Acts 14:9-10

"He [the cripple] listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed and called out, "Stand up on your feet!" At that, the man jumped up and began to walk. Acts 14:9-10

I am struck at how close Paul walked with the Lord. Consider what a discerning spirit it must require to be able to look at someone and judge the level of their faith. I believe that sort of discernment is not a natural thing, but the result of walking close enough to God to know His mind on a matter almost instantly. How then do we achieve for ourselves this marvelous closeness to God? How can we be sensitive to the smallest prompting's of the Holy Spirit? God made a promise back in Proverbs as to how He WILL direct our paths. There are three things we must do, and then God promises that we will have His mind in what we do.

The passage in Proverbs 3 goes like this: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight." So, in order to be sensitive to the mind of God and to walk in His straight paths we must do three things:

1) Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Trust is more than belief. To believe in something, you must simply acknowledge it's existence. We must rely on God with our whole heart.

2) Lean not on your own understanding. We need to acknowledge that we don't have a good perspective on the situation, so our understanding is not complete. Little children do this quite well. When they are lost in a crowd and they can't see above people's knees, they have no way of knowing the direction to go. But Daddy is tall, and he can see over the crowd of people to where they need to go, so all a child has to do is hold Daddy's hand and not worry about anything else. So it should be with us. God can see where we're going, and we can't. We need to realize that and give up trying to find our own way.

3) In all your ways acknowledge Him. This means more than simply giving God a friendly nod. It means that wherever you are, whatever you're doing, invite God to be a part of it. Live life in the knowledge that He is really there right beside you, as real as if He were standing there in the flesh. If you can't invite God to come along, you probably shouldn't be there.

Then, if we do those three things, Proverbs 3 promises us that God will direct our paths. That's how we can be sensitive to going God's way. Hallelujah, Amen and Amen.