How Can We Know?

I'm really wondering, now, how it is that we can know that we are following God's lead.

In a little more than a month, i will be finished with my ministry at Mount Pleasant BIC Church. It seems to me that amidst my own feelings and perceptions, other people's encouragements and discouragements and the words and promptings of my wife, that I/we have sensed God's leading rightly out of pastoral ministry - at least for the time being. But what are supposed to head FOR?

It's not that I'm afraid. God has promised, if we will trust him, to lead us to the things he has ordained for us. Because of God's great love, proven in the sacrifice of Christ, I'm not concerned as to what God might have for us. But how can i be sure that i won't miss what he has decreed?

Yet I should know by know that at least part of what it means to trust God is that I can trust him to lead me through the dark alleys. Through Isaiah the prophet, God said, "I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them." (Is. 42:16) I have experienced this, but there has always been, and is even now, some trepidation. There are so many what-abouts and what-ifs. Yet even in the past couple of weeks, when i was anxious about something else, did not God provide? Of course he did!! So why this anxiety within me?

This is the question the Psalmist asked twice in Psalm 43 - "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and
my God." He poured out his complaint to God but, in the process, reminded himself of God's great faithfulness, of His gracious care. In a sense, he asks the question the apostle Paul asks, "If God is forus, who can be against us?" (Rom 8:31)

So here is my peace, my rest. Now i must trust God to work it in my wife. Her anxiety is beginning to rise. How do i not let her anxiety cause me anxiety? How do i "trust God" for her?

I ask, O Lord, that you send your Spirit to call to me constantly so that i may not wander far from you. You are my... you are our life and hope, our security and provision.