Corporate Discipline #3: Guidance

For the Christian, individual knowledge of the direct, active, immediate leading of the Spirit is not sufficient. Individual guidance must yield to corporate guidance. There must also come a knowledge of the direct, active, immediate leading of the Spirit together.

Much of the teaching on divine guidance in our century has been noticeably deficient on the corporate aspect. We have received excellent instruction on how God leads us through Scripture and through reason and through circumstances and through the promptings of the Spirit upon the individual heart.

This is why Richard Foster listed guidance among the Corporate Disciplines and stressed its communal nature.

While God guides the individual richly and profoundly, He also guides groups of people and can instruct the individual through the group experience.

Perhaps the preoccupation with private guidance in Western cultures is the product of our emphasis upon individualism. The people of God have not always been so. God led the children of Israel out of bondage as a people.

Click here for more from Richard Foster on the Corporate Spiritual Discipline of Guidance

Happy Veterans Day 2023!

As we celebrate another Veterans Day, let’s see what we can learn from a four-star admiral, who served as the ninth commander of the United States Special Operations Command from August 2011 through August 2014. 

Admiral William Harry McRaven retired from the United States Navy, after leading a force of 69,000 men and women in counter-terrorism operations. As a recognized national authority on U.S. foreign policy, he advised presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

I previously summarized his book Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World.

Now, let’s turn to his 2021 book entitled The Hero Code: Lessons Learned from Lives Well Lived.  He starts the book, recalling his childhood, “I was eight years old, way too old to really believe in Superman. In my mind, I knew he was just a comic book character, but in my heart, oh in my heart, I truly hoped that he was real. Because, if Superman was real, then he could solve all of the world’s problems.  Then, I realized if Superman or Batman or Spider-Man weren’t coming, then how would we stop the criminals, the Nazis, the Soviets, the aliens from outer space, and all the violence and destruction? The answer was clear. It was up to us.”

Click here for a summary of The Hero Code