Thou, Our Guide.

Here are some excerpts from J.I. Packer's book Knowing God:

Thou, Our Guide.

Belief that divine guidance is real rests upon two foundation-facts: first, the reality of God's plan for us; second, the ability of God to communicate with us.

Has God a plan for individuals? Indeed he has. He has formed an "eternal purpose", "a plan for the fulness of time" in accordance with which he "accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will" (Eph 3:11, 1:10-11). God has a plan for each of His children.

But can God communicate that plan to us? Indeed he can. As man is a communicative animal, so his Maker is a communicative God. He made known his will to and through the Old Testament prophets. He guided Jesus and Paul.

Scripture contains explicit promises of divine guidance, whereby we may know God's plan for our action. "I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you," says God to David (Ps. 32:8). In the New Testament...Paul counsels, "Let your minds be remade and your whole nature thus transformed. Then you will be able to discern the will of God, and to know what is good, acceptable, and perfect" (Romans 12:2).

Christians have an indwelling instructor, the Holy Spirit. "You have been anointed by the Holy One . . . The anointing which you received from him abides in you, . . . his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie" (1 Jn. 2:20, 27). The giving of guidance is specifically ascribed to the Spirit.

It is impossible to doubt that guidance is a reality intended for, and promised to, every child of God. Christians who miss it thereby show only that they did not seek it as they should. It is right, therefore, to be concerned about one's own receptiveness to guidance, and to study how to seek it.

How We Receive Guidance

The basic mistake is to think of guidance as essentially inward prompting by the Holy Spirit, apart from the written word. The consequences of this mistake among earnest Christians have been both cosmic and tragic. The idea of a life in which the inward voice of the Spirit decides and directs everything sounds most attractive, for it seems to exalt the Spirit's ministry and to promise the closest intimacy with God; but in practice this quest for superspirituality leads only to frantic bewilderment or lunacy.

The true way to honor the Holy Spirit as our guide is to honor the holy Scriptures through which he guides us. The fundamental guidance which God gives to shape our lives -- the instilling, that is, of the basic convictions, attitudes, ideals, and value judgments, in terms of which we are to live, -- is not a matter of inward promptings apart from the Word, but of the pressure on our consciences of the portrayal of God's character and will in the Word, which the Spirit enlightens us to understand and apply ourselves.

The Spirit leads within the limits which the Word sets, not beyond them. "He guides me in paths of righteousness" -- but not anywhere else.

Guidance, like all God's blessings is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us his way, that we may tread it; he will also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God's promise; this is how good he is.