‘Seeking God’s Will For Your Life’ by J. John
‘I want to do God’s will in my life. But how do I find God’s will?’ Many Christians get very troubled about this and I sympathise. Let me make several points.
1. We need to be constantly reminded that the issue is wanting to know God's will for us and not simply getting God to rubber stamp his approval on our will for ourselves. Prayer is not twisting God's arm; it is letting him direct our wills. It is his kingdom, not ours. That said, we have to be wary of thinking that God always wants us to do what we do not want to do. God gives us our gifts for a reason and his will for us may well be what we really desire to do.
2. We can come to know God’s will best in more or less the same way as we come to know anybody else’s will: by spending time being with them. We come to know God by reading his word, the Bible, through which he shows us his desires, commands and concerns. As we spend time with the Bible, allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to us through God’s words, we come to know both God and his will by praying to him. In our communication with God the Father, again helped by the Holy Spirit, we come to know God’s will for our lives. God can also speak to us through the church and can often confirm his will through circumstances.
3. There are very many areas of our lives that are neither right nor wrong and about which it is probably rather naive to seek God’s will. For example, there are most certainly more important things to pray about than whether to change to skimmed milk or which tie to wear.
4. More importantly, there are many areas of our lives over which God is concerned but on which he has already spoken in his written word. For example, God’s will over matters to do with stealing is perfectly plain to everyone who has read the Bible. We don’t need to pray about it. Someone asked Mark Twain about the difficult passages in the Bible and received the reply that it was not the passages he did not understand that worried him; it was the ones that he did. This is a very similar situation. For most of us, most of the time, it is not knowing God’s will that is the problem; it is doing it.
5. This still leaves a small number of difficult cases; for example what job to take, where to live and who to marry. These can be agonising decisions and sometimes trying to discern God’s voice clearly about them can be very frustrating. I believe that God wants us to work out solutions to our problems by using our common sense and be talking things over with wise and trustworthy Christian friends. Think of it this way: a wise parent will not make all the decisions for their child. This is hardly the way to produce maturity. Instead they will encourage the child to learn how to make decisions themselves. Sometimes God does the same.
6. Have an unbreakable general principle that you will seek the kingdom of God and the kingdom’s good in all you do. Jesus makes a wonderful promise in Luke 12:31: ‘He will give you all you need from day to day if you make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.’ We need to trust him in that.’
From ‘God’s Priorities’ by J. John
