Nov 14 2008
Walking in His Will
The prospect of walking in the will of God is one that all Christians would readily agree is a fine and high ideal. To live in unwavering obedience and intimately understand the slightest nuance of the world around us, to know not only when God speaks to us, but to fully understand the revelation when He does, is to continually reside upon the mountain of God. But we are not made that way. We can not, “hear” the voice that we wish was audible to us. We stumble through decisions hoping that we are doing the right thing.
There are many times when we do know the right choice to make, but there are times when we set a course and can only pray that God is up there saying, “Yes! That’s the way I wanted you to go!” Have you ever faced the situation where you have had an argument and say, “OK God, if you want me to apologize, then have me bump into them today while I’m running errands.” And when it doesn’t happen you say that since God didn’t open that door, He must not have wanted you to take the first step. Do we set up hoops for God to jump through in order to get an answer? Does God play along when we do this? Is it Biblical to do such a thing?
There is only one place in Scripture where God, Himself, tells someone to test Him. In Malachi 3:10 God is speaking to the priests when he tells them, “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house; and thereby put me to the test …” RSV. This seems to be telling us the exact opposite of the words of Jesus in Matthew 4, where He quotes Deuteronomy 6:16, “… it is written ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’” I think that it is perfectly allowable to ask for assurances that the choices we might be considering are in accord with the will of God, but it is wrong to try to make God a sideshow act or to try to make Him prove Himself.
When we prepare to make a decision in our lives, we should bathe it in prayer and ask for God to reveal His will in whatever it is we are considering. We must watch to see how He guides us and be attentive to our surroundings and then, when we think that we have a prompting from God, verify it. “But that’s testing God!” I think that it is actually a case of testing whether or not we are hearing His answers correctly. If we approach God in reverence and sincerity and ask for confirmation, He will reward that request. It worked for Gideon!
When God chose Gideon to smite the Midianites, He told him that He would be with him in the attack. Even so, Gideon asked for proof, not once, but twice! He tested that what he thought was true, was really true. Asking permission, Gideon laid out a woolen fleece asking that in the morning the fleece would have dew on it while the surrounding ground remained dry. This God did. But that wasn’t enough for Gideon, a second time he laid out the fleece asking that in the morning it would be dry and all the surrounding ground would be wet; God made it so. It was not unusual for proofs of the authority of the word of God to be provided. When Isaiah told Hezekiah that he had been granted another 15 years you would have thought that the king would have been content, but no. Hezekiah asked for a sign that God would do what Isaiah said He would, and God made the shadow go back 10 steps on the dial of Ahaz.
We can not attempt to make God an amusement for our friends and ask things like, “Oh God, show yourself and when I release this pencil, make it float in the air.” It probably won’t happen, but that’s not proof that God doesn’t hear our prayers, only that It doesn’t serve God’s purposes to grant such selfish demands. Besides, if He did, we would take the credit away from Him anyway. If we are traveling and all of a sudden realize that we’re almost out of gas, we might pray, “God, let me make it to the next gas station,” but when we roll in on fumes we think that we must have simply had more gas in the tank than we thought.
God does open and shut doors in our lives but too often, we misuse our free will to ignore them. Have you ever found yourself trying to do something and everything seems to be stacked against you? Mightn’t there be a divine reason for that? When we are facing a tough decision and we are asking God to show us the way, don’t stop there! We need to ask God to show us the open door, and He will, but no sooner than we see that door open, Satan may set a dozen other open doors along side of the one God had planned for us. We need to ask God to open the door for us and to close all the other doors so that we can’t make a mistake. If you think that God doesn’t work this way, take a look at Acts 16:6-7.
Speaking about the trials of Paul’s missionary journeys, we read that he was, “… forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they came opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia but the spirit of Jesus did not allow them…” If you are about to embark on a plan, or course of action, that is in violation of the things that God would have you do, He will throw up road blocks to make you reconsider what it is that you’re doing. This isn’t to say that we can’t, in our hard and stubborn hearts, decide to do it our own way; we can. The Bible says that it’s, “hard to kick against the pricks,” not that we can’t kick against them.
I don’t want anyone to think that I am trying to make a case for bargaining with God, I’m not. I’ve never known anyone who received a blessing of God when they began with, “God, if you will do, (insert any ridiculous request here), then I promise to, (insert any lofty ideal that you will never keep anyway, here).” God can’t be made to do anything, least of all to meet us in our folly and give sanction to it. We are to find where God is working and then join Him in what He’s doing.
Recently, I have been in the process of making an important decision and I have been doing exactly the things I’ve been talking about. I asked for one open door with all others shut and then when I saw the door that I believe God opened for me, I asked Him if I was seeing it correctly. I laid a fleece, as it were, and God answered. I didn’t test God, I only asked that IF what I thought was true, really WAS true; to show me a simple sign to confirm the direction I was getting ready to move toward. But there was another thing that I also used to provide confirmation. God’s Peace. God is a God of order, not chaos. If a decision is being directed by our Lord, I believe that we will have a calm serenity about the choice we are making.
The reality is that we rarely know whether or not the choice was correct right away. Facing certain, uncertainty; I know that God will either still any storm that may arise, or strengthen us to withstand the gale. When we are faced with a choice and don’t know the right way to go, we must begin by seeking the will of the Lord in prayer. God wants us to reap the benefits of the blessings he has laid up for us, a life that is ordered and in step with His Word, and His peace which transcends the turmoil of this world. It is consistent with the nature of God that we pattern our lives so that our actions are …
All for the Glory of Christ