Humor on God's Guidance

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God's Will Through Circumstance: He Opens and Closes Doors

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 16:9, Proverbs 3:5-6, Isaiah 30:21, Genesis 24:27, Isaiah 48:17

Not long ago, I had a young couple come to me and say, “Pastor, we’re looking at buying a house. We’ve looked at this one house, and we really like it, but we want to make sure it’s God’s will. Would ...

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Taking Seriously the Possibility of God’s Guidance

Author

Dallas Willard

Keywords

Scripture

Acts 8:26-40, Exodus 3:1-10, 1 Samuel 3:1-10, Genesis 37:5-11, Acts 9:1-19

Richard Attenborough’s movie Gandhi has a scene set in South Africa where the young Indian lawyer and a white clergyman are walking together on a boardwalk, contrary to South African law at the time. ...

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Hearing God’s Voice is no Small Matter

Author

Dallas Willard

Keywords

Scripture

1 Samuel 3:9-10, John 10:27, 1 Kings 19:11-12 , Acts 9:3-6, Isaiah 30:21

Sunday dinner was finished, but we lingered around the table, savoring the good food and reflecting on the morning’s service at church. The congregation—where I then served as a very young (and very g...

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Preach or Pray: St. Francis Seeks Guidance from Holy Friends

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Early in his career, St. Francis of Assisi was in great agony of doubt about how to proceed. Should he devote himself to prayer and meditation alone or to preach? A humble man, he sought out the wisdo...

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Walking the Dog as an Analogy for Adversity

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 50:20, Exodus 14:13-14, Job 23:10, Psalm 37:23-24, Romans 8:28 , 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

In C. S. Lewis’ classic work Mere Christianity , the English apologist compares God’s use of adversity to walking a dog on a leash. When the dog wraps its leash around a pole and tries to move fo...

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Struggling to Find His Path

Author

Thomas Merton

Keywords

The following prayer from the Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton, is vivid in its honesty and captures the challenge of seeking God’s will through a life of prayer: My Lord God, I have no idea where I a...

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If You Want to Fill your Sunday School Class

Author

Dallas Willard

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 3:5-6, Exodus 3:1-12, 1 Kings 19:9-13, Romans 12:1-2, Acts 16:6-10, Psalm 25:4-5

Within the Christian community this leads to a prominence of teaching on the will of God and how to know it. Russ Johnston draws upon his own wide experience to remark how this continues to be one of ...

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When Decisions have Fateful Consequences

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Joshua 1:5, Psalm 20:7, Isaiah 40:30-31, 2 Thessalonians 3:3, Hebrews 10:23; 13:5-6

The famous poem The Charge of the Light Brigade includes these haunting lines: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred… Someone had blundered. Theirs not to reason why, ...

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He Guides Our Steps, Through All The Tangled Maze

Author

Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 42:16, Psalm 23:, Exodus 13:21-22, 2 Corinthians 4:6, Romans 8:28, Romans 11:33, Philippians 1:6

The following poem is attributed to Nicholaus Ludwig Zinzendorf, the 18th century Moravian church leader and reformer. It captures well the ups and downs of life, the existential questions that emerge...

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Can you Grasp the Word of God?

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Jeremiah 20:9 , Deuteronomy 6:4–9, Isaiah 55:10–11, Hebrews 4:12, 2 Timothy 3:16–17, Psalm 119:105

There’s a story that used to make the rounds about the German theologian Paul Tillich. Tillich’s theology was considered dangerous by many Christians in the U.S. Supposedly one time after delivering a...

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The Kinds of Being Spiritually Lost

Author

Don Everts and Doug Schaupp

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 7:7-8, Proverbs 27:17, Luke 15:4-7, Luke 19:10

The second lesson this group of new believers has shown us is that the postmodern path to faith is organic. Lostness, of course, looks different depending upon your perspective and personality. It is ...

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Ratatouille and Surrendering to God

Author

Casey Clark

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 8:6-11, 1 Corinthians 2:16, Galatians 2:20, Colossians 3:3, Philippians 2:5

When we watch cartoons, it is fun to see the way we can so easily allow some of the craziest stuff to just be taken at face value. Movements that don’t follow the laws of physics? Sure. Talking animal...

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Portrait of Mortality and Reflection

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Ecclesiastes 1:2, Job 14:1-2, Matthew 6:19-21, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Psalm 90:1212

John Donne (1572–1631), was a British poet who entered the ministry in 1615 and served as dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, from 1621 until his death, Donne underwent a profound transformation aft...

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Look Up, See Possibilities

Author

Bruce D. Strom and Eugene Cho

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 12:2, Psalm 19:1, 2 Corinthians 4:18, Psalm 123:1, Isaiah 40:26

Maybe this sounds silly, but go outside and look up. You cannot see yourself. All you see is a vast expanse of possibilities. Look down. You will see yourself and little else. This is true in life. Lo...

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Keeping Time with the Spirit

Author

James K. A. Smith

Keywords

Scripture

Galatians 5:25, Romans 8:14, Isaiah 30:21

Keeping time with the Spirit is less a regimental march—left, right, left, right! ad infinitum—and more like a subtle dance, a responsive feel for what comes next. Lionel Salter offers a parallel in h...

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Hearing the Voice of God in Jesus

Author

Mark D. Roberts

Keywords

God's Voice

If we want to hear the voice of God, we should pay attention to Jesus. We hear God’s voice in the teachings of Jesus as they are portrayed in the biblical gospels. We hear God’s voice through the acti...

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Disregarding God’s Prohibitions

Author

Mark D. Roberts

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 6:1-2, 1 John 1:9, 1 Corinthians 6:18, James 1:14-15, Matthew 5:27-28, Hebrews 13:4, Proverbs 6:32

Some years ago I had a pastoral relationship with a couple of people who were deeply in love with each other. They believed that God wanted them to get married so they could consummate their love. The...

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Deepening Our Attention

Author

Kent Annan

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 4:2, Amos 5:24, James 1:5, Philippians 4:6-7, Micah 6:8, Matthew 6:10

Simone Weil, a French philosopher, theologian and activist around the time of World War II, wrote a remarkable essay in which she connects the discipline of schoolwork with that of prayer. She argues ...

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Listening to God’s Voice

Author

Frank Buchman

Keywords

God's Voice

We accept as commonplace a man’s voice carried by radio to the uttermost parts of the earth. Why not the voice of the living God as an active, creative force in every home, every business, every parli...

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The Faithfulness of a Few

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 28:20, Revelation 2:10, Matthew 5:10-12, Matthew 10:22, 2 Corinthians 4:8-10, 1 Peter 4:12-14, Romans 8:35-37, John 15:18-20, Psalm 31:23, Matthew 25:21, 1 Corinthians 4:2, 1 Timothy 6:12, Matthew 24:45-46

Pliny, a Roman Governor serving around 112 AD, faced a challenging situation regarding Christianity. Many Church historians believe that by his time, it had become illegal to profess the Christian fai...

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Fighting Constant Comparison with Platitudes (Does not Work)

Author

Richella J. Parham

Keywords

Comparison

Scripture

Psalm 139:13-14, Ephesians 2:10, Galatians 6:4-5, 2 Corinthians 10:12, Romans 12:3

I searched for guidance on how to combat the problem of constant comparison. I found that well-meaning teachers sometimes addressed the topic, but their advice usually ran along these lines: “You sho...

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Lifting the Rock

Author

Source Unknown

Keywords

One day a father decided to take his son to play at the local park. The boy quickly gravitated to the sandbox and found himself mesmerized by the colors and textures surrounding him. After a short tim...

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The Roots of the English Word “Worship”

Author

Fleming Rutledge

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 9:6-7, Micah 5:2, 1 Kings 8:10-11, Matthew 2:1-12, Philippians 2:6-11 , Psalm 95:6-7

In the English language, worship is an important word. It comes from ancient Anglo-Saxon and means “worth-ship”—to ascribe ultimate worth to something or someone. Matthew is portraying the nature of t...

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Biblical Meditation

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 1:null

Biblical scholar Nahum Sarna (in On the Book of Psalms) points out that the mediation mentioned in Psalm 1 (The man who “meditates on [God’s] law day and night”) is “not engaged in meditation and cont...

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Getting Lost, Sort Of

Author

Samuel Rodriguez

Keywords

God knows where you are and has never left you, regardless of how you may feel or how uncertain you are of where you’re going. It reminds me of when our kids were small and we visited Disneyland for t...

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Feed My Sheep

Author

Dallas Willard

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 6:1-8, Exodus 33:12-23, 1 Samuel 3:1-10, Acts 9:1-19, Matthew 17:1-8, Psalm 16:11

Sometimes, of course, the sense of God with us becomes much more distinct. My oldest brother, J. I. Willard, served for over thirty years as a minister under the blessing of God. But his entry into th...

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The Way God Enjoys Getting Things Done

Author

Joni Eareckson Tada

Keywords

Weakness

Years ago, when I took that fateful dive into shallow water and broke my neck, never did I think that God was honing me for leadership. All I could do was retch at the thought of sitting down for the ...

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Divine Intervention & One more Step

Author

Dallas Willard

Keywords

Scripture

1 Samuel 3:4-10, Exodus 23:20, Isaiah 30:21, Acts 16:6-10, John 10:27-28, Psalm 91:11-12

One remarkable illustration concerns Peter Marshall, the Scot who in the middle of the twentieth century became one of America’s most widely acclaimed ministers. Through his outstanding qualities as a...

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What the With-God Life Looks Like

Author

John Ortberg

Keywords

Transformation

There is a consistent pattern in Scripture of what happens in a life that God wants to use and improve: -There is always a call. God asks an ordinary person to engage in an act of extraordinary trust...

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The Gentle Whisper of God

Author

Richard J. Foster

Keywords

Scripture

1 Samuel 3:1-10, Isaiah 30:21, 1 Kings 19:11-13 , John 10:27, Acts 8:26-40, Psalm 32:8

In the early days of my experiments in listening to the Lord, I sensed a distinct word to call a friend, a chaplain at a local college, and see how he was doing. The word carried with it the marks of ...

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