Good Books on Guidance

Perhaps reflecting our rather narcissistic culture books on guidance seem to be one of the bestselling subsections in Christian literature. Having read a lot of them over the last few weeks my conclusion is, mostly, that there's no need to read more than one or at most two because all the good ones say the same things:

• God sovereignly guides us in line with his good plan for our lives.
• He only very rarely reveals that plan to us in advance.
• The Bible gives us all the guidance we need for righteousness.
• God has placed us in churches where people will give us wise advice and loving support.
• So we should trust God, do what the Bible says, take heed of the wisdom of church leaders and others and then just get on and make decisions.

All the books that follow contain these elements, but they all expand on them in helpful ways with subtly different emphases and at slightly different levels. Take your pick:

1 Decision making and the will of God, Gary Friesen, Multnomah.
The mother of all recent good book on guidance; that is to say I suspect it's the one where most of the other writers got their ideas from! Longish (450 pages) but easy to read with loads of helpful diagrams. I will be forever grateful to former boss Dr Jason Clarke for introducing mew to this book.

2 Finding the Will of God: A Pagan Notion? Bruce Waltke, Eerdmans.

Shorter and simpler than Friesen with a particularly good part one, which shows why lots of contemporary Christian notions of how you discover God's will are basically pagan ideas. Frightening and sobering!

3 Guidance and the Voice of God, Phil Jensen & Tony Payne, Matthias Media.
Probably the best known book on this subject in the circles I move in. Jensen & Payne's book is clear (sometimes painfully so) and practical. As a result of its brevity it loses some of the helpful nuances you get in Friesen. I also preferred the original, provocative, title The Last Word on Guidance!

4 Just Do Something: How to make a decision without dreams, visions, fleeces, open doors, random Bible verses, casting lots, liver shivers, Kevin DeYoung, Moody Press.
Another short punchy take on guidance with the sort of down the line (and occasionally across the line) humour you'd expect from the kind of preacher who hangs out with ark Driscoll a lot. DeYoung's helpful take on the subject is that he writes specifically with the aim of getting people to do something. This is the book to read if you're feckless and irresponsible - well if that's you you're probably not going to get round to buying it. But if you know some feckless and irresponsible you could give them the audiobook version?

5 Finding God's Will: Reaffirming the Sufficiency of Scripture, Colin Hamer, Wipf and Stock.
Another brief book, divided into 16 short chapters - this is the one on the list most likely to make it as your daily Quiet Time reading for a couple of weeks. Colin's writing style is punchy, no-frills and clear to the point of painfulness. If you like your doctrine unadorned with fluff this is the choice for you.