Many Times, Many Ways - Part 10

Part 1 – The character of our communicative God!

Part 2 – God’s good for us in silence or the quiet voice 

Part 3 – God is able and willing to speak over anxiety, one hindrance

Part 4 – What if we cease to pray? Can we thwart God’s will? The role of prayer in guidance

Part 5 – What if we cease to pray? The role of faith in guidance

Part 6 – Guidance, maturity, and dependence

Part 7 – Will God speak to me? Or only for kingdom purposes?

Part 8 – Our desires? Can we prevent guidance?

Part 9 – Discerning voices

Satellites orbit in the nightscape. Planes twinkle across the night heavens. The northern star dips behind a tree. The all-so familiar Orion seems to lose its clarity one night as the earth turning tips it upside down. So, too, life is disorienting sometimes. We search for guidance, but question and doubt if that is the north star of God’s guidance or a satellite. Will God allow us to be confused? Can we be mistaken in guidance? Can we go down the wrong path and end up with plan B? Should I have gone to that doctor instead of the one I did? Did I take the wrong job? Did I marry the wrong person—would things have been better?

These fears most often arise from the question if there is one perfect will of God for our lives, and then—can we screw it up? Miss it? Big view of self, small view of God often accompanies this. So is there one perfect will? Yes and no. I do think God has an individual plan for each person. He is omniscient. He is Father. He is sovereign over every detail. Calls and deposes kings (Prov. 21:1; Dan. 2; Isa. 45:1). So I think we can argue that from his nature. Furthermore, he is creator of each person (Ps. 139:14-16). And he equips each person with spiritual gifts, a specific time and place, and specific roles and callings (Rom. 12; 1 Cor. 12-14; Acts 17:26-28; 1 Pet. 4:10-11; Eph. 4:10-13; Eph. 2:10 is debated about whether the good works are specific or not). Thirdly, the Bible shows he clearly had individual callings for Abraham, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Mary the mother of Jesus, etc. I don’t think God has a special plan for just a few people, and the rest of us are somehow less important, or can do what we please. Anna  and Simeon in the Temple, Bathsheba, John Mark, Rebecca, Manoah—all are relatively “small” figures in the Bible, common people seemingly, not clearly given a great golden call. Yet, all played instrumental roles in the mustard-growing kingdom.

However, I don’t think he always tells us our individual will clearly. In the Old Testament, wisdom plays a prominent role in judging and decision making (i.e., Proverbs, King Solomon). There is the interesting verse in 1 Samuel 10:7, “Now when these signs meet you, do what your hand finds to do, for God is with you.” God told Saul something, and could have told him anything—but he did not say not anything specific. He granted Saul freedom within the presence of God. Nehemiah clearly felt the Lord’s hands was with him, but there was no “The Lord told me…” or indication that he had a clear detailed revelation from the Lord. Even when urging his fellow Jews to help rebuild, he did not cite a clearly revealed vision or mandate. The New Testament apostles often did what seemed good according to wisdom (Acts 15:22, 25, 28). Paul laid his own plans often (although he did have supernatural revelation at other times). And here is speculation—but if anyone received clear detailed supernatural revelation for daily decisions, surely it would have been Mary the mother of Jesus, tasked with raising the Son of God! Yet, during the three days of searching for the twelve-year-old Jesus there is no indication that the Lord said, “He is in the temple where he should be.” Perhaps I’m reading too much of my western culture into the story, but I can imagine her wondering, “Are we doing right in raising him? Does he need to be here longer? Should we go home now? What should we do? God, for three days I’ve been frantic! I’ve been praying to find him! Why didn’t you tell me earlier where he was?”

So, God does have an individual plan for each of us. But he doesn’t always reveal it, but leaves us to in wisdom discern it. What love! What grace!

Love and grace? But I’m confused. Needing direction. Lost. Satellites, planes, stars? Only you know, Lord!!! But love—we have the comfort that he does know each detail, each moment of our lives. He is always thinking of us, always involved. Every moment is planned. Love, Father love. A love that gives hope and confidence for each of our moments and decisions. Secondly, a love that gives dignity. Created to give dominion, created to judge angels. We are still given the dignity of a self. Thirdly, a love that desires relationship, not robots. Love is cultivated, sought. It cannot be demanded. God desires a love relationship, one that is freely given. Knowing he has a personal will but still having to seek and discern, to seek him—love. Relationship. I’m not a philosopher, but I can’t think of any way that God could have shown such love in a different orchestration and design. Every facet speaks of his love.

The beauty of grace. His arranging things so allows a relationship between Creator and creation. We have selves, choice. We can freely give love. It shows that God works in the mundane. He works with our decisions and our finite knowledge and finite decisions, our noetic fallenness, and is weaving all of these into what he has personally ordained for each of us and into what he has ordained in the grand scheme of things for his glory. Do you realize the grace and glory? I sit and deliberate and decide—with God-given wisdom, the Spirit, God-orchestrated circumstances, godly counselors, God-revealed Word, with the life of Christ in me and his righteous wisdom imputed to me. I sit and deliberate and decide—leaning not on my own understanding, seeking after him, learning to know him more, becoming more like him. I sit and deliberate and decide—in peaceful knowledge that if I needed a clear revelation, he could and can reveal it, and if I do not have that given to me, I don’t need it. He will work it out according to his best plan if I am seeking him.

So can we miss God’s perfect will? Again, the tension answer of yes and no. No, we cannot miss his ordained will, what he has decreed in secret in his redemptive history, his sovereign governance in his eternal wisdom. Mistakes and everything—yes, even sin—will be woven into his eternal plan and ordained will. We see this with the pharaoh of Egypt who hardened his heart; it was still so that God’s power might be proclaimed and his name be known (Rom. 9:17). We see this with the Babylonians and Assyrians—it was no wonder that Habakkuk questioned God’s use of such a sinful and violent nation to judge his people. Yet, the Bible is not afraid to say it was within God’s ordained will, although God by no means justified or excused the bloodshed (indeed, he later punished them, too, for their outright violence and sick delight in it). The Roman soldiers, Jewish leaders, and Judas all were woven into his eternal plan. Moses’ background in an idolatrous culture, Saul/Paul’s study of the Torah, Daniel’s Babylonian study, Esther’s contra-the-Torah marriage were all used.

But yes, we can miss his will—his moral will, revealed in his Bible and what correlates with his perfect holiness. Adam and Eve’s sin, Abraham’s mistake with Ishmael,  David’s adultery, Gehazi’s greed, Jonah’s lack of compassion, Uzziah’s usurping the priestly role, etc. are not within God’s moral will. I, and all Christians, beware! Seek God! For when we get our eyes off of him, we stumble. We tune our hearts to the satellites, and seek those instead of the star.

Beauty of grace. Does that mean we end up on plan B if we miss his moral will? Careful—for we cannot excuse sin in any way. We cannot lighten the judgment. The Israelites were unable to enter God’s rest, and both Paul and the author of Hebrews allude to that as warnings for those who call themselves believers (1 Cor. 10; Heb. 3-4). David’s child still died. Moses too was unable to enter the Promised Land. Yet, was this plan B?

Careful—for we cannot diminish God. Do you think God was up in heaven, “Shoot. Moses did that. I’ll have to change my plan.” Or, “Saul, oh my. I had you down as the king from whom the Messiah would come. I’m going to have to scrounge around for someone else….” Or slapping his forehead, “David! I had all your days written in my books, but now you did that! I’m going to have to rewrite my books, again!” It was to an Israel in exile for their rebellion against him that God wrote, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you” (Jer. 29:11). God is all sovereign. Nothing can snatch us out of his hand; nothing can separate us from his love; and I believe that sovereignty and love include a plan for us. For those who love him, he is able to work out all things for good. Not ease, but good.

Moreover, he is able to make it clear it if it outside of his ordained will. Abimelech was prevented by God from touching Abraham’s wife Sarah. Balaam was kept from cursing Israel, even though he desired to. David was about to kill Nabal, but God held his hand through Abigail and saved him from bloodshed. Saul was not seeking to convert, but God intervened and turned him into a Paul. Joseph was about to divorce Mary, but an angel warned him. When necessary, when it falls outside of his ordained will, God can intervene! This gives us a confidence that when we seek him, when our general heart attitude is oriented toward him, he can keep us.

“He will guard the feet of his faithful ones” (1 Sam. 2:9).

“Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (Jude 24).

“[W]ho will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor. 1:8-9).

The beauty of grace. Moses could not enter the Promised Land, so Joshua rose up as a godly leader. Grace. It was a repentant David who learned greater the depths of God’s grace and who penned Psalm 51. Jonah learned deeper the compassion of God, felt it for himself in a way he would not have. Abraham learned of God’s power, learned to wait, learned deeper faith and trust. Through our mistakes and sins, we learn. Learn life lessons, learn character lessons, learn our own fallibility, learn to lean on God, learn deeper his love and his grace and other facets of his infinite character we never would have grasped otherwise. Is this good a plan B? The beauty of grace. Not easy, but beautiful.

God’s orchestration in this way—love and grace. It gives us a confidence to make decisions, to move forward in faith and without fear, knowing that he is guiding and protecting. Even when we don’t have all the information we want, he is present. When we seek him and walk within his moral will, he is orchestrating. He will keep. He will protect.  This trust cultivates a deep rest and peace with him. An intimate relationship is based on that trust and freedom of grace. Yet, it also keeps the needed tension of the warning to seek him, to lean on him, to depend on him. We are reminded of our fallibility, so we run to him. Here, too, we find a relationship building facet, for dependence breeds intimacy. It is the child who grasps her father’s hand as she tries to walk that knows the calluses and the shape of the fingers. It is the one who leans so deeply on the other’s chest that hears his heartbeat. It is the one who leans on the other that knows the crook of the arm.