*Bill and his family have just moved to a new city. They have visited three churches, and like different things about all of them. How do they know which one God is leading them to join?
*Susan is single and has been praying about meeting the right guy for her. Dave started coming to her church recently, and after getting to know Susan, asked her out. They have been seeing each other a few months. How does Susan know if Dave is the one God has for her?
*After much prayer and applying, Julie has been accepted into two different colleges. Both offer the degree she is looking for, and both have advantages that would be good for her life. Which one is she supposed to attend?
*Mark has gotten three different job offers in his field of expertise. One pays better than the other two, but it is further from his house. Another job of the three has better benefits, but he isn't sure he can work with that boss' personality. Which job is God leading him to accept?
Do these scenarios sound familiar? Chances are, you have had to make choices about your own life. We all run into decisions we need to make. I especially ran into these types of choices as a young adult, just out on my own. What did God have in store for me? Did God really care what I chose, if all the options were equally good? I had friends who believed that God didn't really have a specific will for us, and that we could do whatever we wanted, so long as it technically wasn't defined in scripture as sin. I couldn't swallow that. They made it sound like God didn't care about what happened to us. The God I had come to know and love was so vastly different than a casual observer in my life.
Jeremiah 29:11 is a verse many people use in referring to God's plan for our lives. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you hope and a future. Some (such as my friends who believed God didn't really care what we did, as long as it wasn't sin) would claim that this verse is talking about the Jews who were going to be taken to Babylon in the Old Testament, and has no relation to us. I'm going to make the point that scripture has one interpretation, but many applications. This verse teaches about what God was saying to the people from Jerusalem during that time, but can we learn a principle about God through it? Yes! God had a plan for His people, Israel. We, the Christians, are His people too. Would God put so much effort into some of His people, but not all of them? Let's look at what the Bible does teach about us.
Jesus clearly stated in John 3:16, For God so loved the world... This is saying that God loves all people, including you and me. God has always had a plan for us! Ephesians 1:4 says that even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love. If God chose us to be His children, He clearly has a plan for our lives that is more than just us fumbling aimlessly through life as He just watches us, uninvolved. Romans 8:28 tells us that God is always working for the good of those who love Him! Luke 12:7 says that the hairs of our head are numbered! Matthew 6:32 reminds us that God knows our needs and provides for us. This is furthered in Philippians 4:19, But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. James 1:17 tells us that Every good and perfect gift is from above... This means that your home, friendships, family, job, etc are gifts from above, not just things you're responsible to make happen on your own. In looking at all of this, we conclude that we have a God who went to all the trouble of choosing us, creating us, saving us, loving us, knowing the number of hairs on our heads, working for our good, providing for our needs, and giving us gifts, don't you think God has a plan for us?
God provided our greatest need in salvation. Romans 8:32 adds that, how will he not also with him [Jesus] graciously give us all things? If God cares enough to send His Son for you, can't you also trust Him to lead you to the church, spouse, job, etc. that He has for you? Don't you think God wants to guide you? He already has a lot invested in you!
Let's look at how God guided believers in the Bible. He called Abram (later Abraham) to leave his home and go to a land He would show him (Genesis 12:1). He called Moses (from the burning bush) to be the deliverer for His people in Egypt (Exodus 3:4-4:17). He called Joshua to lead the people into the promised land (Joshua 1:1-9). He called Elijah in his prophetic ministry (First Kings 17-19, ff). He called Jeremiah, and went so far as to tell him, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. It is true that God was speaking specifically to Jeremiah, and we need to be careful in how we apply scripture to ourselves. However, this passage tells us something about God, and this truth is reiterated in other places in scripture, which we have already looked at. God calls His people from before He even created them! He has plans for them! These plans include things like what we do, and who we marry (or if we marry). Jeremiahs was told in chapter 16 verse 1 not to marry. Those mentioned here are just a few of the Old Testament believers God called and led.
What about the New Testament? Does God still work in the same way? Yes! While Jesus was on this earth, He restricted the use of some of His divine attributes, and He was dependent on the leading of the Father. He sought God's will, including choosing the disciples (He started choosing them in Matthew 6, but in John 17:7, Jesus states that the Father gave these disciples to Him). Jesus set for us the perfect example of seeking the Father's will, and obeying Him. That is what we need to be doing! After Jesus ascended into Heaven, the early church was dependent on the leading of the Holy Spirit, much like us today. In Acts 16, we read about the Apostle Paul and his companions trying to go to Asia, but God kept preventing them, and then, in a dream, God called Paul instead to Europe. God had very specific plans for Paul, and his mission. In Acts 17:26-27, Paul told the people of Athens that God determined when and where people would live, for the express purpose of it being the time and place where they would seek God and know Him. In Acts 27, Paul hears from an angel of the Lord, telling him that everyone aboard the ship they are traveling on will be spared, but that the ship would be destroyed. It happened, just as he said.
As Christians, we have the Holy Spirit. A hymn I know, entitled, I am Resolved contains the line, "Taught by the Bible, led by the Spirit," and I think that should sum up the way we live as Christians. We are to be informed by scripture, and guided by the Holy Spirit. I have to emphasize this: Any experience we have must be evaluated through the lens of scripture. Anything we believe we are being led to do must pass the scriptural test. God will never lead someone to disobey what He has established in His word. God isn't going to lead me to murder someone! God isn't going to lead me to have an affair. God isn't going to lead me to cheat on my taxes. We always want to make sure what we are doing lines up with scripture, and that we know what God has said in the Bible.
Having the Holy Spirit is a gift that the Old Testament believers couldn't have even imagined having all the time. Before Acts 2, the Holy Spirit would come on people to perform a certain task, but would then leave them. To have full access to the Holy Spirit all the time is something they would have marveled at! Jesus told the disciples at the last supper, When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come. This was a promise, not only to the disciples, but to everyone who comes to Christ! God has been guiding us through the Spirit in conjunction with the Bible ever since the days of Pentecost.
Some argue that, with the completion of the Bible, we no longer have need of God to work in our lives. These people would say the Bible alone is our guide. It is true that the Bible is God's perfect and final word. It is also true that the cannon of scripture is closed, and nothing will be added to it (Revelation 22:18). However, we are between Christ's first and second coming, and there is more to come! God is at work in our world! This view of downplaying the work of God in our lives today is a theological position known as Cessationism. The only scripture that holders of this position are able to use to support it is First Corinthians 13:8-10, which talks about how certain gifts will disappear when what is perfect comes. Those who hold to the Cessationism view would claim that "perfect" is referring to the completion of the New Testament. Here is why this is a problem to me: First, it is not clearly stated that the "perfect" is the Bible. Others have argued that it is Christ's return. I believe it is too ambiguous for anyone to be dogmatic about it. Secondly, the context of First Corinthians 13 is about love. This passage is specifically talking about how love is even greater and more enduring than gifts of speaking tongues or prophecy. The Apostle Paul gives teachings about tongues and prophecy elsewhere (the next chapter, actually). This mention in First Corinthians 13 really isn't a strong teaching about these gifts as much as a comparison to illustrate how great love is. All the same, many have used this passage to say that these gifts are no longer to be part of believers' lives today. I believe that is going beyond the teaching of this passage, and focusing on the wrong aspect of what is being said. I know believers who have varying beliefs on these gifts. I have my own beliefs about them. As long as things are done biblically, and discussions about them are respectful, I do not fault anyone, nor do they fault me (and just to be clear, I have a Southern Baptist viewpoint theologically). The bigger issue I have is that people who hold this view that tongues and prophecy passed away when the Bible was complete are going beyond what the passage is actually teaching, and building an entire doctrine, and then, they take it beyond just tongues and prophecy, and turn it into anything involving the Holy Spirit at all. Healing is often lumped with this, and yet healing is not even mentioned in First Corinthians 13. Knowledge is mentioned beside tongues and prophecy, and yet we still obviously have knowledge today. But as I said, they often broaden this teaching to involve anything they see as God's power. I have had Cessationists become very angry with me when I have shared that the Holy Spirit spoke to me in my Quiet Time, or if I shared about how God gave me guidance in a specific situation. I even had one Cessationist compare me to Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism) and accuse me of claiming to have a new revelation equal to scripture. That was certainly not true! They use this belief to minimize the Holy Spirit, because they assume that anything we think we experience is extra-biblical, and that we're trying to put it on an equal plane with scripture. That is not true for godly, Bible-believing Christians. This is why it is so important to make sure we interpret everything in light of scripture--experiences, things people say to us, nudges we believe are from God--all of it must be interpreted biblically. Sometimes we can think we're hearing from God when we aren't. However, just because people make mistakes in this area does not justify the Cessationist position. It is unbiblical to claim that the completion of scripture means God doesn't speak to us, or to claim that He works in our lives differently than He did for believers whose stories we read in scripture. He told us about these believers in scripture so we would better know Him and how He works!
God never changes. Numbers 23:19 says, God is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent. Hath he said, and shall he not do it, or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? James 1:17 says there is no shadow of turning with God. Hebrews 13:8 says that Jesus is the same yesterday, to day, and forever. Revelation 22:13 says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Why would we think God stopped working in people's lives all of a sudden, after He put so much effort into the people in the Bible, and preserving that Word for us? The same God who called Abraham calls to you!
Of course, our journeys are each our own independent walk with the Lord. He called to Abraham, but gave Moses a burning bush. He allowed Peter to be a disciple of Jesus and among the first to get the Holy Spirit, but had the Apostle Paul come to Him in a drastically different way on the road to Damascus. You are an individual, and God will work specifically in your life, but He will always work according to who He has revealed Himself to be in the Bible.
It is true that teachings about the Holy Spirit have been abused. I used to know a very insecure woman who, anytime she wanted people to accept her ideas, she would say, "The Holy Spirit told me..." and then she'd state her idea. It was a setup where you weren't allowed to argue with her or it appeared you were arguing with the Holy Spirit. This is clearly selfish and wrong. We need to be very careful when claiming to speak for God. We need to weigh what we believe we are being told. There have been whole churches who did extreme, showy things, claiming the Holy Spirit was doing them, when He wasn't. I have as much contempt for this as I do for the extreme opposite of Cessationism. Some people go so far as to say all believers must experience certain "sign" gifts to authenticate their salvation, which I completely disagree with. There is no biblical evidence to support this at all. Having said all of that, just because these teachings have been abused doesn't mean the Holy Spirit isn't active in our world and lives today. Some people (the friends I mentioned earlier in this post) take the extreme approach to say that God doesn't work that way today, and that all we need is the Bible, and if we obey the claims and commands in it, we're okay, and God doesn't care about the specifics of our lives. What a depressing way to live! No interacting with God. No personal relationship. The reason the Bible is "living and active" (Hebrews 4:12) is because we read it illuminated by the Holy Spirit in our hearts. No other books can do that for us, because no other book allows us to have the Author in our heart!
Many people (possibly the friends mentioned) want a relationship with the Bible, but not with the God of the Bible. In John 5, Jesus dealt with some Pharisees who had much the same idea. He told them, You study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very scriptures that testify about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me to have life. (verses 39-40). There are many modern-day Pharisees who think they're okay, because they know what the Bible says and are trying in their own strength to live by it, but they are not experiencing the fullness of God working in and through them. They don't know the joy of loving the Lord.
Here is something else to consider. God is our loving Father. Do you think a good parent would just watch their children fumble through their life, hurting themselves, making terrible mistakes, without warning them, trying to help them, getting involved when needed? A loving parent wants the best for his children, and that's what God wants for us. Jesus said in Matthew 7:11, If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!
God has plans for us! He is active in our lives. Our job is to listen, trust and obey. He will make His will clear if we really want to know it. God is not limited to the way He might work, but generally, He will speak to us through the Bible, our prayer life, circumstances He orchestrates, and fellow believers. When these things all line up, it is often God's way of leading us. I'm always encouraged by Isaiah 30:21, And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. Likewise, Psalm 32:8 says, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. It sounds like God wants us to know His will! The New Testament even says this: By ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. God wants us to know and do His will, but more importantly, He wants us to know Him, because He loves us so much! Knowing and doing the will of God isn't a formula to follow. It's knowing God. It's having that relationship with Him. It's loving Him. It's seeking Him. It's obeying what you already know to do, and counting on Him to show you the next step. It's denying yourself, taking up your cross daily, and following Jesus! If you are seeking Him, everything else will fall into place (Jeremiah 29:13, Matthew 6:33).
What would God want Bill, Susan, Julie and Mark (from the very beginning of this post) to do in their situations? As with all of us, they seek Him, and He will guide!
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