Afterwards, you can get yourself back under Holy Spirit instruction about God's general or precursor counsel so that you avoid such a "crisis that requires a miracle for deliverance" again and can instead go in the way of blessings. You'll need to re-evaluate what took place in the light of a fresh understanding of the counsel God gives you in His Word.

Whatever happens don't let the devil persuade you that you can't hear from God. Remind yourself instead that you may well have imperfectly understood the general counsel of God or covering promises for that situation given by God's Word.

Learning to follow God's leading is a life long lesson that will see you walking more and more accurately in God's plan for you if you stay in class with the Holy Spirit as your teacher and the Bible as your basic textbook. May God bless you with a close walk with Him!

In summary here are five points for keeping yourself accurately in step with the Holy Spirit.

• The first thing you need to do, when seeking the Lord's leading on any matter, is to ask for the counsel the Bible has related to that matter.
• You have to ask God for His leading on the basis of faith in His promises and reverence for the counsel of His Word.
• Remember, the Holy Spirit will always be looking to lead you to fulfil the counsel He has already shown you in God's written Word.
• Your pastor has an important role in your desire to follow God's leadings accurately. His ministry to you is aimed at giving you a better grasp of the counsel God's Word provides.
• Keep God's promises and the counsel of God's Word in mind then follow the Holy Spirit with a flexibility or a preparedness that allows you to get a fresh prompting or urging of the Spirit "on the move" or "on your feet".

A visitor asked:

"Why wasn't your first answer from the Lord to rebuke the devourer?"

Because He'd already told me that! I knew that His Word promised He would rebuke the devourer for my sake but I was forgetting it or ignoring it. As a result I wasn't asking the right question. I already had the answer I needed from His Word. Therefore my conversation with the Lord (my looking to the Holy Spirit for guidance) should have gone on from that Word of God.

My example, which you refer to, is intended to show that if you forget or ignore or fail to discover what God's Word declares about a situation and attempt to "hear from heaven" in the absence of that base counsel then you are likely to miss the mark.

Looking for a direct word of guidance from the Holy Spirit has to come in conjunction with looking to the Holy Spirit for the appropriate counsel of God as it is already recorded in His Word.

As a tither God has promised me He will rebuke the devourer for my sake therefore I shouldn't have readily accepted the world's report that my engine was finished. I should have had a conversation with the Lord based around what He had declared He would do for me. Since He had promised He would rebuke the devourer for my sake my conclusion ought to have been that the engine would be kept for destruction by my Heavenly Father and therefore I should have asked Him where to go from there based on that conclusion. My question, "Should I change the engine or not" was wholly inappropriate given what He had already said to me.

I got an email from a lady who has been using my site and corresponding with me for a year or two. She is very excited about a blossoming new relationship with a Christian man in England. It seems they're considering marriage but, since she lives in America, they have to decide which of their countries they will live in. She asked me for help writing,

"Is there somewhere in your site we've missed that...would give us a Word...??? or any scripture that comes to your heart..?"

The following are the main points from my reply:

Firstly, our walk of faith is through one step of faith at a time.

God's leading is by steps and God's people must take each step He prompts with faith that when they've made it He'll show them the next step to take. Ps.37:23. Each step we make with God we take because this is the step we have an inner assurance about and no other possible step gives us such a sense of being right. Even though we can't see where to step on from this step we make it any way. We take it in faith. We trust God will show us what to do next when we've made it. When God directs a step He's starting to facilitate things for us and we need to move outwards on that step to meet up with what He is facilitating.

Secondly, God is often happy with our choices.

Where there are alternative possibilities that lead forwards to unfold good and not harm in our lives then God leaves us to make the choice according to our preferences. Usually, God does not intervene with prompting towards a particular choice unless He sees you want and need some help in making the choice that is before you. (To get an example of an intervention when it was much needed see Deut.30:19.) Quite often, God will say, "Go ahead you choose - there's no problem in that."

Thirdly, God in no way ever intended us to be remote controlled robots.

God made us to be His children growing up into adult sonship. For this reason, He is expecting you to make an increasing number of decisions "on your own" on the basis of the wisdom and insight you've gained through a life in a relationship with the Holy Spirit and His Word. There will be times when God will expect this. He'll expect you to act up to the level of maturity you have come into in Christ. God will not always tell you what to do. You will at times be left to make your own mind up about what to do. He'll say, "OK, you've now come into enough of My wisdom and insight to know for yourself what is the best decision in this situation."

Meditate on those points and I think you will soon come to see confidently the best way forward.

Bye for now. God bless you!