The Secret of Guidance

I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye. PSALM 32:8

Meyer wrote many books, but the little collection of addresses called The Secret of Guidance is the one that has travelled furthest, and its title address is the reason. He wrote it for a particular kind of Christian: the one who believes that God guides His people, has read of Abraham and Moses and Paul being led, and quietly suspects that the guidance was meant for everyone except himself. Such people, Meyer says, often blame their own dullness. Their minds are slow; they cannot catch God’s meaning; they are so afraid of doing wrong that they cannot see what is right.

His answer to them is not first a method but a picture of God. Does a mother, he asks, make her wishes plain only to the quick child and leave the slow one to guess? Or does she take the dull child on her knee and explain it again, more gently? The God of the Bible is that kind of Father. He will come down to our ignorance and suit Himself to our need.

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. ISAIAH 40:11

Why guidance matters

Meyer begins with a sentence that could stand over his whole ministry: “so much of our power and peace consists in knowing where God would have us be, and in being just there.” He illustrates it from the wilderness. The manna fell where the cloud rested. Israel was fed not by going where the food seemed likeliest, but by going where the pillar led; and wherever it led, the food was there in the morning. So with us. If we are where our Father would have us be, He will provide.

The other side of this is uncomfortable. Meyer suspected that much Christian work had come to nothing because it was begun by us rather than by God. We dream bright dreams, he says, try to command success, reach for expedients, and at last come home scratched and muddy like children who have wandered off the path. None of it need have happened if we had first asked what God was doing and where He wanted us.

The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. PSALM 37:23

Five conditions

Before he describes how God guides, Meyer sets out what must be true of the one who is to be guided. There are five conditions, and they are more searching than they look.

The motive must be pure. When the eye is single, Jesus said, the whole body is full of light (Luke 11:34). Meyer calls the double motive a spiritual squint. So long as we half want God’s will and half want our own advantage or the praise of others, we cannot see clearly. We must ask for the single eye.

The will must be surrendered. Jesus said His judgement was just because He sought not His own will but the Father’s. Meyer is careful here, and the distinction he draws is one of the best things in the book: “There is all the difference between a will which is extinguished and one which is surrendered.” God does not want our wills crushed, but yielded — saying yes to Him. And where we cannot yet say it, he counsels the prayer he had learned for himself: to confess that we are willing to be made willing.

If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. JOHN 7:17

The mind must be informed. This is the condition that surprises readers who expect a mystic. God has given us minds, Meyer says, and He does not bypass them. We should gather facts, weigh the evidence, learn from the experience of others and above all from Scripture, and expect God’s voice to come to us, very often, through “the voice of sanctified common-sense.” He tells how the angel brought Peter out of prison and then, after a street or two, left him to work out for himself where to go. God does miraculously what we cannot do; what we can do, He leaves to us.

We must be much in prayer. The Psalms are full of pleas for guidance, and it is the rule of the Father’s house that the children ask. Meyer adds a piece of practical wisdom that many have found freeing: ask God to shut the doors that are not His will. Put the matter into His hands at the outset, and trust Him to stop what He has not planned.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. JAMES 1:5

And we must wait for God’s plan to unfold in providence. That is the fifth condition, and it brings us to the heart of his teaching.

The three witnesses

Meyer’s most famous contribution to the subject is a single sentence. “God’s impressions within and His word without are always corroborated by His Providence around, and we should quietly wait until these three focus into one point.” They have come to be known as the three lights, and a story is often told of Meyer learning the picture from a ship’s captain who brought his vessel into harbour at night by lining up three lamps on the shore. That story is not in the Ochorus text of the book, but the teaching is. There is the inward prompting of the Spirit. There is the written Word. And there is the outward arrangement of circumstances. When all three agree, he says, we may be as sure we are right as if an angel beckoned us on. When they do not, we should wait.

The strength of this is its balance. Each of the three, taken alone, can mislead. Inward impressions rise and fall with our health and our wishes; Meyer warns elsewhere that they often contradict one another. Circumstances can be read to mean almost anything by a mind already made up. And even Scripture can be wrenched from its context to prove what we want. But the Spirit does not contradict the Word He inspired, and the God who speaks in both is also the Lord of providence. Where the three line up, the danger of self-deception is much reduced.

In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. 2 CORINTHIANS 13:1

It is worth adding a caution Meyer himself implies. The Word is not simply one witness among three. It is the test of the other two. No impression, however strong, and no open door, however wide, can make right what Scripture calls wrong. Meyer knew this; in the same book he warns sharply against those who magnify the inner light to the neglect of the Word, and calls it the prolific parent of all kinds of evil. His three witnesses work best when the reader keeps that order.

Only the next step

Meyer ends with a word for those who want to see the whole road before they will take a step. God, he says, does not promise that. “Not next year, but to-morrow. Not the next mile, but the next yard. Not the whole pattern, but the next stitch in the canvas.” Those who demand more will be disappointed and slip back into the dark. Those who take the next step find that the lights multiply as they go, like the lamps of a town seen from a night train.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. PSALM 119:105

He closes with a personal word: that after months of waiting and prayer he had become absolutely sure of his Father’s guidance, and wanted every troubled reader to wait patiently for the Lord until He made His will plain. It is the testimony of a man who had tried it.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Take the decision you wrote down at the start of this book. Examine your motive honestly: is your eye single, or is there some thought of your own advantage mixed in?

2. Ask yourself whether your will is surrendered in this matter. If not, tell God plainly that you are willing to be made willing.

3. Gather the facts. Write down what you know, what you need to find out, and what Scripture says that bears on it.

4. Pray this week that God will shut every door that is not His will, and then watch for what He shuts.

5. Resolve not to demand the whole road. What is the next step you can see? Take it.

A PRAYER

Father, I am slower to understand You than I like to admit. Take me on Your knee and make Your way plain.

Give me a single eye, a surrendered will, and a mind willing to learn.

Speak by Your Word, confirm it by Your Spirit, and open the way before me in Your providence; and where these do not yet agree, give me patience to wait.

Show me only the next step, and give me grace to take it. Amen.