"Thou Our Guide" (Chapter 20 of Knowing God by J. I. Packer)

Knowing God by J. I. Packer

“Thou Our Guide” (Chapter 20)

Divine guidance has either been ignored or doubted because of the influence of modern notions about God, or it has been misunderstood by Christians leading to unnecessary anxiety.

God Has a Plan

Belief in divine guidance rests on two foundational facts:

The reality of God’s plan for us

The ability of God to communicate with us

Does God have a plan for individuals?

He does.

God has an eternal purpose for all things and all people (Eph 1:10-11).

God has a gracious eternal purpose for his redeemed people (Rom 8:28-30).

Can God communicate his plan to us?

He can.

Our God is a communicative God, exemplified countless times in the Scriptures.

Scripture contains explicit promises of divine guidance, whereby we may know God’s plan for our action.

God promises to give wisdom to those who sincerely ask in faith (James 1:5).

We are children of God. What father does not counsel or guide his children?

Scripture is God’s Word to us, for our teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness (2 Tim 3:16-17).

We have the Holy Spirit as our indwelling Instructor.

God seeks glory through our lives, so it stands to reason that God would guide us to obey his will so as to receive glory through us.

“It is impossible to doubt that guidance is a reality intended for, and promised to, every child of God. Christians who miss it thereby show only that they did not seek it as they should. It is right, therefore, to be concerned about one’s own receptiveness to guidance, and to study how to seek it.” - J. I. Packer

How We Receive Guidance

The question is not whether or not God guides us as his children; the proper question is how God guides. “Earnest Christians seeking guidance often go wrong.”

Why do Christians often go astray in their pursuit of God’s guidance?

A distorted conception of the nature and method of divine guidance.

They overlook the guidance that is ready at hand and open themselves up to all sorts of delusions.

“Their basic mistake is to think of guidance as essentially inward prompting by the Holy Spirit, apart from the written Word.” - J. I. Packer

How do thoughtful Christians make this mistake?

They hear “guidance” and immediately think of a particular class of “guidance problems,” which may be termed “vocational choices” — choices between competing options, all of which in themselves appear lawful and good.

Should I marry or remain single?

Whom should I marry?

Where should I go to college?

What vocation should I choose?

Where should I live?

What church should I join?

These are obviously important questions that deserve our attention, but the mistake is jump to the conclusion that all guidance problems are of this one type of “vocational choices.”

Two features about divine guidance in the case of “vocational choices” are distinctive:

These problems cannot be resolved by a direct application of biblical teaching.

So, because Scripture cannot directly decide the issue, people fall back to inward promptings and inclinations that give their minds a settled peace and therefore decide the issue on this basis, assuming that these inward promptings and inclinations are God-given and revelatory.

“The consequences of this mistake among earnest Christians have been both comic and tragic. The idea of a life in which the inward voice of the Spirit decides and directs everything sounds most attractive, for it seems to exalt the Spirit’s ministry and to promise the closest intimacy with God; but in practice this quest for superspirituality leads only to frantic bewilderment or lunacy.” - J. I. Packer

Those who adopt this mystical pursuit of guidance through inward impressions and promptings fail to grasp that the fundamental mode whereby our rational Creator guides his rational creatures is by rational understanding and application of his written Word.

“The true way to honor the Holy Spirit as our guide is to honor the holy Scriptures through which he guides us.” - J. I. Packer

“The fundamental guidance which God gives to shape our lives—the instilling, that is, of the basic convictions, attitudes, ideals and value judgments, in terms of which we are to live—is not a matter of inward promptings apart from the Word but of the pressure on our consciences of the portrayal of God’s character and will in the Word, which the Spirit enlightens us to understand and apply to ourselves.” - J. I. Packer

“The basic form of divine guidance, therefore, is the presentation to us of positive ideals as guidelines for all our living.” - J. I. Packer

“‘Turn from evil and do good’ (Psalm 34:14; 37:27)—this is the highway along which the Bible is concerned to lead us, and all its admonitions are concerned to keep us on it.” - J. I. Packer

“The reference to being ‘led by the Spirit’ in Romans 8:14 relates not to inward ‘voices’ or any such experience, but to mortifying known sin and not living after the flesh!” - J. I. Packer

Any inward thoughts and promptings that we have must be judged and evaluated on the basis of the revealed, written Word of God. “The Spirit leads within the limits which the Word sets, not beyond them.”

Six Common Pitfalls

Even with the right ideas about guidance in general, it is still easy to go wrong. Even regenerate human nature is open to inward deception of the heart.

Unwillingness to think.

It is a false piety that is very unhealthy to follow inward impressions that have no rational base and declines to heed the biblical call to “consider.”

God made us thinking, rational beings. Wisdom and careful thought are means of God’s guidance.

Unwillingness to think ahead.

Unwillingness to look at the long-term consequences.

Unwillingness to weigh alternative courses of action.

Unwillingness to take advice.

It is a sign of conceit and immaturity to dispense with taking advice in major decisions.

The collective wisdom and experience of the body of Christ is a means of God’s guidance.

Unwillingness to suspect oneself.

Unwillingness to question our inward impressions or promptings.

Unwillingness to consider the role of emotions, feelings, and physical, biological influences.

Unwillingness to examine our own motives.

Unwillingness to spot our own rationalizations.

Unwillingness to discount personal magnetism.

Certain personalities are capable of swaying the minds and opinions of others.

We must be on guard against our own capabilities to lead people the wrong way, and we must be on guard against the possibility that what we may consider guidance is actually the strong influence of a dominant personality.

Unwillingness to wait.

“Wait on the Lord” is a constant refrain in the Psalms.

God often keeps us waiting. God is not in such a hurry as we are.

It is not God’s way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time.

No Simple Answers

Choosing the correct path does not guarantee a smooth road. Encountering obstacles and pitfalls along the way is not a sure indication that one has taken the wrong path.

Encountering troubles and trials is always an opportunity to assess our lives and the path we have chosen, but it does not immediately follow that the existence of troubles is a sure sign of sin or error.

Trouble is not necessarily a sign of being off track at all; for as the Bible declares in general that “many are the afflictions of the righteous” (Ps 34:19).

Things that we may consider a bad decision and a waste of life or opportunity may be exactly where God wanted us all along.

We cannot properly assess the wisdom of the path we have chosen by the lack or presence of hardships we face.

Hindsight is not necessarily 20/20, because we can’t know all the possibilities of alternative courses of action. Only God can.

“And if you are thinking that you know the will of God for your life and you are anxious to do that, you are probably in for a very rude awakening because nobody knows the will of God for his entire life.” - Elisabeth Elliot in Knowing God by J. I. Packer

When We Miss the Road

What if we do miss the road? What if we did clearly make a wrong choice and take the wrong path?

Is the damage irrevocable? Have we completely messed up God’s will for our lives? Thank God, no.

“Our God is a God who not merely restores, but takes up our mistakes and follies into his plan for us and brings good out of them.” - J. I. Packer

“Guidance, like all God’s acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us his way, that we may tread it; he wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God’s promise; this is how good he is.” - J. I. Packer