You can understand some ‘hardboiled’ man saying to his Christian wife: “You go upstairs and read your little black book and then you pray and you come down and tell me that God has told you to do something. I don’t believe that God guides you, who do you think you are? Is the God of this universe interested enough to guide your little decisions? That’s too incredible to believe”.
It is, but of course the answer is, yes, providing you realise that you are working for God and not the other way around, which is what magic is.
Listen to these words, Jesus said, “I’m not calling you slaves, saying do this and that; I call you my friends, because I explain to you the inside story. You are my friends if you do what I tell you to do.”
Now these words contain the two pillars of God’s guidance and you find them in John Chapter 15.
First, He offers us friendship. This is what makes us truly human. We lost our original status by putting ourselves at the centre of everything but now we can have this friendship, which meets our greatest basic need, when Christ comes and is really at the centre of our lives.
He also offers us the second pillar, to keep that friendship in continual repair, otherwise we are like telephones that get cut off, or marriages that get broken, or even nations that have diplomatic ties severed and drift into war.
“You are my friends if you do what I tell you”; that’s how guidance begins and becomes a living reality. It’s not magic, it’s cause and effect.
Read John 15 and see.