Life's Inanities and Ironies

  "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice… that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." — Romans 12:1–2 We end where a guided life actually happens: on the altar of ordinary days. Most of the will of God is not found at a crossroads with thunder over it. It is found in a body presented, a mind renewed, and a Tuesday afternoon offered up as reasonable service. Romans 12 does not begin with techniques for hearing voices. It begins with mercies — the gospel mercies of the eleven chapters before it. Because you have been justified, because there is no condemnation, because nothing shall separate you from the love of God in Christ — therefore present your bodies. Guidance is for living sacrifices, not for consumers shopping for a destiny. A man who will not yield his body will not be able to discern a path. How do you prove that good and acceptable and perfect will? By refusing con...

  "As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." — Acts 13:2 After the risen Christ ascended, He did not leave His people without direction. He gave the Spirit, the apostolic Word, and a missionary church. Acts is not a catalog of techniques for getting personal messages. It is the record of the church’s founding, and it still teaches a guided people how to live together under that Lord. Notice the setting. They were ministering to the Lord and fasting. Guidance for world mission was given in worship, not in restlessness. Barnabas and Saul were not sitting in a corner demanding a destiny. They were in the work when the next work was named. The Spirit’s call was confirmed in the body. The church fasted again, prayed, laid hands on them, and sent them away. Private impressions were not treated as sufficient. That pattern rebukes two kinds of men: the man who will not be sent, and the ma...

  "For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." — John 6:38 All lesser examples bow here. The Lord Jesus is not merely our pattern of guidance. He is our Savior, and only the saved can follow Him. You cannot treat the obedient Son as a model while refusing Him as a substitute. Yet once you belong to Him, the Gospels show a human life lived in perfect, glad submission to the Father. “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do” (John 5:19). He moved when His hour had come and refused when it had not. At twelve He must be about His Father’s business, and still He went down to Nazareth and was subject unto His parents. In Gethsemane He yielded the cup He naturally shrank from. There is no conflict in Him between the will He came to do and the sorrow He felt while doing it. This silences two errors. First, that God’s will is always immediate comfort. The will of God sent the Son to the cross. If your definition of...

  "But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD." — Jonah 1:3 Not every crisis of guidance is a lack of information. Sometimes the Lord has already spoken, and we do not like the assignment. The most honest sentence some of us could write is not “I cannot find God’s will,” but “I have found it, and I am booking a fare the other way.” Jonah is the patron saint of the informed rebel. “Arise, go to Nineveh.” The word was plain. He went down to Joppa, down into the ship, down into sleep, down into the sea. Sin always has a downward grammar. He had theology enough to confess that he feared the Lord which hath made the sea and the dry land. He still ran. Knowledge without surrender is not guidance. It is indictment. God’s direction includes pursuit. He sent out a great wind. The lot fell upon Jonah. The fish was prepared. You cannot outrun the God who made the sea you are sailing. Psalm 139 asked the question Jonah tried to answer: whither shall I flee from...

  "I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry." — Psalm 40:1 David was anointed long before he was crowned. Between the horn of oil and the throne lay caves, betrayals, and opportunities to seize what God had promised by the wrong means. The most important education of his life was not how to be king. It was how not to take the kingdom. Twice he could have killed Saul. In the cave at Engedi his men whispered that the Lord had delivered the enemy into his hand. The circumstances looked like providence. David cut the skirt, and then his heart smote him. “The LORD forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the LORD'S anointed” (1 Samuel 24:6). Not every open door in a cave is from God. Some are tests to see whether you love the promise more than the Promiser. David inquired of the Lord again and again — at Keilah, after Ziklag burned. He did not treat yesterday’s instruction as today’s automatic answer. First Samuel 30:6–8 is worth han...