Finding God's Will? Pt 1

John: “Then don’t doubt in the darkness what you knew to be true in the light. You wouldn’t want to miss God’s will and have to settle for second best.”

Bill: “I’m not sure that’s how God’s will works.”

This conversation illustrates a couple of problems that face Christians in finding God’s will.

1. Christians do not agree about “how God’s will works.”

2. Christians do not even agree that God has an individual will He wants each believer to follow.

3. Those who believe that God has an individual will for their lives don’t always agree about how they should discover it or how it should guide their lives.

Some Christians get quite confused while trying to discern the will of God.

Some find themselves paralyzed by their search for a will of God that seems to elude them. What are people usually afraid of doing? Making a wrong decision and ending up outside God’s will.

What does that fear cause? What happens to people who are afraid of making the wrong decision? They make no decision. They spend weeks, months, years floundering in uncertainty.

Ironically, they would probably do more of God’s will if they were less concerned about discovering what it was.

Some Christians confuse God’s will with some purely subjective sense or feeling.

What kind of statements will these Christians tend to make about God’s will? I “feel led” or “have peace” about it.

This approach has led to a variety of unfortunate results

Can you think of any?

Sometimes it produces arrogance.

How? A young man announces to a young woman that God’s will is for her to marry him. I “have peace” about it, so you should to!

Sometimes it leads to folly.

How? The husband or father who abandons a good calling and uproots his family so that he can experiment with some new job or lifestyle for which he is ill-prepared and even unsuited.

Sometimes it leads to sin.

How? The man or woman who felt that God’s will was for them to divorce their spouse and marry a different person.

“For people like these, finding God’s will doesn’t really seem all that different from “going with your gut” or “following your heart.”

Some Christians advocate the wisdom-plus-nothing approach.

What is that? Some people suggest that God’s Word, the Bible, reveals sufficient wisdom for all of life’s choices. As long as our choices do not contradict biblical precepts or principles, then they are within God’s will. They would say there is no particular will of God for us, or if God has an individual will for His children He keeps it hidden.

Advantages? It eliminates goofiness. And God does expect us to exercise wisdom in making choices.

Problems? It offers little help or hope to Christians who are struggling with truly difficult choices, especially when they acknowledge that those choices go beyond their limited wisdom. It can even lead to despair during dark hours of life because they believe God was not willing to offer them guidance in making the most excruciating choices.

Is there a way to solve the problem of God’s will?

What two extremes do we need to avoid? Despair on the one side and arrogance and paralysis on the other.

A solution to the problem must accomplish two things:

1. It will have to permit believers to seek genuine divine guidance for their decisions

2. It will have to avoid treating this guidance as if it amounts to new revelation.

Premise of our study: Such a solution exists- a way that honors the finality and sufficiency of Scripture while providing believers with help for choices that the Bible does not directly address.

There is real biblical hope that God can and will guide you when you have to make perplexing choices. You can feel confident of God’s guidance and blessing as you make decisions.

God’s Providential Will

Does God have an individual will for each believer?

Suppose you say no: How does that view interact with Scripture?

Romans 11:33 ESV

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

If God does not have an individual will for us what must you deny about God according to this verse?

We must deny the infinity of His wisdom and knowledge, why? Because God doesn’t know what is best for us.

Yet, God certainly does know what is best for us, right?

OR, there is something else you could call into question if you don’t believe that God has an individual will for us:

Romans 5:5–6 ESV

5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

Romans 5:7–8 ESV

7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

So, you acknowledge that God’s wisdom and knowledge are infinite, but still deny that God has an individual will for us. What then are you calling into question about God?

His love and personal interest in us! Why? Well, God has the wisdom and knowledge necessary to have an individual will for every believer. He just doesn’t care what is best for us.

Yet, God certainly does know what is best for us, and He certainly does wish the best for us.

Therefore, if God wishes the best for each believer while simultaneously knowing what is best—that is exactly what it means that God has an individual will for each believer.

What is God’s hidden or secret will?

Most Christians will admit that God does have an individual will for each believer. But, they will say that God’s will is always hidden or secret. So we must ask the question what is God’s hidden or secret will.

The idea of God’s secret will is tied to the doctrine of Providence.

What is a good definition of Providence?

Preserving Providence- God continually preserves and maintains the existence of every part of His creation, from the smallest to the greatest, according to His sovereign pleasure.

Governing Providence- God guides and governs all events, including the free acts of men and their external circumstances, and directs all things to their appointed ends for His glory.

How is Providence different from Miracle?

Miraculous events have no natural explanations.

When God works providentially, however, God works from inside nature.

The doctrine of Providence requires double causation: every providential event has a natural cause, but it also has a divine cause.

Illustration: Christian in a drought-stricken country prays for rain. Within days the sky clouds over and it rains. The believers give praise to God. Yet, a local meteorologist claims that the rain is the result of a cold front that has been approaching for a week—even before the believers begin to pray. Who is right?

The meteorologist who sees a natural cause for the storm, or the Christians, who see the storm as a divine answer to their prayers?

The doctrine of Providence says that both answers are correct, as long as neither excludes the other. The thunderstorm is a genuinely natural event, but it is also a divine answer to prayer. God worked through the chain of meteorological causes to respond to His children’s pleas.

According to the doctrine of Providence, this kind of double causation works both with natural events and with human events.

Behind every human action is double intention. One is the intention of the person who acts. The other is the intention of God.

On the one hand, people genuinely and freely make their own choices and act out their own intentions. Sometimes their intentions are evil. On the other hand, behind these human choices is also a divine intention. God permits the evil acts of sinful human beings because He intends to use them to advance his plan and to bring good to His people.

Can you think of a biblical example?

Genesis 50:20 (ESV)

20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

Explain this from the thought of double intention?

Joseph’s brothers had their intentions (free acts of men and their circumstances), which were evil! And Joseph never minimized their evil intentions.

Nevertheless, Joseph recognized that God permitted their evil deed because God had his own intention, and God’s intention was good.

So, why did Joseph end up in Egypt? Double intention! Because his brothers intended him evil, and yet even the free acts of evil men are under the providential control of a good God.

God knows not only ever event that occurs but also every event that will occur. Sometimes He causes those events directly. Other times He cause them indirectly by permitting bad things to happen. If He wished, He could prevent those bad events. Consequently, whatever happens is within His providential will.

At some level we can say, “This is God’s will for me,” even when we are facing persecution or dreadful calamity. We are never outside of God’s providential will. WE CANNOT BE!

We call God’s Providential will God’s hidden will or God’s secret will. Why?

Providence itself is hidden. Why would we say that Providence is hidden? We usually don’t see God’s intentions as quickly or as clearly as we see the even’ts themselves. Think back to an event in your life where you can clearly see the invisible hand of God at work. Did you realize in the moment that God’s providence was active?

Under normal circumstances we can’t perceive how those events—especially the calamitous ones—fit into God’s plan. That is why theologians often refer to God’s Providential will as His hidden or secret will.

Sometimes they also call it His permissive will, because He chooses to permit evil that He does not directly cause.

God’s providential will encompasses every event in the life of every believer. Everything that happens to us always occurs within God’s will, arranged by Him before the foundation of the world.

These events always work together for good for those who love God, i.e., those who are called according to His purpose.

Romans 8:28 ESV

28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Here is the rub…because God’s providential will is secret it cannot be known in advance. It is found only in events as they occur, and it may not be understood until we are actually living in the presence of God.

This is something that gives us great joy and peace! God has a providential will for us. He arranges the events in our lives—even the unpleasant ones—so that they work together for good.

What is the problem for our discussion? What is the major question of this study? How do I find out God’s will for my life? What’s the problem? The Providential will of God is secret! It is not something that God tells us in advance. It gives us no help at all in making difficult choices, except perhaps to assure us that God intends to use even our bad choices to produce good for us.