Decision making and God's will

S.M. Hutchens at Touchstone reacts wisely to foolishness:

A young woman whose family I have known for years called me for advice. She had just been told by a young man that after long and earnest prayer, after seeking the face of God for days, the Holy Spirit had informed him it was God’s will she form a romantic attachment with him. With little deliberation and equal gravity I informed her she could tell her swain and his Spirit to go jump in the lake, and add a boot in my name to their collective backside with her good riddance.

There was a time I would have been more cautious about contravening the earnestly sought will of God in this way, since I was raised in a tradition that, while not charismatic, gave a good deal of respect to decisions earnestly prayed about - the earnester, the better. ....

But I am more confident now that the Holy Spirit, while mysterious, infinitely subtle, and often counter-intuitive is for all that no fool. The gabbling of enthusiasts is not his favored means of communication, nor is he a private gentleman. If he has a message for one who speaks for him, it meets what he has already placed in many of his own, and agrees. He is a friend to reason because he invented it, a friend of counsel, because he is eternally in counsel himself (some would even say, and not without reason, that he is Counsel), and a friend to the wisdom of age and experience, for he is the one who has given it, presumably for use toward his ends. ....

Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments: Quenching the Spirit