Living Under God’s Guidance
Pt. 3
“How to Know God is Guiding You”
Ps 25: 4-5 “Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. 5 Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.”
Ps. 32:8 “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with my loving eye on you.”
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These verses make it clear that God wants to guide His people:
guide them in making wise decisions,
guide them into places of safety,
guide them in His purpose for them.
He literally “directs the steps of His children and delights in each step they take.”—Ps. 37:23
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So what we want to look at today is—how can we know God is guiding us?
How does God guide His children?
How can we know it’s not our own imagination or even worse, the enemy seeking to harm us?
There are 3 ways we can know God’s guidance:
-God’s Word,
-God’s peace,
-And divinely ordered circumstances.
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So first:
I. The Word of God
The Word of God is the unfailing, infallible road map given by God to guide His children through life.
This is why you can know for a fact that God will never ever lead us in a direction that is contrary to His Word.
• There are no exceptions, no new ‘truths’ or new revelations that can overrule the written Word of God.
The Bible says, “Forever, O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven” (Ps 119:89).
And, “Your word is a lamp to my feet (for my next step) and a light to my path (to reveal lurking dangers)”—Ps 119:105.
• Deception gets its foot in the door when we step outside the boundaries of God’s word.
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One problem with guidance these days is that many believers put more stock in a subjective experience than they do God’s Word.
Too often we don’t run inner promptings and emotions, nor things we hear taught, through the sifter of Scripture, to our own peril.
• Christians are not called to be gullible sponges soaking up every teaching that comes down the road, but skilled discerners that judge between good and evil!
Heb 5:14 “But solid (spiritual) food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern between good and evil.”
God’s will for every believer is that, “…We will no longer be like children…tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.”—Eph. 4:14
One day Paul journeyed to the town of Berea, went into their synagogue, and began to teach from the Scriptures. It says:
Acts 17:11 “…the people of Berea gladly listened to the message. They searched the Scriptures day by day to check up on Paul and Silas’ statements to see if they were really so.”
The Bible compliments the Bereans for checking the Bible to see if what Paul and Silas taught was true!
• The Bible is like a fence of safety put there by a loving God, not to keep us IN but to keep the enemy OUT!
Every inner prompting, every experience, every emotion that would lead us in a certain direction should be held up to the scrutiny of God’s word to assure it is God leading us, and not something else!
So The Word of God is the number one source of guidance for God’s children!
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The second way we are guided is by:
II. God’s peace
The Bible says in Phil. 4:6-7…“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.
7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”
Notice, the “guard” placed over our heart is God’s peace.
The word “guard” is a military term referring to a soldier keeping guard over something or someone.
God’s peace is literally placed as a guard over our heart, keeping it in protective custody from dangers, worries, fears, and deceptions.
Here’s the thing:
—If after prayer we have a deep, settled, consistent peace about a path we’re considering, that is one signpost that God is leading.
One man put it this way: “Pray, peace, push.”
PRAY about the decision until there is a sense of PEACE about it, and then PUSH forward.
—And on the flip side, the Holy Spirit also guides by taking His peace away.
When Paul and Silas were on their 2nd missionary journey they tried preaching in Asia but “were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia.”
Then they tried to go into a province of Rome called Bithynia, “but the Spirit did not permit them.”—Acts 16:6-7
Now, we don’t know how the Holy Spirit communicated to them, but it very likely came by God removing His peace—they were “forbidden by the Spirit,” and not “permitted by the Spirit.”
The Bible instructs the believer, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30).
When we experience the grieving of the Spirit within, that grieving may be the Lord guiding us away from a wrong path.
—Now, it’s important to know that the inner witness is not infallible.
There are times we can strongly feel that something is right, that we are on the right path, but when you run it through the unfailing sifter of God’s word, it doesn’t agree.
The truth is that sometimes our own emotions can masquerade as God’s leading.
Only the Word of God can ultimately expose what is from our own soul and what is from His Spirit!
• Deception gets its foot in the door when we place inner feelings over the authority of Scripture!
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And a third way God guides is by:
III. Divinely ordered circumstances
When God is leading, He will make a way for you.
The Prophet Isaiah wrote the following words to Israel in Babylonian captivity:
“For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.”—Isaiah 43:19
This is talking about God ordering circumstances to help guide His people to their appointed destination!
Where God guides, God provides!
He literally makes a way where there isn’t one, and creates a path that didn’t exist.
—He opens doors we could never open,
—provides finances we don’t have,
—gives favor with gatekeepers that have no idea why they’re showing favor!
He made a way for Israel through the Red Sea,
then through a howling wilderness,
and then through a land of giants!
The Apostle Paul knew this part of God’s guidance very well! He wrote:
1 Cor. 16:9 “…for there is a wide open door for me to preach and teach here.”
In his circumstances God had opened a door for Paul, He created a pathway for him to preach that was supernatural!
Jesus told the church at Philadelphia, “I have opened a door to you that no one can shut.”—Rev. 3:8
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So God guides his children first through His WORD, then by His PEACE, and third by divinely ordered CIRCUMSTANCES.
When these three things line up and agree, you can be confident God is leading!