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The Problem of God’s Will
Bill and John both going to same bible college, almost same identical circumstances.
Both facing financial hardships.
Bill: “I’m beginning to think that Bible college isn’t God’s will for me.”
John: “When you came here, were you convinced it was God’s will?”
Bill: “Sure, If I hadn’t thought so, I wouldn’t have come.”
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?
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:
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.
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