Where Is He Leading You?
When you walk with the Spirit, develop in your relationship with Him, and respond to His work in you, it is very likely that you will begin to have all kinds of glorious, supernatural experiences.
Sometimes there will be no response more appropriate than weeping. At other times there will be tremendous joy or overwhelming love. Many kinds of responses are possible as we walk in the Spirit and allow ourselves to be led by Him.
It's always glorious to realize that God's hand is upon you, guiding you along the right route. Of course, at the time you may not always recognize His Spirit's guiding hand; but as the event begins to come together, it suddenly dawns on you: God is leading me!
Several years ago I was called to visit a lady from Calvary Chapel who had broken her back in a serious car accident. I went to St. Joseph's Hospital to pray for her, and soon discovered that in her six-bed ward there were two other ladies also from our church. God had planned it so that I was able to minister to all three of them.
I didn't know the other two were there, but when I walked in each
of them got excited and thought I had come to visit her. (I prayed for them all.) As I was leaving the room and walking back to the elevator, I couldn't contain my excitement. "Lord, I love Your efficiency," I said. "I don't know how many rooms there are in St. Joseph's Hospital, but there are an awful lot. But You're so
efficient, Lord - You put the three ladies from Calvary in the same room so that I could get all three with one visit! This is great, Lord. I love it."
I got in the elevator and pushed the button for the ground floor, but when the door opened and I looked out, I knew I was lost. I had arrived at the nurses' station, not the lobby. So I stepped back in, thinking someone else must have stopped the elevator on that floor.
But when I looked up at the indicator light, the "G" for ground floor was lit up. I was really confused then. A nurse saw my confusion and said, "Are you looking for the lobby?"
"Yes, what did they do with it?" I replied.
"You took the service elevator," she said. I looked up, and there was the sign, as big as life: "Service Elevator, Employees Only."
"Oh, I'm so sorry," I said. "I wasn't paying any attention upstairs."
"That's all right," she reassured me. "Well ... how do I get to the lobby?" I asked.
"It's very simple," she replied. "Just go down to the first hallway, turn right, and then you'll be right in the lobby."
I thanked her, and as I walked away I thought, Oh, what a stupid mistake! As I turned down a short corridor, there was a girl, standing and weeping. She looked up, saw me, and screamed, "Chuck!"
Immediately she came running up to me and began to sob almost hysterically When I finally got her calmed down sufficiently, I asked, "What's wrong? What can I do? Tell me - let's pray. What
can we pray for?"
"Chuck," she replied, "my dearest friend in the whole world - the man who led me to Jesus Christ - is this very moment having brain surgery. This man is such a wonderful Christian. He's been a missionary in Africa and was sent home to have this surgery.
The doctors give him very little hope for being able to walk again. He has a brain tumor that they think has already affected his walking ability, and they feel that..."
She broke off, in tears. "Chuck, I can't bear the thought of such a beautiful man of God being crippled. I'm just devastated."
God enabled us to pray together. I gave her some Scripture and pointed her to Jesus. "I was so desperate," she told me after we had finished. "I was just here praying, 'God, I can't handle this. Please send someone along to help me, to pray with me."' She stopped for a moment, then continued.
"And when I looked up, here you came walking down the hall." Right then the light went on for me. My mistake wasn't merely a stupid error. God had prepared the whole scenario. And I suddenly had the realization: God's hand is on me! He's leading me by the
Spirit.
Talk about a rush, about real excitement! I had been so excited about God's efficiency that on my way down to the lobby I hadn't paid any attention to the signs over the elevator. But God used my oversight to get me down a certain corridor. Had I used the main elevator, I would have walked through the lobby and been gone. But God's Spirit directed me to a certain corridor to meet the need of a certain young girl who in utter desperation was crying out to God for help.
He will do the same thing for you.
As you walk in the Spirit and continue in the things of the Spirit, you too will be blessed with exciting experiences that will thrill you to the core of your being. You'll see the power of God as you witness the various manifestations of the Spirit. It's always thrilling to be a part of what God is doing.
As exciting as they are, however, they aren't what we are to look for. Ecstatic experiences can be wonderful, but they can never be our goal.
Our goal - yours and mine - must always be to want more of God, and for Him to have more of us.
That's what the Spirit wants, as well.
He wants a personal relationship with you that is warm, intimate, and growing. He wants to know you and be known by you.
So what do you say?
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