I have had some wonderful conversations related to my book, Navigate. The following are five snippets from those conversations.
You seem to emphasize Scripture as the primary means of navigating God’s will. Are you saying that God doesn’t use situations, relationships, and feelings to guide us?
No, actually, I believe God uses all sorts of things to guide us. However, that doesn’t mean that we are to discern His will from those things. There is a difference between God’s using something and us understanding what He is doing. God providentially places us in situations and relationships and gives us feelings as a way of guiding without us ever realizing His divine reasons.
You make the point that emotions can be misleading when making decisions. Are you saying that we should ignore our feelings?
Absolutely not. God has given us feelings and emotions for a reason. In fact, God even uses the language of emotions to describe His own feelings toward certain things in Scripture.
Pretending that faith has no relationship with feelings is a dangerous extreme. At the same time, Acting as if faith is ruled by feelings is just as dangerous.
A biblical approach sees feelings as indicators of what is going on inside of us. We must use discernment to understand whether our feelings are rooted in sin (bitterness, anger, jealousy), rooted in righteousness (compassion, righteous indignation, etc), and/or rooted in the Holy Spirit’s resonance with Scripture that we have meditated upon or memorized in the past.
You discourage people from reading too much into circumstances and events. Are you saying that not everything has a purpose?
Not at all. I believe “all things” are working together under God’s sovereignty (Rom. 8:28). However, the Bible never suggests that we have to understand all things. In fact, it says just the opposite –“The secret things belong to the Lord our God” (Deut. 29:29).
Your ideas about how God leads people into ministry is a little different from what I have heard from others. Are you saying that God does not “call” people into ministry?
I am not denying that God “calls” people into various ministries or professions. Instead, I am just saying that a call is not necessarily composed of extra-biblical revelation. Instead, it is more likely evidenced by God-given desires, gifts, qualifications, and skills.
Does your emphasis on decision making downplay the role of the Holy Spirit in leading believers?
Of course not. I believe the Holy Spirit works with the Sword of the Spirit (the Bible) while illuminating our minds to understand God’s Word and providing wisdom to live out the principles and teachings of God’s Word.