For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1.7).
How we view and talk about God’s dealings with us from day to day can have a considerable effect upon our openness to his guidance in the great decisions of life. Many Christians have picked up a manner of thinking and speaking known as pietistic speech, which is very damaging to the perception of genuine guidance. These friends constantly ascribe all kinds of everyday events to the special and direct intervention of the Lord, as though their lives were filled with minor miracles. They believe this way of speaking is ‘spiritual’, and just what the Lord wants to see in his people. However, it frequently leads to a form of spiritual ‘superstition’ in which Christians interpret their perceived interventions by God as signals of guidance.
The famous words of Romans 8 tell us – ‘And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.’ To achieve this he allows us, alongside our blessings, to be exposed to a lifetime of temptations, troubles, trials, sorrows, inconveniences, illnesses and failings, whether brought about by ourselves, the devil, or by natural circumstances. While we must experience these troubles
and difficulties, the Lord weaves all the strands of life’s experiences together, using them to chastise, strengthen and train, in short, to work our eternal spiritual good. Through trials the Lord may be rebuking us for some sin, or training us and improving our resilience and character for some future service. Equally, he may be stimulating our dependence upon him in prayer, or teaching us to be sensitive to the hardships of others, or simply reminding us that we should fix our affections on heavenly things and not attempt to get our satisfaction from the things of this world. When we are about to suffer minor discomfort because of the weather, or the late-running of a bus, it is not necessarily God’s will that we should be delivered from that problem. Everything that goes ‘wrong’ is part of our training for Heaven.
In Romans 8, where it is said that all things work together for our good, we do not read about earthly comforts, but about being kept close to Christ in the midst of – ‘tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword’. We do not deny that God makes remarkable provisions for his people, but judging from the detailed narratives of Luke and Paul, such interventions are generally connected with times of special need, such as when we are on some important service for the Lord, or when he is being especially sympathetic to us in some severe trial.
Before hastily ascribing all comforts to God we should remember that the devil can also bring ‘good’ into our lives (by the Lord’s permission), such as when he tries to distract us from the Lord’s service with comforts, benefits, flatteries, and great earthly opportunities. Satan may also arrange for us to be given gifts, pleasant surprises, or comforts in order to entice us into worldly friendships, alliances or careers.
The devil uses ‘wiles’ (that is strategies) says Paul in Ephesians 6, and King Solomon also points to the strategy of flattery as a prime tool in the onslaught on the soul of the believer (the adulterer in Proverbs, for example, working by flattery and fair speech). From the beginning of his offensive against believers Satan has used pleasant things to deceive. The trouble with friends who ascribe a constant stream of minor benefits to God’s direct intervention, is that they do not seem to realise that the Lord works to lift their interests above earthly, minor and domestic things, to make them more concerned about their part in the work of Christ, and the progress of the Gospel. He would hardly shower minor personal miracles upon them contrary to his own training objectives.
. . . to be continued