Come, Holy Spirit 3: The Guide
For Meditation
The guidance of God is a great theme throughout the whole Bible. One of the tragedies of the Fall in Genesis 3 is that the God who walked with humanity in the garden is now distant and estranged. Humanity longs for a connection with Him again, to be saved from wandering directionless and alone in the world. As God initiaies relaitonship with Abraham and to the Israelites, one of the great gifts of that relationship is His guidance. "I will guide you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you,” God promises his people (Psalm 32:8). God shows up in powerful ways such as the pillar of cloud and fire to guide his people. Nevertheless, there is still distance, there is still separation. In the incarnation, God takes an even closer step toward his people, now guiding and leading them in the flesh. But still, God incarnate can only be in one place at one time. But with the gift if the Spirit, God enables a guiding relationship with every single person who knows him. Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). We now have the intimate guiding presence of God available to us any time, any place, through the intimate presence of the Holy Spirit.
But how exactly does the Holy Spirit guide us? This is one of the most confusing and debated aspects of the Christian life. There are some who say that the Spirit guides through internal promptings and nudges, while others insist that the only way the Spirit guides is through the reading and teaching of Scripture. There have been many times when I wish the Holy Spirit would be as clear with me as he seemed to be at times with the disciples in the Book of Acts, telling them go to one place and not another, to preach to that particular person, and so on. My experience feels a lot more ordinary and mundane. Nevertheless, God’s promise is to guide each of us and direct us in our daily lives, and that he never ever leaves us alone. How can we be more attuned to God’s daily guidance so we can live more deeply into God’s will for our lives? We’ll see this week that the main way the Spirit guides us is through His Word, as he makes his will plain and gives us the power to live in accordance with it.
Our weekly worship guide can be found here.
John 16:12-15
12 “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.14 He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”
