Tina, I think, and again I could be wrong (if so correct me Elijah), but I think his major point was to not look to man for the 'answers'. If you know what I mean.
I think that both of us, I know I can at least speak for myself, always look to the Spirit for the final 'test' of knowledge.
Heb 10:11-1
"11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,
16 “ This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws on their hearts,
and write them on their minds,”
17 then he adds,
“ I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”
18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin."
The more I study, the more I learn, and the more I talk with others I find that it is crucial to understand who we are. We are a soul/heart, that has a mind/conscience/spirit, who lives in a body/flesh.
The verse above states that God gave us a new and clean heart, He put His laws on our hearts, and wrote them on our minds. That is, our 'instinctual'(hearts) desire is to do God's will. Our conscience(mind) knows what it is. So in other words, it is all right there within us. Not only that, but just as He makes a choice to not remember, we too can make choices with our minds. Our minds/conscience/spirit is where the battle ground is. Our hearts are on one side and our flesh is on the opposing side. And what happens is we can sometimes look to the flesh(physical sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) to get our perspective. We do it all the time, but it can be very deceptive and we must be careful.
Ok, so does that mean we do not talk with one another? No. Ok, so does that mean that we 'automatically' do His will? No. God created us to interact with other people. Jesus 'entrusted' His Gospel to twelve human beings. [[ lol. On a side note I pondered that for a while last night and then it hit me. While He entrusted them, and instructed them, to go out with the Good news; He also spoke to them, through the Spirit, to write them down. God had the foresight to know that if it was just left to word of mouth, things could get really changed for the worse.]]
And this is how it all applies, again correct me if I am wrong. Elijah seems to make the point that, if a person was to say; "is it God's will to do____?", that person could potentially receive 20 different answers to what God's will is. Ok, so whats wrong with that? Well, lets say that you started off with only 5 choices running around in your head. Now there is quadruple that amount you have to sort through.
Where as Faith dictates that God's will is already in our mind and heart, and Faith says that if we seek He will answer, and Faith dictates He will never leave us or forsake us. So we MUST be careful in what we allow into our minds. Yes, testing and approving God's will is a process we go through. But we must go through it alone. Sound strange? Well, the Bible tells us we have all the answers we need right there in us if we are a child of God. And I am not directing this at you Tina, but if we have sought after and longed for a knowledge of His will and cannot seem to find it, there could be something wrong.
Modern culture tells us to just keep going forward and 'have faith'. True Faith tells us to wait for Him. A uncertainty, a true uncertainty, is a sign of something. It is His Spirit bearing witness to our spirit. When doubts about GOD arise, we should always stop and examine ourselves, to see whether we are in the faith or not. There is nothing wrong with it. It is the most important question and search we can ever do in regards with God's will.
And if, and when we do 'test' ourselves, His Spirit will bear witness with ours that we are indeed His children if we are. And if we are, and He does bear witness, then what that process has done is brought you right back to the very heart of God...and things will be a whole lot clearer there.
:help
