Keith Plummer on Finding the Will of God

Keith Plummer at The Christian Mind has an excellent post on finding the will of God.  Here's an excerpt that gets to the point:

One of the people who motivates me to speak out on this subject is a young woman I met a few years ago. She was in her 20's and hadn't completed college. She was stuck in a job she hated and earnestly desired to return to school to pursue a degree in sports medicine. Her problem was that she wasn't sure if this was "just what I want to do or what God wants me to do." When she expressed her confusion to her roommates, both of whom had been Christians longer than she, they told her that when they were faced with such decisions, they prayerfully asked God what choice to make and he showed them. As this young woman related this account to me, her eyes filled with tears and she eventually asked, "What's wrong with my relationship with Jesus that I'm not hearing from him?" Things had gotten so bad that she was even doubting her salvation because she wasn't getting the personal direction others were claiming.

I witnessed her countenance change from one of despair to one of joyous relief when I shared with her what I shared with the guys last night - that when the Bible refers to God's will it does so in two senses. First, in some cases the phrase refers to God's sovereign purpose, his comprehensive and predetermined plan which cannot be frustrated. In other instances, God's will refers to his moral precepts, his commands, that which we are responsible to conform our lives to with respect to attitude, motive, and behavior. When the Bible calls us to know the will of the Lord, it is this sense that is in mind. Never are we responsible for finding out beforehand God's sovereign will so we can "obey" it. As James exhorts us, we are to seek wisdom from God, but that's not the same thing as asking him to make our decisions for us.

I posted on this subject myself on May 4, 2004 and again on May 8, 2004.  In the post continuation here I have re-posted the May 4, 2004 entry, a post titled: "Is Finding the Will of God Biblical?"

Rusty Lopez has an excellent post on his New Covenant blog about finding the will of God.  It got me thinking about the matter and I wanted to share a few thoughts. 

First of all, I want to suggest that our modern obsession with finding the will of God is evidence of evangelicalism narcissism, and secondly that it has more on common with paganism than Christianity. I owe my thoughts on the first matter to Henry Krabbendam of Covenant College, and on the second matter to an article in Antithesis on finding the will of God.

Henry Krabbendam was at our church last year for a missions conference and he made some tangential comments on the will of God that were very helpful. First of all the idea of finding God's will for your life as an individual is a fairly recent development in the history of Christendom. For most of the church's history God's will was spoken of in terms of His decretive will and His revealed will, particularly in the Ten Commandments. In other words, a discussion of God's will would usually have something to do with the doctrine of God's decrees (or predestination), or with obedience to the Ten Commandments. This was in a day when theology and the church were far more God centered than we are today. This "God-centeredness" has been replaced with a "man-centered" worldview where we are far more focused on ourselves than God. Thus we are far more concerned with whom we are to marry, where to work, and which pair of socks to put on today than we are with obedience to the Ten Commandments, or submission to God's decree.

This fits in well with a me-centered, narcissistic worldview. Krabbendam gave us four negative consequences to this mindset:

1. It is man-centered and resistable. 
2. It is happiness oriented.
3. It paralyzes (i.e. you can't move until it is revealed).
4. It is non-existent.

Krabbendam says that the idea of finding God's will for my life is foolish and offensive to God.

God's will is that we study the doctrine of the decrees and delight ourselves in the law of the Lord. God's will doesn't have to be found, it has to be obeyed.

The second thought I want to share came from the Antithesis article which has an excerpt from Bruce Waltke's book, Finding the Will of God: A Pagan Notion. Those who are obsessed with finding the will of God have more in common with those who sought guidance from the oracle of Delphi than anything in the Bible. True, there is Gideon's fleece, but that is a bad example for those who advocate looking for a sign to verify the will of God. In His mercy, God accomodated Himself to Gideon's request for a sign via the fleece, but I like to remind myself that, what the Bible reports, it does not always endorse. The Bible reports that God accomodated Himself to give Gideon a sign with the fleece, it doesn't say that He endorsed that method. In fact, Gideon's demand for a sign via the fleece shows more a lack of faith than anything else.

Here are a few good quotes from Waltke in the Antithesis article:

When I hear Christians talking about the will of God, they often use phrases such as "If only I could find God's will" as though He is keeping it hidden from them, or "I'm praying that I'll discover His will for my life, " because they apparently believe the Lord doesn't want them to find it, or that He wants to make it as hard as possible for them to find so that they will prove their worth.

Unfortunately, these concepts do not mesh with the balance of Scripture. Isaiah tells us that "there is no one worthy," and the story of the Old Testament is that man, no matter how hard he tries, can never attain to God. If we really believe in God as the perfectly loving Father, we can do away with our notion of Him as an almighty manipulator and con man.

God is not a magician. Our theology tells us that God loves us enough that He sent His Son to die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. So does it make sense that He would play some sort of game with His children, hiding His will? Is it logical that the God who says He has a plan for each life would conceal that plan so that His work cannot go forward through His people? It is time for Christians to observe, analyze, and systematically determine what the Bible says about God's will. Perhaps it is time for Christians to ask themselves if the words "finding God's will" are even the best way to phrase the plan the Lord has in mind for each of us.

And:

There is no place in the New Testament where we are taught to seek a special revelation, and the practice may actually lead to disobedience if it causes us to neglect the everday opportunities that life brings us in order to wait for a special word from the Lord.

God's will has been revealed to us in His law, He is Jehovah God, not the oracle of Delphi. Rusty Lopez summarizes it well in his blog post:

Herein lies the crux of the frustration I mentioned above: we think that there is some cosmic blueprint for our lives that God knows, and we have to discover. If only we can learn how to tune in on the hints that God throws our way, then we can avoid getting caught in deadend paths.

Yet if we read the Bible we will find that it does not teach that we should expect to get that type of guidance from God. In fact, it teaches that we have been given the responsibility of making our own decisions... through a methodology framed within a Biblical Worldview.

Rusty Lopez has an excellent post on his New Covenant blog about finding the will of God.  It got me thinking about the matter and I wanted to share a few thoughts. 

First of all, I want to suggest that our modern obsession with finding the will of God is evidence of evangelicalism narcissism, and secondly that it has more on common with paganism than Christianity. I owe my thoughts on the first matter to Henry Krabbendam of Covenant College, and on the second matter to an article in Antithesis on finding the will of God.

Henry Krabbendam was at our church last year for a missions conference and he made some tangential comments on the will of God that were very helpful. First of all the idea of finding God's will for your life as an individual is a fairly recent development in the history of Christendom. For most of the church's history God's will was spoken of in terms of His decretive will and His revealed will, particularly in the Ten Commandments. In other words, a discussion of God's will would usually have something to do with the doctrine of God's decrees (or predestination), or with obedience to the Ten Commandments. This was in a day when theology and the church were far more God centered than we are today. This "God-centeredness" has been replaced with a "man-centered" worldview where we are far more focused on ourselves than God. Thus we are far more concerned with whom we are to marry, where to work, and which pair of socks to put on today than we are with obedience to the Ten Commandments, or submission to God's decree.

This fits in well with a me-centered, narcissistic worldview. Krabbendam gave us four negative consequences to this mindset:

1. It is man-centered and resistable. 
2. It is happiness oriented.
3. It paralyzes (i.e. you can't move until it is revealed).
4. It is non-existent.

Krabbendam says that the idea of finding God's will for my life is foolish and offensive to God.

God's will is that we study the doctrine of the decrees and delight ourselves in the law of the Lord. God's will doesn't have to be found, it has to be obeyed.

The second thought I want to share came from the Antithesis article which has an excerpt from Bruce Waltke's book, Finding the Will of God: A Pagan Notion. Those who are obsessed with finding the will of God have more in common with those who sought guidance from the oracle of Delphi than anything in the Bible. True, there is Gideon's fleece, but that is a bad example for those who advocate looking for a sign to verify the will of God. In His mercy, God accomodated Himself to Gideon's request for a sign via the fleece, but I like to remind myself that, what the Bible reports, it does not always endorse. The Bible reports that God accomodated Himself to give Gideon a sign with the fleece, it doesn't say that He endorsed that method. In fact, Gideon's demand for a sign via the fleece shows more a lack of faith than anything else.

Here are a few good quotes from Waltke in the Antithesis article:

When I hear Christians talking about the will of God, they often use phrases such as "If only I could find God's will" as though He is keeping it hidden from them, or "I'm praying that I'll discover His will for my life, " because they apparently believe the Lord doesn't want them to find it, or that He wants to make it as hard as possible for them to find so that they will prove their worth.

Unfortunately, these concepts do not mesh with the balance of Scripture. Isaiah tells us that "there is no one worthy," and the story of the Old Testament is that man, no matter how hard he tries, can never attain to God. If we really believe in God as the perfectly loving Father, we can do away with our notion of Him as an almighty manipulator and con man.

God is not a magician. Our theology tells us that God loves us enough that He sent His Son to die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. So does it make sense that He would play some sort of game with His children, hiding His will? Is it logical that the God who says He has a plan for each life would conceal that plan so that His work cannot go forward through His people? It is time for Christians to observe, analyze, and systematically determine what the Bible says about God's will. Perhaps it is time for Christians to ask themselves if the words "finding God's will" are even the best way to phrase the plan the Lord has in mind for each of us.

And:

There is no place in the New Testament where we are taught to seek a special revelation, and the practice may actually lead to disobedience if it causes us to neglect the everday opportunities that life brings us in order to wait for a special word from the Lord.

God's will has been revealed to us in His law, He is Jehovah God, not the oracle of Delphi. Rusty Lopez summarizes it well in his blog post:

Herein lies the crux of the frustration I mentioned above: we think that there is some cosmic blueprint for our lives that God knows, and we have to discover. If only we can learn how to tune in on the hints that God throws our way, then we can avoid getting caught in deadend paths.

Yet if we read the Bible we will find that it does not teach that we should expect to get that type of guidance from God. In fact, it teaches that we have been given the responsibility of making our own decisions... through a methodology framed within a Biblical Worldview.