A few years ago, we were moving some things from my mother’s house, and I found a letter addressed to myself to be opened after 2016.
Evidently, I wrote the letter in the summer of 1991 for a career planning class just before graduating from the University of Georgia. After glancing over it, the letter’s origin came back to me: The assignment asked us to plan out the next 25 years of our lives. What did you hope to be doing by 2016? What did you plan to have accomplished by then?
I chuckled at my answers for they revealed the hubris of my youth: In 25 years, I would be one of the nation’s leading baseball writers, regularly appearing on ESPN to give my expertise, well on my way to being inducted into the journalist’s wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. I would be married with several children. My bank account would be overflowing with lucre. My first dream of playing second base for the Cincinnati Reds had fallen as short as my stature and level of baseball talent. I couldn’t play my way into Cooperstown, so I’d write my way into those hallowed halls.
Well, in baseball as in life, one out of three ain’t bad: I got married and sired several children — not exactly the kind of prescience that would have me to be confused with the prophet Isaiah. As for those other two ambitions, well, let’s just say the Lord had other (and better) plans for my life.
Why didn’t I gain Cooperstown as a writer? Why wasn’t that God’s will? It’s simple: God, who is infinitely wise, had a better plan for me. And as much as I love baseball, God has changed my heart such that I’d much rather be preaching and working in His gospel vineyard than writing about, as one of my old journalism profs at UGA put it, “two guys playing catch.” Make no mistake, I still love baseball. But I love Jesus more.
As we come face to face with the end of one year and look full on into the eyes of another, it seems like a good time to consider afresh the question of God’s will.
In 15 years as a pastor, one of the questions I often heard, particularly from young people, was: How can I know God’s will for my life? It’s a good question. After all, did not Jesus teach His disciples — and us — to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”?
How do we find God’s will for our lives? Do we need to search for it as if it is lost? Many people seem to seek God’s will as if it is a shell game you see at minor league baseball games: God has hidden it under one of them — it’s up to you to pick the right one. Or as John MacArthur so well puts it, “Some offer the suggestion that God’s will is to be found via a dramatic experience. Running down the street, you fall on a banana peel and land on a map of India. Immediately you say to the Lord, ‘Thank You for that clear leading. I understand! India it is!’ Or there is always the voice from heaven or the vision in your dreams calling you to Chile.”
Trouble is, not all of us would pick the right shell or fall face first into India. God’s will in the Bible is not one dimensional.
God’s Will in Scripture: Two Dimensional
In seeking God’s will, it is helpful to note that Scripture speaks of God’s will in at least two ways: There’s what God’s people should do, and what they will do. God is meticulously sovereign, so one side of God’s will is what theologians sometimes call His “will of decree”; that is, God planned before history began all that will come to pass in history. God oversees all events in His providence and everything will come to pass just as He decreed. This side of God’s will is never broken and always takes place just as God has decreed. Just ask Joseph or Esther or Jonah.
Then there is the other side of God’s will, sometimes called God’s “will of command” (also called God’s permissive will). This side of God’s will includes His moral imperatives such as the Ten Commandments — what we ought to do. Man often violates God’s will of command by disobeying His Word. In this sense, God doesn’t always get His will. Sometimes, this attracts God’s discipline. Just ask the children of Israel or King David or Judas.
This helps understand how our lives fit into God’s eternal plan.
Still, Whom Should I Marry?
But what about God’s will for your life?
Do we read tea leaves or liver shivers as God telling us something? Do we wait on a literal voice from heaven? A vision? A dream? Put out a fleece like Gideon? What do our circumstances mean? As I wrote in the August edition of The Courier (“Life’s a Game of Inches, but God Controls the Inches”), we must exercise caution in interpreting providence because God’s providence is most clearly seen in hindsight.
Actually, as John MacArthur puts it, we should seek God’s will for our lives in Scripture. But what about the thousands of daily questions that Scripture doesn’t address such as “Whom should I marry?” or “Where should I go to college?” or “Should I take the job in Canada?” MacArthur’s approach to this has helped me to relax when considering God’s will for my life. Here are five “S’s” of God’s will from Scripture as MacArthur sets forth in his helpful book, Found: God’s Will: Find the Direction and Purpose God Wants for Your Life.
God’s Will: Saved, Sanctified and More
Saved. The first step in knowing God’s will is coming to know God through Jesus Christ: “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3–4).
Spirit-filled. When you became a Christian, God unzipped you and climbed inside you in the third person of the Godhead. “Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:17–18).
Sanctified. It’s God’s will that you hate sin and love righteousness. “For this is the will of God, your sanctification … . For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness” (1 Thess. 4:3, 7). And there’s also the classic passage in Romans 12:1–2.
It’s not God’s will that a Christian submit to the world’s sinful system.
Submissive. We are to submit to the authorities over which God has placed us — as long as they don’t ask us to violate Scripture — to be a witness before a watching, Christian-critiquing world: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in< authority, or to governors as send by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise for those who do right. For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men” (1 Pet. 2:13–15).
Suffering. This notion is tough for Americans to swallow. We’ve never really suffered for the gospel, but we are called to suffer as Christ suffered. Peter wrote about “those also who suffer according to the will of God” (1 Pet. 4:19) and Acts 14:22 tells us “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”
Simpler Than We Think
If these things are in line, then as Augustine said, “Love God and do what you will.” If we obey God’s revealed will, we will be living as God intended. We will marry the right person. We will choose the college God wants us to attend or the friends He wants us to have because our hearts and minds are being renewed after His Word. And we can be set free to be thankful when God calls us to ministry instead of enshrining us in Cooperstown.
Hundreds of other verses in Scripture with commands about God’s will in our lives; here are two:
Matthew 5:16: “Let your light shine before men so that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”
Romans 12:1–2: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 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.”
Too many people say they are seeking God’s will, His direction for their lives, but they’ve missed out on the most fundamental part of it: They are not living in submission to God’s will for them as He has revealed in His Word. They are hungry and dissatisfied because they are not feeding on divine food. They are feeding on something else.