The Bevans

Prepare The Way For The Lord!

"Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.", lamented the writer of the book of Judges. Independence from God and disobedience were perennial problems for Israel. In Numbers chapter 14, we read that in their presumption, the people decided to invade the Promised Land despite that not being the Lord's will for them at that time. Their action failed because the Lord was not with them and Moses responded, "The Lord said to me, 'Tell them, "Do not go up and fight, because I will not be with you. You will be defeated by your enemies."' So I told you, but you would not listen. You rebelled against the Lord's command and in your arrogance you marched up into the hill country."

Again and again throughout the years, the Israelites, God's covenant people, would decide to do things their own way rather than His. Seven hundred years after Moses, the Lord censured His people through the prophet Isaiah for not paying attention to what He wanted for them:

Are we any different? Do we carry out plans that are not God's plans for us - and then ask Him to bless them? Do we like to run our own lives and do as we please, rather than letting the Lord call the shots? Do we recognise the arrogance and presumption in our hearts when we do this? Surely, as the Anglican General Confession puts it, we have often "followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts". "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way" as we have done what we want, rather than what pleases our Lord.

Our highest purpose in life is to live in relationship with God, to hear His voice and to follow Him, doing whatever He tells us to do. Obedience in our hearts - our willingness to do the Lord's will - is the key to what He wants to manifest in our lives. For, if we are obedient, He can do through us that which might take a lifetime to do if we resist doing His will. Our Spiritual discernment also rests on our readiness to obey, because it is to those who are willing to do whatever He asks that God reveals Himself most fully.

"My mother and brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practice.", says Jesus to His disciples. Later, He says, "You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you." Thus, as far as Jesus is concerned, doing what He wants is essential if we want to know Him as our friend and brother and for Him to reveal His concerns to us. Obedience is central to having relationship with God. The apostle James, in his first epistle, puts it like this:

God does not expect us to run our own lives, but to let Him do so. If we want to live with Him and for Him, we need daily to seek to relinquish control of our lives and hand it over to Him. Lindy Croucher expressed it like this:

The international maritime signal flag for the letter X is an upright blue cross on a white background. When displayed by itself, it signals the message, "Stop carrying out your own intentions and watch for my signals." This is the way of the cross, to lay aside our desires and let the Lord direct us. "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the old nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.", writes Paul to the Galatians. To live by the Spirit - to be directed by the Holy Spirit's 'signals' and to live empowered by the Spirit in relationship with God through the Spirit - requires us to lay down our own intentions and desires and hand control over to the Lord so that we can walk together with Him.

Throughout Scripture, our love for God is inextricably linked with our obedience to His commands. Joshua summarises the law of Moses as follows: "to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to obey His commands, to hold fast to Him and to serve Him with all your heart and all your soul". Both Nehemiah and Daniel refer to the Lord as "the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant of love with those who love Him and obey His commands". Jesus says, "If you love Me, you will obey what I command. ... Whoever has My commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves Me. He who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I too will love him and show Myself to him." As we saw in chapter 5, obedience itself is not love. However, if we truly love God, it will be expressed in joyful obedience to what He asks of us. For, as the apostle John writes, "His commands are not burdensome". Love for God without obedience to His desires is not really love at all.

On the other hand, obedience without love is worthless, empty religiosity. Saint Augustine expressed it like this:

Our obedience should flow out of the overflow of our love for the One who loves us with an inexpressibly great love. It is a matter of the work of the Spirit of God in our hearts: "I will write My law on their hearts.", declares the Lord, "I will give you a new heart ... and I will put My Spirit in you and move you to follow My decrees and be careful to keep My laws." The New Covenant is written "not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." And so, we serve "in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life".

The Lord doesn't coerce us or force us to obey Him. He desires, not robotic or grudging obedience, but free obedience born of love. He gently turns our hearts towards His as we let Him, so that as we experience His immeasurable love towards us we fall in love with Him. And as we love Him above all else, we want to do His pleasure rather than our own. We don't want to do anything other than to live for Him. "Compelled by His love", our only desire is to hear His voice and follow with delight.

The Lord is looking for those who will respond whenever He speaks; those who, like Jesus, will "humble themselves and become obedient", those who truly understand what Jesus meant when He said that His food was to do the will of the One who sent Him, those who are unreservedly available to Him, committed to live the rest of their earthly life for His will. In Genesis, we read that when the Lord gave him instructions, Noah "did everything just as God commanded him", that again and again Moses "did just as the Lord commanded him", and that David too "did as the Lord commanded him." These are the kind of people God is looking for. How responsive are we? Oh that we would respond instantly when our Father whispers to us - that we would react as quickly to Him as a loving mother does to the sound of her infant crying!

Our God is much more willing to direct us than we are to listen to Him and obey. He won't force obedience from us because He loves us too much to do that. No, He will wait for us to come to Him ready to obey, gently tugging at our hearts by His Spirit. Because of the depth of His love and humility, He'd rather do this than ride roughshod over our wills and make us do what He wants - even if this means He gets a bad name as a result of our resistance to Him. But we are the ones who miss out when we resist for there is great joy and peace and freedom in responding eagerly with a soft heart to whatever He asks.

"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." With these words spoken to Nicodemus, Jesus drew a picture for us of the kind of life He expects us all to have, willingly responsive to every breeze of the wind of the Spirit to blow us where He wills. We are to be like a yacht on the ocean. We need to cut the slow chugging engine of our own control of our lives, resolving to do without it even in the midst of a calm or a storm, and to learn how to adjust the sails of our spirits to catch the wind of the breath of God. If we have a heart inclined to hear and eager to follow, if we are vessels ready to do His bidding, then we will see His kingdom come and His will done in us and through us by His Spirit.

"Why do you call Me, 'Lord, Lord', and do not do what I say?", entreats the Lord Jesus, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord', will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven." Jesus had a very high view of obedience to God's commands:

We live in a society that has a serious problem with the idea of submitting to authority. Until the last century, Christian teaching was almost universally seen as revelation from God to be accepted. But now, the questioning of all and every authority has become a way of life, and religious observance is considered a matter for personal preference, on a par with choosing whether to join a tennis club or not. But, whatever value there may be in some level of scepticism towards human authorities, there can be no real place in our lives for questioning God's authority over us. So, at this point we need to decide to go against the expectations of our culture. For nothing does more damage to our relationship with the Lord than choosing not to do what He asks of us. It is a mistake to think that we can pick and choose which aspects of His revelation to embrace, and that ignoring some of the His commands is perfectly acceptable. We seem to be unaware of our precarious position: disobedience not only damages our relationship with God, but also hinders His work in our lives and in the world and gives ground back to the enemy in our hearts.

This is what the parable of the wise and foolish builders is about. Whatever we may remember about this story from Sunday school, Jesus' stated aim in telling it was to emphasise the fundamental importance of doing what He says, and the total foolhardiness and stupidity of disobedience:

Many of us love to hear God. We love to hear the Scriptures expounded every Sunday, or to receive a 'word' from the Lord. But are we as keen to live by the words that He speaks to us as we are to hear them? When God speaks, we must always ask ourselves, "What are we going to do about it?", "How do we need to respond?" So, as we read in the epistle to the Hebrews, "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried Me and for forty years saw what I did." As James writes, every time we listen to God without doing what He says, we enter into deception:

If we desire to hear God speak to us, then we'd better be ready to obey, because once we have heard, we have a greater responsibility. As Jesus said:

If we know that the Lord has said something to us, and we have no intention of doing what He has said, then, like the man who built his house on the sand, we're heading for disaster. Are we willing to take God's words to us seriously? Are we willing to surrender our wills and desires to His? Dallas Willard comments concerning the Scriptures that "anyone who rejects the general counsels of Scripture is in fact planning not to be guided by God", and gives the following advice concerning how we read them:

If we are obedient in the things the Lord has already spoken to us about, then we can expect to hear from Him again. In Jesus' parable of the talents, the master says to those who made faithful use of what He entrusted to them, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things." On another occasion, Jesus said, "Whoever can be trusted with little can also be trusted with much." Can the Lord trust us to make good use of what He says to us, or do we let His words fall to the ground? To progress, we need to obey. If we choose to resist doing what He asks of us, we are unlikely to hear much more from Him. Spiritually, we will go nowhere. Why should God waste His voice on us if we treat His word so lightly? As Jack Deere writes,

The dangers of disobedience when God entrusts us with His word are clearly spelled out in the Scriptures. After a life of obedience, Moses lost the opportunity to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land because he disobeyed. When the Lord told him to speak to a rock so that water would pour out of it, instead he struck the rock with his staff. As a result, the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you did not trust in Me enough to honour Me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them."

In 1 Samuel, we read the similarly sobering account of Saul being rejected as king over Israel by the Lord because of his disobedience. First, Saul takes things into his own hands at Gilgal by making a sacrifice rather than waiting for Samuel as the Lord had told him to. When Samuel appears, he says to Saul, "You acted foolishly, you have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, He would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure." Then Saul refuses to deal with the Amalekites as the Lord commands him and the word of the Lord comes to Samuel, "I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from Me and has not carried out My instructions." Saul's response is then to make excuses and he is decidedly economical with the truth, provoking Samuel's reply: "Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has rejected you as king."

How about us? How do we feel about always doing whatever God demands? Do we behave as if we think we know better than He does how we should live? Do we make excuses for ignoring His commands? Are we listening to Him to hear only those things which are agreeable to us? Ultimately, our attitude to the idea of submitting our wills entirely to the Lord's direction demonstrates the extent to which we have let Him win over our hearts. For if we have truly tasted of His everlasting goodness and unconditional love then we will know without a doubt that His ways are perfect and that He directs us for our own good. We will love Him so much that even the thought of disobedience will be repulsive to us and we will delight in doing what He asks of us. For, deep in our spirits, we will recognise that, as David sang,

"I know, O Lord, that a man's life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps.", prayed Jeremiah. And yet, when going about making day to day decisions, we often go about it in exactly the same way as the world, weighing the advantages and disadvantages of the options and relying on 'common sense', rather than letting God direct. What does it say about our attitude to the Lord and the kind of relationship we have with Him if we leave Him out of our decision-making? Within the church, many of our decisions seem to be driven by 'needs' or people's personal agendas and preferences. But we are called to be a God-driven, Jesus-driven, Holy Spirit-driven people, a community living under the immediate and total rulership of the Lord who want only what the Father wants. And so, when we make decisions, above all we need to seek to determine what He has got to say. When asked why we are doing something, we should always be in the position of being able to say that we are doing it because we believe that it pleases God for us to be doing it. Our lives should be lived completely under the direction of the Spirit of God. As Jeanne Guyon expressed it:

But, if we want to receive God's guidance then we will need to practice laying down our own personal agendas in order to hear what He wants and submit to His agenda. We will need to come to Him so that He can tell us what He desires us to do, and not so that we can tell Him what we want Him to do for us. As Rick Joyner has said, "It is presumption to only call upon the Lord when you want something. You should call on Him to ask what He wants, not what you want." But do we always want to know what He wants? Or do we only want His guidance when we're in some kind of a fix? Dallas Willard makes the following comment:

We will need to give up the false security that comes from thinking we're in control of our own lives. For, as the proverb says, "In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps."

The Lord described David, son of Jesse, as a man after His own heart. Why? What was it about David that meant that God honoured him like this? Perhaps one clue can be found in the fact that repeatedly in the Biblical account of his life, we read that David "enquired of the Lord." David knew better than to rely on his natural abilities and resources. As king, he had access to all the expert advice he might want and yet preferred to ask the Lord for direction: "Shall I go and attack these Philistines?", "Shall I pursue this raiding party? Will I overtake them?", "Shall I go up to one of the towns of Judah?", and so on. Consulting the Lord was clearly David's long-established practice as can be seen from Ahimelech the priest's response when questioned about an event while Saul was still king: "Was that day the first time I enquired of God for him? Of course not!" And, in contrast to his predecessor, Saul, whose demise we looked at above, David knew that waiting for God's guidance was better than doing the wrong thing. Are we more like David or Saul?

During the past few years, there has been discussion in some quarters concerning how 'wide' a road we will find ourselves on if we seek to follow the Lord's guidance in everything. Some have argued that the way is very narrow. One small step to the right or left is to leave the designated path of the Lord's perfect will for us. After all, Jesus did say that "wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." On the other hand, others have argued that the New Covenant is a covenant of "glorious freedom", and that God's guidance provides only broad boundaries within which we can walk as we choose: "Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.", writes Peter. "If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, 'Love your neighbour as yourself', you are doing right.", writes James.

However, these positions create a false dichotomy, for both propositions, in different ways, seem to disregard the fact that true Christian guidance is built on having a direct relationship with the Lord. God's guidance of us is not mechanical, and certainly not dependent on 'techniques' or 'methods', but is part of a richly interactive relationship with God in which we choose consciously to co-operate with Him. So, we can't really expect guidance to be the same all the time. As is the case with a human father with his children, at certain times our heavenly Father tells us very specifically to do a particular thing, but at other times He leaves us great freedom of choice concerning what we should be doing. When He tells us to do something specific, the path for us is narrow; when He gives us the choice, the path is broader. But, we should always let Him determine whether for us at a particular season He is calling us to walk a broad road or a narrow one. If He wants to direct us specifically as to where to live or where to go on holiday or whatever, that is His prerogative. On the other hand, if He chooses to let us decide, that again is His right. We dare not assume that the path He has for us will generally be broad and only occasionally narrow, (nor indeed the opposite, that it will normally be narrow and only seldom broad).

Whatever the specifics of the Lord's dealings with us, even when He gives us great freedom to choose what we desire, this must not be mistaken as a license for self-centred choice but as an opportunity to seek to choose responsibly - in a way which will bring our Father the greatest pleasure. In 1 Kings, we read that the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream and said to him, "Ask for whatever you want Me to give you." Solomon's response was to ask the Lord for "a discerning heart to govern Your people and to distinguish between right and wrong". The Scripture records that "the Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this" and not for long life or wealth for himself, and gave him a wise and discerning heart, so that there never was nor ever will be anyone like him. Our desire should always be to please the Lord in our decision-making, to further His purposes by our choices rather than our own.

Knowing God's direction in our lives is something that should flow naturally out of the relationship we have with Him. As Jesus was in continual fellowship with His Father, so we should be in constant fellowship with Him too, by way of the Holy Spirit. "Pray continually", writes Paul to the Thessalonians. As Benny Hinn puts it,

This is important. If we try to understand God's guidance and direction independently of having a close and constant love-relationship with Him, then we will miss out on the heart of the matter. In recent years, W.W.J.D. - What Would Jesus Do? - bracelets have become popular in some Christian circles. But, how do we understand this question as a basis for deciding how to live. If we think about it in terms of trying to decide for ourselves how Jesus might behave if He was in the particular situation that we are in, then we are working with an implicit assumption that God is, in a sense, distant and that we don't have direct access to Him ourselves. What would Jesus do? He would be walking in continual communion with and total dependence on His heavenly Father, doing what His Father wants Him to, always open to His direction in everything. This is the heart of guidance, and how we should be living.

But, how much guidance can we expect? There seem to be two possible errors here. On the one hand, some speak as if they believe that we can expect explicit direction every minute of our lives, if only we would listen well. When Jesus walked the earth, His communion with His Father was so great that He was at all times obedient. Yet there is no indication that even Jesus was continuously receiving revelations as to what He should do next. Nor is there any evidence of such an expectation in the lives of others in the Scriptures. At times the Lord speaks to direct us specifically and at times He remains silent. Sometimes we might wish that He spoke more, but our responsibility is to be totally obedient to what He has said to us, and always to have ears open to hear and respond to whatever He wants to ask of us next.

On the other hand, there are those who speak as if it were a sign of Christian maturity to receive less explicit guidance than others. This belief seems based on a false extension of the Father-child analogy of our relationship with God. We are God's children, but there is no growth from children to adolescents to adults in the Kingdom. We are not expected to progress towards increasing independence from our heavenly Father. Unlike the situation in our society in which children are expected to mature away from dependence on their parents, Christian maturity can not be equated at all with independence from God. Indeed, the opposite is surely the case, for we are called to "change and become like little children" in humble dependence on our Father, for "the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these". Childlike dependence on God is at the heart of Kingdom living, and Christian maturity is to remain as little children and to learn to live in increasing dependence on the Lord. For independence from God is at the heart of our sinfulness. We are not expected simply to do good things that we think of, but to do the things the Lord shows us to do. Marco Schulz has put it like this:

Doing good things is often the enemy of doing the best thing, the particular work that God has "prepared in advance for us to do". It is easy to come up with good things to do. There are needs all around us. And it is easy to presume that we know what is on God's heart. After David was established as king over Israel, he said to Nathan the prophet, "Here I am, living in a palace of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.", and he planned on providing a more appropriate place for the earthly throne of Israel's divine King. Nathan replied, "Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the Lord is with you." But he hadn't consulted the Lord, and that night God told him that David was not to build a temple for Him but that rather He wanted to establish an eternal dynasty through David. Even with all the right motives, both David and Nathan initially missed God's greater purposes by relying on their own wisdom rather than depending on the Lord for direction.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.", says the proverb. When uncertain of the way ahead, we love to have the Lord direct our paths, but the precondition that we "lean not on your own understanding" presents many of us with a bit of a problem. We like to believe that human wisdom has some real value, but the testimony of the Scriptures is in the opposite direction. Spiritual truths are "Spiritually discerned" and dependent on revelation, and human wisdom is often more likely to impede our discernment of the Lord's will than to help us. This is why Paul exhorts the Romans to let God's revelation to their hearts and spirits transform their understanding and comprehension:

In the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians, Paul contrasts at length the apparent foolishness of God's great wisdom with the great foolishness of our apparent wisdom:

Paul emphasises here that message of the cross and the teachings of human wisdom are in conflict. The cross stands in absolute, uncompromising contradiction to human wisdom. God's ways of doing things look utterly foolish to those who think they are 'wise'. We, who have responded to the message of the gospel, easily forget how absurd it is that our salvation should rest on the execution of a first-century Jew by the Roman authorities. But our response to the gospel message was not the result of being wise; on the contrary, it was a product of the work of the Spirit of God in our lives. Gordon Fee paraphrases Paul's argument as follows:

If the foundation of our faith is so apparently nonsensical, then we shouldn't expect that lives built on that foundation should depend on what is 'sensible' from the perspective of human wisdom. God's folly is wiser than man's wisdom, and before His wisdom all the wisdom of the wise and the intelligence of the intelligent is as utter stupidity - but human 'wisdom' will never recognise this. "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgements, and His paths beyond tracing out!"

Paul continues:

Why should God work in this strange way? Why should Jesus say, "I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was Your good pleasure."? Wisdom and understanding are great sources of pride and hinder us from receiving Spiritual revelation. "God opposes the proud", so, if our lives are to be lived in total dependence on God, then we must be set free from pride in our own understanding and 'wisdom'. For this reason, God chooses to work in ways that may often seem foolish to us.

Paul wraps up his argument like this:

God's true wisdom comes to us, not through reasoning or intellect, but by revelation through the Holy Spirit to our spirits, hearts and minds. We can receive God's hidden wisdom only by "leaning not on our own understanding" and becoming foolish in order to receive what the Lord would show us - and hence becoming truly wise, having the "mind of Christ". As Paul writes a little further on in 1 Corinthians:

Perhaps only a small minority of us would claim to be wise according to the world's standards. But God's wisdom strikes at the heart, not only of the arrogance of the 'geniuses' amongst us, but also at any kind of decision-making that leaves God out. God's 'foolish wisdom' is the great divine contradiction to all our merely human ways of doing things. And, in practice, the tool we most often make use of in deciding what to do is that of "common sense". But what is common sense? And how does it stand up to the wisdom of God? Common sense may seem marvellous to us, but does it seem marvellous to the Lord?

The common-sense action in a particular situation is the one that seems 'obvious' to us. But why does it seem so obviously correct? An analysis of what different people consider to be common sense would show that it varies widely between different cultures (hence the feeling of disorientation felt in cross-cultural interaction). For the most part, then, common sense is simply a product of our culture, a codification of our society's values and ideals built up over the years and instilled in us as we have grown up. To us, common sense often has the "appearance of wisdom", because generally we accept the presuppositions and values of our culture without thinking about them. But we are called to be conformed no longer to the pattern of this world. As Christ said, we do not belong to the world but to Him. "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.", writes Paul to the Colossians. Is 'common sense' hollow and deceptive philosophy? Common sense is certainly not necessarily 'God sense', so we should be wary of automatically basing our decision-making on such a shaky foundation. Of course, the primary problem with relying on common sense is that doing so, once again, seeks to bypass the relationship we have with our heavenly Father - in this case by trusting in the 'wisdom' and common values of our culture rather than revelation from God.

As an example, we could consider the contrast between common sense and 'God sense' concerning the use of money. "Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.", said Jesus, and commended the action of a poor widow who placed her last few coins in the temple treasury, promising, as we saw in chapter 4, to provide for all our needs if we seek first His Kingdom. As Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians, the God's desire for us is cheerful generosity in response to the "indescribable gift" of Christ who, "though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, so that we through His poverty might become rich". This is in direct opposition to common sense and the wisdom of the world which teaches us to spend our wealth on possessions and to hoard (or 'save') rather than give away - and if we are to give, only to give out of our excess rather than sacrificially of what we need to live on. Common-sense human wisdom is founded on getting rather than giving, on investing for financial increase rather than for others' benefit, and on security based on hoarding rather than on God's promise of provision. We will consider our attitude to wealth and possessions in more detail in a later chapter. The point to note here is simply that common sense can be a very poor guide if we desire to live God's way. We need to make a regular habit of checking what is 'obvious' to us against what the Lord has to say.

Somehow, we expect God to be rather like us, and for His advice and direction to be little more than 'sanctified common sense'. Although, much of what He says to us does make sense to us, God is also in the habit of giving commands to His people that make little sense. At times, from a human perspective, He definitely seems somewhat crazy! For example, in Genesis chapter 6, we read of how He told Noah to build an enormous boat (150 yards long) in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from the sea. Then in chapter 17, He tells Abraham that every man in his household is to have his foreskin cut off! Some time later, the Lord asks him to take his son Isaac and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. Because these accounts are so familiar to us, we may miss their absurdity and offensiveness. How would we have reacted in these situations?

The God who said, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways", often works in ways that offend our comprehension. Joshua was a trained military man (we meet him first leading the Israelites in an attack against the Amalekites), but, at the pinnacle of his career, his military training and insight was worth very little as far as God's purposes were concerned. While he was considering how to take the fortress of Jericho, a man appeared claiming to be the "Commander of the Lord's Army" and gave him apparently senseless instructions about marching around the city together with a promise that obedience would lead to the city walls completely collapsing! On another occasion, it was Gideon who has the recipient of 'crazy' military advice from the Lord. When he was preparing to attack the innumerable forces of the Midianite army with a force of thirty-two thousand men, God told him that he had too many men and proceeded to direct him to reduce his army to just three hundred, before instructing him to attack!

Although we clearly recognise the strangeness of God's dealings in these and other similar situations, somehow we usually fail to make any connection to our own lives, and so have no expectation that the Lord may ask us to do equally 'weird' things. But, we need to expect that God may have a markedly different perspective from us in any particular situation, and that He may have a way of dealing with it that does not make sense to our minds. God's thoughts and ways are far above ours, and when He speaks, what He has to say may well contrast dramatically with our way of doing things.

Following God's leading is often somewhat more 'open-ended' than many of us are comfortable with. Our obedience cannot be dependent on understanding what we are being asked to do. We need to have hearts that will obey even when we don't understand why. Requiring that we know where the Lord is taking us can be a hindrance to hearing and obeying Him. Handing control over to Him may mean that He chooses not to tell us where we're going - sometimes literally. In the 1960s, a young woman called Jackie shocked her family and friends by announcing that God was calling her to go. When they asked her where she was supposed to go, she replied that she didn't know, she was just to go. She got on a ship and when she reached Hong Kong, felt that the Lord wanted her to stay there though she had no idea what she was supposed to do in Hong Kong. But thirty years later, Jackie Pullinger's story has become one of the most amazing missionary stories of our time. Thousands of people have been led to Christ and set free from drugs through her ministry. Jackie was willing to look totally foolish to her family and friends and step out in faith along the road God had shown her, not knowing where she would end up or how she would earn a living. As a result, God was able to extend His Kingdom among the Triad gangs in Hong Kong.

Tracy Williamson, in her book The Voice Of The Father, recounts the experience of Jane, a young woman who was studying at a Christian training centre in West Sussex. One night, a thought kept breaking into her dream: "Go to Manchester Airport!" After waking and praying with her neighbour, she set off with no idea why or what she should do when she got there. When she arrived at the airport, she decided to go and sit in the departure lounge. Shortly, a lady came and sat next to her and Jane found herself having to explain that she was at the airport because she was a Christian and God had woken her up and told her to drive there!

The lady then told her that she was flying to meet her estranged daughter who had written to her for the first time in many years to say that she had become a Christian and asking for forgiveness and reconciliation with her mother. She said that she did want to start over in her relationship with her daughter but felt so full of hurt and bitterness that she couldn't. Jane was able to explain that Jesus could deal with her pain, and as a result, the lady gave her life to the Lord there in the airport. She left to catch her flight, now really looking forward to meeting her daughter, while Jane headed back south, praising God for leading the lady to Himself, having promised to write to her at her daughter's home.

On returning to the training centre, Jane switched on the television just as a newsflash began: "A plane crashed on take-off at Manchester Airport", said the announcer. Jane telephoned the enquiry line. The lady had been killed. Later that day, Jane was able to write to that lady's daughter to tell her that her mother had become a Christian and had forgiven her just before she got on the plane.

This story is deeply challenging to the way most of us lead our lives. What would we have done in Jane's situation? Would we have recognised the Lord's voice? Would we have just turned over and gone back to sleep? After all, that would have been the humanly 'wise' thing to do. In about a.d. 35, an angel said to a man called Philip, "Go south to the road - the desert road - that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.", so he headed for the middle of the desert, not knowing why he had been asked to do so. As a result, a high-ranking Ethiopian official gave his life to the Lord and was baptised. Nearly two thousand years later, the Lord spoke to Jane as she dreamt, "Go to Manchester Airport.", so she drove two hundred miles, not knowing why she had been asked to do so. As a result, a lady gave her life to the Lord minutes before she entered eternity. God desires to be able to use us all to bring His love to others. But in order for Him to do so, we need to give a high priority to listening for His voice and obeying without question when He speaks. The Lord is looking for men and women with ears and hearts open to Him like those of Philip and Jane.

In Luke chapter 5, we find an account of Jesus telling Peter how to fish. Peter had a bit of a hard time accepting and obeying the Lord's instruction. After all, Peter was an expert at fishing. And Jesus? Well, Jesus was a carpenter - but, so much more than just a carpenter! When Peter obeyed, he caught more fish than ever before. In astonishment, he fell at Jesus' knees with a new awareness of his unworthiness before the Lord. Often we are in the same place Peter was that day, believing we are the 'experts' in various areas of our lives or work, and that we know all that we need to know. The trouble is that this false confidence will prevent us hearing the Lord telling us how to do whatever we do well in a way we've never done it before, perhaps even in a way that seems utterly ridiculous to us when viewed through the lens of common sense. For it is often hardest for us to hear the Lord's direction in the areas of our lives in which we are naturally gifted because in these areas we tend to live in independence from God trusting in our own might and power, rather than in the Spirit of the Lord. Ultimately, it is a question of being humble before God in the areas in which we think we know best - as if we could know better than the King of the Universe! Jack Deere puts it like this:

We so easily get things upside down, expecting the Lord to co-operate with our way of doing things and bless our plans and projects, rather than co-operating with Him and participating in His undertakings. Perhaps that's why He chooses to work in strange ways on occasion - to draw attention to the difference between His ways and our ways and to build humility, trust and ready obedience in our hearts.

We need to be willing to let God's voice disturb us and challenge our way of seeing and doing things. When He asks us to do something that seems a little crazy, we need to be willing to take the risk of obedience and step out on the basis of what He has said to us, and to look foolish in the eyes of others if necessary. God is perfectly able to overcome our mistakes as we step out in faith - if our heart-attitude is right before Him. For we will only get to experience the Lord at work in our lives in any significant way if we do things His way. Then we will see that all that is achieved is the result of His power and His wisdom, not ours - and, like Peter, our response will be to worship our Lord in amazement at His understanding and authority.

"Apart from Me you can do nothing.", said Jesus to His disciples shortly before His death. This must surely rank as one of the Scriptures least believed in practice. For most of us live great chunks of our lives without reference to the Lord who said of Himself, "The Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing." If this was true for Jesus, how much more essential is it to us who are full of weakness and self-will. Do we let God direct every aspect of the way we live, or do we restrict His input to just a small 'religious' compartment, letting the values of our culture rule the rest? In his recent book, Mustard Seed Versus McWorld, Tom Sine presents the following critical analysis of the current state of the Western church:

Making decisions in relationship with God is not just for some areas of life - for the 'spiritual' or 'sacred' part. No, we should be relating to Him and open to His direction in everything we do: when we're seated before the computer at our desk, as we sit down to dinner with the family, when we're called before the boss at work, while we relax with friends at a party, as we race along the motorway on the way to an appointment, when we're playing with the children at the park, while we share a pint with mates down the pub, as we wait in the supermarket checkout queue, during times of intimacy with our wife or husband, in the midst of an examination we're sitting, as we watch the news or the late film or the football on television, as we answer the telephone, as we fill in our tax return, when we make decisions at work or about how to spend our holiday or what to do with our money. Nothing we do should be done independent of our relationship with our loving heavenly Father. Nothing should be done based on our desires and plans alone without discovering what the Lord's desires and plans for us are. We need a radical return to listening to Him in everything that we do. In both the big things and the little things there should be a constant pattern of turning and listening to Him for direction.

All of our time and all of our money is God's and should be under His control. Whether we live in Bangalore, Bangkok, Bangladesh or Bangor should be His decision, not ours. Whether we take a particular promotion opportunity in our work or not should be His decision, and certainly shouldn't be based on the world's values concerning career 'advancement'. What we do with our 'spare' time and holidays should be His decision not an opportunity for us to escape from living under His Lordship. God desires us to come to Him and let Him do with us as He wills. His plans for us are unimaginably good, but in order to discover this, we will need to lay down our desire to be in control.

Perhaps few of us have much idea of what it would look like to let God run our businesses, our homes, our recreational lives, even our churches. So much of what we do is driven either by the expectations of our culture or by our own personal likes and dislikes that it can be very hard to imagine what life would really be like for us if God was clearly and explicitly the Boss in all aspects of our living. What does a business or a church look like when the Lord is running it, when He is the Managing Director or Senior Pastor and the buck stops with Him? Surely it looks very different from most of what we see around us, for God's thoughts and ways are very different from ours, and His values diametrically opposed to some of the most important values of our culture.

At the heart of a God-directed life is the determined choice to seek His face in everything, to move only under His direction, by the blowing of the wind of His Spirit. In the world, decision-making revolves around the weighing of pros and cons or around pleasing people and respecting the desires of the majority (or influential minority). And, sadly most decision-making in the church and the lives of Christians simply apes the world's approach - in which God is assumed to be absent or at the very least quite irrelevant. But, if we desire to be a people living under the Lord's command, then our church councils, our business meetings and our day-to-day planning cannot be like this. In the church, at work and in our homes, we must reject democracy in favour of theocracy and come to Him, surrendering all our agendas and human analysis, seeking to know only what the Father wants of us. For, if we aren't willing to lay down our agendas and our solutions, and do what God desires, then we certainly can't expect to hear much from Him. At the heart of our meeting together must be the belief that God desires to lead us and will do so if we come to Him in humility. Richard Foster writes the following:

We need to return to a model of living in which it is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit who call all the shots. In Acts chapter 13, we read, "While they (the church at Antioch) were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.' So after they had fasted and prayed, they laid their hands on them and sent them off. The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus." Commenting on this, Richard Foster says,

But it is not just in 'spiritual' matters such as missionary work that we should be fasting, praying and worshipping together in order to discern the mind of the Lord. This desperately needs to become the daily pattern in our homes and workplaces as well as our churches.

When God speaks and we obey, He is able to bring about His will in the earth. "Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.", we pray. If we want to see this prayer answered, then it is up to us to listen to the Lord and act in ready obedience whatever the cost.

A Chinese Christian worked for a mining company and part of her job was to blow a whistle each day when it was time for the miners to come up. One day she 'heard' a voice telling her to blow the whistle. It was far too early, so she tried to ignore it but the summons grew more and more urgent. In the end, despite the fact that it would probably get her into serious trouble, she did blow it and the miners came up. The last one was just clear when there was an earthquake. Most of the shafts were destroyed but not one miner was hurt. When the miners asked her what made her whistle then, she confessed that she was a Christian and described how God had told her to whistle. Hundreds of them became Christians that day and many more at an official enquiry where she gave her testimony.

Many incredible things have come about as ordinary people have heard God's voice and responded in obedience to what they have believed He was saying to them. That obedience may be costly - the Chinese lady obeyed at the possible cost of losing her job and being persecuted for her faith - but we follow a man who "became obedient to death - even death on a cross!" And without our obedience, we will never see the good fruit God wants to produce in us and through us. For, when God speaks and we respond, things happen! As Tracy Williamson writes, "We need to understand that what He tells us will always be for a purpose. He never just engages in idle conversation, but speaks to us in order that we might know His strategies or that we might be changed, comforted or used to show somebody else His love."

Obedience to God's commands will always bring forth good Spiritual fruit. But that fruit may well be hidden - much Spiritual growth is. So we need to take care that we do not judge by the fruit that we see, but do what the Lord wants us to do simply because that is what He has asked of us. He is looking for obedience, not 'results' or 'success' as we measure it. The fruit of our obedience is God's responsibility, not ours. And there is no need for us to do more than obey; indeed, doing more than He has asked of us is no better than doing less than what He wants. "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle.", says the Lord. The horse bolts and the mule stubbornly stands still but we are to be neither. Rather, we are called to be the Good Shepherd's sheep in relationship with Him who follow Him because they know His voice.

Perfect obedience to our heavenly Father is His best for us, and the source of great joy. Jesus said, "If you obey My commands, you will remain in My love, just as I have obeyed My Father's commands and remain in His love. I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." Let us all pursue this obedience that leads to us receiving complete joy!

The following questions and exercises are to help you to respond to what the Lord has been saying to you through what you have read. They can be used in any way you like, either individually, or for discussion in a small group or between friends.

1. Do you find it hard to embrace certain aspects of God's revelation of His will for our lives? Why do you think you find these things difficult to accept? Are you willing to let Him change your heart-attitude towards what He says? Read Psalm 19:7-11 and ask the Holy Spirit to enable you to see His commands and ordinances as He sees them.
2. What is your experience of God directing you? Have you found that hearing God but not obeying Him has impeded your relationship with Him? Are there any ways now in which you are being disobedient, living in a way contrary to His will or refusing to do what He has asked of you? If so, do something about resolving the situation.
3. What is your practice concerning seeking the Lord's direction? Is it restricted to times when you are in trouble or perplexed? Do you want to retain control of parts of your life or do you really want His direction in everything you do? Plan changes to your life that will give God more opportunities to direct you, and ask Him for His help in implementing them.
4. What experience have you had of the Lord giving you 'crazy' directions, that you didn't understand or made you look foolish? If you did what He asked you to, what were the results? When have you found that common sense dictated behaviour contrary to God's will for you? In what areas of your life do you believe that common sense and human wisdom, rather than God's revelation, still control your decision-making? What can you do to place God's wisdom above human reasoning in these areas?
5. To what extent do you limit God's guidance to the 'religious' parts of your life? How much is your everyday decision-making like that of an unbeliever, ignoring the possibility of God's input? To what extent do you find that you live in independence from God in your areas of natural strength? Decide on ways in which you could increase your dependence on the Lord's direction in your workplace and home life.
6. What experiences have you had of fasting, praying and worshipping together in order to discern the mind of the Lord? What was the outcome? In your church or business, how do you think procedures could be changed so as to become a true theocracy in which God Himself is the Director? What role could you play in helping to bring this about?
7. To what extent do you find that your heart has been captivated by God's love to the extent that you will do whatever He asks of you? Use the following words to ask Him to continue to soften your heart towards Him:

Chapter 12, "The Discipline Of Guidance", in Richard Foster's book, Celebration Of Discipline (Hodder and Stoughton), provides an excellent introduction to the subject of guidance, emphasising its corporate nature.

Chapter 8: Steps Towards Maturity

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