2 replies to this topic

[Infralap]

My family and I are searching for God's direction in our lives. Are we to plant a church in Central FL or are we to move to Virginia and help a church?

[Phil]

I'm praying for you and feel confident that God will put you and your family where you're needed most.

[Tkulp]

Infralap,

 

There are a few different things that come to my mind as I hear your desire for direction.

 

I think about my life and the times I sought for direction just as you are. On some rather important moves across the country, I felt that my Heavenly Father basically gave me a freedom to go where I wanted to go. The move was for my family, to bring them up on a farm setting.

What God wanted from me was my love and obedience to His heart, where ever I was at. In other words the location was not the issue. Being salt and light was the issue. Maintaining His presence within. Staying under His wings.

 

Then there were other issues in my life that I sought guidance and I used the formula of a man that I highly respect for his life of faith and obedience. His name was George Mueller. Here is a list that he personally used to determine God's will.

 

How to Ascertain the Will of God by George Müller

1.—I seek at the beginning to get my heart into such a state that it has no will of its own in regard to a given matter. Nine-tenths of the trouble with people is just here. Nine-tenths of the difficulties are overcome when our hearts are ready to do the Lord's Will, whatever it may be. When one is truly in this state, it is usually but a little way to the knowledge of what His will is.

2.—Having done this, I do not leave the result to feeling or simple impression. If so, I make myself liable to great delusions.

3.—I seek the Will of the Spirit of God through, or in connection with, the Word of God. The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also. If the Holy Ghost guides us at all, He will do it according to the Scriptures and never contrary to them.

4.—Next I take into account providential circumstances. These often plainly indicate God's Will in connection with His Word and Spirit.

5.—I ask God in prayer to reveal His Will to me aright.

6.—Thus, through prayer to God, the study of the Word, and reflection, I come to a deliberate judgment according to the best of my ability and knowledge, and if my mind is thus at peace, and continues so after two or three more petitions, I proceed accordingly. In trivial matters, and in transactions involving most important issues, I have found this method always effective.

 

There are many example from the Bible... good and bad. If you look and one of the bad you might look at Balaam. If you examine what he did you will find that he refused to say anything that God did not give him. Be sure that if God tells you to go somewhere and you do not obey he can straighten you out if he wants just like Jonah! As we examine what was going on in each life in the Bible we find that the heart desire was the critical issue. Balaam was interested in wealth. He would not misrepresent God, but he knew the heart of God and what would cause God to do what man could not do. Get the people to sin and God will destroy them. But God is merciful and patient as with the people of Nineveh. God made sure that Jonah wanted to obey!

 

Then there is the New Testament and Paul. The various places that they were told not to go and they obeyed. He was also warned by the Holy Spirit what would happen to him if he went to Jerusalem. He choose to go any way, no matter what the cost to himself.

We will never know, til heaven, what might have happened if Paul had heeded that warning. Paul wrote quite a bit from prison, giving us a large portion of the NT. Peter speaks of how people take Paul's writings and use them to their destruction.

 

Today I believe that it is Paul's letters that are most often misunderstood and twisted to excuse sin and obeying God's Commandments.

 

So where is your heart? Get yourself out of it, if you really want to be used of God. Understand and follow what Paul said to the Romans in chapter 12 verses 1 and 2. Be transformed, renew the mind, stop being conformed to the world... then you will know the perfect will of God.

 

May you find Truth and Peace as you obey and walk after His Word in a freedom from all darkness, a freedom to do justly in all things!!