4. We must confidently expect guidance. “Let him ask in faith nothing doubting,” There are many and many who cannot find the way, though they ask God to show it to them, simply because they have not the absolutely undoubting expectation that God will show them the way. God promises to show it if we expect it confidently. When you come to God in prayer to show you what to do, know for a certainty that He will show you. In what way He will show you, He does not tell, but He promises that He will show you and that is enough.
5. We must follow step by step as the guidance comes. As said before, just how it will come, no one can tell, but it will come. Oftentimes only a step will be made clear at a time; that is all we need to know—the next step. Many are in darkness because they do not know and cannot find what God would have them do next week, or next month or next year. A college man once came to me and told me that he was in great darkness about God's guidance, that he had been seeking, to find the will of God and learn what his life's work should be, but he could not find it. I asked him how far along he was in his college course. He said his sophomore year. I asked, “What is it you desire to know?” “What I shall do when I finish college.” “Do you know that you ought to go through college?” [pg 166] “Yes.” This man not only knew what he ought to do next year but the year after but still he was in great perplexity because he did not know what he ought to do when these two years were ended. God delights to lead His children a step at a time. He leads us as He led the children of Israel. “And when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that the children of Israel journeyed: and in the place where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel pitched their tents. At the commandment of the Lord the children of Israel journeyed, and at the commandment of the Lord they pitched: as long as the cloud abode upon the tabernacle they rested in their tents. And when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, then the children of Israel kept the charge of the Lord, and journeyed not. And so it was, when the cloud was a few days upon the tabernacle; according to the commandment of the Lord they journeyed. And so it was, when the cloud abode from even unto the morning, and that the cloud was taken up in the morning then they journeyed: whether it was by day or by night that the cloud was taken up, they journeyed. Or whether it were two days, or a month, or a year, that the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle, remaining thereon, the children of Israel abode in their tents, and journeyed not: but when it was taken up, they journeyed. At the commandment of the Lord they rested in the tents, and at the commandment of the Lord they journeyed: they kept the charge of the Lord, at the commandment of the Lord by the hand of Moses” (Num. ix. 17-23).
Many who have given themselves up to the leading [pg 167] of the Holy Spirit get into a place of great bondage and are tortured because they have leadings which they fear may be from God but of which they are not sure. If they do not obey these leadings, they are fearful they have disobeyed God and sometimes fancy that they have grieved away the Holy Spirit, because they did not follow His leading. This is all unnecessary. Let us settle it in our minds that God's guidance is clear guidance. “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John i. 5). And any leading that is not perfectly clear is not from Him. That is, if our wills are absolutely surrendered to Him. Of course, the obscurity may arise from an unsurrendered will. But if our wills are absolutely surrendered to God, we have the right as God's children to be sure that any guidance is from Him before we obey it. We have a right to go to our Father and say, “Heavenly Father, here I am. I desire above all things to do Thy will. Now make it clear to me, Thy child. If this thing that I have a leading to do is Thy will, I will do it, but make it clear as day if it be Thy will.” If it is His will, the heavenly Father will make it as clear as day. And you need not, and ought not to do that thing until He does make it clear, and you need not and ought not to condemn yourself because you did not do it. God does not want His children to be in a state of condemnation before Him. He wishes us to be free from all care, worry, anxiety and self-condemnation. Any earthly parent would make the way clear to his child that asked to know it and much more will our heavenly Father make it clear to us, and until He does make it clear, [pg 168] we need have no fears that in not doing it, we are disobeying God. We have no right to dictate to God how He shall give His guidance—as, for example, by asking Him to shut up every way, or by asking Him to give a sign, or by guiding us in putting our finger on a text, or in any other way. It is ours to seek and to expect wisdom but it is not ours to dictate how it shall be given. The Holy Spirit divides to “each man severally as He will” (1 Cor. xii. 11).
Two things are evident from what has been said about the work of the Holy Spirit. First, how utterly dependent we are upon the work of the Holy Spirit at every turn of Christian life and service. Second, how perfect is the provision for life and service that God has made. How wonderful is the fullness of privilege that is open to the humblest believer through the Holy Spirit's work. It is not so much what we are by nature, either intellectually, morally, physically, or even spiritually, that is important. The important matter is, what the Holy Spirit can do for us and what we will let Him do. Not infrequently, the Holy Spirit takes the one who seems to give the least natural promise and uses him far beyond those who give the greatest natural promise. Christian life is not to be lived in the realm of natural temperament, and Christian work is not to be done in the power of natural endowment, but Christian life is to be lived in the realm of the Spirit, and Christian work is to be done on the power of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is willing and eagerly desirous of doing for each one of us His whole work, and He will do in each one of us all that we will let Him do.
Chapter XIX. The Holy Spirit and the Believer's Body.
The Holy Spirit does a work for our bodies as well as for our minds and hearts. We read in Rom. viii. 11, R. V., “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you.”
The Holy Spirit quickens the mortal body of the believer. It is very evident from the context that this refers to the future resurrection of the body (vs. 21-23). The resurrection of the body is the Holy Spirit's work. The glorified body is from Him; it is “a spiritual body.” At the present time, we have only the first fruits of the Spirit and are waiting for the full harvest, the redemption of our body (v. 23).
There is, however, a sense in which the Holy Spirit even now quickens our bodies. Jesus tells us in Matt. xii. 28 that He cast out devils by the Spirit of God. And we read in Acts x. 38, “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.” In James v. 14, the Apostle writes, “Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the [pg 170] Lord.” The oil in this passage (as elsewhere) is the type of the Holy Spirit, and the truth is set forth that the healing is the Holy Spirit's work. God by His Holy Spirit does impart new health and vigour to these mortal bodies in the present life. To go to the extremes that many do and take the ground that the believer who is walking in fellowship with Christ need never be ill is to go farther than the Bible warrants us in going. It is true that the redemption of our bodies is secured by the atoning work of Christ but until the Lord comes, we only enjoy the first fruits of that redemption; and we are waiting and sometimes groaning for our full place as sons manifested in the redemption of our body (Rom. viii. 23). But while this is true, it is the clear teaching of Scripture and a matter of personal experience on the part of thousands that the life of the Holy Spirit does sweep through these bodies of ours in moments of weakness and of pain and sickness, imparting new health to them, delivering from pain and filling them with abounding life. It is our privilege to know the quickening touch of the Holy Spirit in these bodies as well as in our minds and affections and will. It would be a great day for the Church and for the glory of Jesus Christ, if Christians would renounce forever all the devil's counterfeits of the Holy Spirit's work, Christian Science, Mental Healing, Emmanuelism, Hypnotism and the various other forms of occultism and depend upon God by the power of His Holy Spirit to work that in these bodies of ours which He in His unerring wisdom sees that we most need.