Word of Salvation – Vol. 26 No. 42 – August 1981

 

Guidance (Straight Paths)

 

Sermon by Rev. John W. Westendorp on Proverbs 3:5,6

Scripture Reading: Acts 16:6-10, 16-34; Proverbs 3:1–12

Psalter Hymnal: 407; 463 (after the sermon);
                                         249 (after the law); 452; 231

 

Something that every Christian sooner or later has a problem with is the whole matter of GUIDANCE… God’s leading, and knowing God’s will for us. We believe that God has a plan for our lives… for each one of us. We also believe that true joy and blessing comes into our lives only then… when we strive to do the will of God… when we live according to His plans and purposes for us.

Guidance is clearly taught in many places in Scripture. In Psalm 32:8 we read: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you”. And then of course there are many examples of guidance in the Bible: Angels bring messages from God. Paul has his vision of the man from Macedonia. Angels… dreams… visions…. yes, even the casting of the lot. A throw of the dice – and God used that to make His will known.

Our Catechism also refers to guidance in Lord’s Day 12: There we read: Jesus Christ governs us by His Word and Spirit. And so we Christians sing with great confidence: “Guide me O thou great Jehovah…!”

And we CAN sing that because we know that there is a God who guides our whole day by day decision making process.

Why then does the matter of GUIDANCE so often become a problem for us? It becomes a problem for us in the crunch of daily living.

– One of you young men meets a girl and you hit if off well with her. But how do you know whether she is the life-partner God wants for you?

– Perhaps you wonder what you ought to be doing next year….! Further studies….. or looking for work…..? What is God’s will?

– Maybe you’ve been thinking about the ministry or the mission field? But how can you be sure that this is God’s plan for your life?

And then of course there are a thousand and one vexing questions……! Modern science has presented us with the phenomenon of “test tube babies”. But if you were faced with having to make a decision about that…. how would you know whether that was right or wrong? And what about conservation and uranium mining? Or what about the support of certain political candidates? Lots of questions and decisions are to be made every day. How do we know the will of God and how does He lead us?

When we read Corrie Ten Boom’s book Tramp for the Lord, then guidance seems to be some kind of mysterious inner voice. At least…. that’s how Miss Ten Boom experienced God’s leading. May we expect the Lord to guide us that way?

Well, we can’t hope to answer all these questions in one go….! What we want to focus on this morning/evening is that we can indeed know God’s guidance… His leading. He does direct our common, everyday affairs. But then our text tells us that if we want to experience that, there are three conditions that have to be met.

The first condition for experiencing God’s leading is to:

TRUST IN THE LORD WITH ALL YOUR HEART.

Now this FIRST condition – putting our hope, our trust in SOMEONE, speaks to us about our being dependent….. about our helplessness. We have a basic inability….. we cannot know the future. We do not know where the path of life is going to lead us. We cannot run our lives ourselves and guarantee everything will be OK. And so the first thing we must do is TRUST IN GOD. We are called to find our security and stability in life in SOMEONE ELSE. We must put our confidence in the Lord.

Dr. Paul White has written a book on the Christian life: Get Moving. In that book he has written a chapter on guidance. He tells us a little story to bring home this point about trusting in God. Dr. White was once a member of an athletics team, and the captain of the team was a broad shouldered athletic type; he always won his events. He, Dr. White, was only average.

On a particular day they were running a long distance race in strong winds. The captain had come up with a plan for the running of that race. He would run ahead of Dr. White and act as a wind-break so that Dr. White could conserve his energy. So they ran the race…. sometimes the captain ran ahead, sometimes besides. He broke the force of the wind. Then near the finish line his captain told him to “go for the finish!”. And he won the race. His captain had planned a strategy…. and he had simply followed it.

So too God’s people are simply to trust in the Lord. He has prepared a plan for our lives and at the right time He will also give us our marching orders. He will guide us and all we have to do is trust. However we spoke of this as being a CONDITION. That we MUST do this if we want to know the Lord’s leading. Well the first part of this condition is something we already do…! All Christians carry out those first four words: TRUST IN THE LORD….! That is simply the Old Testament way of speaking about FAITH. And we do trust in the Lord…. don’t we? We do that in the New Testament way…. by believing in Jesus.

However…. I want to stress that this is not enough. Just being a Christian does not guarantee that we will know God’s leading. The first condition is not just: TRUST IN THE LORD….! But it is: Trust in the Lord… WITH ALL YOUR HEART.

In other words we must try to live out of our faith totally, so that more and more the whole of our life is guided and motivated by faith in Jesus Christ.

You see, it was one thing for Dr. White to accept the Captain as leader. It was something quite different to believe that his plan was best…. that the plan would work! He had to submit to his captain and trust him with all his heart. And if we want to begin to experience God’s guidance in our lives then there must be a wholehearted relationship with Him. In all our decision making we must trust Him and live by faith…. believing that He does have a plan for our lives.

Sometimes near a harbour we can watch a PILOT BOAT going out to sea. The task of that pilot is to guide the large overseas ships safely to the harbour and to the berth for the ship at the wharves. But when that pilot comes on board the crew of the ship must give control of the ship to that pilot…. total control must be handed over to him. Only he knows where the channels are and how to find the harbour safely.

Just imagine the crew and the captain saying: “Yes, we agree that you are the pilot and we’ll let you on board…. but please remember that we’ve had a lot of experience too….. and we may decide for ourselves at some stage what ought to be done”! The result would be shipwreck. So too Jesus must not only be invited into our lives as SAVIOUR. But we must yield control to Him as LORD. We must trust Him with all our hearts. Only in that way will He make His leading known to us.

The second condition for knowing God’s leading is a negative one:

LEAN NOT ON YOUR OWN UNDERSTANDING.

Now I want to make one thing quite clear regarding this second condition: Lean not on your own understanding DOES NOT MEAN…. that we have to DENY our understanding and our own insights. The Lord God created us with brains and He expects us to use them. It is absurd to ask God to make His will known in matters unimportant. You do not have to ask God in the morning to let you know whether you should get out of bed on the right hand side or on the left side, nor whether you should have one slice of toast for breakfast or three. And yet there are some Christians who seem to think that it is very spiritual to do just that.

God does not ask us to abolish our thinking or our reasoning. In fact God, in most cases, seems to work through our reasoning abilities. Remember that the Christian has a SANCTIFIED UNDERSTANDING. His understanding is guided by the Holy Spirit. Paul can even speak of the Christian as having THE MIND OF CHRIST. A Christ centred understanding as His Spirit rules and guides.

If we turn to Acts 15 we find there one of the best examples of this. Acts 15 deals with the first SYNOD of the church at JERUSALEM. It was a meeting to thrash out the problem of how to admit Gentiles to the Christian church…. a rather controversial issue at the time.

When we read that chapter we see that they debated and discussed the matter. Yes, they also prayed and they also searched the Scriptures. But they also argued the whole matter out and struggled with the issues. But then in verse 28 at the end of all their struggling with this they could say: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us….!”. They did NOT say: This seems a good decision to US… full stop. But also that it seemed a good decision to the Holy Spirit. So sure were they that this was NOT just their decision….. but that it was in fact the very will of God.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why “DIRECT” guidance such as that which Paul received in that dream of the Macedonian man is generally rather rare among Christians. I do not say that they never happen….. rather that they are the exception and not the rule…. because the Lord usually wants us to grapple with the issues involved.

He wants us to think and meditate and search the Scriptures and in the light of that to struggle with the questions. In this way our striving to know the will of the Lord becomes for us a growing experience. He doesn’t send you a telegram from heaven with your address on it…..! But He does give the answer through your struggle with a problem. What then does our text mean when it says: Don’t lean on your own insight. It means that we must also recognise that human understanding has been spoiled and darkened ever since sin came into the world.

There is a world of difference between depending on an ENLIGHTENED understanding….. an understanding guided by the Holy Spirit and directed by Scripture… and an UNENLIGHTENED understanding, an understanding that says: “I’ll solve the problem myself!”.

Leaning on your own understanding is making decisions without God. It is deciding on a marriage relationship or on a choice of a job but then without any reference to what God might require of us.

Or even worse: It may be a decision that we have already made on our own and that we then come and ask His blessing upon and His approval to.

I make up MY mind before I pray and before I search the Scriptures. And THEN I try to find some justification for it in the Bible. Only after I have made my decision do I ask God to bless that decision. That is what it is to lean on one’s own understanding.

This is especially relevant for so much decision making today. So often the basic reason for a decision is: If it feels good – do it! Or: As long as it works – give it a burl! And: So long as it serves the purpose what can be wrong with it? But when all is said and done that is humanistic and man-centred. It is a leaning on one’s own understanding….. and we’ll never know God’s guidance in that way.

The third condition for knowing God’s will and God’s leading is:

IN ALL YOUR WAYS ACKNOWLEGE HIM.

This third condition presents us with a problem: What does it mean to “acknowledge” the Lord in all our ways?

Some have suggested that this means that we must witness for Him. Acknowledge Him in all your ways…. ― that is to publicly give God the glory in everything you do. Witness for Him in word and deed and He will then direct your paths. Of course it’s true that we must do that. And our English word “ACKNOWLEDGE” certainly allows such an explanation. Acknowledge Him…. confess Him… speak out about Him.

If that is what is meant here then there is a very close relationship between the first and this third condition for knowing God’s leading. The first condition was: Trust in the Lord with all your heart…..! Or in other words: Live out of your faith relationship with Him everyday and in all you do. And now we are being told to also bring that to expression in our witness. To show that in our lives for the sake of others. The only trouble is that it is a little hard to see a connection between witnessing for the Lord and the whole matter of guidance.

Notice please that the word “ACKNOWLEDGE” has the word “KNOWLEDGE” included within it and in fact the word that we find here in the original Hebrew language is simply the verb “TO KNOW” – KNOW the Lord in all ways….!

The idea would seem to be that what we know about God must be lived out by us in our daily lives…. it must be acknowledged. And that involves more than just witnessing.

Perhaps we could put it this way: It is true that there are many areas of life where we do not know God’s will…. it is hidden from us and we must struggle with it. But there are also many, many areas of life where God’s will IS KNOWN. Where it is revealed and revealed very clearly….! On some things God has spoken with great clarity. Just think of the many exhortations in Scripture…. the many directives. There are many matters about which the Lord has given very clear guidelines, and if we want to know God’s leading that must be acknowledged.

Let me again mention as an example that area where many young people have problems: It is most probable, young people, that you do not know who it is that God wishes you to have as your life’s partner… who He has planned for you. God leaves you to struggle with that…. to pray about it. But what God HAS made quite clear in His Word is that Christians are to marry only in the Lord, to those who love Him; that believers are not to be mis-mated with unbelievers.

In other words: Don’t expect God to make your paths straight in marriage or to direct you in these matters…… if……. if what God HAS revealed about marriage is not acknowledged by you. First – live out in your life those things you do know.

The same is true for other areas of life too: whether it is a decision about your work or calling in life or perhaps simply whether we should join some activity or other. It is useless to discover God’s secret will for our life if we are not living up to what we do know…. God’s revealed will. First acknowledge that, and only then can you be assured that He will make your paths straight.

CONCLUSION:

These then are the three conditions for knowing God’s leading. But then notice that GUIDANCE here is not spoken of in terms of spectacular revelations from God…..! Not guidance by means of visions or dreams…. or special inner voices. Our text simply states that then the Lord will make our paths straight, that He will direct our paths.

In other words there is also a way of guidance that works simply through the circumstances of everyday life. One is by the Lord opening doors for us and giving us opportunities, or perhaps by Him closing doors to make us go in a different direction. That too is guidance…. God’s direction of our daily affairs. That is the Lord making our paths straight.

Perhaps one other thing we ought to mention and that is this: God directing our paths does NOT mean that we will have no problems. Our reading from Acts 16 made it quite clear that God DOES guide. He gave Paul a vision in the night. Paul knew God’s guidance. But that guidance included a prison cell…. and stocks…. and a whipping. Does that mean that God did not make Paul’s paths so very straight after all? Yes… He surely did. Because the final outcome of it all was that the jailer and his family believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and were saved for all eternity.

You see, brothers and sisters, young people; in that prison house Paul and Silas did not sit there moping complaining to God that it had gone all wrong….! No…. they sang their hymns of praise to the Lord, because they knew that they were safe within the will of God….. that He was guiding them and making their paths straight. And in that they found their great joy.

You too can have that joyful confidence that Paul and Silas had. But then you must:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

And do not lean on your own understanding;

In all your ways acknowledge Him,

and He will make your paths straight.

Amen.

Prayer:

Dear Father,

We thank you that because of the sacrifice of Jesus you care about us and that you lead us. Help us to know your leading in our daily lives. We pray, Lord, that through your Holy Spirit we may be able to live out these conditions in our lives today and so experience your guiding hand at work from day to day.

We pray this morning/evening for those who have difficult decisions to make ― will you give them the light to see.

We pray for young people who must make a choice about their schooling or their work ― keep them faithful to the things you have revealed.

We pray for those who struggle over the matter of finding the life partner that you want them to have ― Lord lead them to someone who loves you more than all.

In all the many decisions we all have to make this week, will you so guide us and lead us that your name may be glorified and your will be done also in our lives.

For Jesus’ Sake. AMEN.