Text: Selected Scriptures

 Case histories on the problem of knowing God’s will

 Determining God’s will can be a difficult task. It has been complicated by two errors:

1. 5 Direct Imperatives Concerning the Will of God
1. Salvation (2 Pet. 3:9)
2. Sanctification (1 Thess. 4:3)
3. Suffering (1 pet. 4:19)
4. Submission (1 Pet. 2:13ff)
5. Spirit-filled (Eph. 5:17-18
1. Walk in Spirit (Gal. 5:25)
2. Don’t grieve the Spirit (Eph. 4:30)
3. Be filled (Eph. 5:17-18)
4. Don’t quench the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:18)
5. Pray in the Spirit (Jude 20)
2. Wrong Ways of Discerning God’s Will
1. Through continued revelation (prophecy), extra-biblical revelation
1. illus.
1. "God told me that I am to marry you."
2. "God told me to quit my job."
3. "The Lord said you are going to have a baby."
4. George Whitefield, when his wife was expecting their first child, he prophesied that she would have a son and that he would become a preacher. The child was a boy but he died at 4 months of age, Whitefield’s only child.

"I misapplied several texts of Scripture. Upon these grounds, I made no scruple declaring ‘that I should have a son, and that his name was to be John.’" "Many good souls, both among clergy and laity, for a while, mistook fancy for faith, and imagination for revelation."

2. Sola Scriptura: Scripture alone is sufficient for all our needs
3. The canon is closed. God speaks through His Word, not through continued revelation
2. Through inner promptings, still small voice, inward impressions
1. illus.
1. "I believe the Lord wants me to go to the mission field."
2. "We believe that God wants us to get married."
2. People in this group, while realizing that their mental impressions are not divine revelation, nevertheless they believe that God somehow communicates His will personally to individuals through inner promptings
3. Question: How do you know if an inner prompting is of God?
1. It could be last night’s burrito.
2. Garry Friesen, in his book, "Decision Making and the Will of God" asks the question "how can I tell whether these impressions are from God or from some other source?" His answer:

"…impressions could be produced by any number of sources: God, Satan, an angel, a demon, human emotions (such as fear or ecstasy), hormonal imbalance, insomnia, medication, or an upset stomach. Sinful impressions (temptations) may be exposed for what they are by the Spirit-sensitized conscience and the Word of God. But beyond that, one encounters a subjective quagmire of uncertainty. For in non-moral areas, Scripture gives no guidelines for distinguishing the voice of the Spirit from the vice of self¾ or any other potential "voice." And experience offers no reliable means of identification either (which is why the question comes up in the first place)…Tremendous frustration has been experienced by sincere Christians who have earnestly but fruitlessly sought to decipher the code of the inward witness."

3. Scripture never commands us to tune in to the inner voice.
1. We are to meditate on Scripture
2. Discern the spirits using the Word of God
3. Obey God’s commands
4. In fact, we are warned that our hearts are deceitful and wicked
5. Haddon Robinson: "When we lift our inner impressions to the level of divine revelation, we are flirting with divination."
6. Quotes from Jonathon Edwards

"An erroneous principle, than which scarce any has proved more mischievous to the present glorious work of God, is a notion that it is God’s manner in these days to guide His saints…by inspiration, or immediate revelation."

"Many godly persons have undoubtedly in this and other ages, exposed themselves to woeful delusions, by an aptness to lay too much weight on impulses and impressions, as if they were immediate revelations from God, to signify something future, or to direct them where to go, and what to do."

I would therefore entreat the people of God to be very cautious how they give heed to such things. I have seen them fail in very many instances, and know by experience that impressions being made with great power, and upon the minds of true, yea eminent, saints… are no sure signs of their being revelations from heaven. I have known such impressions fail, in some instances, attended with all these circumstances."

3. Through feelings
1. Illus.
1. Debbie Boone: "It can’t be wrong when it feels so right."
2. I don’t know why, I just feel that this is the right thing to do."
3. "I’m getting a divorce because I feel that I don’t love you anymore."
4. Bill Hamon: "the spirit reaction orignates deep within our being. Many Christians describe the physical location of its corresponding sensation as the upper abdominal area….We have a deep unexplainable peace and joy, a warm, loving feeling¾ or even a sense of our spirit jumping up and down with excitement."
2. Feelings are very subjective and can change with circumstances
3. Feelings often go against what we know to be right.
4. Through fleeces
1. illus.
1. Gideon
1. open to a Bible verse at random (Bible roulette)
2. Illus. A fellow tried this method and read, "Judas went and hanged himself." Not liking this verse, he tried again only to read, "Go and do thou likewise." Exasperated he tried once more and turned to "What thou doest, do quickly."
2. Ground Hog method
1. "If I see my shadow, if I don’t."
2. "
5. This subjectivity while pervasive in the charismatic movement, has also infiltrated our thinking in fundamentalism
1. Most of us are careful to not go quite as far as charismatics, claiming divine revelation, but we do almost equate our inner impressions with divine revelation
3. The Will of God
1. Recognize God has a will for you (Ph. 3)
2. Desire to do the will of God (John 7:17)
3. Do the revealed will of God (2 pet 1:16-18)
4. Don’t disobey the plain precepts of Scripture
5. If you are doing the revealed will of God, He will give you the proper desires (Ps. 37:4).
1. Thus, ultimately God’s will is not like taking medicine or doing something we don’t want to do. It is following God to the point that our desires are the desires that He wants us to have.
2. Note: there is an element in which times may come that we recognize that what God wants is different from what we want. Of course if our desires are sinful, a sensitive conscience will help us here. However, there may be times when what we desire is not sinful in and of itself, but we recognize it is contrary to what God wants. For example, Jesus prayed, "Not my will but thine be done." In this instance, jesus’ will, if different from the Father’s will, was not sinful because Jesus could not sin. However, it was not the Father’s will. Of course, Jesus knew what the Father’s will was specifically.
6. You can be confident that your decisions are in the will of God
7. Spherical illus. of God’s will
1. don’t consider it linear or like a track to get on and off of. That is two dimensional.
2. don’t consider it a circle and you being in the center of the circle
3. Rather, consider it a sphere with a lot of room. The boundaries of this sphere are the objective truths of Scripture. Within these boundaries, you have freedom to move left, right, up, down, forward, backward¾ any vector¾ as long as you stay in the right "universe."
4. Thus, you have a choice between turning left or right at a stop light, as long as it does not violate Scripture or the law.
5. You have the right to marry who you want within the parameters of this biblical universe.
6. When you sin, or step out of the universe, confession and repentance gets you back into the right sphere again.
7. Sphere is fluid, not static. It is constantly changing based on the situations around you. Like a three-dimensional amoebae
1. once you get married, the sphere changes so that no other mates are possible until death
2. if a pastor sins, he can get back into the right universe, but not the pastorate
3. God is such that He already knows every possibility, every variable, and reality.
8. Sphere is multiple. Picture several overlapping spheres with each representing various aspects of your life. Where all of this spheres overlap is the perfect will of God.
1. even in the perfect will, it is not a single point in the universe, but is a universe in itself, still open to your desires.
2. it is possible to be out of the will of God in one sphere, but not in others.
3. of course, being out in one sphere ultimately affects the others
9. Balanced, mature life is working your way by sanctification so that you are in the right universe in all of the spheres.
10. the better you know God’s revealed, objective truth, the more confident you can be that your personal decisions within the "universe" are correct.
4. Miscellaneous thoughts
1. Verses where we are to know God’s will
1. Eph. 5:17
2. Col. 1:9
2. Verses equating maturity with God’s will
1. Col. 4:2
2. Heb. 13:21
3. Jesus said, "Not my will…"
1. Mt. 6:10
2. Lk. 22:42
3. John 4:34, 5:30, 6:38-40
4. Steps in God’s Will
1. Present your bodies a living sacrifice
2. Not conformed to the world
3. Transformed by Scripture