I Will Lead Him
It is a gift of God when we hit His targets. It’s always a very happy occurrence when we are blessed by nailing God’s plans exactly–when we get the God of the universe’s will precisely right.
How can the finite ever possibly figure out the will of the Infinite? If we wildly succeed in discovering God’s true will, it is not at all because of our wisdom or spirituality; it’s a merciful, exceedingly kind gift from God Himself.
We grow in this. We don’t always get it right. We make mistakes–usually lots of them. This is ok, if our humble desire is to please the Lord.
Ephesians 5:10 says it extremely well…” Trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.” Are we truly trying? Then God is smiling. He understands that we are but dust (Psalms 103:14). He understands our weakness in understanding His intended plans of action (Hebrews 4:15). And He meets our deep need for this as we steadily bring the components of our life’s decisions to Him.
If we miss His will in one situation, this doesn’t mean we will in the next. If we are truly seeking the Lord, we will eventually hit it in a big way. Our faith is in who God is, and though failures pop up in our our paths, God truly does love us and will have us succeed in some pretty special ways. He will help us to bear much fruit.” (John 15:2). Understanding the will of God is built on who God is–not on who we are, and He is infinitely more wonderful than we’ve ever imagined.
Practice is Normal!
Hebrews 5:14 contains a surprising truth, “Solid food is for the mature, who have by practice trained their senses to discern between good and evil.” We practice learning to hit a baseball. Part of the practice involves failing. No one gets a hit in baseball 100% of the time. Succeeding three times out of ten is considered great. Likewise, we grow in learning true discernment and in discriminating when God is leading, when directions are our desire only, when there are presumptuous conclusions, and when things are simply mistakes.
Peter told Jesus, “You will not…” about His going to the cross. Jesus’ strong response, “Get behind me, Satan,” shows that Pater was evaluating things from his immature perspective and wasn’t seeing the true will of God. This is normal in learning to keep in step with God. We make mistakes; that’s ok. Peter missed it, yet was unbelievably restored and later hit the will of God in profound ways because of the love of God. We will, too.
When we make mistakes, we don’t stop trying to follow better. We learn. God will bring us, in His time, into His new, very wonderful things.
God’s leading is always unmatched–way better than we’d ever think of on our own. It surprises, bends, detours, and redirects to bring astonishingly beautiful results that are always more widespread in effect and deeper in-depth than we anticipate. We continue on even when we miss it here because the rewards are so great. Hitting right on the bullseye in God’s leading brings very powerful results.
Cease the Martha-ness
There’s a not-often-enough-remembered promise of God in Psalms 46:10. The God of the enormously delightful tail-wagging puppies and the quite stunning over-chattering birds and the slightly-huge twinkling stars overhead says, “Cease striving and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth.”
God says to find His calm paths because our strained efforts and anxiety-ridden ways can’t make it His very good goals. It’s impossible. God’s touchdowns –which often contain God’s very surprising leadings– bring us to destinations with results far more filled with blessings than we ever considered–and these come in the way of peace; “The work of righteousness shall be peace.”
Martha’s strains and stresses seemed right to her, but they were exactly wrong. Mary’s relaxed pace while enjoying Jesus was exactly right. Jesus even said, “Mary has chosen the good part…”
Don’t be discouraged when you miss it by choosing stress and strain wrongly. Welcome to reality. Welcome to the real Christian life. We ALL make mistakes. Correct and enjoy more deeply the great benefits of a more peaceful, God-working-in-the-midst-path, the path that Jesus walked.
It Seems Good To Me
There is a BIG place in the Christian life for carefully and prayerfully considering options and coming to conclusions and personal calls to action based on many things you know and things God has shown you in the past.
When Luke wrote his gospel, it wasn’t because God led him by a vision or appeared in a burning flower or iridescent bush. The reason he wrote it is almost shocking, “It seemed good to me…” That sentence really needs to be read a thousand times by every believer. Here it is in its entirety, which also reveals to us that Luke wrote his gospel primarily for one person–which puts some pretty hefty weight on the leadings God gives us for single individuals! “Therefore, having carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus,”–Luke 1:3
Think of it. We have the inspired word of God in the gospel of Luke because Luke long ago considered the needs of one person and finally came to the conclusion that he really needed to invest significant time in carefully researching matters of which he had partial knowledge and recording what he discovered. This is the origin of the book of Luke..the inspired word of God. It involved Luke doing what he loved to do; carefully looking into things.
That is earthshakingly wonderful.
The apostles recorded three times in Acts, “It seemed good to us…” Then they went out and did what seemed good! Where are the sheet visions? Where are the angelic visits by night? Where are the dreams and power leaders? Not here!
It’s quite mind-bending: The apostles..the apostles themselves, evaluated this and that and concluded, “This seems good to us; Let’s do it.” And they jumped in and did the things that seemed good, right and special to them. And their “It seemed good…” was spot on. It was the will of the God of the universe. It was the desire of the Creator of mankind!
What a great thing it is to hit it right on here!
There are many, many times when God wants us to carefully consider things. Consider. Pray. Think, think and think some more. Top it off with more happy prayer and rejoicing. And DECIDE. And go for it, crying out with enthusiasm all the time for God to help you see His will more clearly.
Striking out, rather than always hesitating and procrastinating after considering well and being ongoing-ly led by God Himself, can be quite an exciting and fun adventure!
Mark Batterson said it well; “At some point, you need to throw caution to the wind. DO it after you have done due diligence, but do it.” Mark B. P135 CTL
Be of good courage here. Everyone who loves the Lord and seeks to know His will has many times when they do this. They succeed sometimes in sensing God’s exact will at the get-go, and other times, His exact will becomes more clear after they start moving. You can’t steer a parked car; a car is only steered once it is moving. If you love God and you miss it here and there, that’s only normal. But even in the rising, we learn critical lessons that God uses enormously in the future. And, in the process of learning to discern between good, better, and best, God will help you hit the mark more and more often.
Mentor Help
I once talked to a key mentor in my life about some direction he was taking. I asked if he felt his direction was God’s plan. His comment surprised me greatly, “I think so. I hope so.” I thought by the time you hit his age and the knowledge he had of the Lord, that things would always be more certain. Nope. Sometimes things are very clear; other times they are not. It keeps everyone sincere humble.
Often we have to go forward, not because we are 100% sure something is God’s will, but because it seems good to us. The risk is tremendously worth it. Then in retrospect, when we see the Lord move, then it is “Ah ha! It was God’s will! And did God ever do some exceedingly good things.”
Sometimes when you look back over something you hoped was the Lord’s will, an it was, the results are so staggeringly good that it overwhelms you. You weep for gratitude that He helped you come to the conclusion that you had to at least try because the wonderful-ness of the results stun you.
Fourth Time’s a Charm
I’ve had a dream of helping kids and parents to see the Lord in His glory more through the thing’s He’s made. Through the decades I’ve worked here and there on i. All the while it’s been an ongoing deep desire.
Three times I tried to start making the dream a reality. Three times I got buried in the process of trying to do it. It was too complex, It ended in dribble. I could have gutted through it like it was the granddaddy of all research projects, but I felt I’d be doing it without God’s inspiration. I left the dream alone several times for many more years and went on with other things that turned out to be quite a blessing.
Then, thirteen years ago, over a few weeks, I felt the Lord possibly saying, “The time is now.” I say possibly because I didn’t know for certain. I already had three false starts in this under my belt.
One day I very humbly prayed (humbly because I knew frustration in this well!) “Lord I cannot do this on my own. If you want me to succeed, I need you to show me how. Please show me the “pattern.”
I say “pattern” here because there’s a verse that had come as an encouragement. God told Moses to “Do according to all the pattern I was shown to you on the mountain.” Moses was shown a pattern of how to do things God wanted done, and he did them according to how the Lord showed him. Maybe the Lord would help me to make sense of all this and help me to see a direction–a pattern– to follow.
I prayed before beginning and in 15 minutes a rough plan came together. Quite surprised, I jumped in and began working on it. Lo and behold–and to my shock–this time it worked and it did quite well after all kinds of learning experiences and answers to prayer as I moved forward. . After the first year of it being on line, it had 5000 students and a couple thousand more are helped each month by other things we did.
The “pattern wasn’t complete, but it was enough to begin putting down one foot after another and start stepping toward a goal that I then somewhat understood. There were thousands of adjustments along the way (literally!) as we worked with many new things and all kinds of new material, but the original pattern I saw on that day–that I never saw so clearly before–served as a lamppost through all kinds of confusing waters.
Did anything worthwhile come because of our greatness? Not in the slightest. We jumped for joy when we hit it right, and when we didn’t, we tried, tried, and tried again! It was too great a risk not to try. And so it is to this day: successes, adjustments, failures, mistakes, gold strikes, and blunders, and praying and rejoicing and experimenting all along the way!
What a ride!
Silent Night
Silent Night’s lyrics were written in 1816 by Joseph Mohr, a young man in an obscure Austrian village. The creation of the hymn happened not long after Napoleon rolled through Europe; peace was deeply treasured.
Mohr went for a walk before he wrote the Christmas Carol. As he looked out over his quiet, snow-laden town, God’s inspiration for the lyrics came like a lightning bolt out of nowhere.
Soon after, with Joseph Mohr on the guitar and accompanied by his friend Franz Gruber, who wrote the melody, the song was sung for its first public performance. It was Christmas Eve and their audience was a tiny one in their own tiny village. Now the song is being sung in 300 languages across the world.
In Japan, you can hear it on subways and in airports during the winter. I’d venture to say that everyone in the country knows their song. That’s 120 million people! What a witness to a nation that was not in the slightest on the radar of those two young men that Christmas Eve 200 years ago!
God had something much bigger in mind as He moved his men to a little place.
Realize that it’s the same with you.
Better And Bigger
The effect of receiving God’s true creative guidance is that results are more joyful and love-filled and better and often bigger than we anticipate. It’s not that numbers are the important thing, but if out-workings that can help and bring the Lord in glory and beauty to twenty thousand people or twenty million people in addition to the one, two or twenty God has us originally aiming to bless and help, it’s a wonderful thing–if it is God working with us and not us on our own.
Paul was in prison a few times. From his little places, he wrote notes to encourage specific people in towns he’d visited. He often named some of them. God’s eager protege allegedly wrote them on scraps he could find. His desire to write these notes was both known and inspired by God. It was an example of “I have aroused him…He will build My…” (Isaiah 45:13) For Cyrus, Ezra and Nehemiah, it was re-building God’s city of Jerusalem. For the awakened and humbled previously proud young man, Paul, it was building his letters.
Being inspired by God can have mind-bending results. As for Paul, God’s ideas and aims were a bit larger than his.
Paul’s little notes, sometimes less than 5 pages, have been printed billions of times and read trillions of times. They’ve been transmitted throughout the earth by technologies Paul couldn’t have begun to imagine. People are even sitting in comfy but squishy seats reading books with Paul’s parchment words in them and watching images of people speaking his words with great zeal as they fly in metal tubes across the sky!
How could Paul have ever imagined? God’s ways are very much higher than his ever were.
God Gifting
We cannot reach God’s highest aims for our lives without Him gifting them to us. Moving in concert with God’s best doesn’t happen by striving; human ingenuity and might isn’t enough–not for the smallest details in our own families and friendships or our most casual meetings with others or for the most involved matters. It’s got to be God-connection and God guiding and God going before us and guarding behind us–all along the way.
Jesus’ burden is light, and His load is not heavy. He told us so. That’s really good news. We weren’t created to live in anxiety or work from a position of being tied in knots. We were created to be set free from all that and live in peaceful, sweet communion with our God and work and create and love from there. He who the Son sets free is free indeed of all the junk experienced when we do things on our own and hope in ourselves and the hand of man.
Work is meant to be a joy, whether in family or outside it, with all of it being “with Christ.” All is meant to be done by the God of creation in heart-calming communion with Him. It’s here that His greatest secrets are revealed–where He reveals the profound and hidden things like how to love a wayward child, how to better love a spouse, or how to change the entire world.
God’s out-workings come as we’re given rest and wildly wonderful unexpected beauty comes while we get more in sync with the Living God of the universe. Peacefully and sweetly in sync with the Living God. Everything depends on this. And what a beautiful, wonderful way to go!
It’s pretty nice the way our God has set things up. We have to be with Him and love Him and greatly enjoy Him in order to receive His greatest gifts. It’s profitable in every way to sit more at His feet like Mary did and experience more of the beauty of the Lord in our lives. As we do, His words and plans are given as a gift to us instead of us having to run with our anxiety-producing, tiring, isolating ideas. The place of beauty is the place of power. In the presences of His majesty is a very good and very happy–and very effective place to be.
Receiving More?
How do we receive better words, better love, better ideas and better plans for our families, friends, others and ourselves? It’s by landing more in what this verse talks about. “I will lead you and restore comfort to you, creating the praise of the lips.” –Isaiah 57:18
This verse is all about unexpected beauty. It’s all about God leading us more. Who doesn’t want that? It’s also about God inspiring us more, about God moving in our days with more unexpected wonder to bring beauty and adventure to us and others in bigger doses. It’s all about us being truly led by Him into surprising paths of His creative ingenuity which are helped by His miracles.
The result of God entering our lives here is really, really good–profoundly good. Like the verse says, “our lips are filled with praise to God Himself because of the good and helpful things He does.“
We experience the reality of this passage “Praise the Lord in song, for He has done excellent things!”–Isaiah 12:5. When the eternal God does excellent things, their excellence is radically life altering.
Regrets and Tarnishes Included
Sometimes we jump too fast into so-so things and quasi-good ideas instead of waiting for what is worthy of the God who created all things. Other times we bumble things up really bad. If you’re there, as we’ve been, we’re in good company. Abraham caused a bit of a ruckus when he had a son by another other than Sarah in his efforts to help God make His promises happen. Jacob did when he deceived his father. Peter did when he denied Jesus even after experiencing all he did. There is no excuse for these colossal mess-ups.
The really good news is that God didn’t leave Abraham or his fellow failures. God met each of them with His tremendously great fulfillments.
How about you? Do you have some regrets about your past? Everyone I’ve ever met does. It seems that every person on this planet is included. Hosea 6:1 shows the real heart of the God who gave us the gift of life: “Come, let’s return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.”
The wounding spoken of in this verse usually doesn’t happen by God’s doing, except in extreme cases. Natural consequences of our wanderings and God-missing decisions instead take their toll. But, whether God has brought problems on us because of our stubbornness, or stresses and frustrations have come upon us because we left the best path, the living God still loves us. Returning to the Lord–even when wandering happens –is a magnificently smart move because He will heal us, He will help us.
It’s sometimes very difficult to get into our heads that it’s not where we were yesterday but the direction we are headed today that matters. It makes no sense. but when we get this in the depths of our hearts, we enter the deepest humility before God; it’s all about Him and not about our performance.
The Sacred Place: No Longer Me-Instead Us
When we enter this sacred place where God is truly the source of everything, we receive the only power that gives the real victories, and we receive grace from the Lord to help others in ways we never thought possible. We are broken of me-centered, me-empowered and me-preforming Christianity and we enter into the real place of power, where it is not me. Instead, it is Christ who lives in me, who gives the power, gives the help, gives the words, and gives the life.
We experience increasingly the liberating truth of Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” … And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” We know in deeper ways than we ever thought possible “By the grace of God, I am what I am.” It’s no longer me–instead is us–the Lord and me. Pride is not the slave master it once was; we know who is everything; we know Who we need every hour.
You and I will fail again. Stuff happens. Life is complex. Things take us by surprise. The insidious tele-promping mazes of wonderful government offices and business phone systems will more than likely crack our godliness again. The sometimes surprising pettiness and selfishness of some will probably get under our skin once or twice more. Our kids–present or to be–will probably drive us a little batty once again in our lifetimes. Stuff breaking at Murphy’s law perfect timing will probably drive us bonkers again…as will something we not-so-smartly lose. How about locking our keys in the car? Do you think we’ll never do that again, or do we think we’ll always respond like the angels in heaven? I think that for all of us, all this earth stuff keeps us on our knees. We need Him in a big way, every hour.
We need to let God Almighty Himself make our every slip-up and our every slide to funkiness into an Eden. That’s a bit extreme isn’t it? Yes, But our Father loves to do that. He loves to comfort us when we want to cry because we did so poorly. He loves to turn messes into His magnificent-s. And it the love He shows and the beauty He brings keeps us in the very happy place of humility before Him and before people.
We know life will only work as wonderfully as He can make it work if it’s not us alone but Christ with us. We know if we are to succeed in anything that really matters it needs to be God’s help every step of the way. We can’t compose a song, send a letter, write a book, succeed in a godly business, say the right things, give the right encouragements, smile all day long, be a loving and wise parent, be a blessing-from-God spouse –or anything else without Living God. And this is ok. It’s God’s desire to help us every step of the way in everything!
When we receive from God in this way, He makes us a source of comfort, encouragement, and great blessing to others in ways that completely take us by surprise…and even shock us at times. And we aren’t fooled by pride nearly so much as in our younger days. We know in whom we have believe, and we know what’s really going on. It’s Him empowering, helping, giving wisdom, making things work, pulling the strings–and all the rest.
We all have tarnished corners in our pasts. No one escapes it. If we’re astute enough, we can probably make a long list of yesterdays less-than-we-shoulda-beens. But God Himself is the comforter and restorer in every corner in our past, present and future.
Let this one sink in deep and go to bed tonight with a smile and a wave of expectation in the Living God:
“The LORD will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the LORD.”– Isaiah 51:3
Comfort and compassion come from God in the areas of our hurts. This makes the deserts of our lives into Edens. God makes our wasted months and years and the worthless components of our lives into Edens. That is really incredible, isn’t it? It is so amazingly good when God again activates Eden-like blessings into yet another of our waste places, which only the Lord and us know about.
It’s all part of knowing more and more deeply the God of all beauty who meets us with unexpected beauty.
