There are some pretty pagan ways of trying to understand the will of
God floating around
Christendom today! One of these occultic ways is called “Journalling.”
What is “journalling” and why should believers steer clear of this?
Journalling is a Christianised version of the occult “Automatic Writing,”
which New Agers and others
claim can guide your life because messages come from the gods, Goddess
or spirits. “Journalling”
consists basically in “praying” and allowing “God” to give messages
to the mind by impressions,
and writing these messages down while “praying.” This is supposed to
give the Christians a way to
gain an understanding of the will of God for their lives! The Christians
might ask “God” questions,
basically close their minds off, and await the answers. Automatic
Writing may go further by spirits
actually taking over the use of the hand in writing, but certainly
journalling is of the same ilk! Nothing
could be more dangerous spiritually than operating in this foolish
pagan way. Never should we seek
guidance from the Lord except in and through His written Word of Scripture,
otherwise we set
ourselves up for severe delusion from the enemy of our souls. Never
should we close our minds,
cease to reason, and allow impressions to just come to us, and then
think we can blindly follow
these suggestions by “faith.” Evil spirits will deceive us if we do
so!
Remember also that THE BIBLE is the way God speaks to us, not devotional
aids or books. These
might be quite sound, or they may be doctrinal and spiritual poison!
Such as the occult book called
“God Calling” which has deceived countless Christians through many
years. The authors, two
women, of that devotional book are anonymous, they claim to have been
given the book directly
from “Jesus.” They claim really an authority which is equal to God’s
revealed Scriptures! The history
of this little book is horrendous! Sufficient to say here that the
authors received the text of the book
by automatic writing, or “journalling.”
How then can we discover the will of God in a sound, Christian manner?
A Christian believer named George Müller was greatly used by the
Lord in earlier days.
Müller built orphanages as God provided the funds through prayer.
George Müller certainly knew God in a remarkable way, and his
guidance from the Lord led him into a
virtual miracle of a life of trust and faith. Let us start then with
George Muller’s simple advice in regard
to receiving guidance by God about His will in a specific matter. I
have kept this advice on the front
page of my old Bible, which has been with me for thirty odd years:
Let us then think a bit deeper about guidance from God:
1. We should have no covered up sin in our lives if we want to have
guidance from God. It is no use
wanting to know God’s will in perhaps a big matter like whether you
should go to China as a courier
of the Gospel, when you don’t want God’s will in your own personal
life in every way! If you embrace
sin and will not repent and confess it to God, then don’t expect to
find out God’s will in other matters.
Come to God and ask Him to show you anything that is contrary to His
will in your life, or if you have
refused to take a step in your walk with Him and this has caused Him
grief. Be quiet before the Lord;
open to His Spirit to convict you. Ask Him to show you sin in your
life. If you are sincere, and nothing
is revealed, then rest in that and don’t be in agony over the matter,
imagining there IS some sin in
your life you can’t see. If you are shown sin by the Holy Spirit, then
repent, be cleansed according to
1 John 1:9.
2. You must not have some plan of your own which you are determined
to undertake, and really in
your heart you only want God to rubber-stamp this decision. You
must want the will of God only, and
in a course which is debatable, you must not have a worked out plan
of your own at all, you must
really want just to do God’s will. Be quiet before God if you are not
really submitted to the Lord in the
matter, and ask Him to work in you to will and to do of His good purposes.
The cause of many
disasters is that believers want to do something, they are not really
surrendered to the Lord, and they
go after their own wills and crash into defeat or even disgrace!
3. Sometimes someone else can present to you a plan or course of action.
This can be presented to
God, but we must keep our hearts and minds open to the Lord’s will
alone and not be swayed by
enthusiasm or pressure from others. We can have a preference about
a matter, certainly, but be
willing immediately to give it up if the course is not of God’s will.
4. You cannot dictate to the Lord about how he will answer you about
His will! God must be allowed
to answer in His own way and in His own time. Do NOT expect the Lord
to answer in your planned
way, by a vision, or a dream, or a certain person or circumstance which
you expect or prescribe. God
is REAL, not your puppet! People can get very disturbed if God doesn’t
answer in the way THEY
want Him to! They can then be discouraged and confused, and even lose
faith in His guidance as
being a reality. God will not work according to your own ideas.
5. Living with God in ordinary life, every day, knowing and obeying
Him, trusting and loving Him,
makes us able to have absolute trust in His faithfulness and deep concern
for our welfare. “He that
cometh to God must believe He is, and that he is a rewarder of them
that seek after Him.” Now if you
have NO unconfessed sin or covered-up sin; NO known wilful disobedience;
NO determination that
your own will should be done, and that God rubber-stamp your decision;
NO plan all worked out
already; NO idea worked out about how you imagine God will answer your
prayer for guidance - then
go to the Lord with your requests that you should know His will.
TRUST THE LORD, BELIEVE IN HIS CARE AND LOVE:
Here I will quote from Jessie P. Lewis:
“Then calmly, restfully, trust all to God, and leave Him to guide into
His will in His own way. TRUST
Him to work in the will to will His will. TRUST Him to work out in
the life in practical obedience. TRUST
Him to sway the affections into the right decision. TRUST Him to guide
the judgment into clear
decision. TRUST Him to restrain quickly when turning toward the wrong.
Now let the trusting one calmly, quietly believe God is faithful, that
God is guiding, and take the next
step that lies in the path of duty, and ‘do the next thing!’ Should
no step be clear, let him wait in peace,
and quiet trust, that God is faithful and will not fail His child.
Should the path continue dark, let him not
cast away the confidence which will have sure reward. ‘Let him trust
in the name (or character) of the
Lord, and stay upon his God.’” (End of quote).
Remember, the Holy Spirit of God will NEVER guide or enlighten us contrary
to the Scriptures of God
Almighty! The Scriptures reveal the Character of God, immediately refuse
any guidance or
“enlightenment” which contradicts the Bible. For instance, a man I
know insists that he has been
guided by God Who has shown that he must work towards a great revival
and a third reformation
which is coming soon. There is NO such instruction in the Bible, and
the Scriptures show that a great
falling away is happening at the end of the Church Age. The man’s “guidance”
is not of God, for it
denies the Scriptures (see II Thess. 2:3; II Timothy 4:1-5; II Peter
2:1-3 et al).
GOD’S GREAT CARE AND OUR RESPONSE IN MATURITY.
Some times younger Christians, those who have been saved just a few
years or months, can act in
ways that are not of God in the mistaken notion that they are fulfilling
God’s will. Believers must
always act as gentlemen and gracious women. We are not of the world,
we are the Lord Jesus
Christ’s ambassadors. There is a lovely passage in Isaiah which shows
the gracious, balanced
behaviour of our Lord Jesus. The Heavenly Father upholds Him, and God’s
soul delights in Him.
When God’s Spirit is working in us to do God’s will, we too will be
balanced, polite, and filled with
gentle sensitivity to others:
“Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth;
I have put my spirit
upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall
not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his
voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break,
and the smoking flax shall he not
quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail
nor be discouraged till he have set
judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law” (Isaiah
42:1-4).
H.A. Ironside has this to say about being a gentleman:
“I began my ministry as a Salvation Army officer, and sixty years ago
the Salvation Army was a
mighty power for good in this country. We used to march the streets
of San Francisco in processions
of over 1,000, with two or three brass bands, and we won hundreds of
souls to Christ, but little by
little the organisation got away from soul-seeking....Personally I
was so under the power of legality
that I felt guilty if I rode in a street car without immediately rising
to give my testimony.
As soon as we left the corner I would get to my feet and say,
“Friends, I want to give my testimony for Jesus Christ, and I want
to tell you how God saved me. “
The conductor would come and say,
“Sit down. We didn’t ask you to come in here to conduct a church service.”
Then I was rather rude to him. I said,
"Well, I'll sit down if you say so, but you’ll have to answer at the
judgment-bar of God for preventing
these people from hearing the gospel.”
...The last time I got in a railroad train in this way I had just started
when a Roman Catholic priest
jumped to his feet and said,
“What’s this? What’s this? Do I have to be insulted in this train?
Do I have to sit in a Protestant service? Call the conductor!”
The conductor came and said,
“Young man, you can’t do this - you’ve no right to interfere with other
people’s religion when you’re
riding on a railroad train.” And so I had to sit down.
It bothered me. The devil either tries to keep you quiet or makes you
think you must do what is
unreasonable. What delivered me at last and showed me there was a golden
mean between
indifference and rudeness was this very passage - Isaiah 42:1-4. What
does it say of the Lord?
“He shall not cry, neither shall His voice be heard in the street.”
He went through His service here for God in such a restful, quiet way.
When people came to Him and
wanted to know how to get eternal life, how to be saved, He was always
ready to meet them, and He
sought out the lost, like the woman at Sychar’s well, but you never
find Him doing anything
boisterous or uncouth, He was truly “God’s Gentleman.” (End of quote.
“Isaiah”, p.p. 249,250.
GOD CAN LEAD US INTO SHARING THE GOSPEL WITH OTHERS AT ANY TIME!
Be ready, be on fire, be Holy Spirit led, be willing to be controlled
by the Lord Himself The Lord God
can use you for willing souls at any time during the day. He wants
you to be a soul winner, but not a
rude fanatic. This incident reImagess in my mind as one which showed
the power of God in my own
soul-winning desires. It happened some years ago, but it was so dramatic
and thrilling:
I was in Melbourne on holiday, and on Sunday I wanted to attend a different
church than one I would
usually go to. I went to a large city church and the service
began. When the minister got up to
preach, a man came right down to the raised pulpit of the large building,
and began to berate the
minister! He said that the minister did not preach the true Gospel,
and was not called to be a preacher
because he preached salvation by works - and other things I cannot
remember now were said very
loudly. Two elders came and escorted the man from the building. As
he came past me (I was sitting
right on the aisle) I saw his face close up was red, his eyes were
bulging, his tongue was actually
hanging out!
After the service I was invited to a cuppa, and to attend a small Bible
study. About twenty of us went
into a back room for the Bible study, and closed the door. At the end
the whole conversation
suddenly turned into a discussion of what the angry man in church had
said about salvation by
Grace alone, not works, Everyone was against him, and declared that
salvation was by church
attendance and good living. I began immediately to say that this was
not so, and a few listened
intently. Then the bell rang for us to leave, and the people all began
to file out of the only door. BUT,
the door handle came off ! They tried to mend the door but could not.
They cried out for help, none
came. They all sat down again, and I found myself preaching the Gospel
to the lot of them. They all
sat as quiet as mice. I ran through Bible verse after Bible verse.
They made a few comments, asked a
few things, but mostly sat mute. No one came to let us out! It seemed
so long that we sat like that,
possibly three quarters of an hour. I preached the Gospel the whole
time. Then some one came, and
found us locked in, let us out and we all went home.
Was there a group of people who were saved in that church, praying for
the others?
Had the lone man who protested been a member of that saved group?
I don’t know.
I only know that the words I spoke were prepared by the Lord, and He
was opening the way and
doing the work. Someone in that Bible study said once,
“How strange, that is exactly what ‘they’ say too. About being saved
by trusting Jesus.”
He was talking about the man who came down to the front and his friends.
GOD HAS HIS HAND ON YOUR HEAD!
Once, years ago, I was in a lot of distress over a court case. I was
a young married Christian mother
then. My husband had a business concern which was becoming complicated
and upsetting. God
showed me a lovely illustration of His love. I was sitting in a cafe
worrying and praying, asking God to
show me His will and help me know what was going to happen and what
I should do! Then I saw a
little boy jump up from a table and rush around the cafe. The Holy
Spirit seemed to be directing my
attention to the scene which followed. The boy’s father got up calmly
from the table, picked up his
belongings and followed the boy. He put his big hand on the boy’s little
head, and turned him in the
direction of the door. The boy went to go around a table and off again,
but the father just turned him
in the right direction again. The little fellow had no idea really
where he was going, but the father was
in control and he knew what to do and where they were going. The boy
had no worries, his father
was in complete control of everything. I relaxed and let God take over.
I trusted Him to know what to
do, and to turn my head in the right direction. And He did, and could
be trusted absolutely. He never
lets the trusting Christian down!
“Trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but
to trust and obey.”
“For all that is in the world, the lust of
the flesh, and the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life, is not of the Father,
but is of the world.
And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof:
but he that doeth the will of God abideth
for ever.” (I John 2:16,17).
Link to Expose on God is Calling...Letter to Bookstore Brisbane
W. B. Howard ...Editor of Despatch
.
Return to Mini-Despatch
TOC
Click
Here
despatch@mail.cth.com.au