority within it. Teach it the highest and it will lead you into the highest.
(7) God guides through the Inner Voice. God guides through the Inner Voice. God still speaks after the Scriptures were closed; “God kept on talking when his book had gone to press.”** One has to learn to distinguish between the Inner Voice and the voice of the subconscious, our deep desires projected into consciousness. We can learn to distinguish by two outstanding criteria: (a) The Inner Voice always tells you to do the Christlike thing; the voice of the subconscious tells you to do the thing you want. (b) The Inner Voice is authoritative, quietly so. It does not argue. It commands, and its commands are self-authenticating. The voice of the subconscious argues; it tries to convince you, and its voice lacks moral weight. You will learn to distinguish.
An aviator and his wife driving a car got a flat tire and stopped at a garage. The garage mechanic heard the Inner Voice, “Ask that man if he is a Christian.” He shrank from it, but obeyed. The aviator was interested, responded, and found a change within. Half an hour later, his plane crashed in take-off, and he was killed. The Voice was right.
O Voice Divine, make me acute to listen to you, for when I listen to you I listen to Wisdom and Good Will and Redemption. Give me strength to obey when you speak. I want to be God-guided. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today I shall listen to “the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit.”***
*Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Harmondsworth, 1884), 231.
**Strickland Gilliland, as quoted in Halford Luccock, The Acts of the Apostles in Present-day Preaching (Chicago: Willett Clark, 1938), 1.
***Reformation doctrine.
Week 41 Saturday
Guidance in the Crisis and in the Continuous
Psalm 37:1-7
We add additional thoughts on guidance: (8) In order to get guidance in a crisis, remain in the will of God in the continuous. “I being in the way, the Lord led me” (Gen. 24:27 KJV). If we take our own way in the ordinary, we can’t expect God to give us God’s way in the hour of need.
(9) Sometimes you will have to act on probability without specific guidance. Douglas Steere says, “If the way is 95 percent dark and 5 percent light, make your decision on the basis of the 5 percent light.”* And when there isn’t 5 percent light, listen to this word, “Whoever is walking in the dark, without a ray of light, let him have confidence in the Eternal, and lean upon his God” (Isa. 50:10 Moffatt). Trust the character of God. There may be guidance in the absence of guidance; the guidance is to trust where you cannot see.
(10) In order to find out your life work, take these steps: (a) Make an unconditional surrender to God. (b) Ask where is the greatest need. (c) Ask through what vocation you can express your life to meet that need? (d) As you study, confer with people and pray what is the inner urge for you to do? (e) What you ought to do, you will do.
(11) Learn the secret of, what Emerson calls, “lowly listening.”** Relax in God’s presence; practice lowly listening. “Your Teacher never leaves you now; you see your Teacher for yourselves, and when you swerve to the right or left, you hear a Voice behind you whispering ‘This is the way, walk here’ ” (Isa. 30:20-21 Moffatt).
(12) Change the saying from “Where there is a will, there is a way” to “Where there is God’s will, there is a way.” “For if God guides you, God provides you”—provides you with power.
(13) Remember we are made for God’s will, and only in God’s will can we succeed. “Man thinks out many a plan, but ’tis the Eternal’s purpose that prevails” (Prov. 19:21 Moffatt).
(14) Don’t ask for the whole way; ask for the next step. “The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord” (Ps. 37:23 KJV), every two and a half feet. “Your word is a lamp before my feet” (Ps. 119:105 CEB), showing the next step.
O God, I would say in the words of Mary, “I am here to serve the Lord” (Luke 1:38 Moffatt). I have one purpose and one aim—to serve you. So take my life, my powers, my all, and make them the very best they can be. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Let me listen to God speaking, speaking surely words of prosperity” (Ps. 85:8 Moffatt).
*Douglas Van Steere (1901–95) was a Quaker and professor of philosophy at Haverford College. No published source was found for the quotation.
**Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1895), 124.