Knowing Truth

I’ve an online app for Selwyn Hughes’ wonderful devotionals called “Every Day with Jesus.” Today’s reading blessed me using verses about the guidance of the Holy Spirit. His focus was on Jesus words:

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. (John 16:13)

Hughes adds that obviously this means spiritual truth, but suggests all truth means truth about everything. His words reminded me of a couple of personal experiences. A few years ago, I thought I’d like a book of prayers that were different from the way I usually pray, mostly to prompt me to pray in a new way. I never told anyone.

However, a family member who is a believer gave me two prayer books, exactly what I was looking for. I told him this was an answer to prayer. He said he saw them in a department store, read a few pages to make sure they had good entries, and thought I would like them. The odd part is that he isn’t going to church or doing much praying that I know of, but the Holy Spirit used him anyway.

The other story was a visit to a family member who also once made a profession of faith but is not in church either. However, she drove by a church and thought it was the one we would like and told us that was where we should go. We did, and it was the right place for us to be the two Sundays we were able to attend. How did she know? All truth given from the Holy Spirit, even to a prodigal?

Hughes pointed me to several passages:

These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2:10–16)

In Galatians, Paul said he did not receive the gospel from anyone but through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:11–12) These days, many people in the Middle East are being saved by this same thing. They have no Bibles or churches but the Holy Spirit is revealing Jesus to them in dreams and visions. Can He not also direct people to buy the right books or select the right church? How about the right food to eat or the best store to find the coat they need? Or where to travel? Or what house to buy?

When  Paul was headed for Jerusalem, “constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.”  This was not a problem for him as he did not consider his life of any value nor precious to himself. He also knew that those with him would not see him again. (Acts 20:17–25) How was this possible unless the Spirit revealed it!

So many people look for guidance each day. Sadly, many look in the wrong place. For millions it is horoscopes in the nation’s newspapers that people often governed by ‘science’ in the rest of life can believe that the planets’ positions affect what might happen to them that day. For Christians, such things are not only forbidden, they are totally unnecessary; for God himself has promised to guide us.

This reading blesses me. God can use anyone, even backsliders who are His yet not walking the way Christians should walk are still guided by Him anyway. As for the two I mentioned, I see God’s Spirit at work in their actions and concerns for justice and truth.

PRAY: Lord, You are Lord. Your Spirit is guiding those who You want to guide, whether they realize it or not. You do this for me, but how delightful that Your guidance has no limits. Thank You.