How God Guides–Part 1 March 19, 2012
Meet Rob. Rob has just realized that he can’t find hiscar keys. His first move is to check all the regular places in his house.Unfortunately, he doesn’t find them, so he goes through the house again, thistime checking under furniture, beneath cushions, and in all sorts of othernooks and crannies. Still no keys. He checks his car. Nope. Now he’s gettingfrustrated and a little concerned. Finally, he stops and prays, “Lord, I reallyneed those keys. Please help me find them.” Suddenly he has a thought: “Maybe they are in the trunk of the car.”
Pause the scene right there. Most all of us have foundourselves in a situation similar to Rob’s. Let’s suppose Rob does find his keysin the trunk. He would probably rejoice for the rest of the day, and rightlyso. But would he be right to tell people, “I just knew they would be in thetrunk. I asked God to help me find my keys, and He told me where they were”?
Let me nudge you toward an answer by asking anotherquestion: was God’s truthfulness at stake in the situation? What if Rob hadlooked in the trunk and found nothing? Would he have been correct in that caseto say: “God lied to me today. He said I would find my keys in the trunk of mycar, but they weren’t there”? Of course not. Rob was operating on a hunch, nota personal and inerrant word from God. For whatever reason, Rob suspected hiskeys were in the trunk. Perhaps he had looked everywhere else. Or maybe heremembered the moment he set them down. Whatever the specific reason, animpression came to Rob and he acted on it because it made sense. If the impressionhad said, “Maybe my keys are in Albuquerque,”he probably would have kept on looking (after taking his meds).
The obvious point is that if Rob finds his keys in thetrunk, he should thank God for answered prayer and learn a good lesson aboutkeeping track of things. But if he doesn’t find them there, he doesn’t have toquestion his faith or God’s truthfulness. He just needs to keep looking.
This odd little story brings up an important questionI’d like to answer in subsequent columns: what does the Bible teach about howGod guides us? Stay tuned…