How to Seek Guidance

How to Seek Guidance

How to seek guidanceAre you impatient to wait for God’s guidance? Sometimes it seems to take forever. But I’ve learned it does not pay off to go before God. So I wait. Even when I don’t feel like it.

I’ve been thinking and praying about this a lot. And learned a couple of things along the way and I will be writing about these this week.

Matthew Henry has written “To wait on God is to live a life of desire towards him, delight in him, dependence on him, and devotedness to him.” This is what it is all about. How then do we so often miss it?

We are to seek first God and not his guidance. When we seek God, our focus in on him. When we seek his guidance, our focus too often is on ourselves. See the difference?

Too often we are concerned about the next step in our lives, when we actually should be concerned about our spiritual well-being and relationship with God. We assume the spiritual well-being is to come after we solve the whatever puzzle in our lives we are trying to solve. But that’s not how it works. God is mostly concerned about our spiritual well-being and knows that all the other stuff will work out after our spirit is right with him.

The main thing is to stop trying to solve the problems with our minds. God is not interested in our problem-solving skills. He is interested in our spirit.

He leads the humble in what is right,
    and teaches the humble his way.
(Psalm 25:9, NRSV)

When our heart is in the right place, we are ready for God’s guidance. When we are humble, we are able to hear God’s voice. When we are meek in the spirit, we are one with God’s will. With the words of Matthew Henry “Meekness is the silent submission of the soul to the ‘providence’ of God concerning us.”

I leave you to ponder this today. I will write about “how to become meek” on Wednesday. I hope to see you here at Flowing Faith then. Don’t be panicky. Give God whatever is troubling you. And repeat it as many times as needed. Peace will come. It’s God’s gift for all who trust in him.

You will guard him and keep him in perfect and constant peace whose mind [both its inclination and its character] is stayed on You, because he commits himself to You, leans on You, and hopes confidently in You.  So trust in the Lord (commit yourself to Him, lean on Him, hope confidently in Him) forever; for the Lord God is an everlasting Rock [the Rock of Ages]. (Isaiah 26:3-4, AMP)

 

Dear God,
Forgive us for fretting about the wrong things.
Forgive our selfishness.
Help us to focus on you
and revel in your sweetness.
Enable us to make our home in you,
submit our will to you with gladness.
Be our everything, Lord.
Be with us
and when the time is right
guide us to the future according to your will.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen

Q4U: Do you approach God’s guidance the wrong way?

Be blessed, my fellow pilgrim, as you learn to seek first God and not his guidance!

Image courtesy of ochristian.com, design by Mari-Anna Stålnacke. Linking up today with Looking up, Sharing His Beauty, Small Wonders.

5 thoughts on “How to Seek Guidance

  1. This–> “But I’ve learned it does not pay off to go before God. So I wait.” It’s a lesson I’m still learning. Thanks for the encouragement to wait….

  2. I’m so grateful that I finally received clear guidance from God concerning a question I had. Want to know what it was? “Just wait” ! I know it’s from God, because it’s the last thing I would pick to do! Thanks for sharing, Mari-Anna.

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