Finding God's Will
Lesson 2: Principles Based on Spiritual Disciplines


More Superstition

In the last lesson we mentioned that every society in the past had an arsenal of methods for determining what their gods wanted. Let us describe a few more of these pagan practices to underscore the blessing in being a Christian, free from the bondage of superstition.

The Romans practiced augury, a form of divination in which a government official posed a question to the gods and then looked for the answer in the behavior of birds after they had been set in flight or in the behavior of sacred chickens. Another way the Romans sought answers from the gods was by sacrificing an animal and examining its gall bladder and liver. Any flaws showed divine disfavor. The priests who specialized in this practice were known as haruspices (literally, "men who look at guts").


More Principles of Knowing God's Will

We have already looked at three principles basic to discerning God's will. Now we will consider another four.


4. We look at one option at a time, and we take one step at a time (the focus principle).

One option at a time: This rule applies to some decision-making processes that are potentially competitive, as when a congregation chooses a new pastor. If they follow the customary practice of self-governing churches, they examine one candidate at a time. Each comes and preaches, and then the congregation votes up or down whether to call him. Only if they decide not to call him do they invite another man. Withholding a decision until they see several candidates turns the process into a competition or election. The process is then wrong for many reasons.

  1. It imposes unnecessary costs on those candidates who come to the church after it has already seen the right man for the job. Even though the church defrays their expenses, they still give time and emotional energy to the process.
  2. It needlessly puts those same candidates (the ones who would never have been considered otherwise) in the place of losers—hardly an encouragement to them in their ongoing labors for the Lord.
  3. A one-at-a-time procedure allows both the church and the candidate to view the decision properly—as an attempt to discern whether the man and the ministry are a good fit. Just as the church must ponder and pray, so must the candidate, and each side refrains from committing itself until it has peace as to God's leading. In a competition, however, the candidates are less inclined to be careful. They feel pressure to make themselves as appealing as possible. And since a church is likely to favor a more enthusiastic candidate, all the candidates tend to profess too much interest too soon.
  4. A competition can breed deceit, or at least misleading information. In an effort to be nice, the people of the church might heap such praise upon each candidate that he goes away with a very unrealistic notion of his chances. The church might even invite candidates that they are not seriously considering, or they might fail to tell each candidate the number and qualifications of his rivals.
  5. Competitors for the same pulpit might be tempted to use political methods of persuasion, such as flattery of influential people or pie-in-the-sky promises of new buildings and programs.
  6. Choosing a pastor from a field of candidates can easily generate factions in the church.

We have looked in some detail at one kind of decision to show that doing right often requires attention to a multitude of considerations. We are too accustomed to acting thoughtlessly—to taking the easy or popular course that might lead to somebody getting hurt. A one-at-a-time procedure safeguards against negative consequences not only when choosing a pastor, but also in many other kinds of decisions, especially the following:

  1. When choosing a ministry. Some of the people who have come to interview for jobs at the school where my son is principal have not had a serious interest. He has wined and dined them (or should I say, coked and stoked them?), showed them around town, and spent long hours with them, only to discover later that they had already decided to go elsewhere. They had no right to make his school the loser in an unnecessary competition. By giving them definite leading to other schools, the Lord had shown them that He was fully capable of revealing His will concerning each option when considered alone.
  2. When choosing a mate. Choosing a mate is not comparison shopping. Some attention to the field of possibilities is obviously necessary, but once a particular person emerges as the leading possibility, it is then time to pray earnestly for the mind of God, and God will guide clearly. In such a matter, affecting the whole remainder of life, a young person can be confident that God will not permit an obedient child to go wrong. He will clearly say "yes" or "no" with regard to any particular prospect. The decision need not be made by considering whether there might be better options. Weighing one person against another engenders competition, with all its dangers.

In some spheres of life, competition serves the best interests of society. It assures that providers of goods and services, for example, will offer the best they can. To do comparison shopping when buying a car or choosing a college is therefore all right.

One step at a time: The Christian life is not like traveling with a road map but like following a shepherd (Psa. 23). The shepherd does not say to his sheep, "We're going to the meadow behind Farmer Smith's cornfield. If we get separated, meet me there." No, he leads them one step at a time. Of this there are many Biblical examples.

  1. When God called Abram out of Haran, He did not reveal where Abram was going. He said only that He would take Abram "unto a land that I will show thee" (Gen. 12:1). Then God led Abram step-by-step to the land of Canaan, and in this same fashion He continued to lead him throughout his life.
  2. When Abraham's servant went to find a wife for Isaac, he did not know which girl he was seeking or where to find her. Yet God led him to the city of Nahor and arranged circumstances so that the first girl who approached him after his arrival was Rebekah, Isaac's future wife. Later, the servant testified, "I being in the way, the LORD led me" (Gen. 24:27).
  3. The New Testament teaches that the wilderness wanderings of Israel picture the Christian life (1 Cor. 10:1-6). On any given day during their forty-year trek from Egypt to Canaan, the people never knew where they would find themselves on the day following. A pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night stood over the tabernacle. When the pillar was taken up, the people broke camp and followed it. When it stopped, they stopped also, and there they remained until the pillar moved again (Ex. 40:36-8). The guidance the Lord provided was literally step by step.

The one-step-at-a-time principle implies several practical rules.

  1. Do not overplan your life (Jer. 10:23; Prov. 16:9; James 4:13-5). Hedge every plan or promise with the reservation, "God willing."
  2. Do not worry about the future (Matt. 6:34). In relation to the future, we exercise prudence. That is, we prepare for possible emergencies and losses. We develop skills that will enable us to support ourselves and serve God. We set aside resources for future needs. But we do not worry about trouble that has not yet come to pass. Perhaps it never will.
  3. Do not puzzle over decisions prematurely. A high school student need not figure out who his or her future mate will be. An adult need not think about the changes in lifestyle that a severe illness might necessitate. Instead, we should make decisions when we need to make them. We should deal with problems as they arise. We should focus on life today.

The principle of stepwise guidance does not imply that our future is always a complete mystery. God may give us a glimpse of the future so that we can properly prepare for it. He may, for example, give us a vision of some work to do, or a call to some form of service. Over twenty-five years ago He gave me an intense desire for a ministry of writing. At that time I had no idea that a door would someday open for me to write textbooks, or that the internet would someday come into being, making it possible for me to build a Web site that would draw thousands of visitors.


5. If no option looks right, just wait (the patience principle).

Sometimes we are so impatient to move ahead in our lives that we hurry down a path that leads to regret. We must understand that God does not always give guidance exactly when we want it. Sometimes when we seek His will, we receive no immediate answer. Why? Because God requires us to learn the discipline of waiting. The precept that we should wait on the Lord is so important that Scripture states it repeatedly (Psa. 33:20; 37:7; 40:1; 130:5; Isa. 26:8; 33:2). Waiting teaches us patience, and patience is the fountainhead of many virtues.

  1. With patience comes a greater willingness to accept God's direction, whatever it may be. In other words, patience nurtures surrender.
  2. Also with patience comes a quiet spirit—the opposite of an agitated spirit that continually pesters God with selfish demands.
  3. Patience as we wait for God to show us His will allows us to see and enjoy His goodness day-by-day, and with this experience comes a stronger hope for His goodness in the future (Rom. 5:4-5).

The fifth principle is another suggesting some practical guidelines.

  1. If in doubt, don't. This is a good rule for all decisions. When we go shopping, for example, our desire to be done may pressure us to override doubt and buy something we do not really want. A few days later we take it back. Or we just absorb the wasted expense. How much better in all decisions to pay attention to doubt! An absence of doubt is a sign (though not an infallible sign) that we are proceeding according to God's will.

    When I was still a young man, there was a time when I wanted to buy a van. One day as I was driving along, I spied exactly what I wanted in a used car lot. So I went into the lot and struck up a conversation with the salesman, who started off by asking whether I was a Mason. I said "no" and began questioning him about the condition of the vehicle. After hearing his assurances that everything was fine, I asked to test drive it. My hopes were rising rapidly, because the van was what I wanted and the price was cheap. But on the road I noticed defects in both the brakes and the clutch. The salesman dismissed the defects with plausible explanations, and I half-believed him (remember, I was quite young). Although I harbored doubt, desire overcame it, and I bought the van, not troubling to get any effective warranty. As you may imagine, I discovered within a short time that I had made a huge error. The van was riddled with problems, several of them beyond correction. Then I learned why the salesman had asked me whether I was a Mason. Apparently, every Mason takes an oath never to lie to another member of the lodge. It was through this experience that I learned to respect doubts about a purchase.

  2. We should never pursue an option just because it is the only one we see. It may seem that no other option could ever appear on the horizon. Yet if we sense that the option is not right, we should reject it and wait on the Lord, trusting that He can produce something better. Something better may seem impossible to us, but with God all things are possible (Mark 10:27). Both of my sons were tempted at times to choose girls they knew were second best (second best for them, although undoubtedly first best for others). But when they found first best, they realized that the waiting had been worthwhile.
  3. It is never necessary to choose the lesser of two evils. By "evil" we mean moral compromise. If every option we see draws us into wrongdoing, however small it may seem, we know that the right option has not yet appeared. Consider this example. Many communities in America have no good churches. What then should a believer do if his job or another circumstance takes him to live in such a community? Should he go to the least objectionable church in town? No, that would be choosing the lesser evil. At whatever personal cost, he should locate himself and his family in a community with a good church.


6. To follow God requires that we turn away from self (the surrender principle).

One text that throws especially bright illumination on the process of determining God's will is Romans 12:1-2. Paul sets forth certain conditions for knowing "that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." "Acceptable" means "well-pleasing." Many commentators have noticed that the three terms describing God's will form a progression, which could be rendered, "good, better, and best." The writer is clearly implying that in every situation calling for a decision, God's will may allow alternatives to the best decision. Yet he is not saying that a surrendered believer can choose whichever alternative he prefers. Rather, he is saying that such a believer has the privilege of finding and following God's will in the form that is not just good and not just well-pleasing, but absolutely perfect.

In his veiled suggestion that there are acceptable alternatives to the perfect will of God, what is Paul talking about? Christians have long understood that besides God's perfect will, there is also His permissive will. God permitted the people of Israel to practice divorce, although He preferred that they obey the higher standard forbidding divorce (Matt. 19:3-9). He wanted the state of Israel to be a theocracy—that is, a state under His own rule, mediated by priests and prophets. Yet, after severe warnings as to the consequences, He consented to give Israel a king (1 Sam. 8). Many believers can testify that when they insisted on second-best, God gave it to them. His chief purpose in such cases is to minimize sin—to prevent the lesser sin of imperfect surrender from mushrooming into the greater sin of flagrant disobedience. Yet He also has a didactic purpose. He wants His children to learn through hard experience that His perfect will is indeed perfect.

Paul states two requirements for knowing God's perfect will.

  1. We must give God our bodies, faculties, and abilities for His use (Rom. 12:1). It is reasonable to do so because He created us, and all these belong to Him anyway. To sacrifice self in our decision-making means that we do not insist on our carnal preferences. Although God gives us many good things pleasing to the flesh—food and rest and home and marriage and so on, the list being interminable, because He is generous beyond our reckoning—yet He may ask us to sacrifice the lower pleasures of life to the higher pleasure of serving Him despite adverse consequences. He may appoint us to a form of service that brings loss of comforts, or the apparent waste of our bodies and abilities, or suffering, or even death. The missionary who goes to a third world country finds God's perfect will at the price of laying himself on the altar.
  2. We must renounce worldly thinking (Rom. 12:2). An ungodly world has for a lifetime drummed its complacent follies into our minds. So, when we seek God's will, we must start from the premise that our own natural thinking may be wrong (Prov. 3:5-6). We must resolve to accept thinking different from what we already think. Only when we shake off a worldly mind-set and renew our minds by the Spirit of God—that is, only when we begin to think as God thinks—can we discover His perfect will.

How often in counseling someone who is pursuing nonsense have I heard the defense, "I prayed about it"! We all abuse prayer by seeking God's approval of what we have already decided out of selfish motives. Let us learn to pray in true submission to what God wants.


7. To know God's will, we must seek it intensely with our whole heart (the diligence principle).

To know God's will is really the same as knowing Him, and Scripture teaches plainly that to know Him requires that we seek Him diligently (Deut. 4:29; Jer. 29:13; Prov. 8:17). We have said before that the only two reliable ways of finding God's will are by the Word and the Spirit. Therefore, to seek His will with whole-hearted intensity means that we must persist in two disciplines.

  1. We must give untiring study to the Word of God (Psa. 119:105). We must read it, meditate upon it, dig into its depths, and apply it to our lives. We cannot dip into it at random and expect meaningful guidance. Yet when we have a particular question for God, the Bible is a useful tool for finding the answer. How can we use it in this way? After beseeching the Spirit's aid, we go to passages that He impresses upon our memory, or we search through the whole Bible until we rest upon a passage that seems right. Yet we always exercise caution, recognizing that the devil quotes Scripture too. Before making a decision, we must be sure that we have gained a balanced view based on the whole Bible.

    Besides through Scripture, the Spirit can speak to us also through Christian literature, sermons, and the counsel of godly people.

  2. We must walk in the Spirit (Rom. 8:14). We will not digress into a long discussion of what it means to walk in the Spirit. Instead we will be content with a short definition. To walk in the Spirit means

Once you mount this platform of spirituality (or should we say, once you descend to this basement of self-mortification) you can be confident that your own convictions and desires reflect what God Himself wants. Then you can claim the promise of Psalm 37:4.