Most of us want to know God’s will. Not all of us, but most of us.
We want to know where to go to school, who to marry, where to live and what job to take (assuming we even have an option). We want wisdom to make the right decision. We want discernment to see factors we wouldn’t normally see. We want to know God’s mind. We want God to provide the information we need, when we need it, so that we can make the right choices in life.
What’s the alternative really? Use our own judgment or common sense? Just do the best we can in our own strength? I don’t know about you, but my judgment is pretty poor compared to God’s.
Wanting to know God’s will and actually knowing it are very different though. You can greatly desire to know it, but not ever discover it. You can miss God’s best for your life when you fail to understand how to find it.
When you’re in college, you don’t enroll in upper level classes until you’ve first completed the prerequisites. Macro Econ 101 comes before 201 and 301.
When you want to know God’s will, you need to first understand “God’s Will 101.” If you don’t, you will only be confused, frustrated and angry–just like being in a senior level course as a freshman.
In Romans 12:1-2, Paul says:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
After discussing who we are, our sinful condition before God and what He has done to rescue us (Romans 1-11), Paul goes on in chapter 12 to talk about how we should then live. And he begins by urging his readers to offer their bodies as living sacrifices to God, to fully surrender themselves to Him.
Paul tells them this is the their “spiritual act of worship.” That word “spiritual” actually means “logical” or “reasonable.” In other words, based on what God has done for us, the logical thing to do is to fully give ourselves to Him, to no longer live for ourselves but for Him.
We are to no longer live according to the pattern this world gives us, but we are to be transformed into the people God has created us to be as our minds are renewed. We will never become all God desires for us to be if we don’t learn to think differently, to think like He does about ourselves, about life and about Him.
Paul said it this way in Ephesians 4:17-19
So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
As followers of Christ, we’re to no longer live like those who don’t even know Him. Those who don’t know Christ live in the futility of their thinking. Their understanding is darkened. They are separated from the life of God because of the ignorance in them. They don’t know God or His will or His ways.
As long as we continue to live life on our own terms, we will experience limited understanding of God and His will. Most of us don’t get that though. We want to do what we want, but also know God’s will when we have a major decision to make or we find ourselves in a jam.
That’s not how it works though.
There’s a very important word in the Romans passage we looked at. Here it is again with the word in bold:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
First, we fully surrender to God. We give Him total, complete control of our lives. (It is the logical, reasonable thing to do.) We dig into God’s word, so that we begin to think like He does. That results in our transformation as we begin making decisions according to His pattern, not the world’s. That’s “God’s Will 101.” There’s no moving on until we complete those prerequisites.
Only then will we begin to understand and experience His good, pleasing and perfect will.
If you want to know God’s will apart from surrender, apart from a renewed mind, apart from being transformed into His likeness, if you really only want to know God’s will when your back is against the wall…then you really don’t want to know it.