Be Led by the Holy Spirit

Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them.

Acts 16:6–7

The more areas of your life you involve the Lord in, the more you can experience His protection. You can even ask the Lord to guide you in something as seemingly natural as your travel itinerary. In fact, read the passage above. The apostle Paul allowed the Holy Spirit to lead them at every step.

We see from those scriptures that closed doors are not necessarily negative, and could be signs of God’s protection over our lives. The challenge for some of us is that we are so adept at planning and scheduling our busy lives that many times, we don’t make room for the Lord to intervene and to guide us to be at the right place at the right time.

Let’s not put our trust in our intelligence and planning, but in His wisdom, leading, and counsel. There is a proverb that says, “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps” (Prov. 16:9). Even as we plan, I pray that we will always remember to commit all our ways to the Lord, and allow Him to direct our steps.

Being led by the Spirit does not have to be something complicated. When you walk close to the Lord and have a close relationship with Him, He can lead you in supernaturally natural ways.

Some years ago, a couple in our church were vacationing at a beach resort on Penang Island in Malaysia, when the wife felt like eating something in another location on the mainland. Because of that “prompting” in her belly, they headed off earlier than they had originally planned. While they were loading their vehicle, a man kept hurrying them and asking them to move off as they were apparently blocking the hotel driveway, and that had really irritated them at that time.

In any case, just fifteen minutes after they had crossed from the island to the mainland, they heard the news that an earthquake in the Indian Ocean had triggered a killer tsunami that crashed onto the beachfront they were at, killing more than fifty people.

Had they left just a little later, they could have been among the casualties of the tragedy that day. Looking back, the couple believes that the man at the hotel might even have been an angel sent by the Lord to get them out of harm’s way quickly.

I don’t know about you, but I want the Lord to direct all my steps! Call upon Him today and He will answer you.

This devotional is taken from the book The Prayer of Protection Devotional—Daily Strategies for Living Fearlessly in Dangerous Times.