Guidance
by Rev. Dr. Steve Voorwinde
Text: Proverbs 3:1-12
God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. As a Christian it is your duty to find out what that plan is and to live accordingly. Let me give you some examples:
God has in mind exactly who the person is that you are to marry. Only if you marry precisely that person will you be in the very centre of his will for your life. If you do not marry the person he intends you to marry, you cannot expect his abundant blessing.
God also has a career path mapped out for you, and he expects you to follow that path. It is uniquely designed for your individual mix of talents, passions and qualifications. If you miss that path your life will be unhappy and unfulfilled. You will have missed God’s perfect will for your life.
God has also planned a place where you are to serve him. He has pinpointed exactly where you ought to live. So if you move to Melbourne when he wants you to live in Perth, then again you are not in the centre of God’s will and consequently you will miss out on his best.
Now what do these examples have in common? What is the underlying principle here? What determines who you will marry, what vocation you will follow and where you will live? It is God’s heavenly blueprint for your life. It’s all there in his plan for you. All you have to do is to figure it out and carry it out.
Now there are all kinds of ways that you can be guided to discover God’s perfect will for your life. Perhaps the best way is providence. I once knew a very sincere Christian lady who was always careful to make her decisions in the light of God’s providence. If she was faced with a choice she would leave the outcome completely up to God. Her prayers would go something like this: “Lord, if it rains on Saturday, I know you want me to do X. If it does not rain on Saturday, I know you want me to do Y.”
In his booklet Guidance and Wisdom J.I. Packer describes a woman who adopted basically the same approach but far more boldly and consistently. This is how he describes her:
… having consecrated the day to the Lord as soon as she awoke, she would ask him whether she was to get up or not, and she would not stir till “the voice” told her to dress. As she put on each article of clothing she asked the Lord whether she was to put it on, and very often the Lord would tell her to put on the right shoe and leave off the other; sometimes she was to put on one stocking and leave off the other; sometimes she was to put on both stockings and no shoes; and sometimes both shoes and no stockings; it was the same with all the articles of dress.
Here’s another example that’s bolder still. A theological student once received a unique opportunity in the mail. He was offered his “Personal Computerised Horoscope from a Christian Point of View” for just $25.00! On the application form the purpose of this so-called “Christian Astro-Analysis” was clearly stated:
We do not see astrology as the art of predicting a future over which we have no control. On the contrary, the man of faith sees astrology as a God-given scientific revelation – a way of revealing each person’s unique character and potential destiny – so that each of us can better develop our talents to do God’s will in the world.
Now why is each of these examples stranger than the one before? Why do people try to figure out God’s will for their lives by horoscopes, or by voices in their heads, or by whether or not it will rain on Saturday? Why do they resort to fair means or foul in working out God’s will? Because they have a mistaken view of what God’s will is in the first place. There is no blueprint in heaven that we are meant to figure out! To think that we can be in the centre of God’s will in this life is to be guilty of a serious delusion. Whether you live in Melbourne or in Perth you’ll still be a sinner. Whether you marry Mary or Jane you will both be sinners. To think that you can live in God’s perfect will is a fantasy. At the very least it betrays an unbiblical concept of perfectionism.
Even if there were a heavenly blueprint for our lives it would be sinful for us to try to figure out what it was. As Moses said to the people of Israel in Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may follow all the words of this law.”
So the key to guidance lies not in trying to figure out God’s secret will but in doing his revealed will. As it says in Proverbs 3:5,6:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.
The Lord will direct your paths. He will make them straight. Surely this is a very clear word on guidance. But what does it mean? How does it work out in practice? Who are the kinds of people that God guides and where does he guide them? Proverbs 3:1-12 answers all these questions and more. If you want the Bible’s view on guidance, there is hardly a better place to start than here.
Firstly, whom does God guide? Before we can talk about guidance there are some conditions that need to be met. God does not indicate that he will guide everybody but only those who have met certain conditions:
If you want the Lord to guide you, you must trust in him with all your heart. This trust is not to be equated with saving faith, although it grows out of saving faith. Here you trust God to provide for you and take care of you. In that whole-hearted trust there is no place for reservations or suspicions. You have complete confidence that the unseen God of heaven and earth is able to guide you and lead you through this life. You have the simple and strong faith that the God who created the stars takes a profound interest in you personally. So the first question in relation to guidance is simply this: Do you trust in the Lord with all your heart?
Now if you trust the Lord with all your heart, you will not lean on your own understanding. That’s the second condition for guidance. You do not rely on your own insight. Now if there is one kind of person the Bible has little sympathy for, it’s the man who is wise in his own eyes:
“Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.” (Prov.26:12)
“Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight!” (Is.5:18)
When it comes to wisdom this is the tricky part. When you seek God’s guidance, more than anything else you ask him for wisdom. The Bible promises that God will give it to you (Jaames.1:5). But now here is the rub. Once you think your prayer for wisdom has been answered, you have lost it! The Word commentary on Proverbs hits the nail on the head: “When does wisdom cease to be wisdom? When you think you are wise.”
Now that’s been the secret of sages down the ages. They have never thought of themselves as being particularly wise. The truly wise person will not lean on his own understanding. He will pray. He will search the Scriptures. He will be humble enough to seek the advice of others.
God’s word is your compass. Therefore it is true wisdom to follow it even when your feelings, your insights or your intuitions point in the opposite direction. God guides those who do not rely on their own insight.
Thirdly, God guides those who acknowledge him in all their ways. In the original the word for “acknowledge” simply means “know”. Know him in all your ways. Be aware of him. Remember him. Practice the presence of God.
What does this mean in daily life? Surely this, that every department of our lives, every detail of our existence, can be a subject of our communication with God. In his commentary Robert Bridges puts it like this:
It is nothing less than self-idolatry to think that we can carry on even the ordinary matters of the day without God’s counsel. He loves to be consulted. Therefore take all your difficulties to be resolved by Him. … Consider no circumstances too clear to need his direction. ‘In all your ways,’ small as well as great … let Him be supreme.
Obviously we lay the big issues of life before God – whom we will marry, what career path we will follow, where we will live. But here he is inviting us to bring the small things to him as well – the parking spot that you need so urgently, the malfunctioning computer that makes you want to pull your hair out, the unreliable car that threatens to die on you. Well, maybe these things are not so small after all!
So you want God to guide you, to direct your paths, to make them straight? There are some conditions you must meet. There are some questions you should ask yourself:
Do I trust in the Lord with all my heart or do I lean on my own understanding?
Do I acknowledge him in all my ways or do I rely on my own insight?
To trust in the Lord and acknowledge him in all your ways is certainly the key to guidance.
But we have not yet seen all that there is to be seen when it comes to trusting in the Lord and acknowledging him. So far we have looked only at vv.5-6. But we must read these verses in their context. They do not stand alone as so many of the other Proverbs do. In Proverbs 3:1 12 we have a poem about God’s guidance. It may not be a poem with rhyme and rhythm, but it is certainly a poem with a pattern. The pattern is there for all to see.
The poem has six stanzas of two verses each: 1 & 2, 3 & 4, 5 & 6 … and so it goes. It’s all very symmetrical. But there is more. In each stanza there is a command and a blessing, a command and a blessing, a command and a blessing … in that order.
So far in our little stanza – verses 5 & 6 – we have only been looking at the command section:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge him…
They are all commands, and they are related in the closest possible way to all the other commands in this section. Do you want to know more about trusting the Lord and acknowledging him in all your ways? Then look at the other commands in the context and you will find out exactly what the poet had in mind:
My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart (vs.1).
This is probably not so much the father addressing his son as it is the teacher addressing his student. It seems that at the time that Proverbs was written there was in Jerusalem a body of wise men. They sought to interpret and apply the law of Moses in a new situation – presumably the urban setting of Jerusalem. These wise men would then attract pupils who would be instructed in the ways of wisdom. It is this kind of pupil who is addressed in Proverbs time and again as “my son” (1:8,10; 2:1; 3:1,11,21; 5:1). These are not necessarily biological sons but pupils of the wise man.
Notice what the son is told: “Do not forget my teaching.” Literally, do not forget my Torah. Clearly there is an echo back to the laws of Moses. The wise man has passed on the old revelation to a new and upcoming generation.
So if you want guidance then walk the pathways that have been set down before you. Have you had godly parents, Christian teachers and ministers who have sought to open God’s word to you? Then do not ignore their instruction. Remember their teaching. After a time it is easy to forget that. You have learned so much more now. You have such deeper insights. Don’t let it all go to your head. Remember basic lessons that were faithfully taught.
Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
Bind them around your neck,
Write them on the tablet of your heart (vs.3).
Notice these qualities – love and faithfulness. Now who is described most frequently by these terms in the Old Testament? It is none other than the Lord himself. He is a God of love and faithfulness, a covenant keeping God. Think of those famous words with which he described himself to Moses: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger abounding in love and faithfulness…” (Ex.34:6).
So whom does the Lord guide? Those who are most like him, those whose lives are characterised by love and faithfulness. These qualities are to adorn your life. You are to bind them around your neck like a beautiful garland of flowers, like a necklace of the finest jewellery, or like a gold medal worn so proudly by an Olympic champion. Love and faithfulness are to be out there in your life – in full view of the world, in public display for all to see.
Now there is nothing hypocritical or phoney about that – with one proviso. You must also follow through with the second part of the command: “Write them on the tablet of your heart.” Love and faithfulness come from the heart. They are to well up from deep inside of you. On the inside and on the outside you are to be a reflection of what God is like. These virtues are to be deeply ingrained in your very being.
Obviously these are the qualities that relationships are made of. Do love and faithfulness describe the way you relate to family, friends and workmates? The loving and the faithful are the kind of people that God will guide.
Do not be wise in your own eyes;
Fear the Lord and shun evil (vs.7).
Again don’t depend on your own smartness and savvy to get you through. It’s much wiser to fear the Lord. After all, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” To live in awe of him, to live as a person who must give an account on the last day, this is the best way to live. A preacher once boomed out, “We live our lives in the shadow of the Great White Throne!!” We live in awe of the Judge before whom our lives are an open book, before whom everything lies open and exposed. The more we know it, the better our lives will be.
Honor the Lord with your wealth,
With the first-fruits of all your crops (vs.9).
This is one of the really hard ones, and it’s all the harder because it can be measured. Love and faithfulness and the fear of the Lord – you cannot really quantify any of those. They can get a bit woolly around the edges. You can kid yourself into thinking that you have these areas under control when in actual fact you don’t. But your wealth – that’s a different story. You can measure it. You can figure out exactly to the last cent how much you gave to the Lord and how much you held back for yourself. This is where the whole exercise can become decidedly uncomfortable.
So let me make you squirm a little. How much did you put into the offering bag last Sunday? What proportion of your income did that represent? And what about your pledges? Are you on target for this time of the year?
That’s the thing about guidance. There’s nothing mechanical or automatic about it. There conditions to be met. God does not promise to guide everybody, but only those whose lives are characterised by love and faithfulness, obedience, generosity and the fear of the Lord.
This brings us to the second part of our little stanza, the blessing of verse 6: … and he will make your paths straight.
Now what does this mean exactly? How does God direct your paths and make them straight? If it is not a matter of down-loading the heavenly blueprint, then what is it?
Again the context should be our guide. Remember that the stanzas that make up this poem begin with commands and end with a blessing. The blessing here in verse 6 is that the Lord will make your paths straight. Now take all the blessings of these stanzas together and you will get a very clear idea of what these straight paths look like:
They will prolong your life many years and bring you prosperity (vs.2).
Then you will find favour and a good name in the sight of God and man (vs.4).
This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones (vs.8).
Then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine (vs.10).
Put all of these together and you have a very full description of the straight paths of verse 6 – a long life, a good reputation, health, wealth and prosperity. It sounds very much like the prosperity doctrine and the health and wealth theologies of the 1980’s. It sounds almost too good to be true. It’s all smooth sailing, peaches and cream, beer and skittles – call it what you like.
Now why would we get such an impression? For the simple reason that we haven’t quite finished reading the poem. There is still one stanza to go:
My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline
And do not resent his rebuke,
Because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
As a father the son he delights in. (vv.11&12)
These verses put a rider on everything that has gone before. Of course, we should have already realised that the blessings that have been mentioned are not promises. They are observations. These are proverbs after all. Proverbs are not promises, but simply observations about life. They are statements about what happens most of the time. They are not ironclad guarantees. For example, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov.22:6). I am sure we can all think of exceptions to that one! But that’s the nature of proverbs – they state what is generally the case. They make general statements about life. That’s what we have here in Proverbs 3:1-12. But in case we have missed the point, our poet adds this final stanza.
You may do everything right – you may be obedient, faithful, loving and generous, but that still does not put God under any obligation to bless you. He may decide to discipline you instead.
What could that discipline look like? Again the context gives us a clear indication:
Instead of prosperity you experience adversity.
Instead of enjoying a good name, you suffer slander.
Instead of health there is illness.
Instead of wealth there is poverty.
Just because things don’t seem to be going right does not mean that God has stopped guiding you or that you are no longer doing the will of God. Even straight paths can lead through valleys. As we read in the 23rd Psalm, the paths of righteousness can lead through the valley of the shadow of death.
Straight paths are not always smooth paths. Think of Joseph in the Old Testament. He was an obedient son. His life was marked by love and faithfulness. He trusted and feared the Lord. But the more obedient he was, the harder his life seemed to become. His brothers sold him as a slave. Potiphar’s wife slandered him. Potiphar had him thrown in gaol and he languished there for at least two years. But through all of this the Lord was continuing to guide and direct. You could also say that Joseph was experiencing the Lord’s discipline as he was being prepared for avenues of higher service.
Perhaps the supreme example of straight paths is found in the opening section of Isaiah 40 where we hear a voice crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” (vs.3). At the beginning of Mark’s Gospel we are told that the voice crying in the wilderness was that of John the Baptist. The one for whom the straight highway was being prepared was none other than the Lord Jesus. His paths were made straight – and they led straight to the cross! If this is what happened to God’s favourite son, if his straight path turned into the via dolorosa, the way of sorrows, then as his followers we should not be surprised if at times the pathway of our life goes through the valley of hardship.
If that happens to you, don’t become resentful. Don’t get all bitter and twisted. God is still guiding you. He has not abandoned you or given up on you. Strange as it may seem, it shows that he loves you, that he delights in you. These are times of discipline. He is preparing you for higher and more fruitful service.
There are times when the whole question of God’s leading can cause real anxiety. Perhaps you are experiencing doubt and uncertainty as to where the Lord may be leading. Often in situations like that we want a “head-on” solution to these problems. We want some stroke of providence to give us infallible guidance. Maybe it is nothing as drastic as a horoscope from a Christian point of view, or a voice telling us what to do, or even rain on Saturday, but at least God should do something to make his will clear.
But that is the whole point. There is no short cut to God’s guidance. It is by nature indirect and not direct. We must be prepared to wait patiently for the Lord. God’s people are essentially a waiting people. God will often use periods of waiting to discipline us. He will use times like this to purge away disobedience and remove sinful patterns of behaviour.
The Book of Proverbs is all about wisdom. But wisdom is not figuring out God’s secret will. It’s not wisdom to download the heavenly blueprint or even to read the signs of providence. Wisdom is to know God’s revealed will and obey it. If that is how you live, then God promises to direct your paths and make them straight. Amen.