When God is leading...or not?

[Lamb]

Should we rely on "feelings" to know whether God is leading us to do something?

 

[Frankj]

Over my lifetime I've found that feelings tend to be a fickle guide that convinces me that what I want to do is what God wants me to do.

 

[tango]

Should we rely on "feelings" to know whether God is leading us to do something?

Feelings may be an guide or an early indication but if they aren't backed by anything else they could be dangerous.

I've often said that if God is calling then God is quite capable of making the message as clear as it needs to be. If your feeling is that someone in your church needs $10 it's probably not a big deal if the feeling was misguided. If your feeling is that God is calling you to move abroad and be a missionary that's something you'll probably want backed by more than a general feeling.

 

[Lamb]

Over my lifetime I've found that feelings tend to be a fickle guide that convinces me that what I want to do is what God wants me to do.

How do you know then?

Feelings may be an guide or an early indication but if they aren't backed by anything else they could be dangerous.

I've often said that if God is calling then God is quite capable of making the message as clear as it needs to be. If your feeling is that someone in your church needs $10 it's probably not a big deal if the feeling was misguided. If your feeling is that God is calling you to move abroad and be a missionary that's something you'll probably want backed by more than a general feeling.

What would back it up?

 

[tango]

How do you know then?

I know this part wasn't directed at me, but I've often found that feelings alone can often be a great guide to what I want to do and not necessarily a very good guide to what God wants me to do.

What would back it up?

It would depend on what the issue at hand was.

Many years ago I was talking to a pastor about his calling and among the things he mentioned was that in the space of two weeks three people, completely independent of each other, gave him the exact same verse.

A few years ago I'd been talking to a couple of friends about what I thought might be a calling. One afternoon I was walking in the woods and thinking about a particular Bible passage - it had come to my mind for no apparent reason. That evening we had our friends round for dinner and, over dinner, one of them said she had been thinking about me that afternoon because she'd been reading a particular passage of Scripture. It was the exact same passage.

Sometimes that sort of thing can be a coincidence but if you start to line a few of them up it starts to look like God is pointing the way to something. But God knows what you need to see to be convinced - what convinces me might not convince you and vice versa