“I know what to do; the Lord spoke to me.” You may have heard that confident declaration from Christian friends, that God had directly revealed His will to them. Perhaps like me, you felt a little envious that God had spoken to them and not to you. And why didn’t He speak to you when you were struggling with important decisions? With life so uncertain and difficult, we long for more direct revelations from God, a “God told me” prophetic message to guide us.
In the Bible God spoke His will many times and in many ways, sometimes directly (Hebrews 1:1). Many Christians believe that today, if you have enough faith, God will speak to you personally and guide the details of your life. They assume that the ideal Christian is divinely directed by God in every detail.
Are direct, personal revelations God’s preferred way to prompt us to obey His will?
First, we need to see that Scripture shows us two kinds of God’s will.
God’s Will of Decree
When God decrees something, it must come to pass:
“I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose’” (Is. 46:10).
An example of God’s decree coming to pass occurs in Genesis 1 where God said, “Let there be light,” and there was. There was no possibility it could have been otherwise. God decreed the existence of light as the Creator and absolute Sovereign of all.
Also, in salvation’s plan, God’s decrees are demonstrated. Peter points out God’s sovereignty over Jesus’ crucifixion:
“Truly in this city, Jerusalem, there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed both Herod, Pontius Pilate, all the Gentiles, the peoples of Israel to do what your hand and plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:26-27).
Jesus’ trial and murder happened according to God’s predestined plan, even though it required that Herod, Pilate, and the leaders of Israel committed terrible sins to carry it all out. That was all by God’s decree. Christ had to die for our sins, according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:1-4), and His death was sufficient to cover even those evils committed against His Son. Those evils done by men were decreed by God, but they did not make God a sinner. He cannot do evil, for “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1Jn. 1:5).
There is a mystery here that we cannot explain. God’s decrees are as far beyond our explanations as the heavens are above the earth (Is. 55:9). He has decreed the future’s details, but He has not told us all that those details will mean. Where will I live 20 years from now? Will I contract a serious disease in 10 years? When will I die? These are things God does not reveal, and they are not for us to know. And yet, He has decreed the details of my future, and they will come to pass.
God’s Will of Command
God has another kind of will, one that is not presently obeyed perfectly. Jesus told His disciples, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (Jn. 13:34). It is His will that His followers love each other as perfectly as He loves. He also knows that none of us will obey this command perfectly until we are glorified. For now, it is His will of command. However, in the distant future our ability to love perfectly will surely come to pass, as the Father has decreed:
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29).
We will be like Him and perfectly obedient when we live with Him in the new earth. In this life, however, we “walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Living by faith, we cannot see the future, and we don’t know exactly what God’s future plans are from day to day. We cannot know all His will, and we discover that He has designed it that way. Our struggles and frustrations with doing His will in our daily decisions is part of His divine plan to change us. Paul explains in Romans 12:
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2).
God does not give us His will by sending divine Instagrams or Twitter messages every hour. Instead, He is transforming our minds, changing the way we think. If He were to give us specific directions for every twist and turn in life, we would not become what He wants us to be. He is renewing our minds through that struggle of testing everything. If we were to just hear His voice and do as He says without that struggle, we would only go through the motions of good behavior without changing our hearts. We might look good to others, while our sinful desires and drives were not being conquered by His grace. The will of God goes way beyond external conformity in performing certain motions with our bodies. He is transforming us by renewing our minds, transforming us into new creatures that love and serve him with all our entire being.
Those who learn the will of God are people that He changes from the inside out. True obedience starts invisibly, inside the deep motives and desires. Jesus told the Samaritan woman,
“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (Jn. 4:23-24).
God hides his will for our futures while He transforms our minds and souls. We are to learn by testing and doing, using our minds to His service. His will is not just for us to follow instructions with diets, words, or pious-appearing actions of our bodies. The Father wants worshipers to obey Him fully, in our spirits, loving what He loves. We worship truthfully, with nothing held back. †
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