God Takes the Initiative

God reveals his activity as an invitation for you to join him. When he reveals, it is up to us to adjust our lives to God.

What happens when we see God at work? We often get self-centered rather than God-centered. We must reorient our life toward God, seeing life from his perspective. We must allow God to develop his character in us. He is always at work and we must assume that he wants us to join him.

God always takes the initiative. He waits for us to respond to him by adjusting our lives. Perhaps you’ll read a brief story in the life of George Muller and how God worked through this man of faith.

I never remember a period that I ever sincerely and patiently sought to know the will of God by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, through the instrumentality of the Word of God, but I have always been directed rightly. But if honestly of heart and uprightness before God were lacking, or if I did not patiently wait upon God for instruction, or if I preferred the counsel of my fellow men to the declarations of the Word of the living God, I made great mistakes.

Three things helped him:

  1. He sincerely sought God’s direction.
  2. He waited patiently on God until he had a word from God.
  3. He looked to the Holy Spirit to teach him through the Word.

These things led to making mistakes:

  1. Lacking honesty of heart.
  2. Lacking uprightness before God.
  3. Impatience in waiting on God.
  4. Preferring the counsel of men over the declarations of God.

He summed up the way he entered into a heart relationship with God:

  1. Seeking to get his heart into a state where it has no will of its own in the matter. Here is 9/10 of the problem.
  2. Don’t leave the result to feeling or simple impression; or we can be liable for great delusions.
  3. Seek the will of the Spirit of God, through the Word of God. These must be combined.
    1. The Spirit alone can bring delusions.
    2. The Word alone can bring legalism.
  4. Take into account providential circumstances.
  5. Ask in prayer for God to reveal his will.
  6. Through prayer, study of the Word and reflection come to a deliberate judgment according to the best of my ability and knowledge. If the mind continues at peace, then proceed.

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