Andrew - thanks for your comment too. Your comments have got me wondering what kind of image we have of God when we are thinking about guidance? If we emphasis “other” rather than “close” (or perhaps we should be holding those two in tension) does that mean we have an image of God like dictator / king / policeman???? Someone who is there primarily to tell us what to do?

And how does that change if we see him as Father? I guess in all these posts (and perhaps particulaly post 4), there is something i am exploring about us growing up. I don’t want to be telling my kids what to do when they are 20 years old … but i do hope that some of the values that we hold as important are so part of them, that they would do what i would do in any given situation.

So that would mean guidance does change as we grow and mature in our faith?

Jacob’s wrestle with God - where God came to him - seems like a testing of strength and of discovering dynamic face to face interaction and that through physicality. How invigorating and stimulating (though admittedly exhausting!) would that have felt like?

On Saturday I went to day which involved learning the Lord’s Prayer in Jesus’ language Aramaic, its sounds and some movements - chanting with gestures in short. Here the phrase ‘the wisdom of the body’ to use Dr Paul Brand’s phrase, came to centre stage and the notion of a more earthy guidance.

So, Rupert, I don’t hear or read much in Charismatic circles* about intuition, body awareness (eg stress, discomfort, breath) or giving heed to our own desires when considering matters of guidance. We’re more ‘heavenly’ (other) than this additional ‘earthy’ (close) stuff. Maybe we are denying incarnation, our very selves - the very stuff God created, redeemed and wishes to bind with!

* Am I deaf and blind?

absolutely - God gave us free will to choose and if we sat around waiting for confirmation of every step of the journey we would probably make little progress at all. the point is that most people are so frazzled by the decision making process that they often set of or embark upon new things exhausted … time to explore direction can be a great time if you submit to it and do not let it consume you to the point of utter frustration. enjoy each part of the journey … even when the way is not so clear there is still blessing to be had!

Paul - i love that image of the lamp. It seems so real. And it brings real value to others on the journey with us.

Andrew - love it. There is so much there that is worthy of mention, or separate blog posts. I will do something on certainty / uncertainty at some point. But i also love the tension between transcendence & imanance; infilling and indwelling; presence & absence.

Do you percieve that charismatic church is moving away from the unbalanced position you describe? Or do you think there is much more work to be done?

Anon - thanks. Again, what a great picture of the crossroads, and it being a place to meet others, to rest etc. It takes the pressure off having to find a way forward. I do wonder though, if at some point we need to move forward, even if we are still uncertain of which way, trusting the God will speak if we are goind in the “wrong” direction?

Dan - thanks for your comment. That has certainly been my experience too. The more i do it, the more i begin to trust that God really will direct my feet, if i start going to places that He doesn’t intend for me.

So for anyone still reading: why do you think that in churches there is an expectation for the leaders to have to all sorted? Or am I making that bit up (feeling the expectation where there is no expectation?)

If we wait around to hear what we should be doing and what direction to take, we may never get anywhere. God gives us free will to start a journey and then guide us from there.

In starting my journeys I’ve thought I’ve known where I was headed, but God gently prompted me in another direction. It’s happened several times but it’s always been Him suggesting and me choosing. He opens doors and lets us choose whether we want to walk through them.

My guess is that for communities it’s similar. Would be interested to find out what others think.

Faith as a journey, isn’t so much twists and turns as gentle banks and leans. Just don’t look down . . .

I love this concept of crossroads … what better way to set off on the next leg of a journey than this…?

These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.

It’s incarnation, the tussle, the bobbing and weaving.

“But isn’t that the point?” Heck yes! It is about incarnation.

“When we are in the midst of our journey, faith is walking forward in the midst of our doubts, our uncertainties, our fears?” I guess it is also about discerning faith within our very own hopes, desires, illusions, plans and convictions which makes for quite a coktail..

“we are walking with God” Simon Tugwell talks of “keeping company with God” and “living with God” both of which are similar and which I like.

“And lets not confuse uncertainty with unbelief.” Fabulous.

Is it an oversimplification to note that in charismatic circles faith seems to have been reduced to the idea of knowing where we are going/what he has definitively said (!) and measuring our faith along the way by how firmly we stay rooted to that historical position in terms of passion/enthusiasm/positivity? Where is questioning motive, issues of control, of the type of resolution and of the whole gamut of colliding desires. And there’s also the sheer romance of the journey with God with its turns and dips and dives, changingv vistas and moods. Ok let me stop there, getting too gooey?

“Is it that church should be one place of certainty, in the midst of a world of uncertainty?” This is worthy of discussion! Another blog on uncertainty and certainty in its own right would be merited.

This whole business of discernment and of faith is torture for many I feel. The church may posit (probably unwittingly) a single mode of discernment marginalizing the experience of many straight away. My wife does not ‘see’ things she has intuitions, the odd stray thought (some might say more than one – not me of course). Wisdom is demoted and personality unified.

It can end up creating a gap between individuals (experiences don’t match up to a prototype, I’m outside, I’m not ‘spiritual’), between an individual and God where embracing and becoming aware of God’s unique way of engagement with each person is not seen though it is under our very noses because we are looking for ‘that’. Do we become remote from ourselves ignoring desires, any number of senses, and any number of media. We become remote from ourselves, others and the church. Is that too bleak? Is that untrue?

I suspect there’s room here to talk about recovering a theology of the absence of God (he hides/he reveals/ he speaks/he is silent) s well as broadening our sense of the presence of God.

An overly developed emphasis on the transcendence of God (specifically the infilling of the Holy Spirit) to the detriment of earthy immanence (indwelling of God by the Holy Spirit) has left me overly restless, looking for more and the next thing, for something out there, for tomorrow and not attracted to contentment, the now, the here. Of all the things Jesus offers there is this one central idea of God and man in harmony, transcendence and immanence in one body, an example for me that says it is both and I can have both -drawn towards glory and content with what has been given.

I think part of the fun of beinga community is the helping each other when we do stumble over that rock and in sharing the journey, somehow trying to let our lil t-lights from God make a bigger illumination that just me strolling alone…