Knowing the Will of God

             Ben Patterson, former pastor of the Irvine Presbyterian Church writes: “In college I got into an argument with the campus atheist.  He told me that if I prayed that our residence hall would levitate six inches off the ground, then he would believe that there was a God.  I asked him if he would commit his life to this God after the miracle.  He said: “Of course not.  This is another question entirely.”

       Jesus would say to him that the two questions are one and the same.  Do you want to know what God wants you to do?  Ask yourself first: Are you willing to do it when He shows it to you?   That’s the key question.  Why would God give any more light to a person who isn’t using the light they already have been given in Christ?

       But if you are a believer – if you have committed your life to the God who has shown Himself to you -- if you have what Paul describes as the “mind of Christ” you have taken the first crucial step.  But how can you, as a son or daughter of God, know the will of God for the specific situations you face in your life?  This is the question I hope to answer today.

       It may be helpful to divide the decisions we face into two categories: moral decisions and complex decisions.  Moral decisions are those that can be decided by applying a single, clear Biblical/moral principle.  These include most decisions about stealing, sexual behavior, business ethics, and the sanctity of human life.  The Biblical/moral principle tells us what our response should be.

       Paul Little gives an example of these moral decisions in action.  He writes of a young Christian woman who had signed a contract to teach.  Then in August she received an offer from another school closer to where she wanted to live so she broke the original contract.

       She needed to act on the Biblical principle in Psalm 15:4 where God says that He is pleased with the person who “swears to his own hurt and does not change.” In other words, God is pleased with people who keep their word, even if they discover it not advantageous. If she had acted on this clear guidance, she would have kept her original contract.

       The department chairman who told Little about the young woman’s action said her justification was: “I have a peace about it.”  He commented: “Isn’t that lovely?  She’s got the peace and I’ve got the pieces.”

       As we saw last Sunday, the whole idea of discerning the will of God only by what gives you a sense of inner peace is not biblical.  Sometimes people have great peace about doing something wrong.  As I asked last Sunday, has anyone here ever had a sense of peace about a premarital sexual relationship?  Do you know anyone who has justified an unbiblical divorce with the statement “I have a peace about it.”   A sense of peace can be totally self generated. 

       The young teacher Little describes acted against the will of God, despite her self-generated peace.  She violated a principle which, had she been alert and applied it to her life, would have given her clear guidance.

       Little also tells of a man he knows who doesn’t seem to grasp the overriding role of moral guidance in decision making.  “I loaned this man ten dollars,” he writes, “and five years later he is still praying about whether or not he should pay me back.”

       We don’t suffer here from a lack of guidance but sometimes from a disinclination to accept the guidance we’ve already been given.  That’s a problem of will, not knowledge. God’s word is meant to be a “Lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.” It contains all of the information we need for making most moral decisions.  Often the cure is not more study. The cure is repentance and renewal.

         It is very significant that almost every last reference to knowing the will of God in the New Testament has to do with hearing God’s moral guidance.  Doing God’s will in this sense is a matter of applying the moral principle and avoiding rationalization.  We do not need to rethink the issue every time.  If I know, for example, that God does not permit stealing, I do not need to waste my energy deliberating whether He might be leading me to drive off in my neighbor’s car or fudge on my taxes. 

       However, the Bible is not a complete answer book for all areas of human life. Try as I might, I was not able to find a verse that said: “Thou, Dave Wilkinson, shalt move to Moorpark and preach a sermon series on the will of God.”  Neither do we find verses like: “Thou, June Baker, shalt become an engineer” or “Thou, Mary Cornblat, are to marry Barry Barhauser and open a 7-11 in Pacoima.”  The Bible isn’t that kind of book and those who try to make it that kind of book get into trouble.

       We’re all familiar with the man who went to scripture to find God’s will for that day. He opened the Bible at random and read the verse: “Judas went and hanged himself.”  Not finding much there he opened to another page and read: “Go thou and do likewise.”  Somewhat shaken, he opened to a third page and read: “Whatsoever thou doest, do quickly.”

       Then there is also the story of the young man who looked for a woman named Grace to marry because he had read the verse: “My grace is sufficient for you.”

       But once we are free from that silly approach, we can begin to seek the will of God in a mature and responsible way.

       This brings us to the complex decisions.  These are important decisions that have to do with more than moral choices.  Complex decisions include which profession to choose, whether or not to marry and whom to marry, where to go to church, whether or not to change jobs, which college to attend, and questions about priorities. In general, questions like these can’t be resolved by the application of a single moral principle.  And in most cases, we are left with a good deal of freedom of choice.

       That’s the way God intends it to be. 

       I have actually known people who have prayed about which brand of toothpaste to use.  I’m not making this up  That’s what they pray about.  I believe God’s answer is, “I gave you eyes, I gave you a brain.  Read the box.” 

       There are many things in our lives that God simply doesn’t have a will for.  That doesn’t mean that He doesn’t care about us.  It’s what He wants us to become.  God wants us to grow to maturity in Christ and that requires real choices. 

       In fact, I have come to believe, from a careful look at Scripture, that there is no personalized “God’s will” for me to discover in most areas of my life.  God has not already decided most things for me.  So there are no signs I have to “read” and no voice of God I must “hear” in order to make sound, biblical, godly decisions.  I don’t need to discover God’s will for my life as much as I need to create my life according to the principles God clearly lays down in His word.

        When the Bible talks about being led by the Spirit, it talks about how we live our lives as moral people, not in the sense of having the Spirit always telling us what to do next.  For example, Paul writes in Romans 8:12-14 “So then, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die. But if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons and daughters of God.” 

       Being led by the Spirit in this passage does not refer to individual guidance, but to empowerment to live holy lives. It refers to the Holy Spirit’s work of convicting people of sin and “leading” a Christian into right living.  In the same way, in Galatians 5:18 Paul writes:  “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.”

      As we saw a couple of weeks ago, God is less concerned with who you marry than with what kind of husband or wife you are.  God is less concerned with which job you take than He is with what kind of worker you are. God is less concerned about where you live than He is with what kind of neighbor you are.  He is less concerned with what ministry you’re in, than He is with whether of not you serve faithfully.

        God has a will for how we live our lives.  But He is much more concerned with who we become than where we live.  God doesn’t decide our next steps for us and then challenge us to try to figure out what He has decided.  If there is a definite road we need to take, our Shepherd is quite capable of making that plain.  But that’s not the norm.  God almost always dignifies us with the responsibility of making significant choices ourselves.  Like any good father, God teaches us how to make good decisions ourselves. 

        Even a good shepherd doesn’t make every decision for the sheep.  And even a good shepherd doesn’t care about every decision the sheep make.  In the image of Psalm 23, it’s enough for the Shepherd to lead His sheep to green pastures.  He doesn’t need to tell them which clumps of grass to nibble on in which order.  

       We are much more than sheep.  We are free moral agents.  And this means that there are profound decisions we face.   

       Now at various times in my life I have kept a journal.  When both Ryan and Kevin were born, I had the joy of writing a narrative of the birth.  The nurses referred to me as the “Secretary of Labor.”  Reading in these old journals, I come to places where Carol and I have faced major decisions.  How often we express the desire that God might leave a note in our mailbox telling us His will. 

       He hasn’t yet done that.  So how do we know the guidance of God for specific, complex choices we face when we need guidance that goes beyond beyond “read the box” or even “read the book?”  How do we get it? 

       The first way God guides us is simple.  It is so simple, you might be disappointed. 

       Here it is.  What is the logical thing to do? 

       Last Sunday we looked at how the Apostle Paul modeled decision making in the will of God.  Logical decisions on the basis of circumstances and key foundational principles led Paul to the great majority of his conclusion about God’s will.  There were a few times when God left Paul the proverbial note in the mailbox but those were very rare -- even for Paul. 

       As J.I. Packer observes in his chapter on guidance in Hot Tub Religion: “The  Scripture gives us no warrant to expect personal ‘hotline,’ ‘voice from the control-tower’ guidance.  In fact, Packer points out that what some consider the conventional wisdom about how to know God’s will is “actually a new belief in the church that has only been around for about a hundred and fifty years.  It is not supported by the Bible or the experience of the church in most times and places.”

       Following the model of Paul, the normal way to discern the purpose of God is by the use of the minds God gave us and in light of the wisdom from God that James writes we are free to pray for.  James tells us to pray for wisdom  – wisdom --  not a blueprint, not an inner nudge, but wisdom to use our minds right. 

       Soren Kirkegaard, the father of existentialism and Christian believer, said that the only way to do God’s will is to do the illogical thing. He claims that only behavior which seems pointless to us truly demonstrates faith in God.  The idea is that if we know why we’re doing something we aren’t responding in simple faith to God’s leading.

       Now it is true that we must each, ultimately, take “leaps of faith”, and set off like Abraham from places of comfort to a land we do not know.  But Kirkegaard is off base.  The normal way to know the will of God is to follow the way that seems most logical.  God gave us minds for a reason, not just to decorate the inside of our heads.

       The second way to know God’s will is by our own sanctified desires.  Sanctified desires are those that are in keeping with what we already know of God’s will through the moral principles of scripture.

       To be sure, there is a danger here.  We can fool ourselves.  One humorist has pointed out that pastors rarely feel a divine calling to smaller, poorer congregations; only to larger, richer ones.  There is a danger of playing “I’m sure it must be the will of the Lord, ‘cause it seems so right to me.”

       But, at the same time, we need to avoid the fallacy of thinking: “If I want to do something it obviously can’t be God’s will.”  We need to rid ourselves of the unbiblical view of God as the “cosmic killjoy” who doesn’t want us to enjoy ourselves.  He is our Father.  He loves us with an everlasting love.  When we are pleased, usually He is pleased. 

       People sometimes feel led by God.  At times, I’m sure they are.  I know I have been led.  But other times the inner leading I sense isn’t the voice of God – at least not directly.  It is a sub-conscious awareness of recognition of what I really want to do. 

       That doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.  It’s not wrong unless the desire is wrong.  The sense of being led is a recognition of my own God-honoring desire.  It’s not a voice from God so much as a voice from me.  But God can lead in that way. 

       It may well be, if your life is generally in tune with God’s working – with biblical principles of servant hood and stewardship -- that your desire to do something is a sign that God wants you to do it and to enjoy your self the whole time.

       People sometimes tell us to see what doors God opens and closes.  They say we can use these doors as signs of what He wants us to do.  But the Bible does not teach we get definitive guidance from open and closed doors.   We can get guidance. But we can’t get final guidance.

      Paul, for example, walked through some open doors.  He writes in 1 Corinthians 16:8-9: “But I shall remain in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective service has opened to me, and there are many adversaries”   But Paul ignored other open doors.  He writes in 2 Corinthians 2:12-13: “Now when I came to Troas for the gospel of Christ and when a door was opened for me in the Lord, I had no rest for my spirit, not finding Titus my brother, but taking my leave of them, I went on to Macedonia.” 

       The most famous example is the earthquake that opens the doors of the prison in Philippi in Acts 16:26-28.  When the jailer had been roused out of sleep and had sees the prison doors opened, he draws his sword and is about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cries out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Do yourself no harm, for we are all here!’”

        The bottom line is that Paul did not read even miraculous divine opportunities as if they were divine directives.  Paul viewed open doors (even open prison doors!) simply as opportunities that can be acted on or ignored depending on other factors.

         People get very superstitious about this whole business of signs.  “The door is closed.  But is it really closed and locked?  Is it an obstacle to faith, a roadblock from Satan, or divine red light?  Let’s bind the devil, claim the victory, and barge through! “But maybe we’re just not listening to God.”   Or, “I see an open door.  But is this God or is it Satan trying to lead me astray.  Jesus was offered an open door by Satan to rule over the whole earth.  But He knew that wasn’t a door He should walk through.

        Now open and closed doors can help us decide.  By this, I mean that a closed door really limits our options.  Where should you work?  Someplace that will give you a job is a good place to start.  Who should you marry?  Someone who will marry you is a good option.   

       The third way to discern the best direction is through the counsel of mature Christians.  Proverbs 27:17 declares: “Iron sharpens iron and one person sharpens another.” Those who know us, who can independently evaluate our strengths and weaknesses, can help us discern the will of God for a particular situation.   When I talk about using wisdom in decision making, I’m not just talking about my own wisdom.   I’m talking about the godly wisdom of others as well.

       There we have three ways to know God’s will, apart from the supernatural “note in the mailbox” that rarely happens: the logical processes of a Spirit empowered mind, the sanctified preferences of our hearts; and the counsel of mature, believing friends.  These three ways, in tune with the moral principles of God’s word, can be our guide.

       You can know God’s will.  Realize, first, that God’s will in most of its aspects is already fully revealed.  Be sure you are familiar with it in the word of God.  In those areas where He has not been specific, be assured that God intends to guide you if you need guidance beyond the mind he has already given you and the wisdom you can pray for.  He promises to be your shepherd.