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The "Will of God!" For some that is a scary phrase. Joining the kingdom of heaven seems easy: you truly repent, you are baptized in the name of Jesus, you receive the blessed Holy Ghost, you begin to study the Word of God, but then comes the day that the realization hits you that God has saved you for a purpose within His kingdom. You've joined the kingdom, but now you must "discern" or figure out what the will of God is in your life from this point on out. Probably when you came to God, some old dreams and plans had to die. But God never asks for a death without giving you a resurrection so if you died out to your old desires, then God wants to give you some new ones to replace them with! God wants to give us a new purpose in life, and new dreams and new goals to reach toward. When you have the Word of God and the Spirit of God within your life, then you have the two dynamos that created the universe residing within your being! They didn't come just to sit around, but there is a purpose for them being there!

God has a specific plan, a "will" for your life. And you will never be happy if you don't obey that plan and no matter what that plan is, you will truly be fulfilled only if you do obey what God desires for you to do. If you end up rich with everything that this world has to offer and yet not having fulfilled God's will for your life, then you will end up miserable. But if you end up poor as a missionary in "east Juhunga" somewhere, unknown by many but in the perfect will of God, then you will be fulfilled and happy. True happiness and Godly contentment comes less from your circumstances and more from being where God desires you to be. No matter what the odds are, remember that you cannot afford to NOT do the will of God. We should have the attitude that "Lord, whatever you want me to do, I'll do!" There is a mighty power in such surrender of our lives as that.

Jesus, when confronted by people trying to elevate His earthly mother to a high state, refused to allow them to worship Mary and responded with this:

Jesus considers His family, those who do the will of God! You cannot be close to God and not do His will! The Apostle John wrote:

If you want to live forever -- even beyond the lifespan of the earth -- then do the will of God! Paul wrote that King David had "served his own generation by the will of God" (Acts 13:36). King David impacted his world like few men and women have been able to do. He was called "a man after God's own heart." The Messiah would come from his lineage and God swore to him that the legacy that he left would be blessed from on high. Those are things that I would like said about me one day and no doubt you feel the same way also, but it will only happen if we like David "serve our generation by doing the will of God!" Part of coming to Calvary is laying down our wills and doing the will of our heavenly Father! We can't serve Jesus without desiring His will!

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But between here and there, you must be able to decide what the perfect will of God is for your life. Many born-again Christians want to do the will of God for their life whatever that might be but they have no earthly idea of how to figure what it is that God wants them to do. And so we come to that place of questioning that some Christians never get beyond "what is the will of God for my life?" What should I do? How will I know it's the will of God? How do I know which is the best route? For the remainder of this lesson, let's look at some principles that will help us answer some of these questions:

There are some definite commands in scripture that are ALWAYS the will of God. You don't have to pray about whether or not you should do them because you are commanded to do them in serving God. Let me help ease your worried minds and free up a lot of your prayer time by just stating that it will NEVER be the will of God to:

You don't have to pray about such things, because we have already been instructed in these areas by the Word of God. Peter called the written Word of God "a more sure word of prophecy." In his days there were so called "prophets" that were prophesying things that said you didn't have to obey some of the scriptural principles. But the Word of God is a "more sure word of prophecy." Even if a man of God were to prophesy to you that you didn't need to obey some of these things, you'd better do them, because they were commanded by scripture! These things are the general will of God and so we must do them no matter what anybody else does or says! If you want to do the will of God, then you must start by doing the basic things that are already in place as His perfect will!

And let me say this: these commands don't cancel each other out or replace one another. We must obey ALL of them together. I knew a lady one time that felt like she was so called to be a prayer warrior that she decided it wasn't the will of God for her to actually come into church and worship with the saints and hear the preaching but that God wanted her to stay in a Sunday School room and "intercede" for the service. That was no more God than a goose because God' plan will not contradict itself and she needs to come to church just like everybody else does!

I've known people going to miss church because they were going to witness to somebody or talk to somebody about God. You'll never win them because you are breaking what is the basic will of God in your life. I've know some people who prayed so much that they didn't need to read the Word of God or vice versa. That's not right either. Or that were so involved in other areas of ministry that they felt like they were excused from soul winning. Or they preached or taught Bible Studies therefore they did not need to actively worship God. No way is that the will of God. God's will does not contradict itself!

And, really, these established commands are 90% of the will of God which brings us to the next principle:

The 10% of the specific and unique will of God for your life will only come when you are already doing the 90% that is established! Some people want God to spell out every little will and purpose and direction that their life will take before they step out in obedience and it never works that way because God's will is progressive. He will only reveal to you the next step when you take the first.

Think of it like this. You get in a car that is parked out in the parking lot and you are sitting there with your hands on the steering wheel saying "should I go left or should I go right?" "Which direction should I go?" "Where am I going?" You could sit there all day long twisting that steering wheel back and forth until your arms were hurting but really you are not going anywhere! You are sitting in the same place where you were when you started. And God is not going to tell you okay go left and then a little right and now turn there and I want you to go here, while you are sitting in the parking lot twisting the steering wheel!

But if you want to know the will of God in your life, then you must do what you already know to do. To go anywhere, you are going to have to close the door, insert the key, and start the engine and then get out of the parking lot and start heading somewhere. Then it's much easier for God to say "go a little left" or "turn here." And He will if you are moving in the first place. If you are frustrated with trying to figure out the will of God in your life, then you're probably still sitting in the parking lot with God waiting for you to start doing what you already know to do. THEN He will reveal to you the subtle turns and directions of exactly where He wants you to be! That's why it's easier for God to take an Apostle Peter who is willing to get out of the boat and then gently guide him back into the will of God than it is to help someone who refuses to move in the first place. Until you are willing to give everything to doing what you know you should do, then you will never get specific direction from God.

Really, it's better that God does NOT reveal to us all of His will before we even begin. If we could see the valleys that we would have to go through ahead of time, then we might not choose that path because we don't want to endure the bad that we will face. On the other side of the token, if we saw the successes and victories that God had for us and the level that we would achieve, we might be overcome with pride and not even be able to take the paths that got us there. The scriptures says that the "just shall live by faith." Faith is doing what you know to do even when you can't see everything down the road. Faith without action is dead. You can say that you want the will of God in your life, but if you are not willing to do what you know you should do already, then the specific will of God will never be given because you have not acted on faith. True faith is I'll do with all my heart and strength, what I know to do believing that God will reveal to me the rest in time. That's true Godly faith as to His direction. The will of God is progressive and we determine how much of it we discover and see fulfilled in our life.

I see the progressiveness of the will of God in my own life. I didn't know that I was called to ministry or preach and really didn't want to be. But I did know that God had given me the ability to play the piano and I wanted to use my musical ability for God. I decided to go to Bible College one year so that I could take piano lessons and better serve God in my home church while I went to law school. I gave it everything. I was praying and fasting and winning souls and faithful to church and study of the Word of God. And it was only after a year that God began dealing with me about the full-time ministry and preaching. I thought maybe I would be a music minister for ten and fifteen years and then gradually move into a pulpit ministry. I even considered learning a foreign language and working toward using my music ministry to help prepare my life for becoming a missionary. When I graduated from Bible College, and became a music minister, I kept doing what I knew that I should do. In addition to my musical duties, I also begin to teach home Bible Studies and then my wife followed suit. Then God spoke to me and told me to prepare to pastor. I didn't wait a year but my wife will testify that I began to study the Bible for hours everyday and give that preparation serious consideration. I was thinking "okay, now I know that I'm called to pastor, so maybe in eight or nine years I'll be ready." That was when a city called Castroville dropped into my life and the rest is history. I had never felt led to a preaching ministry when God called me in college. I had never thought about San Antonio or coming here when the phone rang and Bro. Wallace asked my dean of music for a male music major that could play the piano and "wasn't queer." I had never heard of Castroville, Texas and never even thought about pastoring it until the board approached me and asked me to consider it. That's the truth. I've never had a time in my life where I struggled to find the specific will of God. Never. And I think that part of that reason is that I learned a long time ago that if you will do the 90% that you know to do with all of your heart then God will progressively reveal to you the 10%. If you are struggling with the 10% then probably you are not doing all of what you should be doing already! If you will start the car and get it moving, then you will find that God is able to direct you to exactly where He wants for you to go.

That's what Paul was saying in our text in Romans:

Paul was saying "do what you know you should do: live as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, not conformed to the world but a new creature in Christ Jesus" and when you do those things ye will "prove" or "discern" or "see" what is the good, acceptable and perfect will of God! God's will is progressive!

This should be obvious and we've covered some of this already, but understand this: there are no rules for broken rules. Many people's lives who are always looking for the will of God in their life and seemingly unable to find it are people who at one time "decided to do things their own way" or "rebelled" against the perfect will of God in their life. It's a miserable place to be and there are no rules for broken rules. When you get out of the perfect will of God, there is no rules except to get back in it and obey what God has told you to do. And that starts with the 90% of what you already know you should do. I've known people to say "preacher, I made a mistake and now I don't know what to do." What you should do is what you should have already been doing and that's what you already know to do! Get a prayer life and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Win souls. Clean your life out with true repentance and Godly living. In other words, get in the car and head back in the right direction. But you can save a lot of heartache by just not breaking the scriptural principles in your life in the first way. Only fools learn the hard way and we've all been fools, but you don't have to stay one!

Paul wrote this:

If you want to reach another level, learn to be content where you are now. If you want to move on, then the best way is to do the will of God in your current circumstances. My wife and I laugh that just when we get comfortable doing something or living somewhere, the God changed everything! There's some truth to that. If you live in your situation and refuse to be happy and refuse to keep God centered in your life, then you will never advance to the next level because God is waiting for you to be content. Paul said that He learned to be content in all things. Remember this: circumstances have nothing to do with your contentment and happiness, but rather your attitude towards your circumstances. Sometimes God is waiting on us to change our attitude toward our present circumstances before He will change them. That's an important lesson to remember. Very rarely will a decision that is based on avoiding and getting out of a lack of contentment in hardship be the right choice. God wants you to change your attitude towards your circumstances before He changes your circumstances.

Everybody has the ability to deceive themselves. If you want to believe something bad enough, then you will convince yourself that it's true. Prayer is God's way of our keeping honest with ourselves. You can tell much about whether or not you are deceiving yourself by how you are praying. If you come to God with a made up mind and you are asking God to approve it, then you are deceiving yourself with your emotion or desires. If you are saying "God I really want to date this girl or buy this or do this and if it's not your will then let such and such happen." You are assuming that what you want to do is right and forcing God to act if it is not. Basically, you are deceiving yourself and trying to twist God's arm to go along with it. We should pray "God what is your will concerning this situation?" The scriptures say:

We can ask knowing that God will answer us. The problem is that we tend to only get God involved after we've kicked open a door and are half-way through. This brings us to the next principle:

Pray "God open the right doors and close the wrong ones." That's a good principle to live by. But you must pray it before you ever force open anything. Let's say someone blesses you with a thousand dollars and you are trying to decide how to spend it. So you decide that you want a new bass boat and you go order one and make the down payment and the rest will be due when the boat comes in. And you go to God in prayer and say "God, whatever you want me to do with this thousand dollars, I want to do it. Open the right doors and close the wrong ones." God's not going to answer that prayer because He can't: you've already kicked open the door to the bass boat and are half-way through it. If He'd had some other plans for that thousand dollars, you'd be ticked and giving it grudgingly anyway so He will let you have your bass boat whether or not you it was His will or not.

What you should have done is before you bought the boat and ordered it and lusted over it, you should have prayed God I have a thousand dollars and I want wisdom in how to spend it. If it your will for me to do something with it other than my personal recreation, then open a door to a need or close the doors that I would like to walk through. Then God can answer your requests, but not when you have already chosen your door and walked through it!

The scriptures say "obey them that have the rule over you" and it's good advice to listen to your pastor because God gives Him direction for your life. But everything we just said about God applies to your pastor as well. Very few times do people come to me when they should to pray about a situation. Usually when people come to me, they've already kicked open the door and are just coming to me to see if I'll bless their actions or not. That's not listening to spiritual counsel.

I've had young people come to me and say "do you think it's God will for me to date this person" when they've already been dating them for three weeks! Isn't it a little late to be asking that? What am I to say? If I feel it isn't the will of God, then you are going to be mad at me for telling you so. If I feel it is, what does it matter, you're already dating them! Really people don't want truth but just agreement. They want me to agree with them what they have already decided to do. That's not listening to spiritual counsel, but rather trying to appease your conscience. And let me say this, if you are already doing something and you have to come and ask the pastor what he thinks about it and you would be offended if he told you that he didn't think it was a good idea, that's probably a good indication that what you were doing was not the will of God anyway! It is the attitude of people who say "it's easier to seek forgiveness than permission" that get offended at truth.

Let me quote Bro. David Bernard on this. He said "God will do what we cannot do but He will NOT do what we can do for ourselves." If you are praying "God pick up that piece of trash" you will be highly disappointed because God gave you the ability to bend over and pick up that trash yourself. He's not going to do it for you. That's common sense. We could pray "God let the church be clean and the grass be mowed" all day long and nothing will happen unless we get up and volunteer to clean the church or mow the lawn! You can pray "God fill the church with people, let us have revival" but until you invite someone and offer to teach them a Bible Study, then it's not going to happen! God equipped us to be witnesses and so He's waiting on us!

It's the same way with the will of God in our individual lives. If you are buying a house or a car, then make sure that it's within your budget to afford it. That's common sense. Use it: God gave it to you for a reason. If you can't carry a tune in a bucket then you don't have to bother praying whether or not you should join the choir. If you hate kids, then you don't have to bother praying whether or not you should join Sunday School. Those are no-brainers. God gave you common sense -- use it! If giggly junior high kids intimidate you or drive you nuts, find something other than youth ministry to help out in! Use your common sense!

I have found that if it "sounds too good to be true, it usually is." That's true in the Spirit. The greatest spiritual resurrections are on the other side of trudging up a hill with a cross on your back. The greatest moments in God are in following His footsteps which went through sorrow. I'm not saying "choose the negative" and certainly obedience is greater than sacrifice, but rather that usually a short cut is a negative thing and usually the right path involves us giving up our will for His and less of us being glorified.

Jesus said that there were two paths to choose from in walking through life. One of them is broad and wide and there are many people that take that path. The other is narrow and tight and a sometimes lonely place to be because most people will not take that path. But the narrow one was the one that led to eternal life and the other to hell!

The scriptures say:

This is another one of those proverbs that must have been very important because we are told it twice:

In every decision that we make we must sincerely ask ourselves "how does this affect my life path of serving God?" Will this help it or hinder it? Will I end up closer to God or further away? Is this taking the narrow path or the wide path. It's human nature to take the easy street, but that's not the right one!

Jesus said this:

Put God and His kingdom first in every situation and you will find out that tomorrow will take care of itself! It all falls into place when we put God first!

Remember John's advice:

You cannot do the will of God for tomorrow yet, but only today can you control. Start putting God first today, and then you will find that tomorrow will fall into place because He holds tomorrow! Do the will of God right now and in doing so you will find the will of God for the rest of your life!