Finding the Will of God - Part 2

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Since our choices affect us in ways we can't always anticipate, believers need to learn to first seek God's wisdom.

Let's continue the study of Colossians to hear how to keep moving toward godly goals. Now I'm sure that there are going to be many people who are going to be listening and you're facing all kinds of decisions in your life. Some of you are contemplating marriage, but you're not quite sure. You're contemplating a change in your vocation. You're not quite sure. You've got problems in your home. You're not too sure exactly what to do about it.

You can think of a thousand things that you're facing. What I want to ask is this, how do you go about making that decision? There's only one person who's got all the facts.

There's only one person who knows all the truth about your situation, no matter what it is. And that one person has committed himself to giving us direction and guidance in our life, no matter what the situation is, he has committed to showing us what to do. So we don't have to ask, Lord, is it your will to show me your will?

Sure, it's his will. He desires. Ask, he says, and it should be given you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened. In all thy ways, acknowledge him.

Give him a chance to show you. In all thy ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct thy path. Now the big question is how do we go about doing that? And that's what I want to talk about and lay down some principles by which to sift what we have decided through to see is this really the Lord's will?

But before I do that, let me clarify something for you. Somebody says, well, you know, I'm about fifty years of age. And when I was twenty-one, God called me to preach.

And I didn't do that. I decided to get married and get myself a job and go to work and make all this money and give it to God. And now I'm fifty years of age and God's call is still on me and I've got to surrender. What about the will of God now? What about those thirty years of my life I wasted?

Well, here's what happens. God will take you right where you surrender your life. He will take you at that moment and God will fulfill His will for your life from that point on with what He is able to do having wasted thirty years of your life. Now, here's what I want to say to young people. Listen, the idea that, well, I'm going to give myself to the Lord when I get to be about sixty, when I've had a good time. What a foolish, ridiculous decision.

Because, my friend, you will have wasted those years of your life. There's God's ideal will, God's perfect will. For example, if God calls you to do something and you do what He says, you fulfill God's perfect will. You may not have done it perfectly in your eyes, but you did what He said so that's the fulfillment of God's perfect will. God's circumstantial will is having blown it back here for these years, now here's my life, God. From this point on, the circumstances being what they are, here is my life.

God will pick you up at that point and fulfill His will for your life in light of what His will can be in light of the fact that you've wasted some good years. Then there's God's permissive will if we can use that terminology. That is, God permits some things that's not a good term.

We say His permissive will. He permits us to do some things that God knows are not best. Now, there are two extremes, those who say that God is sovereign.

Everything that happens, God did it. The other extreme is God just lets you loose and you do your own thing and, you know, that's the will of God. Well, both of those are extremes because He says, in all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy path, which means that God intends for us to be sensitive to the fact that He's giving guidance and direction. He wants to lead us and if we listen to Him, He will lead us. He says, I will guide thee with mine eye. I will teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. Now, why is it that sometime we have difficulty discerning what the mind of God is?

Lord, why don't you tell me? I'll have to admit that patience is not one of my greatest virtues. I'm virtuous a little bit in patience. But it's not one of my greatest because the truth is all of us want to know the answer today, right? God, let's have it now. That's what I want.

Just give it to me now. Well, that's not the way He operates. Why doesn't God always show us? Why is it we don't always know what God wants us to do?

Well, number one, sin. If you have sin in your life, willful, deliberate sin, here's what you're doing. You're saying, oh, God, I really want to know your will in my life in this area. Whatever you say, I'm willing to do. Now, God, don't worry about that.

I'll take care of that later. No, God is, He isn't word, but He is concerned and He's not going to let you do your thing and ignore sin. Now, listen carefully. I'm not saying that you will never know the will of God because there's sin in your life. Yes, I think that sometimes God will show you exactly what to do. And then He says, but it'll never work until you deal with that. Sometimes He won't show you till you do deal with that.

So you can't put God in a box and says He always does it this way. But when you have willful, deliberate, known sin in your life, let me tell you the danger of praying and asking for God to show you in a major decision when there's willful sin in your life. Here's the danger. The danger is something is already wrong with your thinking.

Did you hear that? Something is already wrong in your thinking process that you're tolerating and allowing sin to go on in your life over here. And here you are. Oh, God, I want to be what you want me to be.

I want to do your will. Lord, anything you say, God? At the same time, you have so rationalized to ignore a given area that God says has to be dealt with. It says that your thinking is already fuzzy.

Now, here's the problem. Our evaluation of sin is not the same as God's. He hates it. He wants it out of our life. And He sees it as a stumbling block to His best for us.

God knows that this thing over here is going to affect your clear thinking. Therefore, He wants it dealt with. So sometimes He won't show you for that reason. A second reason He will oftentimes delay showing us is He wants us to refocus our attention.

Let's face it. We get moving in life and we're going doing our thing. And Lord, we want to be in you. And you may be in God's will. But sometimes God just stops us dead, won't show us to refocus our attention. That the key issue with God is not showing you what to do because He can do that real quickly. But He wants to refocus our attention that what we really want more than anything else is not to know something, but to have a deep, intimate relationship with Him that we treasure and value more than some knowledge about a decision. And so therefore, He wants to refocus our attention. And then a third thing that I think is significant here, and that is sometimes what God is doing is simply getting us ready.

You see, God isn't interested in my ease, comfort and pleasure. He's interested in teaching us to trust Him. So what does He do?

He pulls a gap in your life and you can't figure out what in the world is going on. God knows exactly what's going on. So He waits until we've exhausted all of our resources. And then the Lord shows us what to do. Now, here's the dangerous point in your life. When God sets the gap and you think, well, I prayed and prayed and prayed and God hadn't answered. Brother, I'm getting busy.

I'm going to get myself a job. And you go right out and do the wrong thing because you weren't willing to wait for God's guidance. Now, I agree that sometimes it appears to be risky.

Notice how it appears. Let me ask you a question. If God is omnipotent and He is omniscient and He is omnipresent, you're always in the presence of God and He unconditionally loves you. Is anything ever risky with Him? We act like, oh, God may not show up. You don't risk anything with God.

There's no risk. But here's what happens. We get in trouble when we don't wait for God to show us what to do. So let me give you some principles to go by so that you'll know when you don't and when you do have the mind of God about something. How can I be sure that I really, that this is what God wants me to do? You're going to buy a house if I buy this one or that one.

Here's the price. Is that too high, Lord? Are you going to provide for me? And oftentimes God will challenge us to do things. They'll test their faith. Okay, number one.

And you need to jot these down. Number one, God will never tell you to do anything that is a contradiction to His Word. The will of God never contradicts the Word of God. That's why when somebody says to you, and lots of people use that term freely, well, it's the will of God. God told me, and I hear some people say that, and I want to think, oh, Lord, which God told them that? Because there are two gods.

The God of this age who is the devil, and then there is God, the only true God. First of all, His will will never be a contradiction of His Word. So when you come to make a decision, it won't take you long, ninety-nine percent of the time, to find out what God is saying because it's your lifestyle to be reading this and absorbing this and finding out what God wants you to do.

So you can know absolutely for certain that if you have a feeling you ought to do something that God says is a sin, you didn't get it from God. So the second thing I want to say about finding the will of God is this, God will never lead you to extravagant indulgence. That's never the will of God. That's totally out of keeping with what He teaches in His Word, extravagant indulgence.

Now, to somebody who is very poverty-stricken, it wouldn't take much for them to think that somebody else is extravagantly indulgent. But I'm talking about normal, natural lifestyle that God has given you in which you're practicing temperance, you're modest, you're not pretentious, you're not trying to show off. And so I'm simply saying that the will of God will never be extravagant indulgence. That's not God's plan. That's not God's way. You look at the ways of God in the Scripture and you're not going to find that in the Word of God. A third thing He will never tell you to do, the will of God is never to morally wrong someone else. It's never the will of God to morally wrong someone else. Now, that does not mean that you're not going to hurt somebody's feelings.

You may. In fact, the Bible says they that live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. If you obey God, somebody in your family may not understand it. If you obey God, somebody you work with may not understand it. If you obey God, your friends may not understand it.

So you may cause somebody else heartache. Emotionally, they may get upset, they may weep, they may, a lot of things may happen. But you've not morally wronged them. The will of God is never to morally wrong someone else.

Now, so let's turn it now to something that is more positive. And that is, if this can be positive, the will of God may sometime lead you into hardship, difficult in suffering. Just because a thing is difficult does not mean it's not the will of God. Oh, God would never have me to do without this. God would never, God doesn't want my kids on the mission field.

No, indeed. Now, that is a confession of pure, downright selfishness. Oh, God does, it's never the will of God to cause me to suffer pain. For me to feel heartache, yes it is. My most fruitful, learning, helpful times in my life have been the times when I've hurt the most, suffered the longest, been through the most difficulty, hardship, and trials. To say that hardships, suffering, and trials are not the will of God, then you've got to absolutely just totally yank the Apostle Paul out of the Bible. Listen, his whole life was heartache, suffering, persecution, trials, imprisonments, beatings, you name it. Do you think we'd have these wonderful epistles if Paul had written all of them from the Mediterranean on the beach?

No way. He wrote most of them in prison. He wrote them out of a jailhouse. So sometimes the will of God's going to cause suffering, heartache, and pain. Then, let me say this about the will of God. Oftentimes, God will only show us one step at a time.

Say, Lord, I want the full picture. God says, no, one step. When you do that, I'll show you the next step. And when you get there, you'll know where the next step is. And when you get there, you'll know where the next step is. That's the way we live our life, step at a time. One of the wisest lessons you can teach your children is to teach them to follow Jesus one step at a time.

Don't try to figure it all out one step at a time. It doesn't mean you're not to plan. We are to plan. But as the book of Proverbs says, we're to plan keeping God in mind that He has a right at any moment to step in, change anything.

Then, there's something else. And that is, you can expect conflict if you do the will of God. You can expect it.

It's not a matter of whether it might happen or not. You can expect it. Any time you are following the will of God, you're going to have conflict with people. So you see, if you try to please everybody, that's out.

You know why? Because you can please them. One thing today, tomorrow it takes something else to please them.

So you're always on their string. And my friend, that's not the way you live. And I want to say to my pastor, friends, if you're trying to carry on your ministry, trying to please people, it's all over. You can't please them.

You don't try to please people. You commit yourself to please God. God will show the people what is right and what is wrong.

You please God. Let God take care of people's attitudes. We don't please people because we're going to have conflicts. And if every time you run into conflict because you want to do what God wants you to do and somebody else doesn't want you to do, you're either going to be disobedient to God or have conflict.

So you can anticipate that. Likewise, in doing the will of God, finding God's will of your life, more than likely, many times what He tells you to do is going to be a faith stretcher. Now, Lord, are you, God, are you sure?

Yes, I'm sure. Because remember this, that God's purpose for your life isn't ease, comfort and pleasure and being sure that you get paid every Friday and that you stay healthy and everything's just wonderful. God's purpose, He pre-purposed, foreordained, predestined, what? That you and I would be shaped in the likeness of His Son, conformed to His image in our spirit. So God is naturally going to lead us to make decisions that are going to be difficult, hard, trying and testing in our life.

Now, with all that in mind, let me ask you a question. When you've prayed, you've sought the Lord, if it's one of those kind of decisions, how do you know without a doubt? How could Paul say in epistle after epistle, Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God?

God's choice. How could he be so certain? Well, for the apostle Paul, of course, there was the Damascus Road experience that he never forgot. He spent time in Arabia, just he and God alone, God dealing with us.

No question in his mind about that. Now, there's a verse of Scripture in Colossians. Turn, if you will, to chapter three and verse fifteen.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you are called in one body and be thankful. Now, let me just put it this way. Do you remember when somebody said, how do you know when you're in love? You said, oh, man, when you are really in love, you will know. You said, they said, but how do you know?

And so you tried to explain to them how they know when they're really in love. And finally, you had to say, you'll just know. Now, when you've sought the mind of God, now listen very carefully to this. When you've sought the mind of God about a decision, you've been in His Word, you've been asking Him, sent Him to the Holy Spirit, you've brought every area of your life into submission to His will, God, whatever you want is what I want, and the Lord shows you what to do. There will be a sense of unexplainable but very certain quiet, restful confidence. This is what God wants.

Now, listen carefully. Everything around you may be swirling in turmoil and strife and bickering and unrest and violent storm. Deep down inside of you, there'll be this overwhelming sense of perfect peace. This is what God wants. That's what He means when He says the peace of God rules.

The word is reigns. No matter what happens, this is what God wants. You will know when you have the mind of Christ.

You see, when you're submissive to His will and He shows you, you'll know it. So I want to ask you this simple question. Are you willing to tell the Lord Jesus Christ today, Lord, this is where I am today. I'm not even sure how I got here, but here's where I am. But Lord, from this point on, I'm willing for you to do whatever you want to do in my life because I want the rest of this life which belongs to you invested wisely in time, in finances, in experience, in gifts, in talents.

I want the rest of this life invested wisely so that the rest of this life which belongs to you will honor and glorify you. Thank you for listening to Finding the Will of God. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.