Word has already denied you, find another counselor! Isaiah writes about the “wise” counselors of Pharaoh giving him “senseless advice” (19:11). So, whenever someone tells me, “Pastor, I know the Bible says that I shouldn’t, but my counselor told me I should,” I simply reply, “Oh, your problem is that you went to see one of Pharaoh’s counselors!” As a fail-safe mechanism, never ask just one counselor. Pick a group. Try five “go-to” individuals, people you respect as spiritual mentors. The group might include a pastor, a small group leader or just friends who are a few steps ahead of you on life’s journey. At any given point, any one of them might be having an off day. But when you ask all five of them the same question, you should get a preponderance of wisdom, enough to get you going the right direction.
4- Events If there isn’t any tension between what the Bible says and what your heart’s telling you, then your spirit is in agreement with God’s Spirit and that’s always a good thing. But, as my Dad used to tell his congregation, “The Spirit of God will never lead a child of God to violate the Word of God to fulfill the will of God.” (My Dad’s pretty wise.)
3- Others When the Bible is silent on a specific circumstance and your heart seems lost on the matter as well, it’s time to bring in the counselors. Keep in mind, though, just like you can’t trust your heart at times, neither can you always trust a counselor’s heart. Always check a counselor’s advice against the Scriptures. Is it possible that a counselor is always being filled with the Spirit of God, that he or she would always give the best possible advice? Well, no. He or she is just as vulnerable to selfishness, pride and pain as we are. So, if you go to a counselor and you are told to follow a path that God’s
In some cases, God supernaturally guides us through extraordinary events. In the Bible, there were times that He guided believers by His audible voice, through a dream or even a miracle--in some pretty impressive ways, to be sure. But, even throughout biblical history, that wasn’t the norm. By the way, God has spoken to me through lightning flashes before, but it’s always been the same message, “It’s a good thing you weren’t closer to that lightning flash!” The point is, never start with number four, or even number three, or even number two. Start at the beginning. El numero uno es muy simple. Open the Bible. If either of your options provides a choice that would be consistent with what you find there, in God’s blueprint for our lives, then follow your heart. If you still can’t figure out what to do, ask the others. If they’re all clueless, flip a coin. But don’t wait for the next crash to get ready. Learn the Bible, guard your heart, find a group and then, and only then, watch for lightning. By the way, did you see the episode of “Lost” where Jack and a few of the others found something kind of weird in the jungle, and just when you thought they were finally going to get some solid leads on what on earth is going on, something really weird happened and you ended up more frustrated and with less information than you had in the middle of last season? So did I.