Can You Know the Will of God? 10/20/46
Scripture: Proverbs 3: 1-7; 11-13
Text: Proverbs 3: 6; “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”
For 4 of the Sundays preceding today, I have discussed with you (1) the will of God; (2) God’s Intention; (3) Circumstances affecting God’s will; and (4) the Ultimate will of God. Source or guide of much of our thinking in this series has been an excellent little booklet on “The Will of God” by Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, minister of City Temple in London. If you should want later on to review some of this thinking, I commend that little book to you.
Today I close this particular series with a question: “Can you know the will of God?” and an attempt to suggest an answer. Is it possible to discern what is the will of God? Can you know it? Can I? How often we have wished that we could be sure when, like someone lost in the woods, we ask the question: “Where do I go from here?” And supposing we start on a course that we think may be God’s will -- can we be sure that we have not made a mistake?
To be perfectly honest about this last question, we can not be certain, until we get to the end of a way, that it is to the end of the right way. We must often travel more by faith than by sight, taking the risk of a mistake. But if we are willing to read the signs as an alert traveler does, or as an experienced woodsman does in the forest, we will come out at a place where God wants us to be.
Fortunately God deals with us where we are. You recall the amusing little story of a motorist who leaned out of his car window to ask a farm hand the way to York. The farm hand scratched his head and said, “Well, if I wuz goin’ to York, I wouldn’t start from here!” Fortunately God can start with us right where we are, and He seems to have ways of showing us the path.
Those ways become much the more familiar to us as we deepen our friendship with God. Sometime you may have heard people discussing a gift for an absent friend. And perhaps someone has said, “Well, I have known him for 35 years and I know he would like to have us do” thus-and-so. Generally speaking the authority of that experience is right, and comes closest to the wishes of the party concerned.
So it was with the friendship (if it is right to speak of it so) of Jesus with God. He had made a point of knowing the Father so well, for the thirty years of his life, that he seemed sure of every turn and each new direction of the road before him. He almost lost the way in the Garden of Gethsemane. The night was dark indeed for him there, and it was hard to find the way, in the same way that it is sometimes hard for us to find our way. But out of long familiarity with the presence and the righteousness of the Father, Jesus was able to say, “Not what I will, but what thou wilt.” And he opened the door that time, toward his death, sure that it was God’s will that he should take up this cross.
Apart from long familiarity or friendship with God, there are several other signs giving some direction. You know them. I will speak of them briefly.
1) One is conscience. Some believe conscience is of lowly origin - a kind of group wisdom gathered through the years, and absorbed by the individual, as some ways have been found to lead to a precipice, others to a dead end, and some to open thoroughfares. The voice within our hearts has had cynicism and scorn heaped upon it.
And it is perfectly true that the voice of conscience has been widely distorted by the spiritual level at which men are found. For instance, men of the same generation have condemned human slavery, and have accepted it without any condemnation. To one it was wrong; to another it was right.
But when all this has been said, I think we may still, with much validity, recognize a voice that says within us: “This is right; that is wrong;” and that the path of God’s will is most likely with the urge that says, “this is right.”
2) There is the sign we call “Common sense.” A man once said, “I prayed for advice. But none came, so I used my common sense.” But where did he get that? Was it not a part of his creation and molding; in other words, was not his very “common sense” God-given?
At least one obvious warning must be uttered here. For sometimes the will of God seems to lead to what the world would call “madness.” Would “common sense” tell Jesus to wait for mob arrest and mock trial when he could easily escape? And yet it does have validity.
You hear a man say loosely of a business development: “I gambled on such a course, and won out.” Usually he does not really mean that he gambled anything. He used the best of his “common sense,” accepting the risks. There was less blindness in the move than he would have you think. In this sense, life is far less a gamble, so-called, than a continuing exercise of common sense. And we are given no such lazy-man’s ease as to be able to dump every decision in the lap of a mechanical almighty before whom one might make as it were a prayer on a certain push button and be sure of a packaged answer.
3) Guidance of a divine order is often found in the advice of a friend - not a professional, but of a real personal friend who can view the pros and cons of our situation more objectively than we can, because he is less involved than we. Of course there are some problems wherein God’s way of helping seems to be through the advice of some expert - that is, one who gives specialized attention to some particular field of need - perhaps a physician, possibly a minister; it may be a psychiatrist.
But very often a friend with Christian insight can give you a good measure of God’s direction. Not that he speaks God’s will, but that he can give you a new angle that will help you see more clearly for yourself what may be God’s will.
4) Very few of the fundamental problems of human living have not been encountered repeatedly before, by many people. And so the reading of literature for insights of an author, or the experiences in biography may give many an insight into the will of God for earlier pilgrims and for you in this pilgrimage.
5) And there is the voice and experience of the church to which one may turn. Jesus once recommended (Matthew 18: 17) that a personal trouble be taken to the church. It was one that involved an ethical issue of fair dealing between people. A puzzled church member ought to be able to bring his problem to other members of his church in a sincere search for what may be the will of God in his situation.
6) Quaker friends make much of the “inner light.” Many non-Quakers support their claim that light is revealed to people inwardly when they wait in silence and meditation before God. This does not mean blanking the mind after the manner of some Oxford Groupers, and then taking the first thing that occurs to one as God’s will. It means letting rest one’s own determinations for a time. The thoughts may come thick and fast, but without anxiety or concern. Once is a while a sense of great peace comes, and a way seems cleared of frustrations as the feeling that “there lies God’s will for me” rolls over one.
Often in these ways the will of God becomes apparent to us - not for years ahead, but for the moment of need. It is a mistake to seek a blueprint for living ahead. More vital is the sense of having God’s will known to us day-by-day; hour-by-hour. God weaves the future years out of our present days. He even uses the circumstances created by our sufferings and sins.
Will you now consider two questions to be asked of yourself when searching for God’s will for you?
1) The first is this: Do I really want to discern God’s will, or do I just want sanction for my own wishes?
There is an amusing (and I suspect apocryphal) story told of a minister who was invited to become pastor of a church that would pay him 4 times the salary he was then receiving. (Now you know one reason why the story sounds apocryphal!) Being a devout man, he was spending much time in prayer about the matter, taking a good deal of time to think it over before giving his answer.
A friend met the minister’s small son on the street one day, and knowing of the offer, asked the lad what his father was going to do. “Well,” said the boy, “Father’s praying, but Mother’s packing.”
If we may grant some vitality to the story, we may observe that father was saying to God, “What wilt thou have me to do?” Mother, probably no less good-intentioned, seemed to be saying to God, “This is what I intend to do. I hope you will approve.”
Our wills have a way, if we care not, of telling God what to do. “O Lord, bless us in this righteous war, and help us win.” “O Lord, I’m going into a new business. It may be a pretty good thing and I hope you will prosper me in it.” “Lord I want my family problems settled in this way. Won’t you grant me my wish?” Countless prayers of that sort arise!
Discerning the will of God involves putting ourselves aside in an effort to find what is that will. “What wilt thou have me to do?” And then as the picture seems to come into focus we put ourselves into the spot where we seem to belong.
2) A second question is this: “Have I the courage to do God’s will when I discern it?” Have you ever had the impulse to say, “No, Lord, anything but that!” and try to drive a compromise with the Eternal. It is a common weakness. I have known it and possibly you have, too.
Sometimes it is not more discernment we need, but more grit - more faith and fortitude, more determinattion and perseverance.
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When you and I have discerned a measure of God’s will for us, and have the courage to follow its light, three things contribute to our peace of heart.
1) We lose our fear of getting lost.
Lost child.
Air man on radio beam.
2) The dread of carrying the responsibility of what happens is removed.
Dreadful moment when infuriated people intent on Jesus’ crucifixion shouted to the governor, “His blood be on us, and on our children.” [Matthew 27: 25].
God’ message - “As long as you are ready to do my will, I will accept responsibility for what happens. I will carry that burden for you.”
“In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct they paths.”
3) God’s will means our peace, because in his will our conflicts are resolved. I mean the conflicts of indecision - not the necessary effort in conflict that means growth.
(Frustration of high school honor graduate afraid of not being college honor student.)
When we stop being opinionated and saying to the Eternal, “I’m going my own way,” the chafing of the yoke stops and the burden becomes light. “In His will is our peace.”
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, October 20, 1946