How Can We Know God's Will for Our Lives?

This morning, we're going to be delving into a, I think, a really relevant topic that many of us at one point or another in our lives will be wrestling with. And that is: how do we discern God's will for our lives individually? When we are going through times of transition, we're looking at new jobs, we're looking at moving house, all that sort of stuff. How do we discover what God's will is for us in those specifics of life? There's a story of a golfer who approached his first tee for the morning, and he knew that this first hole was a hazardous one with a green that was surrounded by water.

And he debated whether he should use his new golf ball that he had received as a gift. Deciding that the hole was too treacherous, he pulled out an old golf ball and placed it on the tee. Just as he did that, he heard a voice from above, a divine voice, say to him loudly: use the new ball. Frightened, he replaced the old ball with the new one and approached the tee. Now the voice from above shouted: take a practice swing.

With this, the golfer obviously complied, stepped backwards and took a swing. Feeling more confident, he approached the tee, but the voice then also rang out and said: no, use the old ball. How do we know what God's will is for our life? Will we receive voices from above in that sort of way on decisions about life? You may ask that sort of question at really important times, perhaps not as insignificant as whether you use a new ball in golf or an old one.

It can be on the issue of immigrating to another country. Some of us in our church have experienced that pressure, moving interstate, changing jobs. Our young people: what career are you going to pursue in university? The reality is, the bible doesn't promise us words from above, telling us how we should play our golf shots. But as Christians, we do believe that there is a plan for our life.

How do we determine what that plan is? Well, we're going to explore this a little bit, and we're going to be jumping around through various texts within the Bible because this is, I think, an aspect of systematic theology. We're going to look at the whole Bible, and hopefully not all the relevant passages because we'll be here for three hours, but significant passages throughout Scripture to determine some of these things. And the first thing we have to do is understand that there are actually layers to this story, that there are layers to this understanding of what God's will is. And we're going to start this morning by laying the first level, the first layer of this foundation, which is to understand, number one: the unchanging plan.

The unchanging plan, or what theologians call God's will of decree. The bible tells us that God's very nature is unchangeable. We know those bible passages, don't we? God is the same yesterday as he is today as he will be tomorrow. Again, the theological term here is God's immutability.

God is unchangeable. He is permanent. He is irreversible. He is absolute. God never changes.

And since God never changes, neither does His will, neither does His direction for creation. For all eternity, God's plan has been the same, from the past, even today, and into the future. He is in the process, the bible says, of making all things good according to His purposes. Now often we will talk about God being sovereign. We use that word a lot in our church.

He is in control of all things. All things are under His direct control. One very well known example of this is that moment when Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Remember that? Where He prayed to God the Father, even as He was facing the cross: Father, may this cup pass me by, but not my will, Yours be done.

Even as the weight of what is going to take place on the cross tempts Jesus in His weakness, in His human nature, He asks the Father for another way. But there is no other way. This is God's decreed will for the Son. This is God's will for humanity. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is the only way for sin to be dealt with on behalf of humanity.

This has been the plan from the beginning. It will not change. We see another example of that in the book of Acts 4. Peter and John have been released from prison for the first time. The message about Jesus was starting to become really uncomfortable to the religious leaders.

Pentecost had just happened, and the apostles, the disciples, were talking about Jesus wherever they went in Jerusalem. They are put in jail, and then eventually released, ordered not to speak about Jesus anymore. Peter and John and the other disciples meet together, they pray to God for boldness. Having heard what they are not meant to do, they pray for boldness that they may continue to do that. And this is what Acts 4 says: Truly in this city, this is their prayer, truly in this city, they pray to God: they were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your plan had predestined to take place.

There are gathered people that do these things to Jesus, but it always was in accordance with God's plan. This is the unchanging nature and decree of God. And so when we say God is sovereign, we are saying He is like a king or a queen that makes a decree. A decree made by the queen is an unchangeable law. It was the will of God for Christ to die, the bible says.

This is a sovereign decree and nothing was going to change that, even as the Son of God asked for another way. But this is only one example of the will of decree, and there are many of those unchangeable laws, unchangeable wills of God. There are the aspects of creation God has created. Nothing we can do about that, nothing we can ask for will change that, will undo that. At some point, God decided for the universe to exist.

That was His will of decree and it existed. Then we also understand God's providence, God's provision over even the smallest detail of our lives. Jesus makes it clear. He says in Matthew 10:29: not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of our Father in heaven. That is God's will of decree.

He has provision for the world, His providence. But then even the most powerful political forces, humanity, the superpowers that are around us, kings and queens and politicians, are controlled by God as well. Proverbs 21:1: The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord. He directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.

So the foundation to understanding, firstly, God's will is to understand that there are unchanging plans. This is the foundation that everything is built on, that God has set in place, are permanent, that are irreversible, that are absolute. God is the sovereign over everything, and His will is being worked out so that the great and important things will turn out how they are meant to turn out. But then there's a layer on top of this, and this is called God's will of command. These are the plans or God's will aspects of it that can be broken.

We also are very aware of these aspects. The bible tells us that God has placed certain aspects of His will in the hands of humanity. These are called commands, these are called laws, these are called statutes, which are God's will for humanity. These are the things that can be obeyed or disobeyed, completed or failed to be completed. So on the one hand, God's will of decree will take place whether we are obedient or not.

Herod and Pontius Pilate were not obedient to God's will for them to spare innocent life. They succumbed to the pressures. They were overwhelmed by the temptation of sin for whatever purposes they had in their hearts, but God's deeper will was that Christ would die. But then on the other hand, God gives humanity an incredible privilege and responsibility. God's very will, God's plan for our lives lies in our hands to a certain extent.

And we have the freedom to follow them or not. For example, Jesus says in Matthew 7:21, again famously: not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. So we see that not all will do the will of God. There are examples, there are instances of humanity that are resisting or directly disagreeing with that will. And there are plenty of examples of that.

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:18: give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Famously, Moses says to Israel in Deuteronomy 30: See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in His ways, and by keeping His commandments, and His statutes, and His rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you. And so we are to understand that God, in His amazing grace, this is an amazing grace moment towards us, invites us to be participants in His will.

To see His will done on earth as it is in heaven. If you think about it, realise the amazing significance of this privilege. God's perfect, good, holy will, the thing that is right and true at all times, across all generations, that perfect will is tied to fragile, temperamental humanity. God says: Here is my will for you and for the world around you. Do it.

Please, live by it. Now, this is, we have to be careful here. This does not mean God's will changes when we fail to live by that. God's will is still the same. In that way, it is also unchangeable, but in some mysterious, complex way, God's will is also subject to, or is adhered to in this fickle way with humanity as well.

But we know, don't we, as well, that God's will is broken in some of those areas. God's plans can be broken in some way. And so in great and in complex ways, God's great sovereign decrees, those will not be frustrated by the fickle nature of our hearts, but in other areas, those things will meander a little bit. And so what we're seeing here are two different layers that are connected when we talk about God's will. Or at least we see God's will being worked out in two different ways.

The one is to call God's will of decree, God's unchanging will, and the other one is to understand God's will of command, His desires for us that can be entered into or not. Both are true, both are important, both we need to understand when we come to wrestle with what God's will is for our lives. But the final question is still left: How do we know what God's will is for my life, in my specific context here on the Gold Coast in Australia in 2020? How do I know if God wants me to take this job?

How do I know if God wants me to move into this house, to marry this man or this woman, to start this university course? Well, firstly, we need to categorise it. Is my career, is my marriage partner, is my university course part of God's unchangeable plan for the world, for humanity, or is it something that can be chosen to be entered into or not? Now unless we have massive tickets on ourselves, we're probably going to know that we are not God's gift to the world. I mean, we might be pretty special, but we're not necessarily part of that incredible unchanging plan of salvation that we cannot set a foot wrong. We consider all of those things in our lives, those specific things as probably falling under the category of God's will of command, what God desires for our life to look like.

And so in answering the question, how do we determine God's specific will for my life? I want to share with you three helpful steps, stages in determining those specific areas of God's will for our lives. And I want to warn you, they're not mystical, mysterious things where we will, you know, go to special people who will give us special revelation and insights. These are simply biblical criteria for how we can go about trying to understand God's will for us. So three stages of knowing and doing God's will.

Stage one: we need to know the bible and we need to follow its instruction. God's will is revealed in its final and authoritative way in His word. In order to know God's will with any certainty, we need to better understand and embrace God's commands to us. In an era where we are used to quick, easy, available answers, we have smartphones with Google in our pockets at all times.

We have Uber Eats if we're really hungry and we need food in five minutes. We need something right now and we can get it. So in a way, I think the desire in us for quick and fast answers is actually a product of our age. So we would rather hope for a sign from heaven, a voice, a lightning bolt, an angel's visit, than spend time studying God's final verdict in His word, the bible. God's authoritative will of command.

His will for our lives is found in the bible. The apostle Paul says, and listen to this, the scriptures are inspired to make the Christian equipped for every good work. For every good work, not just for some, not just for the majority, for every good work. Now it's really important to also mention that we need the Holy Spirit at the same time as we study and try to determine God's will in His word. We, without God's Spirit, will distort the scriptures.

We will misunderstand it and misapply it. We will avoid at all cost the radical commands that God gives us in His word. Those commands of self denial, those commands of humility, of love, of patience. So the really important first step in determining God's will for our lives specifically is to know God's word. And we can be better at that.

We must be better at that. And then, not simply to know it, but to follow it as well. The second stage, stage two, is to seek the right path with humility and trust. This second stage of knowing God's will is understanding how we apply this biblical knowledge, this biblical truth that we know, to the new situations we find ourselves in. We live two thousand years after Jesus.

We have things like smartphones and Uber Eats, and we have to deal with some of those things in the world we live in. But we apply God's unchanging will to new or foreign situations. So the bible will not tell us which car we should buy, whether it should be a Ford or a Holden or a Mazda. The bible doesn't tell us whether we should own our own home or whether we should rent. The bible doesn't tell us where we need to take our next vacation.

The most important aspect when it comes to deciding on the details, those finer details in our life, is not so much what is finally decided. What God is concerned with is how that decision has been made. Based on what have we made that decision? The most important thing for God is how we've been shaped by God's revealed will as we've weighed up our decisions. And so this means we approach our decisions, firstly, searching Scripture, trying to understand all that God has to say about this particular decision, and then having decided to pursue godly characteristics of patience and humility and love, from that perspective we weigh up the relevant factors.

And we make a decision in faith and in trust. Now, again, we have to realise this takes a lot of humility. This is the thing we don't realise when we are asking God to send us some sort of mysterious prophetic word. Why? Because that is easy.

It's easy to have that sort of parachuted into our laps. What is more difficult is what God is trying to develop in us along the way. This is why people, even Christians, will go to horoscopes or tarot cards or diviners. It's to get that quick fix. But there's a massive difference between praying to God for knowledge, asking to understand how God's word applies to this situation, compared with the habit of asking God to give us a new special word or revelation.

Why this difference? It's because divination does not require transformation. Divination has existed for thousands of years. Since the beginning of time, people have been visiting mediums, visiting witches, taking part in seances rather. God's aim always, consistently in Scripture is to create and develop our character.

So often in the bible, He's talking about this process of development. And so when it comes to determining God's will for us in very specific areas of our life, chances are you're not going to get a voice from heaven. But God tells us that we can ask, that we can seek, that we can knock. He invites us to pray, to inquire. And then as we weigh up those things, as we ask for God's guidance, we take a decision in trust.

And all of that takes humility. So to the people who want to create or understand a good process to determine how we do this, I want to give you seven points. This is what I tell people when they are wrestling with aspects of determining: what does God want for me? This is a really good criteria to work through. The first thing is to meditate on God's word.

We've said enough on that already, to understand, to soak, to know what God's will is. God will never ever tell you to fool around with a neighbour's wife. That goes against His revealed will. That is never an option to weigh up and think: maybe if I pray long enough, God's going to give me a special revelation that this is okay. God will never ever change His will on that.

So we know what God's will is in many areas of our life, and we can use those things to determine whether it's good or it's bad, whether we can pursue it or not. Meditate on God's word. The second really important thing is to weigh up our motives. This takes a lot of introspection, reflection, but what am I wanting to do with this? Is it based on misguided or even sinful motives?

Is my pride being involved here? Is my desire for autonomy or control the issue here? Carefully weigh up what your motives are in determining what God's will might be. Then thirdly, spend time in focused prayer. So pray specifically for this item, not just broad general prayers, but about this.

God, can you please guide me in this path? Trusting again that God is in control, and that He will fix whatever may be accidentally chosen by you in a wrong direction. God is in control and He can direct us back if we need to. God, will you please guide me? I don't know.

I have no full knowledge. You are the only one who has perfect knowledge. Lord, will you please help me in this? Spend time in focused prayer. Number four: seek wise, mature Christian counsel.

This is another one that we may not do well all the time. We think that this is a thing between me and God, only he can tell me what I need to do. But God has given us His church for a reason, and this is a big part of it. There are people that have walked this life a lot longer than us. There are people that have learned lessons from God that we can learn from as well. So weighing up things, seek wise, mature Christian counsel.

Fifth, consider our circumstances. Know that God is in your life and that He may have placed you in your context for a reason. You are in Australia, on the Gold Coast for a particular reason. Understand what He has placed you in. God has given you special gifts, special abilities, that is your context.

How is God wanting to use those things that He has given you already in this particular path? Point number six: think your situation through logically. God has also given us brains. He's given us the facility, the faculty of logic.

So we should be able to understand how things work together, how things often don't work together, what really dumb decisions are, and we use that in determining God's will for us as well. That does not mean that God's will will always seem the most logical. Sometimes we have flawed logic as well, but we can use our mind, our brain in determining things as well. And then finally, number seven, and this is so good to know: remember in all things that God is still in control.

An old testament lecturer at bible college used to say: God can hit a straight shot with the most bent golf club. So God will get us where we need to be even if we are crooked and broken. And God can direct everything in His way. So those are some helpful things to determine how to trust God and humbly enter into those things. And then a final thing, this is our final point today, the third step or stage, is to know God's will means to know His love.

The apostle Paul in Romans 12:1-2 talks about how we can understand and discern what God's will is. And he says this: Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. So there is the directive: offer your bodies as living sacrifices. Paul says this is your spiritual act of worship. Therefore, don't conform yourself any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Now listen to this. He says: then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is. His good, pleasing and perfect will. So there's lots happening in there, but listen to how that paragraph starts: In view of God's mercy. We can trust.

We can enter into decisions. We can determine God's will for us because we have a relationship with God and we know that He loves us. And that sets us free incredibly in how we determine the course of our life. Where does understanding God's will start from? It starts from understanding God's mercy.

The truth is God has given us some very clear insights into how our life will look, to what we should be doing with our gifts and our talents, and how we should be using those things. Whether or not we go through all of that, whether or not we really believe in that, trust in that, really boils down to one thing: whether we believe God's kindness and love for us. Think about it. Am I willing to give over my control, the control of my life to God for my future if I don't really know that God loves me? That God's will for me is good?

We must know God's mercy. We must understand and believe that He loves us. I want to encourage you this morning, the answers to the struggles and the trials of uncertainty and anxiety. The struggles of those things is not simply because, or that the answer to those things is not knowing your future. The answer to that, the solution to that is not knowing the direction your life will lead. The answer to our anxieties and uncertainties is knowing that we have a Father in heaven who loves us and who has a good plan for us.

And more specifically, knowing that He cares about every step we take, whether it's a wise decision or not. Our answer therefore is not blind hope that things are just going to be okay. The answer is that we will be okay. We will be okay. So the only thing worse than going through the unknowns of life, making hard decisions, the only thing worse than that is going through all those trials as an orphan by ourselves.

And so I want to wrap up this morning and be very practical: that we need to be so consumed, so enamoured with God's love for us, that we can trust Him, that we can walk humbly with Him, that we know that His word has goodwill towards us, and then we walk in those ways. Let's pray. Father, we want to bring before You our lives. And some of us listening this morning, some of us taking part in worship this morning, Lord, we've come with anxieties and with doubts and, Lord, all of us have decisions to make. We ask, God, that You will be so in control of our lives, that we will be so filled by an understanding and a knowledge of Your love, that we will make decisions, Lord, that we will make choices with incredible trust that You are walking with us.

God, and then from that trust, help us to walk in obedience to Your revealed will. Those things will never change. As much as we are fickle, as much as we want to make exceptions for us, for others, Lord, we know what You want for us. We know that it is good for us. God, convict our hearts.

Create in us a sense of urgency to walk in a way that is holy, righteous, and good. And so, Lord, for those who have big decisions to make in the very near future, Lord, we ask that You will guide them, Holy Spirit, that You will lead them through Your word, that You will lead them in their context and circumstances, that You will give illumination to their hearts and their minds, that they will judge correctly the motives of their hearts, that they will see what You have given them already in their hands. And then, Lord, as they take that step, give them the incredible peace that You are with them, that they are not alone, that they have a Father with them. We commit all of these things to You, Lord, and we thank You for the promises of Your nearness to us because of Jesus Christ. In His name we pray. Amen.