Dear Colleagues,
The issue of obtaining God’s guidance has vexed Christians for as long as there’s been a Bible over which we argue, discuss and defend our cause with the passion of knights on a pilgrimage!
Take Abraham as an example of someone who followed God’s guidance whatever. He was promised by God that he would be the father of many nations, that his descendants would exceed the number of grains of sand on the seashore. Then Abraham was told by God to sacrifice his son, his one and only son. That must have caused Abraham to have sleepless nights while his mind refused to settle and surrender to sleep. How did Abraham reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable differences? On the one hand God had given him a promise to give him a son and that through this son his descendants would be too many to count in many lifetimes. Then Abraham was told by the same God to sacrifice that son.
Abraham must have thought that the only conceivable way for God to keep His promise would be for Him to raise his son, Isaac, back to life after he had been sacrificed! After all is anything too hard for God? Consider Jesus who, with those unforgettable words, “Lazarus come out”, raised a man from the dead. Some scholars have suggested that Jesus specifically said Lazarus’ name to make sure that all the graves in the immediate vicinity would not also give up their dead on hearing His command.
In seeking God’s guidance God will often test us but we need to hold on to the fact that Jesus loves us. He takes hold of our hands and says to us, “I’ll keep you and make you to be a light for the Gentiles.” (Isaiah 42:6). Later in the same chapter, God says, “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” (Isaiah 42:16). Often God guides us along unfamiliar paths and many times we can’t see the way ahead – we’re like blind people being led by a seeing-eye dog. Just as the blind person has to learn to trust their dog to know better than they do what lies in their path, so we need to trust our loving, all-wise God to know when there’s danger ahead and to keep us from falling into any ‘pits’ along the way. It’s very reassuring to read in this verse that God will never abandon us on the way. He is totally committed to us. Abraham trusted God’s Word and obeyed Him even when it didn’t make sense.
As we step out into 2025 and all that is unknown to us, remember that, “we are God ’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2 : 10) Allow Him to lead you in the right path so that you can discover and do whatever it is that He planned for you before you were even born. He can see what lies ahead and He has promised to lead you and turn the darkness into light before you and make the rough places smooth. These are precious promises indeed for a new year!
Written By:
K.M. RICQUEBOURG
PSI ZIMBABWE CO-ORDINATOR