No Blueprint but God’s Guidance

I remember we were speaking one night, and I said, “Shoghi Effendi, you know the way that the way that the administrative order in America grew and developed, and I know the matchless way in which you did this thing, it was almost the work of a genius, the way you accomplished and built this Cause and made it what it is today.” He said, “Leroy, you talk like you think that I sat over here in the Holy Land, and I had a blueprint of this Bahá’í World Order, and that I started to build it. As soon as I found the friends strong enough to do this, I said build this wall. And then a little later I said build that wall, and then build this wall. And then lay that floor. If you have that idea, dismiss it from your mind. When I became Guardian, I didn’t know what the steps to be taken were. God guided me. And when he gave me guidance I did what He guided me to do, and then I didn’t know what the next step would be until I got the guidance, and when I got the guidance, we did it. And then I didn’t know what the next step would be. I may have thought of what it might be, but I didn’t know until I got the guidance, and then I did. He said, I have supreme confidence that God will guide me to do whatever is necessary for the Cause whenever it should be done. And he says, the Bahá’ís of the world must have exactly that same confidence. They must have confidence that God will guide the Guardian to do what should be done for the welfare of the Cause at the moment it should be done, and unless they have that confidence, the Cause cannot succeed. This is the second message that I want to give you, friends. This confidence which the Guardian had in the unending guidance of God. We, ourselves, have to have this reliance. We have to be reassured in ourselves that God will guide His Cause, and that things will be done when they are to be done, how they are to be done. The unending of guidance of God has not left us. Shoghi Effendi has not left us. He has left his physical body, but his Spirit is still directing the affairs of the Faith in these days, and if we keep our hearts pure, if we keep our hearts as a mirror through which the Power of the Spirit can reflect itself, we will be guided to win this great Crusade.

Source: Hand of the Cause Leroy Ioas, “In the Days of the Guardian”, a talk given in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 31 October 1958 (issued on cassette by the US Bahá’í Publishing Trust; transcript at bahai.works).

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: 5-steps-prayer).

Various. *bahaistories.com archive*. https://bahaistories.com/subject/5-steps-prayer