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“Your Will Be Done”
Making Decisions in God’s Will (part 1)
Praying The Lord’s Prayer, Part 5
Matthew 6:10a
Lord, Teach Us to Pray
March 9, 2003
I have been making decisions ever since I first spit out my broccoli. And that was an easy choice. As you go through life, some decisions are harder and harder to make. In school, I began to have to make decisions on who will be my friends and what I will do when faced with certain challenges from others in my class—like when bullies threatened me or whether or not to go to certain parties where they may be drinking or doing drugs.
Graduating from school, I was faced with deciding if and where I would go to college. In college, I was pressed to decide what I will do as a profession for the rest of my life—a pretty daunting choice for a 19 year old. By the time I graduated, I had to act confident that I had chosen the right career path. Then came the choice of where that career was going to be. What company would I work for? Would I be willing to move to another part of the country? Would I mind traveling a lot?
After working for three years in a Fortune 100 company, I became a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. Then more decisions had to made: Should I go into full-time ministry or continue in my present career? How do you decide such a thing? Then the cycle started all over again! I had to decide what seminary to attend to get my Masters degree, followed by deciding where to serve in my first ministry.
During that time, I was dating an extremely cute and incredible girl. Should I marry her? Is she the girl God wants me to be with all my life?
Then there came a time to decide what ministry to do next; I had to decide—do I move to another state? Do I stay home and start a new church?
Decisions…decisions!
What are one or two of the most important or stressful decisions you have had to face in your life? Maybe you are facing a difficult choice now.
When facing important life decisions, we have been told, we must seek the “will of God.” We have been pointed to verses that say that God has prepared in advance good works for us to do and that God will direct our paths. The Christian’s duty, then, is to go and find God’s will—those things that God wants us to do by praying for that direction. So, when faced with choices in life—some smaller, some very huge—we feel the pressure to discern what God has willed us to do. After all, we have been told, God has a detailed, ideal will or plan for each believer, and we do not want to drift off the path of his will! That can cause serious harm!
The only problem is that we struggle with how we can actually figure out the will of God. We can search the Scriptures, but no verse will say, “marry Linda,” or “start a church,” or “move to Iowa.” But we have been told that we must be “in the center of God’s will.”
Today and next week I hope to debunk some of the myths about the will of God, and to clarify what God says in the Bible about making decisions.
First, before we get started, I want to assure you that God does love you and that he does seek to be intimately involved in your life. He wants you to be in a prayerful relationship with him as you face choices. He wants you to rely on him for guidance through his Holy Spirit.
But I also want to assure you that God gives you a lot of freedom to make your own choices. But many of us don’t want to make hard choices. We want to have some kind of crystal ball so that we can see into the future—so that we know all the ramifications of every choice we make before we make them. And knowing that God is omniscient and that we have a special connection with this God, we naturally want to pray… “Lord, How ‘bout a little help, oh omniscient One!”
And we do all sorts of silly things to divine our way into making good decisions. Here are a few:
1. Playing Bible Roulette.
This is when you open your Bible to whatever verse you come to first as a direct word from God to your particular situation. There’s the old story of a guy who was trying to find God’s will. He closed his eyes and flopped his Bible on the couch, allowing it to open wherever God would want it to open. He opened his eyes and read in Matthew 27, “Then he went out and hanged himself.” Somehow, that didn’t seem right, so he tried again. Close eyes, flop, open eyes. He read in Luke 10, “Go and do likewise.”
This silly example is just to make a point. Many people have treated the Bible as a book of magic. But that is not how the Bible functions—it is living and active when you understand its contents and apply it to your life. Any other use of the Bible borders on what God calls divination. In ancient times, people did all sorts of things to understand the mind of the gods when making choices in life. Some of them studies livers, thinking the center of our being was the stomach, not the head. Others studied the stars (and you can still read the horoscope in the daily newspaper). Others would go to “oracles,” special guides who had the divine ability to share the mind of the gods—and you can still call spiritual advisors over 800 lines today. Others looked toward numerology, seeking secret codes that would reveal the god’s intentions—and you can go to Christian bookstores today and buy books about what has been called “The Bible Code.”
But God will have none of that. He warned the people of God in the Law,
“Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD.” (Deuteronomy 18:10-11).
A Christian does not “interpret omens” or “practice divination.” A Christian does not treat the Bible as some kind of divining tool. The Bible functions only in one way: As the revelation of God through the stories and teachings recorded on its pages. It is God’s powerful voice to you,
only when you understand its contents and apply it to your life.
2. Relying on inner impressions or a “peace.”
In seminary, we had a student newspaper that came out twice a quarter. I was assisting another person in doing the paper, and the next year I took over as senior editor. I remember a conversation I had with the editor I was assisting. She said to me, “God has told me to not put out a second edition this quarter.” I asked her, “He
told you?” She replied with confidence, “Yes. And I have an inner peace about it.” It was the ultimate Christian end-game. When somebody tells you, “God told me…” or “God has lead me to do this…”, what can you say? What right to I have to question what GOD has been telling you to do?!
But I wanted to ask her, “Now, at the beginning of the year, when you decided to take on the responsibility of being editor of the paper, did God tell you to do
that? And if he did, did he not know that there was a responsibility to produce a total of 6 papers a year? If that is the case, then did God change his mind? Or is something else going on? Are you just overwhelmed with this quarter’s school load and think that it’s wise not to do the paper for the sake of your grades? And since you have convinced yourself that your grades have priority, is that why you have an “inner peace” about it?
An “inner peace” is a bad indicator of God’s will. Christians have used “inner peace” to justify all kinds of disobedience, from adultery to dishonesty in business. This self-deceptive trap of following our emotions can take over what God has revealed about his moral will in Scripture.
Jesus sweated drops of blood before going to the cross. He certainly was perfectly in God’s will, but he did not have an “inner peace.” Jonah, on the other hand, slept in the boat as God threw a terrible storm upon it, threatening the lives of all on board. Jonah was
not following God’s will, but felt a great “inner peace.”
I urge Christians to not be so flippant with crediting the Holy Spirit with what we have decided to do. It is a serious sin to give credit to the Spirit something that he has not done! Just because you have a “peace” about it does not mean that this “peace” is God’s indication that you are doing exactly what he wants you to do. It may be that, or it may be that you have made a good choice—a
wise choice—that makes good sense. Or, it may even mean that it is a bad decision but you have merely
convinced yourself it is the best. I’d rather you say, “I feel good about this decision” than “God has given me an inner peace.” When we lift our inner impressions to the level of divine revelation, we had better be SURE! Or else we are flirting with sin.
3. “Putting out a fleece.”
Another myth is that we can follow Gideon’s example in Judges 6 to understand the mind of God in making decisions. To confirm with God if he would be used by God to save Israel from the Midianites, Gideon placed a fleece (the shorn wool of a sheep) on the floor on two nights, and dew fell at one time on the fleece without any on the floor, and at another time the fleece remained dry while the ground was wet with dew.
So, we think, “If it worked for Gideon…!” and we do things like this: “If my husband gets that pay raise, I will know that it is God’s will for me to go buy that new outfit.” Or, “If she wears that pink shirt today, I will know that I should ask her to marry me.” Or, “If I receive the acceptance letter today from Ohio State, I will know that is where I should go to school.”
But none of this is really anywhere near the truly miraculous event of the fleece for Gideon! Hey, if you are going to really put out a fleece, ask God to do something that could never happen without his divine miraculous hand! But
even that would not be wise, for Gideon’s story is not given to us as an example to know God’s will. It cannot be duplicated by coincidence or coercion.
~
Now I don’t want to come down to hard on anybody today. I believe that most of us have been tempted to pray these kinds of “test prayers” in order to divine God’s mind. I think it simply shows that we are sincere in our desire make decisions that will please God, and we really are struggling with how to go about doing this.
There are a number of good books about knowing God’s will in decision making. M. Blaine Smith wrote Knowing God’s Will (Intervarsity, 1979), Haddon Robinson’s out-of-print Decision Making by the Book (Victor, 1991) is good, and Garry Friesen wrote perhaps the most influential book, Decision Making & the Will of God (Multnomah, 1980, 2nd edition, 2000). Friesen is Dean of Faculty and Professor of Bible at Multnomah Bible College, and serves at of our sister churches, United Evangelical Free Church in Oregon.
In what I am about to tell you, I am indebted to the insights of all these authors, but I have also studied this subject in the Bible at length on my own. This week we will look at God’s Moral Will and God’s Sovereign Will in helping us to make decisions. Next week, we will spell out five practical guidelines that can help you to make good choices.
1. God has given you plenty of guidance on how to live life—
therefore, submit to God’s will revealed in the Bible.
A few weeks ago, I shared about what it means to “pray for God’s
will.” I encourage you to go back and re-read that
message. We learned that the MAIN way the Bible speaks of “The Will of God” is that which glorifies God by our obedience to his revelation in His Word. When somebody wants to know, really know, the will of God, I can confidently point them to the Bible. The Scriptures tell us what God wants us to believe and how God wants us to behave. So, our first order of business is to submit to God’s moral will, which is revealed to us on the pages of Scripture.
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
If I want to walk on the path that God would have me walk, I need to let Scripture function the way Scripture is meant to function. The Bible teaches us how we ought to live; it rebukes us when we wonder off the path; it corrects us so that we can get back on the path of righteousness; and it trains us in right living. And all of this is for one purpose—so that we can be equipped completely for a life that serves others. So, in other words, all you need to live a life that is filled with what God would have you do (every good work),
all you need is to allow Scripture to function as it should. We are to study the Bible, meditate on the Bible, immerse ourselves into the Bible. Romans 12:1-2 tells us that we are renew our minds by letting the Scripture change the way we think and feel about things—and when we do, we are transformed.
So, the first and most crucial step is to commit to submitting to God’s moral will. And, practically speaking, that is an immense help in making decisions! Because when you know what God says is right and wrong in a general sense, then your set of choices is automatically made smaller! You will not consider, for example, lying at work in order to get a promotion. You will not consider, say, trying to choose who you will marry by sleeping with the two finalists (as “The Bachelorette” did). Some choices in life are clearly outside the moral limits of God’s will. That helps a lot in making decisions!
2. God has given you freedom to make many of your own choices—
so learn how to make good decisions.
Okay, we know that there are clear commands in Scripture as to what we can and cannot do to be in God’s will. But we must admit that there is a lot of stuff that I have to decide in life that I can’t look up in my Bible. How do I make those choices?
Some of us have been taught that only one decision would be God’s will, and all others would be “outside God’s perfect will.” But contrary to that view, the Bible teaches something else. To quote Garry Friesen,
“Scripture teaches the concept of freedom: In many cases, any one of several choices would be equally pleasing to God.”
Think for a moment about the very first commandment given to man. It is a model of the freedom God gives us within his moral will—“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
(Gen. 2:16-17, emphasis added). That is freedom within boundaries. And God continues to tell us, “Here are the boundaries in which you must live your life in order to be in my will; do not go outside these boundaries. But within those boundaries, I give you freedom of choice.”
God is our heavenly Father, and like any good parent, he wants us to grow into maturity—spiritual maturity. But we know that a good parenting is more than making all the choices for your child. Your mom and dad are not supposed to be meddling in all your decisions for all your life. If that were the case, you would always be immature. Good parents train their children in making moral decisions—teaching them the boundaries in which to live life. Sure, at first, the parent makes the choices for the child, modeling what it looks like to make good choices. But as the child develops, the good parent relinquishes that responsibility to the child. Instead of making all the decisions for the child, the parent seeks to reinforce the morality he or she has already instilled in the child. The parent is no longer leading the child every step of the way, but allowing the child to live his or her own life under that instilled moral will in how to make those individual choices. The intention is to have the child know the moral bounds in which to make decisions, how to APPLY that moral code to individual situations is ultimately left for the child to decide on his or her own. That is the definition of becoming mature. And our relationship with God is very much the same.
“But wait a minute,” some will counter, “what about verses that teach that God will tell us every step to take on the path of life?”
To that, I say “Do those verses really teach that God wants to lead us by the nose so that every step is HIS decision and not our own?”
A favorite is Proverbs 3:5-6—“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (KJV). We’ve been told that this verse teaches that we must
not make our own decisions—we must not lean on our own understanding. Instead, the promise of this verse is that God will give
specific direction every step along the way, for all the choices we make—he will
"direct our paths."
But that is not what this passage is saying. A better translation is found in the NIV,
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”
The promise is that the LORD will “make your paths straight,” not that he will “direct your paths.” This is best understood in light of the way Proverbs tells us how those who do not trust in the Yahweh live: The immoral woman spoken of in Proverbs 5
“does not care about the path to life. She staggers down a crooked path and doesn’t even realize where it leads” (Prov. 5:6); and
“The guilty walk a crooked path; the innocent travel a straight road”
(Prov. 21:8). So what Proverbs 3:5-6 is telling us is that when you live your entire life with God as the center, no longer living on your understanding but trusting God’s moral will and his way of thinking revealed in his Word, your path will be “straight”
(moral and righteous), no longer “crooked” (immoral and guilty). Or, as
Romans 12:1-2 says, a Christian is one who lives his or her entire life as a
"living sacrifice" to God, obeying the command: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
It is then, and only then, that one can "test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect
will," because it is then that one in walking the straight path.
What does the Bible actually say about God’s direction in life? Some of us have been taught that we must
first discern God’s will with absolute certainty before taking a step. It is usually taught that God’s will can be known through some kind of outward sign like our circumstances or through some kind of inward impression. But this is not the biblical testimony of how we are to make decisions.
While there are several instances of divine supernatural guidance in the early church, the vast majority of examples of decision making we see believers making in the Bible is based on
wisdom.
For instance, eating meat that was sacrificed in pagan temples was, not surprisingly, an issue of concern among the early Christians. It was like our issues of whether or not to buy products from companies that we know are supportive of evil practices like abortion. Paul tells the Corinthians that they have freedom to choose when it comes to whether or not they should eat the meat sacrificed in pagan temples.
“If some unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience.” (1 Cor. 10:27).
Notice, Paul does not instruct them to pray until they have guidance from God. He does not say, “Pray and God will tell you through your inner peace as to what to do.” Instead, he says, “If…you want to go…” In other words, the decision is up to you. For some believers, they will decide that it is not right to go, but for others, they will want to go, and that, too, is a legitimate choice.
Another example is choosing whether or not to marry. When choosing who to marry, Paul makes it clear that we are free to choose for ourselves our mate. Should a single marry or stay single? In his answer, Paul does not say something like “God will tell you to marry or to stay single.” Instead, he says
things like this: “A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord”
(1 Cor. 7:39). The moral will concerning who you marry is that the person “must belong to the Lord”—that person must also be a follower of Jesus Christ. But that’s all Paul says on the matter. Within that boundary, she can marry “anyone she wishes”—she is free to choose. He even says,
“But in my opinion she is happier if she remains as she is…” (v. 40). This is a matter of choice—Paul has his opinion, but she is not bound by that—she can still choose anyone she wishes.
He also says that staying single is a valid option, maybe a better option because being single frees one up to do more ministry! But this is still a matter of CHOICE. Paul says,
“I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you…” (v. 35). Again,
Paul is careful to allow believers to make up their own choices.
So, under the boundaries of God’s moral will, we are free to make choices. As Haddon Robinson writes, “The question we should ask is no longer,
‘What is God’s will?’ Instead, the question is, ‘How do I make good decisions?’ If we change the question, we change the direction of the answer.”
That’s good advice (and not just because it comes from a guy named “Robinson!”). What God wants is for us to take responsibility for our decisions
as we walk in accordance to his moral will. When we put the responsibility of our decisions on God, we become
passive at best and timid at worst. I have seen many good-intentioned Christians frozen with trepidation in making choices because God has not given a clear direction.
But when we take responsibility by learning how to make good decisions, we become active in the process. While still seeking God’s guidance in prayer, we realize that God has given us the freedom to choose for ourselves. As we learn how to make wise decisions under the umbrella of God’s moral will, we become the mature Christians that God desires us to be.
But how do I make good decisions? Here is where you hear an advertisement to
read the next installment in this series. We will look at five guidelines for making good decisions.
But in the meantime, I want you to know that when more than one option is before you, and each one is equally acceptable under God’s moral will, you are often free to choose. And then you can rest assured that God’s sovereignty will work it out for your ultimate good. That leads us to a major aspect of what it means to be a Christian—trust in God.
3. God is in control—
therefore, trust that he will work out everything for your good.
Do you remember Romans 8:28? This verse needs to be memorized by anyone who feels anxiety over decisions.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
All your choices, even the choices you may feel regret over, are working together for your spiritual good. God is in control. God is sovereign over everything. He is secretly guiding all things—even those things that may look like coincidences in life—like when Ruth unknowingly found herself in the care of Boaz (Ruth 2).
Some have questioned me, “Are you denying that God has a special plan for each individual believer?” To that I say, No! I am not denying that God has a sovereign plan over everything and that each of us has an important part of that plan.
But we must realize that God’s sovereign will on my individual life cannot be known beforehand. God’s sovereign will is very often only recognizable after it plays out—when you look back and say, “Whoa! I can now see God’s hand there and there and there…I would never had done it that way, but I now see God’s hand in it all, and that he had it all planned out!”
I was just talking with Gary Lyon, pastor of Refuge of Hope in downtown Canton, and he said that they just closed on a new building that will eventually house the homeless. He said that for the last several years, they have been evangelizing, discipling, feeding people, helping people get over their addictions. But they had no building. God now has provided a building. It was like God wanted everything to be in place and only then to put it into a building. Gary said that he would have done it the other way around—buy a building, and then start doing ministry—but that would have meant that they would have had a building, sitting empty because nothing was yet established. He said that looking back he can see God’s hand guiding the whole process.
Looking back on God’s sovereign direction cannot be missed, but looking forward to try to decipher it ahead of time is just about
impossible. So, trust that God is sovereign. Have faith in God that he will always work out everything for the good.
Okay, next time we will get into the practical guidelines as to how to make decisions.
Until then, I want you to know these things:
~
1. You do not always need a direct word from God for every decision. God has given you his Word in the Bible, he has given you the ability to seek wisdom in making decisions, and he is sovereign over it
all (points 1, 2, and 3 above).
2. When faced with more than one option that are equally moral and wise, you need not panic that one may be “outside God’s will.” Rather, you should thank God that he has given you these choices, and seek to make the wisest choice possible.
3. We cannot blame God for our foolish decisions. It is not acceptable to try to divine God’s mind by Bible roulette or inner impressions or putting out a fleece. When we do this, our decisions are often poor ones, and then we are tempted to blame God for the consequences. But we can know that even if we make foolish decisions, God is sovereign and will turn those into something that will glorify him and do us spiritual good. Often, it is when we make mistakes that we often grow the most.
4. Instead of asking “What is God’s will?” we need to ask, “How do I make good decisions?” That is the topic of next week’s message.
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