GUIDANCE (1)
GUIDANCE (1)
I feel that in matters for which you seek guidance, it is not so much praying for direction that one needs as getting near the Lord; and the nearer you are to Him, the clearer will everything appear; for you will remark that the thing most on your mind is the one most subjected to the test at such a time; and the proof of your reality is the way you stand clear of it; so that you can look at it, not as one under the power of it, but as one so satisfied with the Lord that you are able to accept His counsel, whatever it be. When we ask for guidance about a matter in which we are too much engrossed, or which is in a way necessary to us, we are not free enough to receive His mind. The heart is like a sheet of paper, all written over with our own desires.
Nothing is really necessary for us but Christ; and when we are simply happy in Him, we are ready for any counsel which He may give us. He orders for us here in the wilderness, because it is a wilderness, and we are needy in it; but we best understand His orders when we are first satisfied in His fulness. When I am very happy in Him, outside of what I need here, I am sure, as I walk in faith, to be kept from what would be a hindrance to my communion with Him, because I am in the fresh sense of what He is, and therefore quickly alive to what is not suited to Him.
I think the only way of truly judging about anything simply natural is, whether it causes any reserve between the Lord and me; and it is evident that it is only in proportion as I know and cultivate nearness to Him [p. 227] that I can be alive to the thing which would interfere with it. A thing which would be felt by one very near would not be felt at all by one at a distance.
The great end and value of waiting on the Lord is to ascertain His mind, and when I have learned it, to act upon it. If, after I have ascertained His mind, I do not act on it, I lose the certainty of His mind, and make myself a centre, instead of walking in the path marked out for me. I make my knowledge merely contemplative, and not practical, and my own health of soul suffers.
Coincidences buoy up the natural mind, and we must take care that they do not supersede faith, though they may sometimes confirm faith. The Lord bless and keep you learning how to abound, and how to be abased; the former is the harder of the two.