Your reading of the Bible, your prayer, and your waiting are all the different steps of your making up a kind of leading. Is this not a picture of your past Christian life? For such a long time you built up a lot of leadings, but the genuine leading was mostly ignored. This is why many have been seeking after the Lord for years, yet without much growth. The divine sonship within us did not increase much over the years. In other words, even though we may have been seeking, studying the Bible, praying, waiting on the Lord, yet for so many years we didn’t live a life as a son of God. We may have lived a life that was much regulated and that was much improved, but it was not so much a life that designated us the sons of God. We may have had a lot of improvement and a lot of adjustment, yet we didn’t have that much growth in life. Our divine sonship did not increase much.
The four Gospels portray a picture of how the disciples were under the Lord’s leading. The leading to the disciples in those days was just the presence, or the stay, of the Lord. The Lord’s leading to the disciples was His stay, His remaining with them. As long as He was there, that was the leading. But if you read the Gospels again with this view, you could see that all the disciples including Peter and Mary didn’t realize the Lord’s genuine leading.
For example in John 11, after Lazarus died, Martha and Mary sent the information to the Lord. Do you think that was under the Lord’s leading? That was altogether not needed, so the Lord didn’t respond to that call. Instead He remained in the place where He was for two more days. Surely the disciples wondered why the Lord Jesus wouldn’t do anything. Perhaps they discussed why the Lord wouldn’t go to Lazarus. Do you think their wondering and their discussing was under the Lord’s leading? Surely that was their “brotherly love.” Peter and John and James all had brotherly love, but it seemed that Jesus didn’t have brotherly love. But then to their great surprise suddenly the Lord said, “Let us go into Judea again.” Right away their response was that the Jews were seeking to stone Him. Again, was their response under the Lord’s leading? By reading John 11 you can find very few of the apostles’ or the disciples’ doings that were under the Lord’s leading. Mostly whatever they did and whatever they said was far away from the Lord’s leading. They all were distracted. Even Martha got distracted by her religious knowledge. The Lord Jesus had told her that her brother would rise again, and she responded that she knew he would rise again in the resurrection in the last day (vv. 23-24). All these things eventually caused the Lord to weep. The Lord was there and He was the leading. His presence, His stay, should have meant everything to them. They shouldn’t say anything; they shouldn’t act in any way. They should just put to death all the practices of their mortal body.
This must be our attitude also. When our lips want to speak, we have to put them to death. Whenever a part of your body wants to do anything, put that to death. Then you are spontaneously led by the Lord. This kind of description gives us a picture of how much we are out of the Lord’s leading. Even in His presence we may do a lot of things contrary to the Lord’s leading. Today the Lord is much closer to us than He was to the disciples in the four Gospels before His death and resurrection. At that time He was only among the disciples and outside of the disciples. Today He is much closer; He is within us. His abiding in us is the leading. But we are Marthas and Marys and Peters and Johns. Don’t think that you are better than they were.
Of all those disciples, not one was led by the Lord. Every one of them did something other than the Lord’s leading. Even when the Lord was going to call Lazarus out of the tomb, Martha indicated that he was stinking. This means she had a leading according to the circumstances. She knew that four days had passed already. She knew too much. This is a picture of our situation also. You cannot say that those disciples did not love the Lord. Perhaps they loved the Lord more than we do. They had dropped everything and they were following the Lord every day. Yet they were ignoring the Lord all the day. Although the leading was there in His Person, they were ignoring it. They didn’t need anything else. They just needed Himself. He Himself is all-inclusive.