Of David. To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul; 2 in you I trust, O my God. Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me. 3 No one who waits for you will ever be put to shame, but they will be put to shame who are treacherous without excuse.
4 Show me your ways, O LORD, teach me your paths; 5 guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and I wait for you all day long.
6 Remember, O LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. 7 Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O LORD.
8 Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways. 9 He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. 10 All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant. 11 For the sake of your name, O LORD, forgive my iniquity, because it is great.
12 Who, then, is the man that fears the LORD? He will instruct him in the way chosen for him. 13 He will spend his days in prosperity, and his descendants will inherit the land. 14 The LORD confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them.
15 My eyes are ever on the LORD, for only he will release my feet from the snare. 16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. 17 The troubles of my heart have multiplied; free me from my anguish. 18 Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins. 19 See how my enemies have increased and how fiercely they hate me! 20 Guard my life and rescue me; let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you. 20 May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you. 22 Redeem Israel, O God, from all their troubles!
Introduction
How do you discern God’s will when you are making a decision? In verse nine David says that God guides the humble. How does He guide us? Impressions? Words of knowledge? Gut feelings? Prophecies? Hidden messages? Fleeces? Promptings? When we pray for guidance, what form should we expect the answer to take? Should we be listening for a still, small voice telling us which way to go? Should we ask for a miraculous re-arraignment of circumstances so that there is no question which way is best? Should we be on the lookout for coincidences? Like the women who decided it was God’s will to fly rather than drive on her vacation because when she woke up her digital clock said 7:47. My question is how does she know it is not a message from God saying, “Steer clear of jetliners”?
Arguably the most dominant theme in this psalm is God’s guidance for David. He brings it up eight times. And it is no surprise that David would focus on that. When you get into a mess because of your own sin very often it is not easy to figure out how to get out of it. When David’s life exploded with trouble, which it often did, his response was to fix his attention on what God is like. And this time when he did that he saw more than a dozen different attributes, but the one that captured his attention most was the fact that God is the type who guides His people. And when your life is chaos and you are in a world of pain it is no surprise that God’s guidance is going to be one of the main attributes that captures your attention when you focus on God. This psalm is a great example for us of how to seek guidance from God.
These principles apply whether you are in some fix because of your own sin or if you are just faced with a hard decision. We make hundreds of decisions every day – some of them very important and very difficult. Chances are most of you are facing a somewhat difficult decision right now. So what should you do?
The Attribute: God’s guidance
God guides in ways, not just choices
Let’s begin by doing what David did and fixing our gaze on this attribute. As I describe it, think about how you can enjoy the experience of God’s guidance more in your life so you will love Him more.
There are two parts to this process of God’s guidance: 1) The action God does. That is described with four different words: Show (YADA, cause me to know) used once; teach (LAMAD, teach) used three times; guide (DARAK, lead, or guide) used twice; instruct (YARAH, teach) used twice. And 2) The other part is what it is God is showing/teaching. That is also described with four different words: his ways (DEREK) used four times; (his) paths (ORACH, path or way) used once; (his) truth (EMET, truth) used once; what is right (MISHPAT, judgment or justice) used once
4 Show me your ways, O LORD, teach me your paths; 5 guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and I wait for you all day long.
8 Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways. 9 He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. 10 All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant (lit. who keep His covenant and testimony).
12 Who, then, is the man that fears the LORD? He will instruct him in the way chosen for him (or in the way he should choose).
God is a teaching God. His way of guiding is not by saying “Choose option B here, choose option A there…” Instead He leads us by teaching us which things are more important than other things. Friendship is more important than money; godliness is more important than friendship. Family is more important than comfort; righteousness is more important than family. Obedience is more important than sacrifice. Love is more important than ritual. Reality is more important than symbol. Eternal things are more important than temporal things. Affections are more important than actions, etc.
So God guides us by teaching. And the goal of all the instruction is that we walk in God’s ways. The word “way” refers to the path that your manner of living cuts through the terrain of life. People who live for physical pleasure cut one path. People who live to please people cut a certain path. People whose main interest is money cut another path. People who love power cut a particular path. There are countless different paths you can take as you navigate through life. And there is one path that God loves. And the fact that He loves it makes it the ideal path. It is the path that is in your best interests. It is the path that glorifies God the most. It is the path that will ultimately be the most loving and beneficial for others. Everything about that path is best. It is the path of least regret. It is the path of greatest reward. It is narrow. It is hard. Only a very few ever find it. Most are unwilling to take it when they do find it. But it is without question the best path. There is a God who knows everything, who sees and controls the future, who has infinite power, who is nothing but pure goodness, and who has unrestrained love for His children, and when He says a path is the best path, it is the best path.
One of the most common mistakes we tend to make is in thinking that the most important thing when you are making a decision is which option you end up choosing. When you are seeking God’s will, you need to understand that the most important thing is not which of several options that you choose. When we are struggling with the decision about a job or a large purchase or what to do in some relationship, and we cry out to God and say, “Show me Your will!,” what we want is for God to let us know whether we should choose A or B. But whether you choose A or B is not the most important thing. The most important thing is whether you follow God’s way or another way. There could be two people faced with the same decision and both of them choose B, and yet they took completely different paths. If B is the higher paying job, one guy could choose that because he is greedy and materialistic and a lover of money. Another guy could choose that job because he has the gift of giving and has a deep desire in his heart to support more missionaries and give more to the church and to the poor. The most important thing is not the options you select but the way you take. So when you are seeking God’s will you are seeking a path, not just a choice.
Each time you make a decision you are preferring some things over other things. One person might take one path because he prefers leisure over money. And someone else might take the opposite path because he prefers money over leisure. And so the way God guides us through life is by showing us which things to prefer over other things.
Guidance and holiness: Decisions are a matter of what you love & prefer
And that is why God’s guidance in Scripture is so often connected with righteousness and holiness. If you think guidance is only a matter of which option to select, you’re not going to understand the connection with righteousness. If you are seeking God’s guidance just to find out “Am I going to be happier with this car or that car?” or “Will we be better off in this house or that house?” or “Will I get a better education in this school or that school?” then righteousness does not seem to be a big factor. But when you understand that the real issue is which things your heart is preferring when you choose the Honda over the Chevy (are you preferring the things that are most dear to God’s heart?) then it becomes very clear why it is a matter of holiness and righteousness. Because the very essence of evil is when your heart loves bad things. And the very essence of righteousness is when you heart is delighted by the things of God. The definition of sin is the preferring of anything over God. And the definition of righteousness is the preferring of God over any other treasure. So God’s guidance is a matter of holiness and righteousness even when it is over seemingly neutral things like which car or house to buy.
One preacher said, “Guidance is usually a result not so much of ecstatic heights but of spiritual depths.” That is a great statement. The way to be led by God is not by getting into an ecstatic state where you hear voices from heaven. It is by knowing God so profoundly, and walking with Him so closely, and being so much conformed to His image that your heart loves the same things and hates the same things His heart loves and hates.
Don’t let that discourage you – it is not out of reach
Now, I hope that does not hit you as a discouragement. Some of you might hear all that and think, “Great – I have not walked with the Lord like I should have. So does that mean I cannot know His will in this decision I am faced with today? Am I going to have to spend years getting where I should be spiritually before I can enjoy God’s guidance?” No. The thing you need to understand about God’s guidance is it is one of His attributes. The fact that he guides His children is an aspect of His nature. It is characteristic of what He is like. It is so close to the core of God’s essential nature that verse eight connects it with God’s goodness and righteousness.
8 Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.
It is the very fact that He is good and upright that fuels the pleasure He has in guiding sinners in the right way. He is so good, it is His nature to bring about more good – which requires starting with something not good and making it good. The problem of my sin is the very thing that makes it more certain that He will do this.
Last week we talked about the fact that God does not just forgive us when we sin – He restores us. He repairs the damage and leads us back onto the right path. So His guidance is an integral part of His restoration when we sin. That is why this psalm (25) that speaks so much about forgiveness and restoration from sin also says even more about guidance from God. One of the sweetest, most precious promises in all the Bible about restoration of a repentant sinner is in Isaiah 57.
Isaiah 57:15-19 For this is what the high and lofty One says-- he who lives forever, whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. 16 I will not accuse forever, nor will I always be angry, for then the spirit of man would grow faint before me-- the breath of man that I have created. 17 I was enraged by his sinful greed; I punished him, and hid my face in anger, yet he kept on in his willful ways. 18 I have seen his ways, but (now note the three things God is going to do to bring about restoration) I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him, 19 creating praise on the lips of the mourners in Israel.
Any time there is a promise of restoration from sin you usually do not have to look far for a reference to guidance. In Isaiah 58 the people were going through the religious ritual of fasting while being cruel and unloving to the poor. So God calls them to repentance.
Isa.58:6-11 "If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, 10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. 11 The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
Guidance is a key part of restoration from sin because God’s guidance is always guidance into His righteous paths.
Ps.73:22-24 I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. 23 Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. 24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.
Why is that? What is God’s reason for always throwing guidance into the package when He restores us from our sin? The answer to that is in the 23rd psalm.
Psalm 23:3 He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness…(Why?) for his name's sake.
It glorifies His name when He takes sinners from the path of sin and restores them to the path of righteousness. And that is why He is zealous to do it. God will literally cross land and sea to be a guide for you.
Ps.139:9-10 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me
If Scotty suddenly beamed you out to the farthest reaches of the universe God would be there to guide you.
God’s will is not a guessing game. Following His guidance and discovering His will for your life and for a particular decision is not a cosmic Easter egg hunt with God giving hints and saying, “You’re getting warmer.” Think of your own children. If one of your kids just really, really wanted to do your will – wanted to walk in the path that was most delightful to your heart, would you tell that child what you want in Chinese or some code that the kid could not figure out? God is the best, most effective communicator in the universe. And He guides us like a father guides his little children. You don’t give your two year old child a topo map and a compass and drop him off in the forest and say, “Meet you back at camp.” A father understands the limitations of his child, and that is the model for how God deals with us. (Psalm 103:13 – F is for “Father has compassion”)
A teaching process, but not remote - direct
Now, when you think of God’s guidance as a teaching process, do not let that create a picture in your mind in which God sends you a textbook from heaven and tells you to study up. Scripture does not describe God’s guidance in remote, detached terms. It is not a distance learning program. Jeremiah 31:32 describes God’s guidance in terms of taking His people by the hand and leading them.
Ps.63:8 My soul follows hard after you, and your right hand upholds me.
God’s guidance is very personal and individual.
Avoiding errors on both sides
Christians have tended to fall into one of two errors on either side of the truth with it comes to following God’s guidance. Some of our Charismatic friends focus so much on the immediate, direct, personal aspect that they tend to fall into the error of superstitious mysticism. They are always looking for voices from God or messages hidden in circumstances or coincidences, or they turn the Bible into a book of magic. They figure out God’s will by playing Bible roulette – randomly opening to a verse and then ripping a phrase of that verse out of context to apply to their situation.
The problem with that approach is it is superstitious. There is no rational basis for believing that some feeling or some coincidence carries a particular message. Even in the case of supernatural knowledge – like knowing some information about a person that you had no way of knowing; demons can convey information like that just as well as God.
It is possible to become so enamored with the miraculous that you are not really all that interested in hearing God’s voice unless it comes in miraculous form. People like that get real excited if they hear a voice that tells them the name of some person they have never met – or some fact about that person’s life. “Last Tuesday you thought about calling your mother, and you dialed but then quickly hung up.” And if it turns out to be true they get all excited – “I heard the voice of God!”
If I got up here and preached a whole sermon on the woman who started to dial her mother and then hung up, and the next week I preached on the item someone had in her purse that was revealed to some modern day prophet - a whole sermon on a yellow handkerchief, it would not be long before every seat in the place would be empty. In fact, I doubt even the supposed prophets who got those revelations would be interested; which goes to show that it is not really God’s Word they love, but rather they are just in love with miracles.
Others see that error and overreact to the other side and end up erring by making God’s guidance nothing but impersonal, indirect, general information recorded in the Bible that is the same for everyone; God does not speak directly to anyone, He just gave us the Bible – so God’s speaking is exactly the same for every human being on the planet. The problem with that is that Scripture speaks of God speaking to us and guiding us as individuals.
Isa.30:21 Whether you turn to the right or to the left you will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
And right here in Psalm 25 David says,
14 The LORD confides in those who fear him
The word “confide” in this context most likely refers to the secret communications within an inner circle. “God opens his mouth to speak to them without any reserve.”
And if God’s only communication to us is in the print on the page of the Bible, then what are we to make of all the promises that God will guide us on the condition that we repent of our sin. The Bible can be read by anyone – even unbelievers. When David cries out to God in this psalm for guidance, he is not asking God to drop a copy of Scripture out of heaven into his hands. David had the Scriptures, yet he still prayed for guidance.
So what is the truth that lies between the errors of superstitious mysticism on the one hand and no direct, individual speaking on the other hand? The one side points to miraculous speaking – like the way God spoke to the prophets. But not all people are prophets. In fact, after the completion of the Bible, I do not believe God is giving any more direct, prophetic revelation in addition to Scripture. The other side points to the Bible as the only way that God ever communicates now. But is there anything else? Is there any way Scripture speaks of God communicating to us besides the miraculous way He spoke to the prophets and the general way He speaks in the Bible? Is there ever a sense in which God communicates something to you, as an individual, that is specific and personalized to you, and yet is not a miraculous prophecy? Yes. There is another way God speaks to us. It is called enlightenment.
Enlightenment
It is when God opens your eyes to see some specific truth.
Eph.1:18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you,
These people are already saved, but Paul is praying that God will open their eyes in a greater way to some specific truths. There is a huge amount of truth that is just sitting there in front of our faces that we are blind to. And God speaks to us by turning on the light in a specific area and showing you something that is there that you could not see or accept before.
Isa.42:16 I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them
Ps.43:3 Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell.
The people who get into the superstitious error have the problem of never knowing for sure if what they are hearing is God’s voice. People sometimes ask me – “When God speaks to you, how do you know it is His voice?” But if you understand that God speaks to us not through promptings or impressions or coincidences, but through enlightenment, then you do not have to ask the question, “How do you know if it is God?” If there is light, of course it is God. That is like asking, “How do you know when someone has turned the lights on in a room?” You know by whether or not you can see clearly. God does not give you special, superstitious insight into where the chair is – He just turns on the lights so you can see plainly where it is.
Now, I want you to understand what I mean by this, so I will show you how it works in three areas: Wisdom, Interpretation of Scripture, and Application of Scripture.
WISDOM
Imagine you are trying to make a basic wisdom decision that there is no direct statement about in Scripture. For example, should I buy a house right now or just rent? My first step is to go to God in prayer and as Him to guide me. First and foremost, that is a matter of me loving the right things and having the right priorities. But once that is in place there is still the question of how to best achieve the spiritual goals that I now have. My motivation is I want to be a good steward of the money God has entrusted to me. So now I need wisdom to know what is the best way to avoid squandering that money? So how is God going to answer my prayer for guidance and wisdom? Should I watch for some strange coincidence that has to do with buying or renting and try to interpret it? No. God does not use darkness and obscurity to communicate. He uses light. The most common way is for Him to answer a prayer for guidance in a case like this would be to simply open my eyes to wisdom by means of providence.
So you go to a wise a realtor and say, “I have heard it is bad stewardship to rent, because your money goes down the drain every month, so I think I should probably buy.” And God provides a realtor who is willing to explain to you that in the market you are in it will probably be a net loss if you buy and resell within five years. The appreciation on the house probably will not be enough to cover the realtor fees. And you are a junior in college and are planning on moving away within a year or two. So now the lights are on. You can see clearly what the wise course is. That is the voice of God. God is in charge of which realtor you talked to, and whether that realtor knew what he was doing, whether he would be a clear communicator, whether you would understand or misunderstand, etc. And God providentially moved all those factors to bring you to a point of being able to see the wise course.
How do you know it was God’s voice? Because the light is on. It is just as plain as day to any unbiased person who considers the facts, that it is the wise course. If you go to your friends and say, “God told me to rent and not buy” and they ask how you know it was God, and you say, “I can just feel it in my bones” – all they can do is say, “Well, if you say so.” But when God really does speak, He turns on the lights, and everyone around can plainly see what is there. Now, if you explain your reasoning to all your godly, unbiased friends and none of them can see what you see, it may be that you are imagining something.
INTERPRETING SCRIPTURE
It works the same way with interpreting Scripture. Paul wrote to Timothy and explained some principles in the beginning of 2 Timothy two, but he did not expect Timothy to fully understand them until God gave Timothy enlightenment.
2 Tim.2:7 Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.
We need God to open our eyes so we can understand the meaning and significance of what He said in His Word. And another thing we need is for Him to give our hearts the ability to accept and delight in what He said in His Word. If you are not willing to accept a truth, you probably will not be able to understand it.
1 Cor.2:14-15 The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual man makes judgments about all things
So the Holy Spirit enlightens us by making our hearts willing to accept a truth so we can then understand it when the lights go on. If you are unwilling to accept something is true you will not see it even when the lights are on. So the Spirit works in our hearts and transforms our affections and desires and biases so we are willing to accept the truth.
If you are looking for insight, do not expect God to give it by means of misuses of His Word. For example, Bible roulette. That is when you just flop your Bible open and randomly point to a statement and then apply it in a way other than it was originally intended. Or another example – allegorizing. Any time you draw any interpretation from the Bible that differs from what was originally intended by the author, you are misusing God’s Word. And God does not want us to seek His guidance through the misuse of His Word.
The way God speaks to you through Scripture is by opening your eyes to what is there. And once He has done that it is obvious it was His voice because the correct interpretation is plain to see. You can point it out to anyone who knows the proper way to interpret the Bible and they will say, “Of course – I can see now that that is what that passage means.”
For example, suppose you are studying Psalm 25 and you are trying to figure out what the very first line means – unto you I lift up my soul. God does not speak to you by just having you sit around and daydream about different possibilities until you think of one that you really like and that will get lots of “oooh’s and aaaah’s at a Bible study discussion group. Instead He will lead you to the right commentary or teacher or He will move in your heart to make you think to search on that phrase in your Bible software, and once you do that it becomes very obvious what it means to lift up your soul to something. It means to make that the object of your desire. God turns on the lights and lets you see what is clearly there. And when he does that you can show what you discovered to pretty much any unbiased person and they can see it plain as day.
APPLYING SCRIPTURE
So it works with wisdom, it works with interpreting the meaning of Scripture, and it also works with the application of Scripture. When you are discerning what a Bible writer meant by what he said in a specific text that is interpretation. When you use that principle to make decisions in life that is application. For example, Paul urged Timothy to use a little wine for his stomach’s sake in 1 Timothy 5:23. That passage has one meaning and one meaning only. There is only one correct interpretation of that passage. The correct interpretation is that Timothy was to use wine for his stomach in a medicinal way. There are no other meanings and there never will be, because a passage can never mean what it never meant. So that is the meaning.
From there, you discern the principles that are implied. One principle is that Christians should use medicine when they are sick. That is a necessary implication of what Paul said. Another necessary implication is that it is okay to seek relief from suffering. Another necessary implication is that we ought to be concerned about one another’s suffering. Another is that the solution to sickness is not always repentance from some specific sin in the sick person’s life.
So if you are facing a decision in life – like whether you should take your sick grandmother to the hospital or just trust God to heal her, God will speak to you and guide you to the right decision. But He does not speak to you by sending a cloud formation in the shape of a hospital that makes you think, “Aha! A message from God!” Nor does He try to guide you through ambiguous feelings in your stomach that you interpret as “a sense of peace” about this or that decision. I do not know how feeling a sense of peace ever came into use as a means of supposedly hearing God’s voice. Jonah felt so much peace in his disobedience that he was sleeping like a baby in the middle of a raging storm. And Jesus felt so little peace over His decision to obey the Father and go to the cross that He was up all night sweating blood. No, God does not have to resort to ambiguous, unclear means of communication like that. He guides you in the right way by turning on the lights and letting your mind notice 1 Timothy 5:23, and then enabling your heart to understand and apply its intending meaning.
Enjoy being guided
God is an ideal Guide
It is important, in your quest to love God, to learn how to enjoy being guided through life by Him. He is such a perfect Guide. He knows you. He knows your needs, your limitations, where you are now, where you need to go; He will not be manipulated, but He will show great compassion. He knows your blind spots, He knows the dangers and the places where you are likely to be lured off the path. He has all the power you need, all the wisdom it takes, all the kindness there is, He is able to guide you; He is willing to guide you, and He has promised over and over and over that He will guide you.
All that is left is for us to become glad followers; to be like David in Psalm 63:8, where he said his soul clung to God and followed hard after Him; to listen to His Spirit through His Word. It is such a thrilling reality to know that God has taken you by the hand to guide you. He speaks to you through His Word.
Jer.15:16 When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart's delight
Any time the lights are on, and you can see a situation or a decision or a text of Scripture clearly - realize that that is not just your own intellect. It is a direct, personal experience of God Himself! You are experiencing what it is like to be guided by Him! When a truth clicks while you are studying your Bible or listening to a sermon, and a principle becomes clear - don’t miss the fact that you are experiencing the very presence of God and are receiving grace directly from Him. If you have a sense that something is wrong and you should not do it – that is not just your memory banks. It is the actual voice of God - a direct experience of Him! Without that direct action of God the wrongness of the act would not come to mind. Or it would not seem wrong. Learn to take the direct, immediate voice of God’s Spirit seriously. When the lights go on that means He is in the room! Talking to you!
Listen!
Be very discerning whenever someone tells you to listen for the voice of God. Usually when people urge you to do that what they have in mind is superstitious mysticism. They want you to stop praying, and empty your mind and wait for some thought to come floating in along with a warm fuzzy feeling, and then assume that is God talking to you. Please do not ever do that. Satan will masquerade as an angel of light and tell you all kinds of wonderful sounding things that are 99% true with 1% of the arsenic of some deadly error mixed in. So do not do that.
However, having said that, I do want to urge you to listen for God’s voice. Seek His guidance. Listen to hear God’s voice with an expectant heart. When you open your Bible each day, do you expect God to speak to you? Or are you just getting your Bible reading done?
What about when you come to church? Do you come here expecting to hear from God – to have the Spirit of God communicate something directly from the mind of God into your heart? Something that is just what you need right now in your life? If you are like me you critique most every sermon you hear. It was a good sermon, bad sermon, too long, not enough illustrations, too loud, too soft, whatever. Maybe a better way to critique a sermon would this based only on how much of God’s voice was in the sermon. If there is a lot of God’s voice heard clearly and accurately in a sermon, it could hardly be too long. And if there is very little of God’s voice in a sermon it could hardly be too short.
And if we thought that way – so that our main question was, “How much of God’s voice was in that sermon” before long I think we would probably start critiquing the sermon less and critiquing our listening more. So you walk out of church thinking, “How well did I listen to You, God? And how much delight did I take in what You said to me?” Next week we will look at the threefold response and then learn four very specific things this psalm teaches us to do when seeking guidance from God.
Benediction: Ro.15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Discussion Questions:
1. Describe the attribute of God’s guidance and what is so wonderful about it.
2. What is the difference between seeking to know which option will work out best and seeking God’s way?
3. Why is the way you choose more important than whether you select option A or B?
4. Describe how God gives you individual guidance in wisdom decisions, or in interpreting or applying Scripture.
5. What’s wrong with superstitious mysticism or impersonal generalism?
6. What is enlightenment? Have you experienced an enlightenment in some specific area where you were seeking God’s guidance recently?
