More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
January 26 - February 11, 2020
The vehicle is not as important as the destination.
when it comes to finding God’s will, the Lord of the universe does not mean to hide anything from us.
Consider this one statistic: In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men completed all the major transitions into adulthood by age thirty. These transitions include leaving home, finishing school, becoming financially independent, getting married, and having a child. By 2000, only 46 percent of woman completed these transitions by age thirty, and only 31 percent of men.2 It’s stunning for me to think that less than a third of men my age are done with school, out of the house, married with kids, and have a job that pays the bills. “Adultolescence” is the new normal.
Perhaps your free spirit needs less freedom and more faithfulness.
A lot of books have been written trying to answer this basic question, and my answer may not be what you expect from a will-of-God book. My answer is not original to me, but it is quite simple and, I hope, quite biblical. I’d like us to consider that maybe we have difficulty discovering God’s wonderful plan for our lives because, if the truth be told, He doesn’t really intend to tell us what it is. And maybe we’re wrong to expect Him to.
If we examine the Bible, we see that God’s will has two sides to it. On the first side is God’s will of decree. This refers to what God has ordained. Everything that comes to pass is according to God’s sovereign decree. And all that He decrees will ultimately come to pass. God’s will of decree cannot be thwarted. It is immutable and fixed. God is sovereign over all things—nature and nations, animals and angels, spirits and Satan, wonderful people and wicked people, even disease and death. To steal a line from Augustine, “The will of God is the necessity of all things.” In other words, what God
...more
God works out everything—the big picture, the little details, and everything in between—according to His own good and sovereign purposes.
Every human lamentation and woe must look to the cross. For there we see the problem of evil “answered”—not in some theoretical sense—but by pointing us to an all-powerful God who works all things for good. Shocking as it sounds, the most heinous act of evil and injustice ever perpetrated on the earth—the murder of the Son of God—took place according to God’s gracious and predetermined will.
Isaiah 46:9–10: “I am God, and there is no other; I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.’”
The other side of the coin is God’s will of desire. This refers to what God has commanded—what He desires from His creatures. If the will of decree is how things are, the will of desire is how things ought to be.
God is sovereign, but He is not the author of sin. We are under His sovereignty, but we are not free from responsibility for our actions.
Both sides of God’s will are in Scripture. God’s will of decree —what He has predetermined from eternity past—cannot be thwarted. God’s will of desire—the way He wants us to live—can be disregarded.
The will of God, as His will of desire, means that we do what is pleasing in His sight.
Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” This is the closest we come to finding the will of decree and will of desire side by side in the same verse. God has secret things known only to Him (His inscrutable purposes and sovereign will), but He also has revealed things that we are meant to know and obey (His commands and His Word).
God’s will of direction.
Yes, God has a specific plan for our lives. And yes, we can be assured that He works things for our good in Christ Jesus. And yes, looking back we will often be able to trace God’s hand in bringing us to where we are. But while we are free to ask God for wisdom, He does not burden us with the task of divining His will of direction for our lives ahead of time.
God does have a specific plan for our lives, but it is not one that He expects us to figure out before we make a decision.
Trusting in God’s will of decree is good. Following His will of desire is obedient. Waiting for God’s will of direction is a mess. It is bad for your life, harmful to your sanctification, and allows too many Christians to be passive tinkerers who strangely feel more spiritual the less they actually do.
God is not a Magic 8-Ball we shake up and peer into whenever we have a decision to make. He is a good God who gives us brains, shows us the way of obedience, and invites us to take risks for Him.
The better way is the biblical way: Seek first the kingdom of God, and then trust that He will take care of our needs, even before we know what they are and where we’re going.
This is the first reason we seek to know God’s specific will of direction for us: We want to please Him.
The second reason some of us seek God’s will of direction is because we are, by nature, quite timid.
Some Christians need encouragement to think before they act. Others need encouragement to act after they think.
Some Christians have the best intentions in seeking out God’s will. They are just too cautious and a little fainthearted. Such Christians need admonition, but they also deserve our patience and help.
The third reason we seek God’s will for direction is we are searching for perfect fulfillment in life.
Faith in Jesus does not guarantee that everything will go our way.
Life isn’t always fun, and we shouldn’t expect it to be.
When we marry, we expect great sex, an amazing family life, recreational adventure, cultural experiences, and personal fulfillment at work. It would be a good exercise to ask your grandparents sometimes if they felt fulfilled in their careers. They’ll probably look at you as if you’re speaking a different language, because you are. Fulfillment was not their goal. Food was, and faithfulness too. Most older folks would probably say something like, “I never thought about fulfillment. I had a job. I ate. I lived. I raised my family. I went to church. I was thankful.”
“You just … do things” seemed to be my grandpa’s sentiment, and as you’re doing them and walking with the Lord, you don’t spend oodles of time trying to figure out if you like what you are doing. I guess if you keep busy and work your whole life, you don’t have time to worry about being fulfilled.
we need the firm reminder that many of us expect too much out of life. We’ve assumed that we’ll experience heaven on earth, and then we get disappointed when earth seems so unheavenly. We have little longing left for our reward in the next life because we’ve come to expect such rewarding experiences in this life. And when every experience and situation must be rewarding and put us on the road to complete fulfillment, then suddenly the decisions about where we live, what house we buy, what dorm we’re in, and whether we go with tile or laminate take on weighty significance. There is just too
...more
Of the five reasons for our obsession with finding God’s will, this may be the most crucial: We have too many choices.
The Paradox of Choice
My hunch is that most of our obsession with knowing the will of God is due to the fact that we are overburdened with choice. We think choice makes us happy, but there comes a point (and most of us are well past it) where we would actually be better off with fewer choices.
My fear is that of all the choices people face today, the one they rarely consider is, “How can I serve most effectively and fruitfully in the local church?” I wonder if the abundance of opportunities to explore today is doing less to help make well-rounded disciples of Christ and more to help Christians avoid long-term responsibility and have less long-term impact.
I’m arguing that our eagerness to know God’s will is probably less indicative of a heart desperately wanting to obey God and more about our heads spinning with all the choices to be made.
The final reason we want to know the will of God is because we are cowardly.
Notice what we don’t read in this story. We don’t read of Esther seeking any divine word from the Lord, though a discerning reader may see God at work in Mordecai’s advice to her. She had no promise as to what the future would look like. All she knew was that saving her people was a good thing. God did not tell her what would happen if she obeyed or exactly what she could do to ensure success. She had to take a risk for God. “If I perish, I perish” was her courageous cry.
Esther didn’t wait for weeks or months trying to discern God’s will for her life before she acted. She simply did what was right and forged ahead without any special word from God. If the king extended to her the golden scepter, praise the Lord. If he did not, she died.
Esther was more man than most men I know, myself included. Many of us—men and women—are extremely passive and cowardly. We don’t take risks for God because we are obsessed with safety, security, and most of all, with the future. That’s why most of our prayers fall into one of two categories. Either we ask that everything would be fine or we ask to know that everything will be fine. We pray for health, travel, jobs—and we should pray for these things. But a lot of prayers boil down to, “God, don’t let anything unpleasant happen to anyone. Make everything in th...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
That’s often what we are asking for when we pray to know the will of God. We aren’t asking for holiness, or righteousness, or an awareness of sin. We want God to tell us what to do so everything will turn out pleasant for us. “Tell me who to marry, where to live, what school to go to, what job to take. Show me t...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Obsessing over the future is not how God wants us to live, because showing us the future is not God’s way. His way is to speak to us in the Scriptures and transform us by the renewing of our minds. His way is not a crystal ball. His way is wisdom. We should stop looking for God to reveal the future to us and remove all risk from our lives. We should start looking to ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
God is all-knowing and all-powerful. He has planned out and works out every detail of our lives—the joyous days and the difficult—all for our good (Ecclesiastes 7:14). Because we have confidence in God’s will of decree, we can radically commit ourselves to ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
God has a wonderful plan for your life—a plan that will take you through trial and triumph as you are transformed into the image of His Son (Romans 8:28–29). Of this we can be absolutely confident. But God’s normal way of operation is not to show this plan to us ahead of time—in retrospect, maybe; in advance, rarely.
God promises to be your sun and your shield and to carry you and protect with His strong right arm. So we can stop pleading with God to show us the future, and start living and obeying like we are confident that He holds the future.
First, the conventional approach to discovering God’s will focuses almost all of our attention on nonmoral decisions.
The most important issues for God are moral purity, theological fidelity, compassion, joy, our witness, faithfulness, hospitality, love, worship, and faith.
But if you are motivated by right and doing right, then your career choice is not a moral decision. The Bible simply does not address every decision we must make.
My point is that we should spend more time trying to figure out how to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God (as instructed in Micah 6:8) as a doctor or lawyer and less time worrying about whether God wants us to be a doctor or lawyer.
Second, the conventional approach implies that we have a sneaky God.
In the conventional view of God’s will, however, we get the impression that He not only hides His will from us, but He then expects us to find it. So we obsess over God’s will of direction, eventually getting frustrated with God for not showing us what He wants. We end up disappointed with ourselves or angry with God because we can’t seem to figure out how to find God’s will for our lives.
