Some years ago I worked in a factory that had some tasks done by robots.

The factory was already pretty much mechanised, as you would expect for a company supplying parts to the car industry. But each machine did one simple task. Robots, however, are multitasking. Put in the instructions and off they go doing the same job in exactly the same way, over and over again.

Lead us

The Lord’s Prayer — Part 14

What I am talking about is God leading us. So how does God lead?

You don’t have to be a Christian in Evangelical circles for long before you hear the term, I feel lead. Usually from someone who is enthusiastic and new to the faith, and is hard to tell them that it might, just might be their own minds thinking this and not God, and that God’s leading has to be tested, without killing that enthusiasm.

And then there is the possibility that they are hearing from God.

How can we tell?

Because God does lead. Jesus told us to pray for God to lead us and the Psalmist talked, metaphorically, of God leading by still water. So how do we tell if God is leading us?

It would be great to for God to send an email or text message letting us know what to do. So how do we find out how God is leading us in our lives now?

When asked this, Billy Graham said that he believed that God guided him as he prayed, studied His Word and maintained a willingness to do His will. He went on to explain that even though we may understand God’s will for us in a particular matter, our hearts must be ready to do what He says.

Because there are two plans, God has a generic plan, culminating in the return of Jesus Christ to the earth in glory at the end of the age – this applies to us all, and I have dealt with this in the blog in this series called God’s Will.

But there is also a specific plan for each of us. And this does not come as a set of detailed instructions, because God does not want robots who will follow a set of instructions to the letter. What God wants are people who will be faithful and trust him and follow him so that we may come to know him intimately.

Today’s sermon was coincidentally about this. The reading and sermon were based on the story, in Daniel chapter 3, of  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being thrown into King Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. God did not save them from going into the furnace, but by going through it, and by being in the furnace with them.

We can be sure that whatever God has in store for us he will be with us in it.

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