We have to practice putting to death the practices of our mortal body. Then we are led. If He is staying, we stay. If He is drinking, we drink. If He is eating, we eat. We don’t ask, and we don’t pray, and we don’t read His Word to create a leading. It is so strange that the Lord did not answer Martha and Mary’s prayer, and the Lord did not tell Peter and John and James what to do. When He wanted to go, He simply said, “Let us go” (John 11:7). When He goes we have to go also. This is to be led.
I have the burden to show you how much we have been deceived in the past. Don’t put the blame altogether upon the enemy, Satan. We have been self-deceived. We have built up many leadings in the past just by our preferences. The leading is here within us. His stay in us today is very close and very subjective; it is very dear, very precious, very real, and very practical. Yet in our daily life, it seems He is not with us. You behave, you walk, you do things, you see things, you talk. You do not have the deep sensation that the Lord is with you. A Person is with you who is more real and more practical than you are, yet you don’t have such a sensation.
If my wife and I are together, mostly I don’t have the sensation that another One was there already. My wife and I were not the first ones there. We were the second and the third. The first One is He. We don’t have this sensation. So when we want to do certain things, we pray for the Lord’s leading. Many of us could testify that the more we prayed in this way, the more we were distracted, the more we didn’t know what was the leading. The more we prayed for the leading, the more the leading was gone. So we all learned the skill of how to build up a leading by reading the Scriptures, by praying and waiting, by checking with the circumstances, and sometimes by asking the Lord for a sign.
This shows us where we have been and perhaps where we still are. It also describes the genuine leading which is the processed Triune God to be the all-inclusive indwelling life-giving Spirit. With Him is the divine life. With the divine life is the law of the Spirit of life. These three things can never be divided. They remain simultaneously within you. They are the leading. All the time they are leading. You don’t need to seek after the leading. As long as you, by His grace, put to death all the practices of your mortal body, you are led by the Spirit.