Originally Posted by Trapped
Hi Peter,
I appreciate your coming out of the woodwork to post. From the responses I have received both here and from current LCers, it seems like this is kind of an equalizing topic for both "sides". As a fellow church kid, one thing I am trying to understand in a general way is just what I grew up in, and the reasons why I grew up the way I did because of the way things were done/said in that place. What I'm stuck with here is, if everyone has the same "how do we know?" question, why on earth did all the brothers and all the young people's serving ones in the LC speak so concretely and definitively about needing to have the Lord's speaking and leading? We talk about church kids struggling because they are drowned in premature knowledge well before they have the maturity in life and experiences in life to have any level of understanding of what their minds are being packed with.....well, what on earth good is it to lay out this, essentially, impossible and unattainable requirement on young kids that apparently the ones speaking it aren't even experiencing? I know these are rhetorical questions, but it's these ones that distract me all day long.
You make a great point about knowing the "NO". For several years I really tried to open and touch the Lord and get His speaking or leading but got nothing in return. Eventually I couldn't be bothered anymore and stopped trying. Then one day as I was leaving my house, I passed by a small pile in my room of totally insignificant things I needed to return to another saint who had made a big enough mistake towards me that an elder recommended I not communicate with them for a period of time. I passed by that small pile of nothing and thought "oh, I'll return it another day, I just don't feel like dealing with it today." Five steps after that I got a "NO - do it today", but I brushed it aside and kept walking. Five more steps and I felt, no joke, like God had reached down from the heavens and poked His finger in my stomach to prevent me from taking another step. I actually looked down expecting to see an indent in my stomach from the "NO". Of course "no's" won't usually be that physical in nature, but the Lord does seem to "show up" sometimes when it's a clear no, doesn't He? Of course I was thoroughly annoyed that the Lord would get off His rear end to speak to me about this literally worthless pile of someone else's belongings and not bother to respond when I sought after Him for myself! But my point is, yes, often there isn't a leading so much as there is a NO.
I do recall a serving one mentioning our conscience specifically as a kind of a no-machine. In other words, it is not going to pipe up that things are okay, it will just activate when things are not okay. Which I guess means, as OBW and others have said, we have the freedom to do that which isn't sinful/immoral/hurtful until we get the NO.
Thanks,
Trapped
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