“God, where are you leading me?” Have you ever asked that question? If so, I want to share with you an awesome principle about hearing the voice of God from the Christmas story. Look at Matthew 2:9:
9 When they heard the king, they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was.
The wisemen find out where the Lord was leading them by following the star. The key to find out where Jesus is leading us is to follow the star. So where is the star? Look at 2 Peter 1:19:
19 which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts;
The morning star that rises in our hearts is Jesus (or more specifically the spirit of God). One of the major ways the Lord leads us is by His spirit in our hearts. This happens as His spirit begins to stir in us and we realize we need to move. Sometimes we won’t know exactly where we are going, but that is ok. We don’t have to know everything, we just need to obey that which we know if we want to be led by the spirit of God.
If you’ll think about how God led Abram, He said to leave his home and go to a land He would tell Abram of. In other words, God didn’t show Abram where He was going at first; He waited until Abram began to move in the direction God led Him. The same is true for us. When the morning star moves in our heart, we need to pay attention and follow the leading.
This brings up an important question, how will we recognize the destination when we begin to follow the leading? Look back at Matthew 2:9:
9 the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was.
The star stopped moving and begin to hover when it was at the appropriate destination. This is how the spirit of God leads. He will begin to hover or remain when He has taken us to the destination He has called us.
For example, if we get a leading to apply for a new job because we sense the morning star in our heart leading us, we may look at several job postings and not sense the presence of God. What should we do? Keep looking because we haven’t seen the appropriate job posting yet. At some point as we look for new jobs, we will sense the spirit of God highlight a job. It’s hard to describe unless you’ve experienced it, but it often appears the spirit of God will begin to sit down or rest on the appropriate job posting. Something on the inside of us knows this is the one! This is where we apply.
I will admit as we learn to hear the spirit of God we will miss it from time to time. That’s ok though because this is how we train ourselves to hear His voice (see Hebrews 5:14). As we are intentional about listening on the inside and obeying that which we hear, we will improve in our ability to recognize His voice so we gain confidence in what we are hearing.
Learn to pay attention the morning star in your heart! It will lead you into the plans and purposes of God just like the Holy Spirit led the wisemen to Jesus! If you’d like to learn more, check out this message I recently taught at Grace Life Church.
