Knowing God's Will: A Peace that Passes Understanding

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

Isaiah 26:3

We are slowly working through the question, "How do I know God's will for my life?" We have talked generally about the fact that discerning God's will begins with laying a firm foundation of knowing Scripture, knowing God, and practicing the skill/spiritual gift of listening prayer. Currently we are looking at some of the more practical guidance God sometimes uses to reveal His will to us. Namely, we have looked at how He uses open and closed doors and advice from wise counselors. This week we turn to consider a sign that helps confirm that we have in fact heard God's will correctly.

All throughout Scripture we find that whenever and however God reveals His will to His people they always know what He is telling them. Nowhere in Scripture do we find stories of believers doubting what God has commanded them to do. I believe that God works the same way today. Though He may make us wait for weeks on end before He reveals His will, once He has told us what to do we know in our hearts what He has commanded. We are often like Gideon however, who, though he never doubted what God asked him to do, did doubt the sanity of God's plan and His ability to accomplish it. So too with us, it is often the case that we know God's will in our hearts but our minds are slow to trust and obey this knowledge.

When you are caught in this cycle of knowing but not trusting, one sure sign that your heart has in fact rightly discerned God's will is that the more you pray about it and surrender yourself to obey it, the more at peace with it you will be. Consider the verse above. It says that God keeps in perfect peace those whose minds are stayed on Him. The verse makes clear that "staying" your mind on God means to trust Him. Looking at other translations of the Bible we see that this trust is steadfast in nature, for other translations render this verse as saying that God keeps in perfect peace he whose mind is "steadfast." So we know that when our mind is steadfastly trusting God that He will keep us in perfect peace, but what does that have to do with discerning God's will?

When you know God's will and you fix your heart and mind on doing that which He has told you to do then you are really fixing your heart and mind on God Himself in steadfast trust, thus the peace of God will follow close behind. If you have a wrong idea about what God has called you to do and you fix your heart and mind on that, then your mind is not fixed on God but on some other plan and the peace of God will not attend it.

Simply put, peace often acts as a confirmation that we are on the right track in responding to what we believe God's revealed will to be. This confirmation is made even more certain when there is no logical reason for us to be filled with such peace. Philippians 4:7 describes God's peace as passing all understanding. So when you have peace that passes all understanding it should be clear that you received it from God. For example, consider a missionary who feels called to minister in a dangerous area. Though they have a healthy concern for their own wellfare, those who are truly called will minister in that area while filled with an inexpressible peace. For Christians the most dangerous situation that is in God's will holds more peace than the most comfortable station outside of it.

Consider now the biblical example of Gideon which we have already looked at in recent weeks. Scripture records that Gideon lacked faith initially. He asked God for several proofs before he chose to trust. He knew in his heart what God's will was but his mind was unwilling to trust and obey that will. One can understand why Gideon struggled though. Scripture records that the Midianite army God sent him to fight consisted of 135,000 soldiers. Once Gideon chose to obey God, he had 32,000. He was outnumbered by more than 4 to 1. Then the Lord pared Gideon's army down to 10,000 which meant he was outnumbered by more than 13 to 1. Finally God removes even more men from Gideon's army until Gideon has only 300 men left. Amazingly God is sending Gideon into battle outnumbered by 450 to 1! Knowing that Gideon would be scared the Lord gives him one last encouraging proof that it is in fact His will for him to fight (see Judges 7:9-14). After that last encouragement we don't find Gideon wringing his hands and worrying about what He should do, because he is finally convinced that this is God's will and that God will give him the victory. Notice Gideon's boldness as he heads to the battle lines.

"When Gideon heard the dream and its interpretation, he bowed down and worshipped. He returned to the camp of Israel and called out, 'Get up! The LORD has given the Midianite camp into your hands.' Dividing the three hundred men into three companies, he placed trumpets and empty jars in the hands of all of them, with torches inside." (Judges 7:15-16) 

In spite of overwhelming odds and a battle plan that must have seemed ridiculous, we see Gideon (who up to this point has been really lacking in both courage and faith) now fully convinced of God's will and moving to the battle line with great peace and courage. His mind was fixed on God, and God was keeping Him in perfect peace. This same peace works as a confirmation in our lives as well. This doesn't mean that obeying God's will should be easy for you or even that you will have no fear. It simply means that you will be filled with a peace concerning it that passes your understanding.

For further reading...

• John 14:27- Christ gives us a peace that can't be taken away.
• Philippians 4:4-7- A peace that passes understanding.
• Colossians 1:19-22- Peace is our birthright.
• Judges 6-8- Check out the whole story of Gideon. It's is filled with biblical treasures.

Knowing God's Will: Good Advice Goes a Long Way

Where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.

Proverbs 13:10

Listen to advice and accept discipline, and at the end you will be counted among the wise.

Proverbs 19:20

When we are seeking to know God's will and having a hard time hearing it straight from His lips, He sometimes gives us help from more commonplace sources. Last week we talked about open and closed doors and how a change in circumstances may help point us towards God's will for our future. This week we consider what Scripture has to say about asking other people for advice.

It turns out that Scripture puts a lot of credence in seeking counsel from multiple sources before making plans. Proverbs speaks most powerfully to this fact, not only in the passages above but also in passages like Proverbs 12:15, 15:22, & 20:18. I felt the passages above, however, to be especially meaningful to our topic. Look at Proverbs 13:10, "Where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who seek advice." When you are faced with a major life decision, there is usually someone trying to give you advice. You can tune this out or even get angry at them for trying to tell you what to do. (Many of us respond this way when our parents give us advice- no matter how old we are.) But these responses spring from a heart of pride, and, as the verse says, they lead to strife in your relationship. Instead you should humble yourself under the advice of wise counselors and carefully consider what they say.

Now, there are two very important qualifications that you need to consider when accepting advice from other people on what God's will for your life is. First, nowhere does the Bible assume that all advice is equal. Check out Proverbs 9 where Wisdom is personified as a woman trying to lead the people toward understanding and long life while Folly, also personified as a woman, tries to lead them to death. So too there are wise counselors and foolish ones. The advice you are given is only as sound as the judgment of the person from whom you receive it. (For a classic Biblical example of this, check out how Rehoboam's poor choice of advisors led to the Kingdom of Israel being split in two - I Kings 12 and II Chronicles 10.) So choose carefully who you listen to. Have a discerning ear. Seek out the instruction of wise men and women who know the Lord well, who know you well, and who have had a chance to see His work in your life. This gives them some perspective on what He might be up to in your life now.

Second, don't follow other people's advice blindly, no matter how wise they are. Scripture never suggests that you should blindly follow other people's advice instead of doing the hard work of seeking to know God's will on your own. Consider what it is that they have to say. Take it to the Lord in prayer, but don't assume that they speak for God. At the end of the day discerning God's will for your situation is between you and your Father in heaven. The advice of others is one factor to consider, but it is not everything. Avoid the temptation to take the easy way out and have someone else tell you what the right answer is. To do so is cowardly and it robs you of new depths in your relationship with God.

So the next time you are having trouble figuring out what you should do, remember to humble yourself under the advice of wiser men and women. They may just be able to shed some light on your situation, and as Proverbs 19:20 says, "at the end you will be counted among the wise."


For further reading...

• Proverbs 12:15, 15:22, & 20:18: See what else Proverbs has to say about seeking wise counsel.
• Proverbs 9: What a wonderful allegory for our world> People either chose to listen to Maiden Wisdom or to Mistress Folly. 
• I Kings 12: Consider Rehoboam's folly and its repercussions. 
• Galatians 2:1-10: Doesn't Paul serve as an example of seeking wise counsel when he visits with the elders in Jerusalem?

Knowing God's Will: Open and Closed Doors

Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised—look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water.

Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece, but this time make the fleece dry and let the ground be covered with dew.” That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew. 

Judges 6:36-40

Who among us hasn't been like Gideon? Who hasn't asked God to work through a Magic 8 Ball we had lying next to our bed or asked Him to send a total stranger to tell us what to do or, my personal favorite, who hasn't blindly opened their Bible and stabbed at a verse to see if it would reveal God's will for their situation? How has that worked out for you? If you are like me, it hasn't worked too well. There may have been times when God showed us extra grace by stooping to our level and playing our childish game; but all in all these aren't what I would call tried and true methods for discerning God's will.

Ironically enough, when we do these things we really aren't behaving that differently from Gideon or from the people of Israel in the Old Testament. This may sound crazy but the Israelites actually had a special set of dice that they called lots. They sometimes cast these lots (or threw the dice) to discern God's will in specific situations. (See the further reading at the end of this post for Scripture references.) So why don't we throw dice in the church anymore? And why don't the methods I mentioned above work better? It is interesting to note that the Bible does not record anyone "fleecing" (asking for signs like Gideon did) or "casting lots" after the day of Pentecost. (That's the day that Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to all of His followers.) It would seem that once God's people had the Holy Spirit living inside of them these other methods of discerning God's will became outdated and obsolete. But sometimes we just need some direction from the Lord that is more concrete. 

Thankfully our God is good and does sometimes use real world, concrete signs to help reveal His will to His children. Over the next few weeks, we are going to look at some of these ways that God helps us. This week we consider open and closed doors, but first a disclaimer. Generally speaking, none of these signs in and of itself definitively reveals God's will for your life with 100% certainty. When several signs point in the same direction, you can gain a sense of God's probable leading. But only when these signs are taken together with much prayer and listening for God's voice, can they really give a believer strong confidence in what God is leading them to do. All of that to say, these are not the end all in knowing God's will for your life. They are helpful, but they should always be considered carefully and with much prayer.

Open and Closed Doors:

The rationale here is that God will make it possible for you to do His will and perhaps even impossible to avoid it. There are times when God legitimately uses this method of revealing/confirming His will to His children. However, I think out of all of the ways that God helps us, this one is the easiest to misread. Sometimes an open door is just an open door. Sometimes God is testing to you to see if you will have the faith to walk away from an opportunity. And although He does sometime stop us from form doing things (see Acts 16:6-10), nowhere in the Bible does it say that God will always prevent you from missing His will. So you need to be careful when weighing open or closed doors as signs of God's will for your life. 

Here are some helpful hints for using this method of discernment. First, an open door is most convincing when you sense God is calling you to do something that is legitimately out of your grasp. Although you sense it His will for you to do it, you are incapable of obeying because some obstacle or closed door prevents you from it. If after you surrender to His leading the closed door suddenly opens, then you may be correctly understanding what He is calling you to do. For example, say that you sense God is calling you to attend a certain college but the college has already rejected your application and didn't even put you on the wait-list. Yet, you can't shake the feeling that God wants you there, so you surrender to attending that college if He will make it possible. Maybe you even take a step of faith and contact the admissions department and ask them to reconsider your application. If within a few weeks you are accepted to that school, then it would certainly seem to be a confirmation that you are on the right track.

I am less convinced when you are looking at a number of options and one door opens before the others. For example, say that you have applied to three colleges and you ask God to reveal His will. One of the three colleges calls you and tells you that you have been accepted. They even offer you a scholarship. This very well may mean that it is God's will for you to go to this school, but it is just as likely that it means the college had a lower number of applicants this year and they are trying to scoop you up before the other colleges take you. Thus, an open door can be a powerful tool that God uses to either reveal or confirm His will for you. But in order to know for sure if this open door is in fact God showing you His will or if it is merely circumstantial, you must turn to prayer. 

Closed doors can be a little harder to read. But certainly anytime you believe you are taking steps of faith toward what God has for you and a door gets shut in your face, it is a good time to reconsider what you think God is telling you. It may be that you are headed in the wrong direction or it may be that God is teaching you perseverance. Again prayer and listening for His guidance will clarify the matter.

For further reading this week...

• Judges 6-8: Read all of Gideon's story
• Leviticus 16:8-10, Proverbs 16:33, Luke 1:9, & Acts 1:15-26: Check out how lots were used in the Old and even in the New Testament.
• Revelation 3:7-11: Jesus places an open door before the church of Philadelphia.
• Colossians 4:3: Paul asks for an open door for the message of the Gospel.
• Acts 16:6-10: God prevents Paul from going to one area to minister so that he will be free to go to another.

Knowing God's Will: A Real Life Example

The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Psalm 23

Up to this point in this series of posts you may feel like all I have given you is vague generalities. The truth is I wish I could be more specific. I wish that there was a neat mathematical equation for knowing God's will. There simply isn't. Knowing God's will is a spiritual gift and an acquired skill. It is a gift that only God can give and only you can learn to perfect for yourself as you walk through the valleys of life hand-in-hand with your Savior. One thing that may be helpful however, before we move on to some of the more concrete ways God sometimes uses to give us direction, is for us to pause to look at a real life example of how someone has discerned the Lord's will. Since my knowledge of the intimate inner workings of a person's decision making is limited to myself and my wife, I will have to resort to a personal story. It is somewhat fitting however as this post will serve as a sort of review of the journey the Lord has taken my wife and I on over the last year.

Towards the end of 2009 my wife and I felt led to resign our positions at the church where we were both employed at the time. December 31st of 2009 was our last day of work for the first church we had ever served in full-time ministry. We started 2010 unemployed, with no immediate job prospects. Unemployment was at the highest rate it had been in our lifetime, and I was scared. I had felt led by the Lord to resign, but even I had my doubts about the intelligence of doing so. But discerning God's will isn't always about being certain. In fact, I believe that it will always require a step of faith. At its core it is about wholly accepting as true the fact that God knows better than you what you should do in a given situation.

So I started 2010 on a job search that would last six months. At the time it felt like an eternity. In retrospect I can see how blessed I was to find a job so quickly. I applied to churches all across the nation. In total I believe I applied to more than 75 total. I was desperate for a job. A few months into the search a church in rural Georgia began to show interest. After several phone interviews and even one face-to-face meeting the church told us that we were their top choice. They wanted to move forward and have us come down and meet the people. This will sound crazy but almost immediately I wished I wasn't their first choice. Although we lacked any really clear direction from the Lord, Stacy and I both had an uneasy feeling about this position. I couldn't imagine walking away from what looked like a solid job offer, the only thing resembling a job offer we had received in months, but we simply didn't have a peace about moving forward either. One thing I have learned is that part of discerning God's will is listening to the counsel of wise people in your life. I value my wife's opinion and when she validated the uneasy feeling I already had, it was a big red flag to me. Add to that the fact that God had not indicated to us in any way that He was calling us to go to this church, and Stacy and I felt like we had no choice. We hesitantly walked away. I wasn´t 100% sure it was the right decision when we made it. At the time it was a step of faith, but within a very short period of time Stacy and I were both very confident with the decision. This leads to another important point: Sometimes silence is God's means of showing His will.

After we turned down the opportunity to move forward with the church in Georgia, there was a long drought in our job search. After several months, in order to bring in some money for the family, I took a job as a teller at a bank more than 30 minutes away from our house. I felt like I was on a spiritual island. The Lord was strangely silent. The clear direction that He had given me so freely in the past now seemed absent. In this time I learned that discerning the Lord's will often begins with silence. This silence may seem to drag on forever, but we serve a God who doesn't leave His children in silence forever. He will speak in His time.

Finally about four months into the job search things started to heat up. After several rounds of phone interviews there were two churches near Washington D.C. and one in Nashville that were still interested in us. I was on an airplane returning from an all day face-to-face interview with one of the churches near D.C. when I began once again to plead with God for some direction. I was asking God simple questions and hoping for some sort of an answer. "Lord do you want me to work at this job in Northern Virginia? Do you want us to take this position in Maryland? God is it your will for me to work at Haywood Hills Baptist Church in Nashville?" As I sat in the plane and prayed, God finally gave me that moment of clarity I had been seeking after for so many months. No hoopla or fanfare, just quiet assurance and confidence that I was being called to serve at Haywood Hills. It was hard to believe at first. I hadn't even met anyone from the church. I was set to have my first face-to-face interview with them in just a few days, and I hardly knew anything about the church. Over and over again I repeated that question to the Lord for weeks. Consistently and patiently He gave me the same answer every time. A quiet assurance in my gut, in my heart, and in my mind that this was what He was calling me to do.

The problem now was timing. Haywood Hills was still at a fairly early stage in their hiring process. I was one of three candidates with no guarantee that they would pick me. In the meantime two of the churches I had been interviewing with told me that I was their number one choice and they wanted to move forward. Stacy and I knew that God had called us to Haywood Hills, but what if the church didn't get the same direction? These other churches wanted an answer from us now, and we weren't going to hear back from Haywood Hills for a few more weeks. Again, with some fear, Stacy and I took a step of faith. We told the other churches that although we did not have any desire to shut the door on them completely, we did finally feel that God had revealed His will to us and that He was leading us in another direction. We didn't feel that it would be right to allow them to fly us out for further interviews and meetings without them knowing our hearts were elsewhere. The churches chose to wait, Stacy and I waited, and I am sure that Haywood Hills also waited for our sovereign Lord to work everything out in His timing.

Waiting is an apt characterization of discerning God's will. This spiritual discipline often involves much waiting. It involves acknowledging that we are not in control and that He is. That we do not know what is best for us, and that He does. That we are completely dependent upon Him for our every need, and that we will continue to wait until He chooses to light our path in His timing.

In the end, God proved faithful. Haywood Hills also felt the Lord's leading and the church voted almost unanimously to call me to serve as their Minister to Youth and Children. And because of the long process that our Lord took us through, Stacy and I know for absolute certain that this is where we have been called to serve which brings us real peace. In the end what started as perhaps the most difficult thing that Stacy and I had ever experienced became our greatest blessing. Walking through this storm with our Savior taught us so much more about God's goodness and trustworthiness than we ever would have learned otherwise. There are some things you just can't learn by reading about them. I believe that the full magnitude of God's faithfulness is one of those things. I hope that you get the chance to experience that goodness in real life ways just like I did, even if it involves walking with Him and discerning His will through difficult situations.