Know God’s Will

 

Last Sunday a woman told me the situation in her family. Then she said, “I don’t know what to do.” While I felt her pain, I remembered a sermon from years ago. The pastor outlined the various places in the Bible that plainly state the will of God, mostly to do with faith and obedience, then said if those were true in our lives, we could do whatever we wanted. 

He explained with this verse: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4) noting that when our hearts are right with Him, God puts His will in our hearts. In other words, His will for me is godliness and that is so important to Him that He might use difficult circumstances to bring me to listen before He uses me or answers my prayers.

He has different ways to make His will known. As Piper points out, God sometimes designs circumstances so that I end up where He wants me — without me realizing it. His example is from Acts 16 where Paul and Silas found themselves in jail, and the result was the salvation of the jailer and his household. His plan went beyond their plans, but since “no plans of His can be thwarted” (Job 42:2), He will do this when necessary.

The necessity might include dealing with our sin. I’m reading Jeremiah and how God put His people in exile because they were not obedient. Their shepherds were lying to His sheep and leading them astray. He said: Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” declares the LORD. . . . “You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds…” and this is what He did. His will was not what they wanted meaning comfort and their own way. God also said He would send a Redeemer, but after that promise He warned them:

Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’ ” For who among them has stood in the council of the Lord to see and to hear his word, or who has paid attention to his word and listened? Behold, the storm of the Lord! Wrath has gone forth, a whirling tempest; it will burst upon the head of the wicked. The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his heart. In the latter days you will understand it clearly. (Jeremiah 23:16–20)

Clearly God's priority is our holiness and obedience. If I listen to us and do what He says, other instructions become clear. None of this happens if I’m walking in the flesh. To hear Him, I need to be humble, filled with the Holy Spirit, and continually in His Word. 

God did not write His will about every detail in my life. Do I go to a seminar or stay home? Do I visit this person or that one? Do I purchase this needed item or not? For all this, I need godly discernment. I’ve learned that my decisions are not totally reliable. I’ve also learned that He will give me the right choice if I listen. He shapes my mind and inclines my heart to whatever will bring Him the most glory.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

Sometimes He simply speaks to me. It may be a simple thing, like what turn to take when driving somewhere, or what book to take home when browsing in a store or the library, or how much to give when a needy person tells me their story. Very often my husband or I share a thought and the other one says, “I was just thinking the same thing.” While Piper says this is the least common way of God's leading in the NT, it is common in our household. 

I can rest in God's goodness whatever method He uses to reveal His will. Some will seem like a mystery, yet God is good — always. His will is always against the desires of my old nature. This is easier to discern because of that conflict. At times it will be a decision involving two things that both seem good. Yet the best way to know what He wants means keeping sins confessed, talking to Him with an open heart, and being willing to do whatever He says.

PRAY: I’m so thankful Lord that You desire my good along with Your glory and can make those two things work together. You continually put me in awe with Your love and great wisdom. Today is going to be another day of seeing Your will worked out to do both. I’m happy to let You go first.

I Spy God…

Wildfires aside, we still love to drive through the mountains only a few hours from our home. Besides looking up at the grandeur of the peaks accented by incredible forests and color everywhere, a detail never fails to amaze me. How do trees grow out of rocks? Think of the power of a seed, and most of them do not even look like seeds, yet they sprout and roots reach through to nourishment and the trees grow, some of them even splitting the rocks apart.

Today’s reading likens the power of Christ in His people to that seed. It is a power that works in our weakness, meaning without Him we are unable to do the will of God. Not only that, it is a power that rules over all else, even those events and circumstances that threaten to overcome all goodness and the desires of our hearts.

I witnessed this power at our family reunion. People who seldom talk chatted with ease. Those who never met the others prior to this gathering were amazed by the love shown to them as were the others amazed by their interest in everything new. So many God-things happened that I felt like a bystander watching Him work — the same sort of feeling I get looking at a tree sprouting up through the rocks of an overwhelming mountain. God, how do You do that?

One thing I’m noticing in myself and in others is that we need to have a fuller concept of who God is and what He can do. If my ideas about God are faulty or inadequate, I don’t even notice His power at work.

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. (1 Chronicles 29:11)

For nothing will be impossible with God. (Luke 1:37)

I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. (Job 42:2)

Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. (Psalm 147:5)

These and other verses say it, but I also need to say it, to ask God to open my eyes to His wonders. This is needed because it is not part of my sinful nature to want this or see it.

When one granddaughter was about three, we went for a walk. I pointed to various things such as the sky, the grass, the flowers and said, “God made this for us to enjoy.” Finally I added, “And God made you too.” At that, she put her little hands on her little hips and declared, “No he didn’t.”

This is the built-in attitude of sin — a refusal to acknowledge God. I need to fight it. I need to look at the trees and think of them waving praise to God. I need to see His handiwork in creation and His mighty work to change lives in His people. Even those who do not believe will somehow display that they are made in His image, and even those who disagree and try to change what they are, I need to be thankful that only God can change lives.

Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil. (Jeremiah 13:23)

If we cannot do good without Him, I can be certain that even the evil anyone may do is under His control and supervision. I may not understand why or what God is doing or allowing, but I can be certain that He is at work: “I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7)

PRAY: Jesus, seeing Your hand in all of life has changed my life. Fear gives way to confidence for I know that You know what You are doing. Wars and tragedies, crime and human evil seem to win, but  You are not finished yet. The Bible is clear that at the end of it all, You are the winner, the One who is able to sprout seeds in a rock and make sense of a world that seems out of control. Keep my eyes on You.

God can do it…

 

Planning this big event, our family reunion, has been a learning experience. In the past few months God has shown me that even though my faith moves from strong to weak and back again, He hasn’t changed at all. A life-long lesson for me and one that took forty years of wandering, and the death of an entire generation, for His people to learn.

They came to the land God promised but failed to enter. While they were weak and saw themselves as “grasshoppers” compared to the “giants” that lived there, it was not their weakness nor their enemies’ strength that kept them from going in, but their unbelief. The Lord was able but it took a long time for them to realize it. I can relate to that slowness to learn.

After their wandering, when most of them died, they trusted the Lord and took the land, but what is interesting is that they knew after leaving Egypt that God was capable. They sang an amazing song of praise (see Exodus 15:3ff) yet when they saw the giants, they forgot or neglected to act on what they knew and turned back.

How many times have I done the same. The reunion task is too big for me. In discouragement and feeling great fatigue just thinking about it, I often want to quit. Then God reminds me, sometime subtly and sometimes with a 2x4 at the side of my head, that this was His idea and it will happen. Curves come. Some who said they would help back out, the to-do list has too many items, well-meaning friends say “you can do it” without realizing that “no I cannot” is theologically correct. I cannot do it. But God can!

Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? … You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode… You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established. The Lord will reign forever and ever.” (Exodus 15:15–18)

 Two days ago, I had no problem with the curves, the too-many to-do items, or believing God was at work. This morning I work up feeling like a grasshopper and wanting to run and hide. Nothing has changed except the way I’m thinking — in fear instead of faith. The task is the same and so is the God who entrusted me with it. Like the children of Israel, do I really want to wander in the wilderness or go at this with confidence?

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. (1 Chronicles 29:11)

I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. (Job 42:2)

Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. (Psalm 115:3)

For nothing will be impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37)

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20–21)

This last passage is revealing. It reminds me to watch out for a “little fox” that tends to mess me up — whenever God does amazing things, it is for His glory. If I get even the tiniest notion “that it will be glory for me” then He stops working on the ‘amazing things’ and puts His focus on my self-centered attitude with determination to change it to what it should be.

PRAY: Jesus, this task was Your idea and You are making it happen. I need to back off and have no thoughts of any sort of personal gain or fame from it, not even the glory that “oh, she trusts God” or anything else that puts the focus on me. Again, I’m my own worst enemy, foolishly trying to make a giant out of a grasshopper instead of looking to You — the One greater than any adversity or bad attitude.

All Things . . .

READ Ephesians 1–6

A neighbor related her belief in the sovereignty of God with such fervor that her deep conviction convicted me. How can I doubt Him when He is able to “order all things” and made His will secure? Today’s reading begins with those words:

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, (Ephesians 1:7–11)

Ephesians is a favorite NT book, yet this morning I was so intrigued by those two words that I did a quick search and found enough to fill another book! “All things” appears 86 times in the ESV Bible, possibly more in the original languages. Many of those references are about the sovereign power of God.

For instance, in the OT, Genesis 24 begins with, “ . . . And the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things.” In 2 Samuel 23, He is said to “order all things” and 1 Chronicles 29 says “all things” come from Him, therefore whatever we offer to Him is really His in the first place.

Job declares, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2) and the Psalms say He puts “all things” under our feet, yet all things are His servants, not ours. Other passages speak of God who made “all things.”

The NT adds more of the same. Jesus said, “ . . . with God all things are possible” and of Jesus the crowds said, “He has done all things well.”

Significantly, Jesus said in Gethsemane: “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36) God gave “all things” into the hands of Jesus. He has the power to do “all things” yet yielded that power to the will of God. This is the attitude God wants me to have concerning His sovereignty. I am powerless without Him, yet His power is available to me — but never apart from His will.

Romans 8 is well-known for two thoughts about all things. One is: “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (8:28) The next verse reveals that the good purpose God speaks of is not health, wealth and comfort, but about being more and more like Jesus — including His submission to the will of God rather than doing whatever He wanted to do (Note, none of His will was sinful!)

The second thought is this: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (8:32) And these two verses are connected . . . the “all things” God gives us relate to the purpose of the “all things” He uses. That is, He wants me to have “all things” that will produce in me the image of His Son. If anything does not do that, He does not want it, and neither should I. As Paul says, “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.” (1 Corinthians 6:12)

At least one more NT truth is expressed using this term:

God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:8)

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence. (2 Peter 1:3)

No matter what God asks of me, He will supply what I need to do it.

There are many more verses about “all things”— I could write a book! However, for today, I’m relying on God’s supply to give me what I need to do the things He puts on my heart to do, and rejoice in the fact that the He is my God — my source and resource for all things! Amen.