He had been so certain that day that the thoughts and feelings that had come into his heart were a direct communication from God, having been put there by none other than Jesus Christ himself. Later, however, he would come to understand that those thoughts and feelings had been nothing more than the natural workings of his own mind, and that he had been merely assuming that God was behind it.
Even so, he went for decades without ever adopting a reliable strategy for telling the two apart. And he would make the same mistake thousands of times. For the many failures he encountered, one would think he might have tired of the whole thing and turned to scripture instead for learning the will of God. But it was just too alluring—this idea he had got from church that God was going to be communicating with him directly, as if by a private conversation in his own heart. He much preferred that to the prospects of reading and study and contemplation. And so he continued on as he had been taught.
And he would not come to see it for many years, but the result of all this was that he had set up by mistake an interior altar to his own will and reasoning, and that the actual opinions and wishes of God had had very little to do with his daily decision making. Once he finally stared learning how to listen to the scriptures, he realized then that God was “telling” him many more things through the Bible than he had ever perceived before, when he was looking mostly inside his own heart for communication from God. And not only was there more of it, but what he was hearing now was much different in nature than before, for now, it disagreed with his own thoughts and feelings much more often, and required him to adjust his personal view accordingly.
This was much harder work, but was much more authentic and effective, and he was alive again, growing in ways he had not grown before.
