Discovering God’s Will

Our task as Christians is not to discover what the secret will of God is. Our task as Christians is to discover what the revealed will of God is. And it's been fascinating to me throughout the course of Christian life and ministry how many Christians want to discover the secret will of God who have got no interest in discovering the revealed will of God.

The person you'll marry, what degree you should enroll in, or the job you should take. These are questions we've all asked, but how do we know which direction to go in when the Bible doesn't answer those questions specifically for each one of us? Today on Renewing Your Mind, Sinclair Ferguson is joining us with a very practical message on how to discover the will of God. Today's message is from Dr. Ferguson's series, The Basics of the Christian Life, which walks you through every stage of the Christian life to help teach you how to live for the glory of God. And for one day only, you can request digital access to this series and the study guide, plus receive John Calvin's classic book, A Little Book on the Christian Life, in the mail.

This offer ends today, so visit renewingyourmind.org with your donation of any amount while there's still time. So how do Christians seek to discern the will of God in both the small decisions and the big decisions of life? Here's Dr. Ferguson with wise counsel from the Word of God. Now as we continue our studies on what it means to be a Christian and to grow as a Christian, I want to turn now to a very important subject, and that is the question of how do we discover God's will for our lives? And I want us to look at a couple of passages of Scripture just as a beginning place. They're both in Paul's letter to the Colossians, and they've both got to do with prayer. In Colossians chapter 1 and verses 9 through 14, Paul says that since the first day he heard about the Colossians, he had not ceased to pray for them, asking that they may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that they can walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. Now Paul had not been the person who had brought the gospel to Colossae. It looks as though the person who brought the gospel to Colossae was a man called Epaphras. And Epaphras had come to visit Paul, and obviously in that context they had come to know each other. And so at the end of the letter to the Colossians in chapter 4 verse 12, Paul says something about this man who was probably one of the pastors of the church. Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.

And it's just fascinating, isn't it, that Paul seems here to be reflecting on times that he and this other brother spent together, and perhaps one of them said, can we pray now for the church in Colossae? And at different times they had prayed for the same thing. And a burden on their hearts was that as these Christians grew to maturity, they would grow in their understanding and knowledge of the will of God. And that's a question that often we're asking right from the very beginning of the Christian life, what is the will of God for my life? Younger people in a very complicated and complex world, young people who have become Christians, are often asking that question, how can I discern the will of God?

And the answer to that question is both definite and indefinite. It's definite in the sense that the Scriptures tell us how we will discover the will of God in our lives and for our lives. But the Scriptures do not themselves give us that will, do they? So, if somebody says to me, whom should I marry, you shouldn't be raking around in the Bible and finding somewhere you can bond and say, well, it looks as though you're supposed to marry Mary.

Or, no, no, it looks as though it's Martha. Oh, I put my finger on the wrong verse. So, the Bible provides us with principles and what God wants us to do because we are His children, and this is why both Paul and Epaphras are praying in this way, is to grow in our understanding of God's will in order that we may apply those principles in our own Christian life. And that leads me to say a number of things just by way of basic principles.

The first one is this. It's a very important thing for us as Christians to resist the urge that some Christians have to discover the secret will of God. Who am I supposed to marry? Tell me what her name is, God. Why is that such a mistake? Because you remember Deuteronomy 29, 29, the things that are hidden belong to the Lord. The things that are revealed belong to us and to our children. Our task as Christians is not to discover what the secret will of God is. Our task as Christians is to discover what the revealed will of God is. And it's been fascinating to me throughout the course of Christian life and ministry how many Christians want to discover the secret will of God who have got no interest in discovering the revealed will of God.

And so this is a very important first principle. Of course, it seems very disappointing. And people think if God would just reveal His secret will to me, that would be so good and actually it would be so much easier. It would mean I didn't have any responsibility, no decisions to make, and I would never grow up to maturity as a result.

Have you ever met a teenager who has never had to make a decision in his life and noticed how dysfunctional he has become and how immature he really is no matter what he or she thinks about themselves? And the same is true in the Christian life. And so the second basic thing we need to understand is that what God has given us and wants us to recognize is principles and precepts and examples of how His will works as we find them revealed in His Word.

John Newton, the great English letter writer actually, he was a greater letter writer I think than he was a preacher, and he was also a great hymn writer. In one of his little letters to a friend on divine guidance, he puts it like this. He says, the matter of discovering God's will is in a sense a little like a pianist learning to play the piano.

He learns how to do it, he learns the score, and the more he learns the score, the more he is able to play with freedom and to develop a musical ear. Now, you may have a musical ear, you may be a music critic for all I know. You go to some great concert and you can tell the difference between the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Los Angeles Orchestra. You may have that kind of musical ear. For most people, they sound the same.

It doesn't matter who did the recording. But there has been a growth in some people. They've learned to distinguish, and it's done by practice and understanding of the score and the relationship between the score and the event of the music being played. And in many ways, living within the will of God is like that. That the instruction manual so becomes part of my life it gets into my bloodstream that I begin to think God's thoughts after him.

I begin to discern the difference between good and evil, and also between good and better, and also between better and best, in order that I may live for God's glory. Now, it would be so much easier if God just sent messages down from heaven, wouldn't it? But nobody would grow as a Christian, if that were the case. Nobody would need to discern God's will for their lives.

Nobody would need to make decisions that were pleasing to God. And what God is after in our lives is growth to maturity, because we need to remember that first of all, we've to resist the urge to seek the secret will of God. We are to recognize the directives and precepts that God gives to us. And we need to remember also that as New Testament Christians, God actually wants us to make decisions. God really does want you to make the right decisions.

Because if you're not capable of making right decisions, you haven't really grown as a Christian. You've become wrongly dependent on a crutch, and you remain a spiritual infant because you're not able to discern and do God's will. That can sound a little frightening, but remember He is our Shepherd, and He's promised to lead us and to guide us. When we are the lambs of the flock, I wonder if this was your experience, you look back and you think, boy, I could have really messed up. But when we're the lambs of the flock, He carries us in His bosom. But then there comes a time, doesn't there, if you live in a country where there are plenty of sheep and lambs, you see this when the shepherd puts the lamb down and it's staggering around, and then it learns to find its feet. But the shepherd constantly keeps his eye on the sheep so that the sheep will not wander. And so we can have every confidence that although the Lord wants us to grow up to maturity, to discern and to do His will, He is promised that He will be with us and He will guide us. And yes, in the amazing fatherly provision He makes, He apparently sometimes lets us make mistakes. But then He comes with His shepherd's crook and He draws us back, and we know that we can trust Him.

Well, what does this look like in practice? Let me focus on what I said earlier on, that characteristically God gives us guidance through the principles and precepts that He has given to us in His Word. Let me try and spell that out. And the first principle is this, God gives us specific directives. There are many places in Scripture where He actually says, do this. It's an interesting thing to me that when you look back through the story of the church from the Reformation onwards, there comes a point in church history when people started writing books on how you get guidance and how you discover God's will, and it's relatively recent. Up through about the eighteenth century, Christians did not write books on discovering God's will.

Why? Think about it this way, because in so many of those Christians' homes and families, they were catechizing their children. In Scotland, they were teaching them the Shorter Catechism, and they were learning the teaching of the Larger Catechism. If you take a glance through these catechisms and the Reformation catechisms, you find something very interesting that actually is very difficult for some evangelical Christians today to swallow. Between thirty and forty percent of those catechisms are taken up with the Ten Commandments.

Shock, horror, legalism, how could you teach that to the children? Why do you think there is such confusion about discovering the will of God if we ignore what I call the Big Ten, these big foundation stones that apply to virtually every realm of life? And you remember how the catechism works with that. Here are the principles God has given to us. How do those principles apply in daily life?

What are we to avoid and what are we to do? And you know, when you think about these youngsters being taught these principles, you begin to understand why it was that Christian authors didn't need to write books on how do you discover the will of God. Because these young Christians were growing up with vision from the spectacle lenses that had been crafted into their sight of the whole of life that were according to Scripture. And so they saw things, as it were, through God's eyes. And when you think about it, virtually every decision that you and I take day by day in answer to the question, what does God want me to do, will be a decision directed by one or other of those commandments. Of course, the Ten Commandments don't tell you who to marry and who not to marry, but it's not a decision that you're making every day of your life.

So, this is the first thing. And in a way, it's tragic that we have become, I think, so arrogant as Christians that we think we're way beyond the Ten Commandments because you never get beyond the Ten Commandments. And I wonder if you've noticed incidentally in our society how many more laws we keep creating in a society that has begun to put the Ten Commandments aside and say, we know better and we'll do better.

But the result of that whole disaster is that when we avoid God's Big Ten, we've got to make a thousand more to cope with the consequences of that. And do you remember the promise of the gospel that's quoted in Hebrews 8 and 10 about what the Holy Spirit does? When the Holy Spirit comes, He will write God's what into our hearts? God's law. So, here is a wonderful principle that Christians so frequently avoid that God has already given us directives that govern most of our lives.

Now, of course, we still need wisdom to apply them. It's clear, for example, the command, honor your father and mother means that when you're a child, you obey your father and mother. But when you become a married man or woman and you have your own family, the command is not obey your father and mother. And you will find yourself in spiritual peril if once married, the principle of that new family life is, we're going to obey my father and mother. Because the command is not obey your father and mother, the command is honor your father and mother. And that means when you're a child, you obey them. And when you're an adult and married, that authoritative bond is broken, but you continue to honor them.

And then you have to work out, sometimes, and some of you may have done this, how now that I am no longer obligated to obey them because there is this new family structure and I have left that one and begun a new one, how can I continue to honor them? And that's where you need the resources of the wisdom of other parts of Scripture. And you can understand how that applies to so many of the commandments.

The principle is there. And alas, I've seen some Christian parents who, when they are youngsters, have got married, have insisted that the children will continue to obey them. And they've said, that's God's commandment, but it's not God's commandment.

And in fact, what they have done is they've disqualified themselves from being honored, alas, in the process. So, we need to understand Scripture well and we need to use it wisely and we need to appreciate, we really need to appreciate the directives that God gives to us. Secondly, God not only gives us specific directives, but He also gives us precepts. In fact, there's a whole book of precepts in the Bible, the book of Proverbs. And interestingly, it begins with what looks like a series of outline talks that a godly father would give to his son.

Now, a godly mother could transpose them into counsel for a godly daughter, but they're kind of elongated sections where great principles of knowing God's will are expounded. And then there is a kind of almost shotgun approach of all these indicated sayings that teach you what to do in this situation, what to do in that situation, and some of them really need to be thought through. For example, the Proverbs that tell you not to answer a fool according to his folly, but to answer a fool according to his folly. How can both of these Proverbs be wise?

You don't need to live very long before you realize why they're so wise, that there are fools who need to be answered in accordance with their folly, and there are fools who need to be answered in such a way that you're not just mirroring their folly. And it's so sad, isn't it, that people are so concerned about finding out the will of God, what to do in this situation and that situation, and their real problem is ignorance of the Bible. And sometimes behind that, well, you know, God will reveal His special will to me. Why would God give us a whole Bible if He didn't want us to know that whole Bible? And one of the best things that we can do for ourselves and for our youngsters, therefore, is really get to know the Bible.

Now, there's a third thing that I want to say in this context. God gives us directives, He gives us presets, and He also gives us general principles that will help us how to negotiate life. And interestingly, to me anyway, one of the places where the New Testament does this most clearly is in one of the two most dysfunctional churches with which the Apostle Paul had anything to do with, the church in Corinth. And the church in Corinth appears to have written to Paul with all kinds of questions in which they're saying, help us to understand the will of God in this situation. And in the course of his teaching to them, Paul throws out a number of principles that seem to me to be really helpful for us as we negotiate difficult questions about the will of God. So let me finish this session simply by enumerating seven of them.

Seven is the perfect number. I'm not saying that this will perfectly guide you into the will of God, but I have myself found them particularly helpful. What are the questions I need to ask about any decision I take in which the Scriptures are not, as it were, completely clear telling me this is what you're to do?

Question number one is this, is it lawful? That is, is it according to the Word and the will of God? Because no action that is contrary to God's Word can possibly be legitimate for the Christian believer. The second question, which Paul raises in 1 Corinthians 6 verse 12, he says, you know, it's true that all things are permissible for us that are not contrary to God's will.

But you know, when somebody says there's nothing wrong with it, that's not a good answer. So Paul says, what you need to ask is, is this action beneficial to me and to others? And then a third question he raises, will it be enslaving? Isn't that interesting? And isn't it true that there are many things in our lives that are perfectly legitimate for us, but for some of us they will become enslaving? We will turn them into idols. And it could be anything from classical music to playing golf.

It could be anything from watching Netflix to your garden. And so you need to ask the question, if I pursue this, for me as an individual, could that be enslaving to me? And if so, I need to keep a very special discipline on that engagement. A fourth question that he asks, he says, is this absolutely consistent with Christ's lordship? He speaks about that in 1 Corinthians 6, 19 to 20. Is this absolutely consistent with the lordship of Jesus Christ? The fifth question is this, and he asks it in 1 Corinthians 10 verse 33, will this be helpful to others?

That's a testing question, isn't it? It's okay for me to do this. It's legitimate for me to do this.

I want to do this. It would be good for us if we did this, but will it be good for others? Because we don't live to ourselves or for ourselves. And then Paul gives us another question to ask, and he does this really in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 1. He says, is this course of action going to be consistent with biblical example? You see, how much of this has got to do with the intimacy of our knowledge of God's Word? And if there is a responsibility here, it is that we should become more and more familiar with God's Word. And then there is this final question, which I think is so helpful for us. 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 31 indicates it to us. Is this going to be consistent with the promotion of the glory of God?

Because what promotes the glory of God will always be His will. Those seven questions are so helpful and probing to ensure that we really are thinking about the decisions that are in front of us. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, and that was Sinclair Ferguson from his 12-message series on living the Christian life to the glory of God. Today only, for your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, we'll grant you lifetime digital access to the series and the study guide to help you dig deeper.

Or perhaps you'll use this series with a study group. And also we'll send you the classic Christian book from John Calvin, a little book on the Christian life. Believers have turned to this book for centuries, and this new translation really captures Calvin's biblical faithfulness, his theological integrity, and his pastor's heart. So call us at 800 435 4343 or make your donation at renewingyourmind.org.

This is a one-day offer, and it ends at midnight. When the will of God for your life is a season of suffering, how does the Bible teach us to respond? R.C. Sproul will join us on Monday to help us think through suffering in the Christian life. Join us then here on Renewing Your Mind. R.C. Sproul will join us on Monday to help us think through suffering in the Christian