larshaukeland

15 Blueprint for guidance

Encouragement for difficult days (15):

BLUEPRINT FOR GUIDANCE

“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

Proverbs 3:5-6

Reading in the Bible, we see how God was guiding people like Moses and Abraham in the Old Testament days. The question for today is: Does He guide His people today as well? Does he guide … us?

Can we come to the Lord and ask Him to give us the direction we need in the decisions of life?

The Scriptures say we can. We are to trust in the Lord, and He will direct us in our lives.

The longer we live, the more we realize our need for God’s help in our lives. The prophet Jeremiaah put it like this: “O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” (Jeremiah 10:23)

Left to ourselves, we make mistakes and get lost, but when the Lord is leading us, our path opens up to us. God can not lead us before we admit that we need His guidance. If we feel self-sufficient, then God is not able to help us. We need to realize that we need His help.

When we get lost in life, we are happy to ask any stranger we meet for direction, and we trust just anybody to get us where we need to go. We go to the doctor, our lawyer or our banker for specific advice in our lives, but we are often reluctant to ask the Lord for guidance. This is why Proverbs 3:5-6 starts with faith. “TRUST IN THE LORD with all thine heart…”. God wants us to trust Him with our lives, and He promises that He will never lead us astray. In Psalm 23, David says “He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake”. We need to make the Lord Jesus our Shepherd and the Holy Spirit our Teacher, and together they will direct us in the will of God so that we don’t walk in the darkness, but in God’s light. Proverbs 4:18 puts it like this: “But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”

Another part of Proverbs 3:5-6 is the whole-heartedness. “Trust in the Lord WITH ALL THINE HEART…” James reminds us that “a double minded heart is unstable in all his ways”. We need to trust fully in the Lord, giving Him our whole heart, not trusting ourselves or others for that matter, but wholly trust in God. We should not trust our own natural reasoning, but trust in the Creator God who knows everything.

David was one young man who did not trust his own reasoning when he faced Goliath. Everybody else laughed at him, because their natural reasoning told them that the giant would surely squash little David. But David knew what God could do. He put all his trust in God, and God helped him conquer the giant.

When Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane, the reasonable thing for Peter to do, was to take his sword and defend Jesus. However, this was not in accordance to Gods plan, and Jesus rebuked Peter and healed the damage that Peter had done. There are times when the reasonable thing to do is not the right thing to do. It seemed unreasonable for Noah to build a huge boat on dry land, and it seemed unreasonable to Joshua to walk around the walls of Jericho for a whole week.

Today, God communicates with us through His Word. We should lean on His divine revelation, not on our natural intelligence. Obedience to the Word of God is as important today as it was in the biblical times. Abraham belived in God and trusted in Him, and he obeyed when God directed him to the promised land. Noah believed in God and obeyed in building the ark. Abraham believed in God and obeyed when he went out on his journey not knowing where he was going. That’s called blind faith!

God doesn’t reveal His will all at once, He reveals it one step at a time, one day at a time. We do not first understand God’s will, and then decide to follow it, we first follow it and then later we understand it when God gives us the understanding. What turns off God’s leading in our lives is sin.

“If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:” (Psalms 66:18)

Trust in the Lord, read His Word, pray to Him, then follow wherever He leads. He surely has a blueprint for our lives. His plan for us is that we follow Him.