We constantly are asking how we can know God’s will. The Bible doesn’t give instructions on how to know God’s will, it just tells us to know and do it.
I can hear some of you thinking, “If I knew what God wanted me to do, I would make better decisions.”
Back in the late 90s and early 2000 was a TV show, Early Edition, set in Chicago. The main character, Gary Hobson, mysteriously received the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper a day ahead of time, effectively giving him knowledge of the future.
Hobson would then attempt to prevent the terrible events each day which he learned about from the newspaper. It was fun to watch, but it was make believe. Only God knows the future.
We Christians sometimes wish God would tell us every day what’s going to happen so we would make right decisions because we’re afraid of making the wrong ones.
The Bible never tells us to ask, “How do I know God’s will? It just tells us to know it (Eph. 5:17). Maybe we are not clear about what we mean when we talk about God’s will.
This is God’s purpose from eternity past to eternity future whereas He determines what’s going to take place. Ephesians 1:11 11In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. (cf. Eph. 3:11)
History is God’s story. He writes the story line. The world is not spinning out of control. When God created He also established the course for this world. And He set His plan for humanity.
God is working out His sovereign will through believers and non-believers, atheists, pagans and Christians. Whether you like it or not, even whether you believe it or not doesn’t matter. God’s sovereign will is going to be accomplished.
All of us are included in His sovereign will. For example, Peter said about Christ’s death,
Acts 2:23 23This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.
When those Roman soldiers carried out the crucifixion they didn’t know they were part of God’s plan. They were just being good soldiers, following orders.
In the Old Testament, Job said in Job 14:1, 5, “Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. Man’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months.”
God has established the life-span of every generation. We can hasten our deaths by our life-styles, being in an accident, or getting a fatal disease. But even if we live without those, most of us will not live to 100 because God has determined our days.
God’s sovereign will is running its course precisely as He arranged it. This characteristic of God is not something we can know or anticipate ahead of time. Although He did reveal some of the future. For instance, the Old Testament Jews knew that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem of Judea.
But usually we only recognize God’s sovereign will in our lives as we look back at what has already taken place.
The Bible tells us what God wants us to believe and how to behave. God’s moral will is very clear in the Bible. In the Bible we discover principles and precepts to follow and morals to learn.
Everything we Christians do should be for God’s glory. We do that through words, thoughts and actions. We may not know what the will of God is for the future, but even a casual reading of the Bible reveals His will for every believer. Here are some:
And the list goes on and on. Peter wrote:
1 Peter 4:8 – 11, 8Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. 11If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
When the goal of your life is to live for God’s glory, then decision making is easier. In Alice in Wonderland, Alice came to a crossroads and didn’t know which road to take.
The Cheshire cat asked, “Where are you going?” “I don’t know,” Alice replied. “Well, if you don’t know where you’re going,” the cat wisely answered, “any road will do very nicely.”
We Christians know where we are going. The road we want to travel is the “To Live For God’s Glory” road.
God is glorified when a husband loves his wife as Christ loved the church; when a wife submits to her husband; when both submit to each other. Fathers glorify God when they don’t exasperate their children. Children glorify God by obeying their parents.
The Ten Commandments are an expression of God’s moral will. The first four are all about our relationship to God: God is the only God; do not have idols or misuse God’s name; honor God with a day of rest.
The next six are about our relationships to others: honor your parents; do not murder, or commit adultery or steal; do not give false testimony or covet what someone else has.
Throughout the Bible we are instructed to act in love and kindness. We are not to be self-serving. We are to think of others before ourselves. We are to have integrity. We are to be sexually pure.
We are to be faithful and generous. We are not to forsake assembling ourselves with other Christians. We are to tithe and give to the poor. A Christian is not to marry a non-believer.
Employers are to treat their employees with respect and employees are to respect their bosses and give a full days work. And in everything we are to act out of proper motives.
We are to love one another, offer hospitality, serve one another, tell others about Christ, to teach people about Jesus, to be gracious with our words. All these things bring glory to God.
These and more of God’s moral will are clearly found in the Bible. Yet we still want God to make decisions for us. We want to put the responsibility of our bad decisions on His shoulders.
This is where the rubber meets the road in our lives. God gives us permission to disobey His moral will. The Bible never tells us to ask, “What is God’s will for my life?” God has already spelled it out in the Bible. Nor does it ever tell us how to know God’s will.
God assumes that because He’s given us the Bible, we will know His will from reading it. Then He gives us the freedom to make decisions about our life in accordance with it.
From the very beginning God did not want puppets at His beck and call. He wants us to willingly choose to love Him. We know this was His purpose because even in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were given permission to choose to obey or disobey God concerning the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Did God know that Adam and Eve would disobey? Of course! But the only way to have true fellowship with God has to be because we want it and choose it.
One of the great mysteries about God is that He knows the past, present and future. He knows what your decisions are going to be, and He knows how those decisions are going to affect and change your life.
We think, “If He would just let us in on what He knows we would be able to make the right choices He desires for us.” But even if you knew, would you make the right choice? Adam and Eve didn’t.
Just as the sin of Adam brought sin into the world and has affected humankind ever since, God gives us permission to make life decisions and to live with the consequences.
His permissive will allows your decisions and the decisions of others to affect and impact other people’s lives in many ways. When someone drinks and drives and causes a terrible accident many other lives are affected besides the drivers.
Did God decide it was time for that man to shoot and kill that 6-year-old boy and his grandmother in Bernalillo? No! But that human decision will hurt and affect many others for years to come.
God is not responsible for the choices you make, nor is He responsible for the consequences of your decisions—you are.
Some Christians think that God reveals His individual will just like He did to certain individual in the Bible. But, they were the exception, not the norm.
Yes, a few people in the Bible received direct revelation from God. But those revelations always had to do with God’s kingdom, and with the growth of the Church.
For instance, the deacon, Philip, received direct, divine instructions from God. Acts 8:26 26Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”
As he was going he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of the treasury of Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians. Then, in Acts 8:29, 29The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”
This was direct, verbal guidance to Philip. It wasn’t a hunch that he was to go to the desert and start a ministry to charioteers who were on their way to Egypt. God sent him to tell the eunuch about Jesus.
In Acts 10 Cornelius the centurion was told to send men to Joppa to bring Peter back to Cornelius’ house. He was told to go to a specific place at a specific location to find a specific man.
He wasn’t dreaming, he wasn’t hallucinating; he received direct, specific verbal guidance from an angelic messenger of God.
And in Acts 16 the Apostle Paul received a divine vision of a man from Macedonia asking him to come over and help the Macedonians. As a result of this direct vision from God, Paul began to tell the Macedonians about Jesus.
The common thing about these three instances of divine guidance was that they pushed the early believers to share the Gospel of Jesus with people they may not have thought of reaching.
Does God give direct guidance to individuals today? Perhaps, to a very few, probably where conditions are very similar to biblical days, and where access to the Bible is very restricted, and the one receiving the guidance is involved in reaching people for Jesus.
But you cannot use these examples when you have to decide whether to marry a certain person, take a different job, buy a particular house, or move to a new location. If you are looking for that kind of direction you may wait a very long time.
When someone tells me that ‘God told them to do something,’ I want to ask, “What did He sound like? Was He a tenor or a bass?
“Or did you mean that you searched the Scriptures for guidance in the decision that you made?”
Though a few people in the Bible received directions from God doesn’t mean that God has to reveal His specific, individual will to us. And one of the reasons is because we have the Bible, they did not!
You do have guidance. It is unambiguous and it’s direct. It’s from God, and it’s found in His Word. Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:16 that all Scripture is “God-breathed” or inspired by God.
He said that this God-breathed book is profitable for four things: for teaching us what we ought to believe. For rebuking us when we have gone wrong. It corrects us by putting us back on the right path. And it instructs us in right living.
These four things are designed to thoroughly equip us to live a satisfying and productive Christian life. This means that when we understand the Bible and apply it correctly, it is all-sufficient.
The Bible is sufficient to help us in life’s decisions. The anxiety you feel when you face life’s tough decisions—what vocation to enter, what school to attend, what job to take, what ministry to give yourself to—will be lessened when you first ask, “Will the decision I make reflect my relationship with Jesus, and will I be able to live a Christian witness as a result of this decision?”