By J.R. Miller
We talk much about being led. If we are not led by one who knows the way--we can never get home, for we can never find the way ourselves. How are we led? How can we know what the divine leading is? We cannot hear God speaking to us, nor can we see Him going before us to show us the way. How, then, can we learn what His will is for us? How can we have Him show us the way?
For one thing, we are quite sure that God desires to lead us. His guidance includes not only our daily steps--but also the shaping of our circumstances and affairs. We cannot be thankful enough that our lives are in God's hands, for we never could care for them ourselves.
There is no such thing as chance in this world. Every drop of water in the wild waves, in the most terrific storm, is controlled by God. In these days, with their wonderful advance in science, some good people are asking if there is any use in praying, for example, for the sick, for favorable weather, for safety of the ship that bears loved ones of theirs on the sea, or for the staying of the epidemic. It seems to them that all things are under fixed laws with which no prayer can interfere. How, then, can God lead each one of his children in any ways, except according to the fixed and unalterable laws of the universe? We need not try to answer this question--but we may say that God would not be God if He were in such bondage to the laws of His own world that He could not hear the cry of a child for help, and answer it, or if He could not open a way for you out of the greatest difficulties.
So we need not vex ourselves with the question, how God can lead us and direct our paths. We may leave that to Him, for He is infinitely greater than all things He has made. He is able to ward off dangers, that none of them can touch us. This is God's world, and God is our Father. His name is Love, which means that love is the essential quality of His character. Do you think since God's power is so great, and His law so unalterable, that His love has no liberty of action? Believe it not. God can do what His heart longs to do for us. He can lead us in the way in which He would have us go.
God's leading, however, does not remove the necessity for thought and effort on our part. He does not lead us by compulsion, without choice or exertion of our own. We have something to do with the working out of the will of God for ourselves. God is never to be left out of anything; He is always to be consulted. We pray, "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," but it is we who must do this will--God will not coerce us into doing it, nor will He do it for us. We are to take God's way instead of our own--but His will must work through our wills. Our wills are not to be crushed, broken, as sometimes we are told--they are to be merged in Christ's, voluntarily brought into accord with His will, so that we shall do gladly and heartily what He wills for us to do. "Our wills are ours--to make them Yours." God never does anything for us, that we can do for ourselves. He has given us brains, and He does not mean to think for us. He has given us judgment, and we are to decide matters for ourselves. He does not carry us along--He leads us through our own willingness, our obedience, our aspirations, our choices, our ventures of faith.
God's leading includes divine providence. There are many examples of this in the Bible--but the story of Joseph is one of the plainest and most remarkable. In his youth, Joseph was cruelly sinned against. The envy of his brothers tore him away from his home, and we see him carried off as a slave to a strange land. Why did not God interfere and prevent this crime? He could have done it, since he is God. Did He not love Joseph? Yes. Why, then, did he permit such terrible wrong to be done to this gentle boy? Just because He loved him.
But the writer of the story shows us what would have been the consequences of Joseph's escaping that night. A number of years later, when the famine came on, there would have been no storehouses filled with food, and Egypt would have been destroyed. The Hebrews in Canaan would have perished, there would have been no chosen family, the history of the ancient world would have been changed, and civilization would have been set back centuries. So we see it was in wise, far-seeing love--that God did not interfere to save this Hebrew lad from the wickedness of his brothers. He used the evil of men to lead Joseph through all his hard training and discipline, to prepare him for the great work he was to do when he became a man.
If we would be led by God, we must submit to His providences, when they clearly interpret His will. Not always, however, are hindrances meant to hinder; often they are meant to be overcome, in order that in the overcoming we may grow strong. But when there are obstacles which cannot be removed, they are to be accepted as the waymarks of divine guidance. Whatever in our lot is inevitable, we must regard as indicative of God's will for us, showing us gates closed against us, and other gates opening out upon ways in which we must walk.
How we may interpret Providence and decide in all cases what the will of God for us is, are questions which many find it hard to answer. Some people have a habit of opening the Bible at random when they are trying to decide some important question of duty, and then taking the first word they come upon as the answer to their question. But this is not a sane or Scriptural way of getting divine guidance. Bible texts are not meant to be used as dice in playing games of chance.
If we would learn what God's will for us in life's common affairs is, we should always keep near to Christ, so near that we can speak to Him any moment, ask Him any question, and let our hand rest in His. He always finds some way of making His will known to those who thus trust Him and look to Him for direction.
Then if we would have divine guidance, we must be willing to accept it when it comes to us. We must be willing to be led, and must be ready to go wherever our Lord would have us go. Ofttimes the reason we do not get guidance, is because we are not willing to take God's way when we know it. Elizabeth Fry, at the age of sixty five, said that from the time her heart was touched by the divine Spirit, when she was seventeen, she had never awakened from sleep, in sickness or in health--but that her first waking thought was, how best she might serve her Lord. She sought always to be led by Him in paths of service of His own choosing. The outcome of such devotion to the divine will was a life full of beautiful ministry. The prisons of all the civilized world felt the impress of her noble life. A young girl who will thus seek the divine guidance, and promptly and unquestioningly accept it, cannot know to what beauty of character and what splendor of usefulness she will be led in the end.
We are to pray to be divinely led not only in large matters--but in the smallest--every hour, every moment. "Order my steps," is a prayer in one of the Psalms. How it would change all life for us if we would continually pray thus! You will have some hard thing to do tomorrow, some uncongenial and distasteful task. You will not want to do it. But it is God's will, and that makes it a radiant deed, like the holiest service of angels before God's throne. You will have to endure something hard or humiliating thing tomorrow--some unjust treatment, some unkindness. Your nature will revolt. "I cannot do that," you will say. But it is God's will that you should endure it, and endure it sweetly, patiently, songfully, and that changes it for you--it is a glorious thing to do God's will.
We will always find God's will for us--by always doing the next thing. No matter how small it is, it will take us a step forward in God's way. Doing His will in little things--will show us other steps to take, and thus will lead us on until all the way has been passed over. The Word of God is said to be a lamp unto our feet--not a great sun shining high in the heavens, illumining a hemisphere--but a little lantern that we may carry in our hand and hold so that its light shall fall on the bit of road on which we are walking. It will not light a whole mile for us at a time--but it will always make the next step clear, and as we take that, the next one, and so on, until all the miles of our journey have been shown to us.
If only we will do the will of God, as it is made known to us, little by little, moment by moment, we shall be led step by step, and at last shall reach home.
One of the most remarkable incidents in the Gospels is that in which, to a poor woman's cries for help, Jesus answered not a word. He kept his face turned away, and seemed to treat the suppliant with cold indifference. Yet he was not indifferent. In His heart was warm compassion for her, and in the end He gave her far more than she had asked.
There are times when God seems to be silent to us. To our earnest supplications he answers not a word. We are told to ask and we shall receive, to seek and we shall find, to knock and it shall be opened unto us. Yet there comes times when, though we ask most imploringly, we seem not to receive; when, though we seek with intensest earnestness, we seem not to find; when, though we knock until our hands are bruised and bleeding, there seems to be no opening of the door. Sometimes the heavens appear to be brass above us as we cry. Is there anywhere an ear to hear, or a heart to feel sympathy with us in our need?
Nothing else is as solemn as the silence of God. It is a pathetic prayer in which a psalm writer pleads, "Be not silent to me; lest I become like those who go down into the pit." Anything from God--is better than that He is silent to us. It would be a sad, dreary, lonely world if the atheist's creed were true--that there is no God, that there is no ear to hear prayer, that no voice of answering love or comfort or help ever comes out of the heavens to us.
Do prayers of faith ever remain really unanswered? There are prayers which are answered, although we do not know it, thinking them still unanswered. The answer is not recognized when it comes; the blessing comes and is not perceived. This is true especially of many spiritual blessings which we seek. We ask for holiness, yet as the days pass it does not seem to us that we are growing in holiness. Yet, perhaps, all the while our spirit is imperceptibly, unconsciously imbibing more and more of the mind of Christ, and we are being changed into His image. We expect the answer in a certain way--in a manifestation which we cannot mistake, while it comes to us silently, as the dew comes upon the drooping flowers and the withering leaves. But, like the flowers and the leaves, our souls are refreshed and our life is renewed.
We put our cares into God's hands, with a prayer that He will free us from the load. But the cares do not seem to become any less. We think there has been no answer to our prayer. Yet all the while an unseen hand has been shaping, adjusting, disentangling the complex affairs of our life, and preparing a blessing for us out of them all. We are not conscious of it--but our prayer has been receiving continual answer. Like the tapestry weavers, we have not seen the unfolding of the pattern as we have wrought away in the darkness, and yet on the other side, where God's eye sees, it has been coming out in beauty. Some day we shall know that many prayers we now think unanswered, have really been most graciously answered.
There are prayers, however, which are not answered. For example, we ask God to lift away our burden. He hears our pleading and His heart is warm with love; yet, to do this would be to rob us of blessings which can come to us only through the bearing of the burden. There are mistaken notions current among good people about the way God helps. Some think that whenever they have a little trouble, a bit of hard path to walk over, a load to carry, a sorrow to meet, a trial of any kind--all they have to do is to call upon God and He will take away that which is hard, or prevent that which impedes, freeing them altogether from the trial. But this is not God's usual way. His purpose concerning us is not to make things easy for us--but rather to make something of us. So when we ask Him to save us from our care, to take the struggle out of our life, to make the path mossy for our feet, to lift off the heavy load--He simply does not do it. It really would be most unkind and unloving in Him to do so. It would be giving us an easier path today--instead of a mountain vision tomorrow. Therefore, prayers of this kind go unanswered. We must carry the burden ourselves. We must climb the steep path to stand on the radiant peak. God want us to learn life's lessons, and to do this we must be left to work out the problems for ourselves.
There are rich blessings that we can get only through sorrow. It would be a short sighted love, therefore, which would heed our cries for deliverance and spare us from sorrow because we desired it, thus depriving us of blessings which God intends to send to us in the sorrow, and which can come to us in no other way.
A child may indolently shrink from the study, the regular hours, the routine, the tasks and drudgery and discipline of the school, and beg the parent to let him stay at home and have an easy time. But what would you think of the father who would weakly grant the child's request, releasing him from the tasks which irk him so? And is God less wise and kind than our human fathers? He will not answer prayers which ask that we may be freed from duty, from work, from struggle, since it is by these very things alone that we can grow. The only true answer to such prayers is the withholding of what we ask.
A man and his wife were talking together, and this scrap of their conversation was overheard: "I could make a good living," said the man, "yes, more than a good living, by continuing to paint the sort of trash I've been painting all summer."
"Yes," said the woman, looking at him proudly, "but I want my husband to live up to his best. I would live in a garret, on a crust, cheerfully, to help him do it."
That is the way God would have us live, so as to make the best of our life. When we pray for help to live easily and not up to our loftiest reaches of attainment and achievement, God will be silent to our request. He would not be our wise and loving Father if He treated such request differently.
There are selfish prayers, too, which go unanswered. "There are others." Human lives are tied up together in relations. It is not enough that any of us shall think only of himself and his own things. Thoughts of others must intertwine with thoughts for ourselves. Something which might be good for us, if we were the only person, it may not be wise to grant because it might not be for the comfort and good of others. It might work them hurt, or at least add to their burdens. It is possible to overlook this in our prayers, and to press our interests and desires to the harming of our neighbor. God's eye takes in all His children, and He plans for the truest and best good of each one of them, even the least. Our selfish prayers, which if granted, would work to the injury of others--He will not answer.
There is yet another class of prayer which appears to be unanswered, but whose answers are only delayed for wise reasons. Perhaps we are not able at the time to receive the things we ask for. A child in one of the lower grades in the school may go to a teacher of higher studies and ask to be taught this or that branch. The teacher may be willing to impart to the pupil this knowledge of higher things--but the pupil cannot receive it until he has gone through certain other studies to prepare himself for it. The higher music cannot be taught until the rudiments have been mastered. There are qualities for which we may pray--but which can be received only after certain discipline. A ripened character cannot be attained by a young Christian merely in answer to prayer--it can be reached only through long experience.
These are suggestions of what appear to be unanswered prayers. They may have been answered--but we did not recognize the things we sought when they came. Or they may be, indeed, unanswered, because to answer them would not have been kindness to us. Or the answers may have been delayed until our hearts were ready to receive them. We may always trust God with our prayers, even when the need seems to us most urgent. He is wiser than we, and His love for us never makes a mistake. He will do for us whatever is best, at the best time, and in the best way. Unanswered prayers are not unheard prayers. Every whisper of a child, every sigh of a sufferer in this world, goes up to God, and His heart is compassionate and loving, and what is best for us He will do.
