it’s been ages since i’ve posted on phos. it really does require making time, but being intentional is good. something i need to work on.
one reason abiding with Christ in God’s love is important is because it’s how God speaks to us. here’s a passage on guidance i’m copying from e. stanley jones’ abundant living. lorraine lent me the book. this a long and a good read…
if guidance gives to life a sense of mission and the sense of accountability every moment, then how does God guide us?
i suppose the great problem to God is how to guide us and not override us. He must guide us and develop us as persons at the same time. to lead us and at the same time produce initiative in us is a task worthy of divine wisdom. that task is the problem of every thinking parent. many parents are benevolent tyrants, snuffing out initiative and personality. guidance must be such that each person is guided into a free, self-choosing, creative personality.
to do this God will guide in many ways, awakening the personality to aliveness and alertness of mind and spirit to His hidden leadings. God’s leadings should be sufficiently obvious to be found, but not so obvious as to do away with the necessity of thought and discriminating insight. they must be “an open secret”–open, yet sufficiently secret to make us dig.
God will guide us in one or more or all of these ways: (1) He gives general guidance through the character and person of Christ. Christ lets us know what God is like, and, therefore, what we must be like. (2) He guides us through the collective experience of the Church–the corporate wisdom gathered through the ages. (3) He guides through the counsel for good people. (4) He guides through opening providences–matching us against some opening opportunity or need. (5) He guides through natural law and its discoveries through science. (6) He guides through a heightened moral intelligence and insight–we become personalities who are capable of exercising sound moral judgments. (7) He guides us through the direct voice of the Spirit within us–He speaks to us in unmistakable terms in the depths of our being.
the probabilities are that God will guide us in more than one of these ways, lest one method narrow us.
told you it was long. but really… wouldn’t spending time in the intentionally conscious presence of God make it easier to be guided? i mean, God is omni-present, but we’re not omni-aware. intentional abiding is what’s needed.
and i love the room for creativity.
lauren laughs 