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5 May 98
God’s Guidance (Adapted from Knowing God by J.I. Packer)
Part 3: Common Pitfalls
In your personal walk with the Lord, what mistakes have you made concerning God’s
guidance? Here are some common mistakes that J.I. Packer points out.
- Unwillingness to Think
- We should never expect irrational guidance. There is a constant biblical summons
to "consider…" (Deut 32:29).
- Read Rom 12:2. How does this passage limit the things we feel "led" or
"prompted" to do? Our effectiveness in "considering" is greatly
enhanced when our minds our renewed through the truth. God will never put us in a position
where we have to sin to do his will. For example, Paul became interested in a lady in his
apartment complex, and they are both Christians. He didn’t find out until after he
started getting involved with her that she was separated from her husband. He was seeking
God on the issue, but he also wanted to justify having a relationship with her. If he had
been willing to think with a biblically "renewed mind," he would have known that
to get involved with her was sinful, and that God never puts us in a situation where we
have to sin do do His will. God’s will in this example was clear: He should have
ended the relationship immediately.
- Why can impulsive decisions be dangerous? Because we can forfeit rational thought for
our immediate desires. Satan knows that rational thought can be an effective weapon used
against him. That’s one reason he tempts us to make impulsive decisions.
- When seeking the Lord in prayer on some decision, we should search the Scriptures for
wisdom because this will put us in a mindset to think properly.
- We can ask, "What would Jesus do?" but unless we know what Jesus would do, it
doesn’t do much good. You have to be able to answer the question, "What did
Jesus do?" before you can answer the question, "What would Jesus
do?" Therefore, we need to fill our minds with the things Jesus did and the
principles of living that He established.
- Unwillingness to Think Ahead
- How will my present decision be affected by simply thinking ahead? Can you think of a
time when you made a bad decision because you didn’t think ahead?
- We should weigh the long-term consequences of our decisions. We should ask, "Who
does it affect? How does it affect the Kingdom of God? Will it cause someone to stumble
into sin?" We should "consider our latter end" (Deut 32:28-29).
- We should constantly do "what-if" scenarios in our minds, carrying out the
consequences of our decision to their conclusions, identifying and then excluding those
that don’t biblically make sense.
- Caution: We will never be able to accurately predict the consequences of our actions, so
we need to be careful not to put too much value on our "what-if" scenarios.
- Unwillingness to Take (Consider) Advice
- Why is it sometimes difficult to ask for advice? Pride is the most common reason we
don’t seek advice, because it reveals that we don’t know everything and that we
don’t have everything under control. It’s humbling to ask for advice.
- The wise man listens to advice (Prov 12:15, 13:10, 19:20), and judgement awaits those
who reject the Lord’s advice (Prov 1:29-31).
- Why should we seek as many sources of advice as possible? So that we may be able to
consider previously-unrealized factors and perspectives in our decision. We should test everything
[all viewpoints], and hold on to that which is good (1 Thess 5:21).
- What is the most valuable source of advice anybody could ever consult? The Bible. How
does this limit who we should seek advice from? We should seek the advice of people who
know the Word, those who correctly handle the Word of Truth (2 Tim 2:15).
- Cautions:
- Bad advice that seems good is always available (Prov 12:5).
- Tend not to let someone else’s convictions become your own unless you are fully
convinced of the biblical basis of the convictions. Let our grounds for being convicted be
based on God’s working in your heart, not people’s advice (Phil 3:15).
- Don’t avoid seeking advice from those who we think might advise us to do other than
what we already desire. (This is especially true with parents.)
- Unwillingness to Suspect Oneself
- How do you think our personal desires affect what advice we choose to consider and
follow? We tend to follow the advice that is most appealing to us. King Xerxes made
convenient use of self-gratifying advice (Est 2:2-4).
- Why should we suspect our own advice to ourselves? Because when we are counseling
ourselves, it’s like the "fox guarding the hen-house." We are our own
biggest suspects for seeking self-gratifying advice. "We need to ask ourselves why we
‘feel’ a particular course to be right, and to make ourselves give reasons"
(Packer). This is why Godly advice from other Christians is so important: It helps us
evaluate our decisions from a more objective viewpoint. We should be introspective by
asking God to search us and try us, and find any wicked way in us. Then we will be in a
better position for Him to lead us (Ps 139:23-24).
- What are some ways we can avoid this unwillingness to suspect ourselves? We can be
humble and broken before God, realizing that we are extremely biased when it comes to
making decisions that affect us. Put others’ concerns first before our own (Phil
2:3-4).
- Unwillingness to Suspect "Magnetic" People
- Have you ever followed the advice of someone largely because they represent a
"beacon" of spiritual light and wisdom (i.e., pastor, well-respected Christian)?
How could this possibly be bad?
- "People with a flair for self-dramatization [can] gain an alarming domination over
the minds and consciences of others, who fall under their spell and [who] decline to judge
them by ordinary standards. And even when a gifted and magnetic person is aware of the
danger and tries to avoid it, he is not always able to stop Christian people from treating
him as an angel, or a prophet, construing his words as guidance for themselves and blindly
following his lead" (Packer, pg 238).
- Consider this biblical example:
- 2 Sam 16:23. Ahithophel had a "magnetic" personality. His advice was
considered as if it were from God Himself.
- 2 Sam 16:20. Absolom seeks advice from this "magnetic" Ahithophel.
- 2 Sam 17:5-7. Absolom seeks another opinion, which was different than the first.
- 2 Sam 17:14. God actually used the second man’s advice, not the "spiritual
pillar" Ahithophel’s advice.
- Outstanding people are not necessarily wrong, but they’re not necessarily right,
either. We should test [compare with the truth of the Scriptures] everything, and
hold on to that which is good (1 Thess 5:21).
- Unwillingness to Wait
- Why do we have such a hard time simply waiting for God’s guidance and timing? We
think we know what’s best, and we think we can "help God along" with our
request. This is what happened with Abraham and Sarai (Gen 15:2-5, 16:1-2). What we think
we need and when we need it is usually quite different than what God knows we need and
when we need it. We tend to expect God to answer us the way we want Him to, immediately.
This leads us into a spiraling battle of uncertainty, anxiety, and impatience.
- "It is not God’s way to give more light on the future than we need for action
in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time…. When action is
absolutely needed, light will come" (Packer).
- Remember that "waiting on the Lord" is more an exercise in refining your heart
to trust God than it is a pre-requisite to getting clear direction from God on a
particular decision. When we actively engage in growing in righteousness through grace of
spiritual disciplines, we will find peace about the uncertainty. In this way, our
anxieties and sometimes our desires may go away or change. Ask yourself: "What are
you doing to wait on the Lord?"
- Caution: Don’t get unrealistic expectations about an answer. Don’t be
unwilling to proceed with a decision just because you didn’t get the answer spelled
out in the sky for you. Just don’t let yourself make a bad decision because of one of
the above common mistakes.
Credits
Most of this material has been adapted from J.I. Packer’s Knowing God,
InterVarsity Press, Downer’s Grove, IL, 1973, ISBN 0-8308-1651-8, Chapter 20.
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