Seeking God’s leading

I posted this on another blog: http://oneinjesus.info/2011/10/thought-question-gods-leading/#comment-195588 and thought I would copy here as well for others to review.

The question was whether it was seeking God’s will or an abandonment of responsibility
when we ask God to reveal what He has decided to us.  I’m not sure it has to be completely either. ..

As noted, and as seen in the Bible, God often has (and I believe does) “call” or “lead” people to a task.  Moses was sent to Pharoah.  Gideon was called to war (in a way that could only glorify God).  Stephen was sent to the Eunuch.  Cornelius was sent to Peter at the same time Peter was sent to Cornelius.

I believe that God does indeed lead us, guide us, and influence us through His Spirit and otherwise.  Read I Corinthians 2:8-16.  Yet, that does not remove our free-will, nor does it imply what we might call  defeatism” (related to Calvinism).  Because God INFLUENCES or LEADS does not require that God MAKES things happen in a certain way and/or forces us to make a certain decision. He called Abraham to go, but He did not force him to do so.  It does get deep in thinking about what might happen if we do not follow His leading.  Perhaps more often, we don’t know it or “hear” it.  But, doesn’t He know this also?  The Spirit is our guide and help.  That does not imply control or even coercion. Rather, it requires us to listen and obey.   I do believe that sometimes God’s leading is for US to decide.  It may not matter if we do A or B.  More often, we have already decided we want to do either A or B and ask God which He has chosen.  His answer may be “neither” but we have a hard time hearing that one.  Submission does not ask WHICH He has chosen, but WHAT He has chosen if anything at all.

An intriguing example to me is in Acts 21 where Paul was planning to go to Jerusalem.  The church did not want him to go, and verse 4 says, it was “through the Spirit” that they determined this.  Yet, Paul, whom we think as being led around on his missionary journeys by God, determined to go anyway.    A prophet then comes and shows him and the church what was going to happen to him if he went to Jerusalem.  It would have made sense for Paul to have decided that God was leading him not to go and that he had two points of confirmation (the church’s advice and the prophet’s word).  Yet, he said he was ready to even die in the name of the Lord Jesus.  Do you think he sensed that God was leading him to go in spite of the consequences?  While the scripture does not tell us exactly what he was thinking, the reply of the church when he insisted is interesting.  In spite of the fact they had been “led” apparently though the Spirit,and the prophet’s word had further confirmed it, they replied, “The Lord’s will be done.”  What was it that moved them from the Spirit’s apparent leading and confirmation to accept what Paul believed was God’s leading?  It required them to make a free-will decision concerning what they believed was God’s will and/or whether or not they were to follow that leading.  Perhaps, they came to believe that it was God’s will that Paul go, but God’s revelation was simply to prepare them for what was to happen by Paul following that leading. Paul ended up with a good perspective that even though there were consequences, he was going to follow the will of God.  That makes sense in the context of the scriptures where God most often called people to do what they did not want to do.  Moses resisted going to Pharaoh.  Gideon asked for miraculous confirmation (twice) that his call was indeed God’s will.

Our bigger concern is not whether or not God leads and guides us, but in learning to recognize and acknowledge how He is working in our lives.  Though that may lead us into a “word only” debate, the same principle applies to those who hold that view.  God has revealed His word to us (whatever means you may believe He has done so), and it is up to us to discern what He is telling us.  Then, we must also accept what we discover.  Neither of those do we do perfectly as humans.  Part of that process is certainly learning to recognize what He is doing.  Job spent a long time trying to figure that out.  But, the process of figuring it out was the very thing God was “revealing” to Job.  God knows when to be quiet and when to speak.  He knows what we will read, what we will hear, and what we will think.  Regardless of how He works to “guard, guide, and direct us” (to use one of our old time sayings), it does not take away free-will, nor personal responsibility.  In fact, in some ways it adds to it.  It requires us to be obedient and to work to listen and learn.  We decide if we will even do that.

The interesting question that remains is, “Does God’s will FLEX with our response to His leading”? If He wants one thing, but we choose another, does He then enact a “plan B” of sorts?  Was it His will that man would sin?  We do know it was His plan BEFORE it happened to do something about it.  Was that His “plan B” or His plan all along?  Was it God’s plan for Israel to have a king?  He knew it would happen and used their decision in His will and promised the Messiah though King David.  But, their decision was a rejection of God as king in the first place (I Samuel 8:7).

So, the answer, I believe, is that is it not an abandonment of responsibility to seek God’s will.  Nor should we determine that He has no will and has just left everything up to us.  All the choices are up to us, even though He may have a preference, and may even work to direct us toward that will.  The problem is that we focus too much on the will and the decision rather than on the God who is leading us.  The concern is not as much in whether or not we will make the choice God wants us to make (we usually will get that wrong), but in whether or not we are willing to do our best to SEEK His will and try to be OBEDIENT to Him.  The sermon on Mars Hill (Acts 17) gives some good insight into this question.  Paul says that God put things in place so that “MEN WOULD SEEK HIM”.  It is not the choice or the consequences that we live for, but the God in whom we “live, move and have our being” that should be the focus.

Ephesians 1:17 (NIV) ¹⁷ I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, SO THAT YOU MAY KNOW HIM BETTER.

What do you think?

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