Category: HOW GOD GUIDES

Almost 30 years ago I wrote a paper on what I believed about divine guidance. Recently I decided to review, edit, and add to what I taught as a 20-something pastor. I thought it might take a few weeks to shore up the writing and insert some anecdotes from my decades of trial and error method finding God’s will. I wanted to tell some of the stories of me floundering and falling, and of Jesus running to my rescue. He’s good that way. Without his patient tutelage I’d be as lost as the lost I hope to find and introduce to our Guide. Anyway, It took me (off and on) over a year to rewrite what I believe at present about how he guides his followers.

You know it works in the world of the blog – though I’ll post the chapters in the order in which they make the most sense (at least to me), they’ll appear in the blog in the opposite order. I do recommend that you read the Introduction first (it’s particularly important in order to get a sense of where I’m coming from) and then after that maybe the next four or five chapters in order. After that, if you’re not up for reading all the sections, you could pick and choose what interests you most without losing the sense of the paper as a whole.

Here are the chapter titles, which I’ll publish in this original order:

• Some introductory thoughts
• The God Positioning System
• The Bible is your first stop
• Use your “Sanctified Common Sense”
• He speaks; can you hear him?
• Sometimes he’s silent
• Find out what he’s doing and do it with him
• Observe the burden…
• Listen to your friends (especially the good ones)
• There’s usually a “peace” when it’s right
• Sometimes it takes some serious seeking
• Open and closed doors
• You gotta live right to hear right
• How’s your “whatever”?
• Divine appointments
• Being led without realizing it (until later)
• Enjoy Jesus every day
• When you pray
• Keep moving
• My problem with the strategic plan
• You might have to wait a while
• Signs & Fleeces
• Dreams, visions, and angels
• Sometimes he sends a prophet
• Notice the repeated notices
• I think I “missed it”
• In conclusion

If you love God and care about his will, I sure hope that you’ll find this writing to be helpful. (My guess is that few who don’t love him will have even arrived at this point to read my musings, and if they have, would be less than enthused to read on.) But for those who genuinely want God’s will for their lives (in the big picture and the small), I hope to demystify rather than mystify the subject. If my approach isn’t helpful to you, then stop reading my words and give your fullest attention to God’s words in the Bible!

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Observe “the burden”

[If you're reading along with these, here's the 7th chapter of "How God Guides." I'd love to hear from you if you have some comments or questions.] Above I talked about seeing what God is doing and doing it with him. I didn’t really say anything about how to see what he’s doing, or more …

Continue reading "Observe “the burden”"