GUIDANCE (2)

GUIDANCE (2)

As to guidance, the first thing to settle is the direction or line in which you wish to be guided. Is it for prosperity and happiness here, or is it in Christ’s path, however suffering that may be?

Generally guidance is sought for one’s own advantage. I do not doubt the Lord helps the waiting soul that does not rise higher, but this is guidance simply for one’s own gain. I consider guidance to be for the Lord’s sake, when He leads me as His servant, and this I can only arrive at by acting as He would act were He in my place and circumstances. Of course, if I knew how He would act were He in my place, all would be settled.

The real difficulty, then, is to find out how He would act, and this can only be acquired by acquaintance with His mind. The word, in a very distinct way, informs me of His mind; not with reference to some particular instance merely, but what His mind is. It is not so much, for example, what you could make of an oak-tree, but what an oak-tree in its qualities is. I get ^[p. 228] formed in His mind by intelligent study of the word; but it is not simply knowledge, but the mind of the Lord, which is unfolded in the Bible.

Many read the Bible, and are well informed in textual meanings, who have not acquired the mind of the Lord - that is, how He would act or feel in a given case. Now, if I do not know the Lord’s relation, in His own mind, to everything here, I shall study the word ineffectually as to guidance; because I am studying it with reference to a relation which is not correct at the present time.

If I had to act for a king rejected, I should not be guided, were I to act for him as if he were reigning. Plainly, if you do not see Christ’s present relation to this scene, supposing you go back to Jesus on the earth, sent to be the Lamb of God, which is as much as the best in systems see, how could you have guidance now according to His mind? If you are truly seeking to act as He would act, you are seeking Him in quite a different relation from that in which He is now; and every step you take for the Lord, even when sanctioned by the word, betrays this great defect - namely, that you are trying to act like Him in a relation to present things which was once true, but is not now; and then you would use the sword, like David, or great earthly pomp, like Solomon.

Thus there are three things necessary for guidance: first, that you are obedient, prepared in heart to act as He would act; secondly, that you understand His present relation to things here; thirdly, that you acquire His mind from the word as a whole; for it is the knowledge of His mind that imparts colour and beauty, like His, to our ways.