Stop Making God’s Guidance So Complicated by J. LEE GRADY for Charisma News
When I was in my 20s, I was praying about whether I should enroll in graduate school. Then one morning in my devotional time I came to Psalm 32:8a, and it seemed to be flashing like a neon sign. It said, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go.”
The Holy Spirit was emphasizing that God would teach me and that I didn’t need additional schooling. That’s not to say graduate school is wrong for everyone else; it was just not God’s plan for me at that time. And God illuminated a particular Scripture to clearly show me what path I should take.
The Bible promises that God will guide us. But many Christians find it difficult to hear God’s voice. And in some charismatic churches we complicate things when we try to make guidance mystical or weird—as if you have to hear an audible voice from heaven about what color shirt to wear.
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Years ago, I learned from author Henry Blackaby that there are four distinct ways we receive divine guidance:
1. You can hear God’s voice by reading the Bible. Friends have sometimes complained to me: “I just never hear God speaking.” Yet when I ask if they read the Bible regularly, they say they’re too busy. Their Bible is collecting dust on a shelf while they beg God for a Technicolor vision from heaven!
God supernaturally inspired 40 authors over a period of 1,600 years to compile His love letter to us. After the Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, many people were martyred because they translated it in a modern language. God went to a lot of trouble to compile the Bible. Yet today many people say they are too busy to read God’s most direct message to Planet Earth!
When you read Scripture with a prayerful heart, God can cause a verse to jump off the page as a direct message to you. British preacher Charles Spurgeon recognized this years ago when he wrote: “When I have been in trouble, I have read the Bible until a text has seemed to stand out of the Book, and salute me, saying, ‘I was written specially for you.'” Expect God to speak directly to you from Scripture.
