VEHICLE OF GOD'S WILL

VEHICLES OF GOD’S WILL

What about visions, dreams, prophecy, tongues, and emotions?
The consuming passion of a true Christian is to know and to do His will. The doing of God’s will is what Christ says determines whether we are known to God or not. That is why He says that it is quite possible for someone to prophesy, cast out demons, and perform many miracles in Christ’s name and yet be locked out of heaven (Matthew 7;22).
Since the matter of doing God’s will is so crucial to our acceptance before God, it is understandable that this subject should agitate the minds of so many Christians.
We do know that the Bible expresses the will of God, but the problem is that the Bible is not specific on many personal issues. For instance, the only specific thing the Bible says about who to marry is that the person must not be a non-Christian. All the other things are completely left to you to decide. So you embark on the search with no clues. In the process you can get so frustrated that you wish that God televise the person to you and save you from any further frustration.

God does televise His will. The Bible is the record of God’s will televised over a very long period of time. Through the television, you can both see and hear. The Bible records vision, dreams, prophecies, and various emotions through which God communicates with us.

DON’T LIMIT GOD
The thing to note from this is that God is both willing and free to communicate with us as He chooses. You dishonor God when you try to limit Him to any particular method of communicating with us. The best we can say is that since we do not find Him contradicting Himself in the Bible, He cannot contradict Himself through any other means by which He chooses to communicate with us.

Believing that God is both willing and free to communicate with us as He chooses, and that He never contradicts Himself, we should be totally open to every possible means of knowing God’s will. Let visions, dreams, prophecies and tongues flourish as much as they can! We should be willing to see and hear them. How do we know that God will not speak to us through a vision, a dream, tongue or prophecy? We should let God be God.

We should never forget that God is like new wine, and therefore He must always burst through the old wine skin of our views on how He communicates His will. Ordinarily, we should not expect to see “a dumb donkey speaking with a voice of a man”. For the specific purpose of restraining “the madness of the prophet.” But it happened! And who was the prophet? “Balaam, the son of the Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness” (2 Peter 2:15, 16). As a song writer says:
“God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform
He plant His footsteps on the sea
And ride upon the storm.”

DISCERNING THE WIL OF GOD (PART II)

DISCERNING THE WILL OF GOD (Part II)

The place of reasoning in discerning God’s will for our lives is equally worth-mentioning. What distinguishes man from wild beasts is his ability to think logically. For example, if John believes it is the will of God for him to become an engineer, yet he has always performed poorly in physics and mathematics, common sense dictates here that he chasing the wind.

But there are cults claiming to be Christian groups and controlling many young zealots. They maintain that whatever the leader teaches is the will of God. Any contrary view must not be entertained even for a moment. To think of anything else, they teach, is to listen to the devil. We maintain that any cult or group whose teaching discourages its adherents from using their God-given mental faculty has its origin from Satan. Its goal is to keep those misguided followers in perpetual servitude to the devil himself.

Finally, maintaining a daily quiet time with God for Bible reading and prayer plays a vital role in helping a Christian to discern the will of God. Implicit in this practice is a humble and obedient attitude toward the Almighty. Daily Bible reading and prayers constantly remind us of the nature of God, and keep our conduct daily exposed to the searchlight of His will on a daily basis, until we become accustomed to discerning and practicing His will. So when the time comes to make major life decisions, we do not grope in darkness. Our daily quiet time with God has kept us in the habit of being in the right place, doing the thing. Then we can confidently testify, like Abraham’s servant, “I being in the way, the lord led me” (Genesis 24:27)

DISCERNING THE WILL OF GOD

DISCERNING THE WILL OF GOD (Part one)

It is crucial for a Christian to discern and practice God’s will. It is, in fact, the one factor by which God determines those who will eventually enter into his kingdom. Matthew 7:21-23. Hence Christ instructed His disciples through the model prayer he taught them Matthew 6:10 to pray daily that God’s will might be done in their lives.

Since His will is so crucial, we can logically conclude that God will not play any “hide and seek” game with those who sincerely seek His will on any subject. We may well expect that He too is eager to reveal His will to all honest enquirers.

Whatever subject we seek God’s mind about, let us bear in mind that His will must be consistent with his character. He is holy, loving, Almighty and unchanging, to mention a few of His attributes. If we embark on any line of action that contradicts any of these attributes of God, we can be sure that we are out of His will.

For example, it cannot be God’s will for a young couple to engage in pre-marital sex for any reason. That clearly contradicts His holiness. Neither can we claim God’s leading when we destroy the person or character of another person that we may attain a certain position. That contradicts His attribute of love, which demands that we treat others in the way we will be happy to have them treat us. And we cannot say, “Lord, show me your will first, then I will decide whether to do it or not.” Such a prayer attempts to dethrone God as the Almighty who must be obeyed unconditionally.

DISCERNING THE WILL OF GOD

DISCERNING THE WILL OF GOD (Part one)

It is crucial for a Christian to discern and practice God’s will. It is, in fact, the one factor by which God determines those who will eventually enter into his kingdom. Matthew 7:21-23. Hence Christ instructed His disciples through the model prayer he taught them Matthew 6:10 to pray daily that God’s will might be done in their lives.

Since His will is so crucial, we can logically conclude that God will not play any “hide and seek” game with those who sincerely seek His will on any subject. We may well expect that He too is eager to reveal His will to all honest enquirers.

Whatever subject we seek God’s mind about, let us bear in mind that His will must be consistent with his character. He is holy, loving, Almighty and unchanging, to mention a few of His attributes. If we embark on any line of action that contradicts any of these attributes of God, we can be sure that we are out of His will.

For example, it cannot be God’s will for a young couple to engage in pre-marital sex for any reason. That clearly contradicts His holiness. Neither can we claim God’s leading when we destroy the person or character of another person that we may attain a certain position. That contradicts His attribute of love, which demands that we treat others in the way we will be happy to have them treat us. And we cannot say, “Lord, show me your will first, then I will decide whether to do it or not.” Such a prayer attempts to dethrone God as the Almighty who must be obeyed unconditionally.