A happy Christian

‘And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.’ Isaiah 58:11

Suggested Further Reading: Acts 16:6–15

Jehovah shall guide you continually. Notice the word shall—‘The Lord shall guide thee.’ How certain this makes it! How sure it is that God will not forsake us! His precious ‘shalls’ and ‘wills’ are better than men’s oaths. ‘I will never leave thee nor forsake thee; I will never forsake thee.’ Then observe that adverb ‘continually’. We are not to be guided only sometimes, but we are to have a perpetual monitor; not occasionally to be left to our own understanding, and so to wander, but we are continually to hear the guiding voice of the Great Shepherd; and as we follow close at his heels we shall not err, but be led by a right way to a city to dwell in. You have been, perhaps, in a maze, and you know how difficult it is to find your way to the centre. But sometimes there is one perched aloft who sees the whole of the maze spread out before him like a map, and he calls out to you to turn either to the right or to the left, and if you attend to his directions you soon find the way. Even so the maze of life is only a maze to us, but God can see it all. He who rules over all, looks down upon it as men look down upon a map; and if we will but look to him, and if our communion be constantly kept up we shall never err, but we shall come to the goal of our hopes right speedily by following his voice.

For meditation: As in most mazes, we enter the Christian life through one door, the Lord Jesus Christ (John 10:9) and head for one goal—heaven. But wrong paths leading to dead ends will be followed when we fail to obey our guide. We must then turn round, leave the wrong way and seek God for the right way i.e. repent. At times we may not know which path to take or may even find ourselves going round in circles, apparently getting nowhere. We then need to continue to walk by faith, always looking to God for guidance. He is the giver of repentance (2 Timothy 2:25) and faith (Ephesians 2:8) at the start of and throughout the Christian life.

Sermon no. 736
2 January (Undated Sermon)