Page 36 to your mind, and instinctively, you know you are to call them, reach out to them, or pray for them. Or someone asks you for a favor, and while your natural inclination is to turn them down due to the inconvenience, you have an instinct and a prompting to say ,yes. Or perhaps you are going head-to-head with someone over an issue that you feel passionate about. And intuitively, you are prompted to defer to the other person, drop the issue entirely, and put it into the Lord’s hands. Or a brother or sister in Christ gives you a personal observation, suggestion, or word of instruction, and it stays with you day after day. You have an inward witness that the word is right on the mark. I remember as a young Christian in my teens what happened when I first began to ask the Lord to lead me by His Spirit. Some of the first promptings I had were to help my mother wash the dishes (something I hated to do). In responding to those promptings, I had joy in doing the dishes. The burden was not heavy. I also remember times of mowing my lawn and then having an instinct to mow my neighbor’s lawn right afterward. Again, I enjoyed doing it. One of the marks of the Lord’s inward working is that when He prompts us to a certain action and we respond to it, He supplies the power to carry it out. Further, our inward parts are given a sense of life and peace. The inward promptings that I received as a young believer always involved giving, aiding, and loving on the one hand, or losing
Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator: single letters, and syllables uncomposed, are no better than nonsense. He who overlooks Him who is the “Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,” and sees not Him in all who is the All of all, doth see nothing at all.
Richard Baxter