Finding the Will of God - Part 1

The initials GPS may not mean much to you now, but you’re going to be hearing a lot about them in the next few years.

As long as man has sailed the oceans, or hiked through the wilderness, he has wanted a precise answer to the question “Where am I?” If he could answer that question, he could also know where he was going and how to get there.

Thanks to GPS, it is now possible to answer that question to an accuracy of inches, anywhere on planet earth. GPS stands for Global Positioning System, and it is one of the most amazing inventions in history.

Since 1979, the US Department of Defence has been launching a series of satellites which circle the earth at an altitude of 10,900 miles in six orbital paths. When complete, there will be 24 satellites in orbit, insuring that at any given time there are at least four satellites above the horizon at any point on earth.

These satellites broadcast a continuous digital code which is synchronized by an atomic clock - the most precise instrument of time known. A ground-based GPS receiver broadcasts the same signal, synchronized to the same atomic clock. By measuring the difference between the signal from space and the signal it is generating itself, the GPS receiver can accurately calculate the distance to the satellite. Do this three times with different satellites and you have three co-ordinate lines which enable you to triangulate your position.

GPS really shone during Desert Storm. It enabled our soldiers to know within inches where they were, even in a trackless desert in the middle of a blinding sandstorm. The military uses of GPS are obvious, but the commercial field is where the real excitement is.

By the end of the decade, almost every car will come equipped with a GPS receiver. Coupled with a video display on your dashboard, you will be able to see your precise position on a map. Not only will it give you something to play with while you’re stuck in traffic on the Southern State, it will mean that men will never again have to stop and ask for directions!

Finally, we’ll all know the answer to the questions: “Where am I and where am I going?”

Over the past few months, I have met many people who have been asking the same two questions, only in a different realm. I have had conversations with folks who were facing major life-changing decisions. A young executive ponders a career change; a school teacher is forced to look for a new job; a doctor struggles with an overfull case-load; a young woman contemplates marriage; an older couple faces the need to pull up roots and move to a less expensive area of the country. They’re all asking “Where am I? Where am I going?”

We spend a lot of time and energy wrestling with questions like that because we know that the decisions we make have a way of turning around and making us. When we choose one end of a certain road, we’re also choosing the other.

That’s why a Christian often finds himself asking: “How can I know the will of God for my life? How can I find out what He wants me to do and where he wants me to go?” That’s a question I want to consider with you today.

There’s been a lot of confusion and misinformation about the subject of God’s will. That’s why it’s important that we start with some basics.

The Bible is a book about God’s will. Recently, we’ve been looking at various parts of it: The Ten Commandments, The Sermon on the Mount. Teaching that tells us how to live according to the will of God. In that respect, the Bible reveals God’s will for everybody.

But unfortunately, that doesn’t help you to decide whether to take that job offer in Virginia, or to buy a Ford instead of an Oldsmobile. There are no Bible verses that say “You, Mary Jones, shall marry John Smith.”

The Bible doesn’t get that specific and that’s where our problems begin. We want God to give us specific guidance that will help us to make those specific decisions we’re struggling with. We want God’s will to be custom-tailored to our circumstances. We want answers, and we want ‘em quick!

But let’s back up a little bit. In our desire to get specific answers to our specific questions, we often tend to skip over God’s general will as it is revealed to us in the Bible.

Let me give you a personal example. I committed my life to Jesus Christ when I was eight years old. For the next ten years, although I went to church, I basically ignored God. But then, when I was eighteen years old, the Lord showed me that I had not been walking in fellowship with Him. I had been pretty much going my own way, making my own decisions, running my own life. In spite of the fact that I was supposedly a Christian, I was living, in practical terms, as though I weren’t. And because of that, I was not truly happy or fulfilled inside. I didn’t really have any peace.

So at eighteen years of age, I decided, like the Prodigal Son, to go back. I invited Jesus Christ to take control of my life. I began to read the Bible. I began to pray. I began to go to church to worship God, rather than just to see my friends. And I began to experience a new peace inside that wasn’t there before.

At the time, I was working for Air Canada. I had a good job and a bright future. But I began to sense that God had something more important for me to do. I didn’t know what that might be, but I did know that there was one matter that I needed to take care of right away. That was to be baptized. You see, in the years since I had become a Christian, I had never been baptized. The Bible says that being baptized is one of the first acts of obedience for a follower of Jesus. But baptism wasn’t something that was important to me, because my relationship with the Lord wasn’t important to me.

But now, as I thought about what God wanted me to do with my life, I knew that I needed to take care of that one aspect of God’s revealed will that I had totally ignored up til then. So I was baptized.

And it was only after I was baptized, in obedience to the command of God in the Scriptures, that I began to experience God’s leading in the specific matter of what to do with my life.

Now I’m not trying to say that baptism is the key. What I’m saying is that obedience is the key. This is the first important truth when it comes to knowing God’s will for your life. If you are ignoring, or perhaps deliberately disobeying some aspect of God’s will that he has already revealed to you in Scripture, don’t expect God to give you any guidance when it comes to specific areas of your life. God doesn’t bless disobedient people.

1 Peter 3:7 Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

God’s will for husbands is to love and cherish their wives. Now if they are not doing that, God isn’t going to answer their prayers. Prayers for guidance, prayers for blessing, prayers for whatever. Their own disobedience is the thing that blocks the blessing of God in their lives. It blocks answered prayer.

Mark Twain once said “It’s not the parts of the Bible I don’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts I do understand.” Maybe this is the problem for many of us. We know what God wants us to do, but we just aren’t willing to do it. Then we wonder why God doesn’t give us guidance regarding his specific will. It’s because we haven’t obeyed his general will as he has revealed it to us.

That leads us to a second important issue. Do we really trust God? Our obedience, or lack of obedience, to God’s Word is directly related to what we think of God’s character.

Many of you know Warner Wolf, the TV Sportscaster. He’s leaving the New York area after 12 years. It was Warner Wolf who immortalized the words “Let’s go to the videotape.”

Well, let’s go to the videotape of Genesis 3, as we consider this question of God’s will and God’s character.

Read Gen. 3:1-6.

Why did Eve disobey God? Was it because she didn’t know God’s Word? No. She knew it full well - she even recited it to Satan. Eve disobeyed God because Satan succeeded in getting her to doubt God’s motives.

Satan said “You know why God has forbidden you that fruit, Eve? Because God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. He’s a selfish old codger, God is. You can’t trust Him. He’s really playing you for a chump, Eve. He wants to keep you and Adam down.”

Satan impugned the character of God. He poisoned the mind of Eve against the goodness of God. And once that well is poisoned, all the water is contaminated. Eve didn’t sin because she didn’t know the Word of God, she sinned because she didn’t trust the goodness of God.

Satan has done his work well. All of us have served the Prince of Darkness and lived in his realm too long. When we enter the kingdom of God’s Son, we carry our doubts and suspicions with us. If something painful happens in our lives, we ask “why?” and the question mark is like a dagger pointed at the heart of God.

How easily we suspect, when some reversal happens in our lives, that God has lined up against us. And even when good things happen to us, we’re quick to doubt God’s goodness. If something wonderful comes into our life - something completely unexpected - at first, we’re delighted. But then suddenly a shadow crosses our minds that it will soon be snatched away. God doesn’t really want me to be happy, we think to ourselves. As soon as I begin to enjoy this good thing, He’s going to pull it back like some cruel, sadistic parent. So we knock on wood, and hammer at the heart of God.

Maybe that’s why we don’t know God’s will for our lives. Because we approach the matter with fear and trepidation of what we might find. We say to ourselves “If I completely submit myself to the will of God, then I just know that He’s going to make my life miserable. He’ll probably condemn me to go and be a missionary in a place like Africa. Please don’t send me to Africa!”

And if that’s what we think about God’s character, it’s no wonder that we hesitate to hand over the reins to Him.

Suppose that my son comes to me one day and says “Dad, you know, I’ve been thinking about you and Mom. I’ve been thinking about all the sacrifices you’ve made for me - how you’ve given up your time and your privacy just to have me living in your house. I’ve been thinking about all the hours that Mom puts in doing my laundry, and cooking my meals, and cleaning up my messes. I’ve been thinking about all the money you’ve spent on me that you could have spent on yourselves. Dad, this may sound corny, but I know I’ll never be able to repay you for all you’ve done for me, and I just want to say thank you, and I want you to know that I really love you.”

Now how am I going to respond to that as a parent? How would you respond? Would you say “Ha! I’ve just been waiting for this moment! Now I’m going to make your life really miserable, son. We’re moving your room out into the garage. It’s going to be bread and water from here on. You’re grounded for the rest of your life. Oh, and you know that baseball glove you’ve had your eye on? Forget about it! You’ll never see another good thing as long as you live.”

Of course not! You love your son, you care about him, you want what’s best for him. And when he shows by his attitude that he understands where you’re coming from, that makes you love him all the more, doesn’t it?

Listen, that’s the way it ought to be between us and God. God loves us.

Romans 8:32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

Does it make any sense, in light of that verse, to think of God as some cosmic Scrooge who scowls down on us from heaven and tries to make our lives miserable?

The will of God is not some agenda for messing up our lives. The will of God, as it is revealed in Scripture, and as God gives it to us in specific guidance, is His agenda for putting our already messed up lives back together so that we will be happy and fulfilled.

We started off today considering the questions “Where am I?” and “Where am I going?” In the physical world, those questions can now be answered by the Global Positioning System. But in the spiritual realm, in reference to your life and mine, those questions can be answered when you do two things: Trust and Obey.

You need to trust God’s character. You need to obey His Word. When you begin to do that, you’ll begin to build a spiritual frame of reference for answering the questions Where am I? and Where am I going?