Mainstream educated Christians should have noticed by now that there are two basic approaches to Christian service pointed out to us both by the Bible, ourselves, and Christian teachers. The first one is "Hold your breath and try an approach you dream up. God will guide you, bless what you're doing, and keep you alive." The other one is "Wait on God. Don't try to do anything major for God unless you have a clear leading from Him. If you can't detect His signals yet, hold tight or you will probably cause more problems for the church, wrecking your life in the process." Not surprisingly, some vaulted Christian teachers (Oswald Chambers among them) tell you to do both, while hold them both out as mutually exclusive. Who has some Godly wisdom on this question?
Intuitive approach vs. Procedural approach.
Inuitive is to "follow your gut instinct" and procedural is to "follow a recipe." An experienced baker might follow their gut when it comes to ingredient portions or bake times, and a different baker might strictly follow whatever has been printed in the recipe guide.
The new covenant can read like a recipe with qualifiers for an intuitive approach that reads something to the effect of "add this ingredient to taste" but also warns against the danger of canonically endorsing one baker's intuitive answer legalistically as the only valid response, "a pinch of yeast leavens the whole loaf."
The law is written on the heart and mind. There are some explicit commandments such as love God and love your neighbour as yourself, but they inherently contain interperative aspects such as to the question of "who is our neighbour?" through the parable of the Good Samaritan. "Here's an example" was the answer instead of a firm recipe for whomever would qualify.
"try an approach you dream up"
Biblically, God spoke through dreams, it just wasn't always fully understood by the recipient of the dream. Sometimes an interpreter was required, such as Joseph in Genesis interpreting other people's dreams including that of the Pharaoh.
We see, somewhat on the same note, that prophesies acceptable to the community are said to require a second party to record for the witness.
Dreams and intuition can be clear signals. The topic of claromancy came up in a thread a few months back (e.g. casting lots, flipping coins, etc.) with the concept that through random processes God can make His will known. Claromancy can be skewed and setup improperly. If we ask a question with two possible outcomes ("should I go left or right?") and flip a coin to try to make God's will clear, we might be excluding other possible answers (e.g. "go backwards" or "go straight" or "go left then right" or "do nothing: wait"). Likewise if we are using a process that isn't really random. Something like a fumbled coin might itself be a signal that the wrong question is being asked.
If we interpret intuition as a type of claromancy, the same shortcomings apply. We try to search our feelings for whether to go left or right but have not imagined the possible proper route as it is not consciously or near-consciously known to us. Even if a dream or intuition tries to show the correct answer, if our conscious mind is loudly asking a false dichotomy, we may not hear the answer that is being given to us. It would seemingly be important to have an open mind, a loving heart, and faith in our spirit to the possible answers and the mental 'coin fumbles' that may be telling us that we are approaching the problem incorrectly or with the wrong perspective.
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