Romans 8:14  Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

While I was on one of my one mile walks, prescribed by my sadistic physical therapist, I was praying and thinking about how my faith and sense of the presence of God has grown over the past couple of years.  Now, I’m sure it has something to do with being humbled by cancer and the accompanying physical trials. Suffering brings you to an interesting theological fork in the road; one road away from God and the other road toward God.  I chose to go toward him.

Now when I say I chose to go toward God don’t think for a moment that I always went with praise and thanksgiving.  Often, I simply cried out in pathetic desperation and sometimes I even angrily challenged his wisdom and sovereignty.  But perhaps more important than my time spent talking with God is my time spent thinking, listening, and learning.

One of the most important things I have discovered in this crucible I’ve been through was what theologians and philosophers call “plausibility structures.”  Plausibility means, “having an appearance of truth, reason, acceptance of credibility.”  I have discovered there are many dimensions of my “plausibility structure.” There are science and archaeological discoveries.  There is the confirmation of history in scriptures. There is the prophetic accuracy of scriptures. There is the biblical moral code and the predictable consequences of obedience or rebellion.  I could go on but let me get to the point. The most persuasive thing that God has done for me in the past two and a half years is simply show up time after time.  I call this, “the plausibility structure of the Spirit.”

I’ve got about 30 stories but my favorite is when I was scheduled for a bone scan.  On the day of the bone scan I got very afraid and stressed out. The possibility of something showing up just overwhelmed my emotions.  I drove to the hospital had the dye injection and went home to wait till the time for my appointment.

When I got back home I sat in my recliner and said, “okay God give me a scripture from the Bible for assurance.”  The only verse that came to mind was, “A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all.”  I didn’t know where it was and for some strange reason it didn’t even occur to me to look it up. Instead, I just opened my Ipad, selected Psalms and randomly hit Psalm 34.  When I got down to verse 19 there it was.  I’m thinking at the time, well God that’s nice, that you took me to the verse that I was already meditating on, but then I read on to verse 20 and I couldn’t believe my eyes. It read, “he protects all his bones.”  

It was a Friday afternoon and when the scan was over the technician said, “hey I don’t want you to worry all weekend, your bones are beautiful.”  The point is not that I didn’t have bone cancer because a lot of wonderful Christians have had bone cancer. The point was God made himself real to me and in the long run that’s more important than whether or not I had bone cancer.

The other day, I had a spiritual conversation with a restaurant owner in Milford.  A few days later I was going to lunch and I felt that tug in my heart that said go back there and talk to her again.  I thought to myself, no, I don’t want to seem too pushy, I’ll go somewhere else.” Wouldn’t you know, there was road construction blocking the road to the eating establishment I wanted to go to and I was forced to pass the restaurant I was avoiding.  I even drove past it but the voice of the Spirit kept pounding my head. So, I turned around and our conversation led to a decision for that family that they are now so happy about. Even though that dear lady is very new to the Christian faith, she let me know this past Sunday that if I had waited one more day to have that conversation they would have gone a different direction.

 Now don’t get me wrong here, the “plausibility structure of the Spirit,” that I’m describing here can’t be our only anchor for faith.  We all know some well meaning Christian who’s taken a leave of absence from reality and gone overboard with “being led.” There are all kinds of problems when we abandon other important metrics for measuring God’s activity in our lives.  However, if you aren’t being led by the Spirit you are emotionally and spiritually poorer for it.  And you’re missing out on the great adventure of being fully human and knowing God in real time.

British philosopher Bertrand Russell, famous for his agnostic views as much as for his theories on logic, was once asked how he would answer if he turned out to be wrong about God.  Russell was delighted with the question and answered, “Why, I should say, ‘God, you gave us insufficient evidence.’” Obviously, Bertrand Russell never asked to be “led by the Spirit.”