In this lesson we examined how we can know God’s will for our lives. We learned that God’s desire is that we be less concerned with our outward circumstances and more concerned with our own inward condition. A good supplemental reading would be Bruce Waltke’s Finding God’s Will: a pagan idea? I know of no other book as helpful as this one for learning how discern God’s will for our lives. I strongly recommend it to anyone anxious over any major life decisions. Amy Jordan has them available in the bookstall. Enjoy!
What is God’s Plan for My Life
1st Wednesday in Lent
March 4, 2009
I. What is God’s plan for my life? When we ask this most of us mean something similar. “What job should I take?” “Should I get married?” “Who should I marry?” “Should I move? Where should I move to?” Etc. etc.
I.a. We might be asking this question for a number of different reasons. Maybe we’re asking because our life situation has changed, and we don’t know what’s next. In other words, we are not only asking “what is God’s will for my life?” But also “What do I do now?” Life has changed its course. Maybe we’ve been laid off, divorced, taken a pay cut, and now we need to make a change.
I.b. Then again, we might be asking that question because nothing is changing in our lives, and we fill stale, discontented, stagnated. Like maybe if we don’t get out of where we are now, life might pass us by. We just get the sense that it could be better than it is.
II.a. To make matters worse, I think there are a number of different cultural influences that are making this question push itself to the forefront of our minds. You know, two thousand years ago, it was pretty easy to decide what you were going to do for a living. Do you know how Jesus decided to become a carpenter? Because his daddy was a carpenter. And I’m guessing that Joseph probably chose to become a carpenter because his daddy was a carpenter. Not only that, but in other eras and in other parts of the world, if you knew a trade that would put food on the table, you never asked “is this really what God wants me to do?” You just thanked Him for putting food on the table!
II.b. Not only that, but our society has seen a remarkable breakdown in authority structures over the past fifty years. You can see this very often in immigrant populations. People who come from traditional societies often feel very comfortable telling their children what profession they should choose. Our culture has lost that mooring, and so each individual is completely on his own to figure out what he wants to do with his life.
II.c. This is further complicated by a growing subjectivism in our society. What I mean by that is this. Our society has seen a breakdown in basic communal life both within the family and the local community. Two hundred years ago, if you were a blacksmith, you were a valued and essential part of your community. You filled a role no one else could fill. The same was true for shoe makers, coopers, brewers, etc. With centralized production of almost every good and service, few people get to see themselves as part of the bigger picture. And so we are left with a sense of purposelessness.
My mother-in-law once told me that one of her goals in raising her children was to give them responsibilities around the house in such a way that they knew if they weren’t there to fulfill them they’d be missed. What she was trying to do was let each child know that they were an essential part of the family, and that things didn’t run well without them. Few of us have had that experience, and so few of us see ourselves as needed by others in society. The result is that we’ve become very individualistic in our decision making process. No longer do we make major life decisions based on what is best for our family or community, now we make those decisions based on our personal wants and desires.
II.d. Finally, and probably most importantly, we feel the pressure to discern God’s will for our lives because we are afraid of missing what God has in store for us. We’re afraid we’ll make the wrong choice. We’re afraid we’ll choose the wrong spouse and miss our true love. We’re afraid we’ll choose the wrong career and be frustrated in a dead end job. We’re afraid we’ll miss the big opportunity to make it rich. In other words, we have a world view in which it’s possible for us to choose a path for our life contrary to God’s plan for us and never experience what He really has in store for us.
III.a. Given this situation, many of us try to discern God’s will in a number of ways that He doesn’t intend for us to.
In his book, Finding the Will of God: a pagan notion?, Bruce Waltke gives several anecdotes of people trying to figure out God’s will for their lives.
III.b. Many of us try to discern God’s will through signs. Margaret hears the Marshall Islands mentioned several times, and even encounters a person named Marshall, and so she thinks God may be calling her to be a missionary to the Marshall Islands. Another character, Douglas, figures out which girl he should date by working out a system. He lists all the girls he likes. If they don’t answer, he figures they aren’t for him. If the line is busy, he tries later. If they pick up, it was meant to be!
III.c. Some folks try to discern God’s will by following their gut. When I was in college, my roommate and I were trying to find a job. We had been offered a job at The Boston Market, and so we prayed and both felt right about the Boston Market. It turned out to be one of the worst jobs I ever had!
III.d. Other folks turn to the Scriptures for answers. They want to know which job they should pick, so the flip the Bible open at random and point at the page! If that doesn’t suit them, they try again.
III.e. The problem with each of these, I think, is obvious. First of all, there’s no certainty that you will interpret the sign/feeling/scripture correctly! It’s all up to you to get it right. Which points to the deeper issue. You see, there’s a certain logical fallacy that’s being used here. We reason that God has a plan for our lives, therefore we have to figure out what it is! In other words, God’s plan is a hidden thing that we have to figure out. We forget that God is in charge of all of human history. Can you imagine God, seated on His Heavenly Throne, snoozing away until, all of a sudden He wakes with a start. Realizing that He’s been asleep on the job, He looks down at the earth and cries out, “Oh no!!! Janice got the wrong job! And Bob married the wrong woman! Tom and Mary bought the wrong house! How am I ever going to fix this?” The very thought of it is ridiculous!
IV. If that’s true, why are we having this class? If God is going to do what God’s going to do whether we get it right or not, what’s the point in trying to figure out God’s will? Well, first of all, Scripture tells us that God’s will is a beautiful thing. Jeremiah 29:11 says “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Psalm 119 talks about God’s will for us as a path. It says, “blessed are those who walk in the law of the Lord, who seek Him with their whole heart,” “With my whole heart I seek you, let me not wander from your commandments,” “Your testimonies are my delight, they are my counselors,” “Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it.”
So, what’s the deal? Are we supposed to know God’s will or just trust that His will will be done? The answer is yes.
V. In order to understand this, we could look at Matt 6:25-34. Read this passage (right now) and ask yourself, “What is Jesus saying here?” He’s saying, “Don’t worry about your body and your physical needs, God knows what they are, He always takes care of you. What you should be worried about is pursuing His kingdom and His righteousness. In other words, most of the time you and I are worried about God’s will, we’re worried about the wrong stuff! You see, we worry about our circumstances and God worries about our hearts.
The New Testament is full of references to God’s will for His people. Few, if any, of these refer to the circumstances of our lives. Instead, almost all of them make reference to growing and developing godly characters that bring glory to God. In 1 Thessalonians 4:3, Paul says “This is God’s will for you, your sanctification.” Ephesians 5:16-18 says God’s will is that we rejoice and give thanks in all things. In Colossians 4:12 Paul prays that we stand in God’s will mature and fully assured. 1 Peter 2:13-2:15 says that God’s will is that by doing good we silence those who speak against the faith. The list goes on and on. In no case does Paul seem to indicate that somehow if we’re not careful we’ll slip off the path of God’s sovereign blessing. In almost every instance, what Paul (and most of the New Testament) is most concerned about is that our right action flow out of godly hearts.
In other words, we need to be less concerned about whether we get the right job, car, house, spouse and more concerned about where our hearts are. We need to be less concerned about whether we’ll make more money, and more concerned about whether we’re being sanctified, growing in joy and thanksgiving, and bringing glory to Jesus Christ through our lives. The result is, that when we cultivate such a godly heart, we find out that we make decisions in line with God’s will!
VI. Now, here’s the irony. On the one hand, this is a very comforting doctrine. It’s comforting because it teaches us that God has complete control over our circumstances, that He cares for us, that He’s attentive to our needs. So, we don’t have to worry any more about food, what we’ll eat, or clothes, what we’ll wear. In other words, once the need to control our lives is taken away, we’re free to trust God to control them for our good.
On the other hand, this way of looking at the world is much more terrifying. It’s more terrifying because instead of houses and jobs and families being at stake, what’s at stake is our soul. You see, our role in earthly history can follow God’s plan exactly, and our hearts can completely miss the mark. Jonathan Edwards described this dilemma well in a sermon entitled “Wicked Men Useful in their Destruction Only,” which you can find by reading it online. In the sermon, Edwards says that objects have a hierarchy of purposes. So, for example, a car’s main purpose is transportation. It has several minor purposes underneath that, shelter from the rain, music, comfort, etc. If a car fulfills all of the minor purposes, and doesn’t get you from point A to point B, it’s useless!
Edwards (as well as the Westminster Catechism, and, I believe, the Bible itself) says that the main purpose for which all people were created was to bring glory to God. Under that purpose, individuals fulfill several other duties for which they were created. The scary thing is this, human beings will fulfill the purpose for which they were created. In other words, they will glorify God. If they cannot glorify God by loving Him, giving thanks to Him, serving Him, then they’ll serve Him by being destroyed. There will be not cars up on blocks in the Kingdom of Heaven. They will either have their engines replaced, or they’ll be sent to the junkyard.
If that sounds harsh, you may want to recourse to a gentler teacher, Jesus Christ. Jesus describes this situation, where we conform historically to the will of God and yet reject him in our hearts, in one of His parables. The parable is recorded in Luke 19. In this story, Jesus tells of a man who traveled to a distant country to be made king. Before he left, he gave some money to three of his servants to invest while he was gone. These servants, however, hated him and didn’t want him to become king. And so they campaigned while he was gone to get him out of office. At the kings return, he finds that two of the servants did well with the money he gave them. They invested it and got a good return. The king is well pleased with them. However, the story ends with the king demanding that the rebels who resisted his rule be brought before him and be slaughtered! You see, Jesus too takes this point of view. In next weeks lesson, we’ll look at this disturbing truth in more death and examine how we can know ourselves to be within the bounds of God’s will.
Thank you! This helped me so much
was there ever a part 2?