Word of God

Philippians 2: 13 ‘…for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.’

Luke 12: 12 ‘For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.’

As the Spirit Leads

These verses speak to us about receiving guidance from God. This often comes with the gifts of wisdom and discernment. These are spiritual tools, which we need to grasp and use. This is a tricky subject and it is easy to deceive yourself. On the other hand, we do not need to run away from a tool that God gives us. God can and does speak to us; we need to learn to recognise and receive His communication.

Our hearts can sometimes be full of wanting this or wanting that, but it would be unwise to think that every desire within our heart is of the Holy Spirit, even if it is of long-standing. It needs an awake and alive spirit to distinguish what is of the Holy Spirit from what is just the desire of the heart.

In Philippians Paul says, both to will and to do. We need to learn from our own experience that what is of the Holy Spirit will bear fruit for the kingdom when we obey and put it into practice. If we think something is of the Spirit and we act on it, but then find nothing good comes of it, we will need to reflect again and learn to distinguish the Spirit from the flesh.

Last Sunday, I happened to be the one leading the prayer meeting and various leadership type people were not there because they were out on ministry and the meeting was not going too well. I did my best to listen to the Spirit and to seek discernment from one or two others and together we tried various things to lift up the meeting. In the end, we persevered with the praise and there was no time left to bring in the teaching, except to finish off with a short word of about five minutes.

I might have been right to set aside the normal programme or I might have missed the Lord’s leading. Afterwards you think, ‘if I had done this or that…’, but at least the meeting ended on a higher note with people more in the Spirit.

As we were leaving the hotel where we hold our meetings, we received a message from one of those coming back from ministry using a cell phone with a poor connection. We just got the words ‘accident at Macheke’ and ‘Marondera hospital’, and the phone cut out. We drove back home with our hearts beating a little faster, not knowing whether people were alive or dead or what had happened.

We were very relieved, when we got a better connection at home, to find that no one was badly hurt. The driver had dozed off and they had hit a concrete sign on the side of the road. The vehicle was badly damaged and needed to be towed home, but no one was seriously hurt. The vehicle, a pick-up truck with people in the back as well as in the cab, just stopped short of going down an embankment and rolling over and over. Perhaps this was what we were having a hard time over and persevering in prayer for that whole Sunday afternoon.

God has a purpose in everything, and it is good to follow the leading of the Spirit as best we can. God can work in us for His good pleasure and give us what we should say and do as He sees the need. Our programme is nothing to the Lord and can easily be set aside. God knows what his people really need. The tools we need to get in touch with the Lord’s will are the gifts of wisdom and discernment.

As the Spirit works more and more in the church of today, we need the gifts of the Spirit to grow in us as well. We need to ask for these gifts and use them and let them grow. Mature Christians in today’s church cannot just rely on others to tell them what God wants and does not want. Sure, they need to listen to the word of their leaders and elders, especially when their elders are mature men and women of God, but they also need to learn to use the Holy Spirit’s tools for themselves.

Paul did not tell the Philippians, God works in me; let me tell you what you must do. He told them, God works in you, as if to say, just as He does in me, so that you also may know the will of the Lord.