How Do I Know God's Will for Me?

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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June 12, 2013

00:01: Alright, we are at the last of our series of questions.
00:07: I have gone through all the questions and we have pretty much answered them all except one and this one wasn't even one that was written down.
00:16: This was one that was given to me in a conversation.
00:20: But all the ones that we've done up until now, if you weren't here, go back and listen to the recordings because I'm sure that if you ask the question that it is somewhere in the recordings of what we have done and if you feel like I totally missed yours and totally forgot about it, feel free to send me an email or write me a note or even catch me after your lesson and I'll try to address it at some point.
00:46: The other thing is next week we're going to begin a whole new series.
00:49: It's going to be kind of for the summer because we are not going to have Wednesday nights in August.
00:53: So it's going to take us through June and July and then we'll take August off.
00:58: But from June and July, we're going to be going through a scripture memory system.
01:02: It's going to be a little bit different type of lesson, but it's going to be a lot of fun.
01:05: It's going to be good for all ages so that everybody will get to do some memorizing.
01:09: We'll have some contests and have a lot of fun over the summer doing that.
01:13: But today's question is a question that I can honestly say is wrestled with by so many people.
01:22: It's one that people have difficulty with, whether they are new Christians or old Christians or whether they've been in the church for one year or for 50 years.
01:30: This is a question that is often difficult for everyone.
01:36: And it's the question of how do I know God's will for me? How do I know God's will for me? And that question is, as I said, a very, very heavy question because what we're going to see in the lesson today is there is not just a simple answer sometimes to that question.
02:12: If you don't have any notes or anything, if you don't have anything written down, I'll put everything on the board for you here.
02:17: The first thing I want to do is I want to break down the subject of God's will.
02:22: When we talk about God's will, we actually have to talk about God's will in different ways.
02:30: And I'll explain to you what I mean.
02:33: The first thing we talk about, we talk about God's will, is we talk about God's prescriptive will, and then we talk about God's sovereign will of decree.
02:59: OK, so we talk about God's will.
03:02: We're going to talk about two different things.
03:05: We're going to talk about God's prescriptive will, and then we're going to talk about God's sovereign will of decree.
03:12: Very simply, God's prescriptive will.
03:16: What do you think I mean when I say God's prescriptive will? And may I want to take a stab at it? Go ahead, Ben.
03:29: OK, to prescribe something, to write it down or to give.
03:34: This is what is expected.
03:36: You go to the doctor, he gives you a prescription.
03:39: This is what is expected.
03:40: You're going to take this pill twice a day for five days.
03:44: How many people actually do all five days? Very few, right? Very few people.
03:48: Well, some people don't, though.
03:49: They go and they take their medicine for two days, start feeling better, and they forget to take the rest of it.
03:54: It's really not good for them, right? So when we talk about the prescriptive will of God, this is God's commands and what? His prohibitions.
04:17: What is the command? Do this.
04:22: Do that, if God says what? What's one of God's commands? What was it? Love your neighbor as yourself.
04:33: Thank you, Noah.
04:34: That was very good.
04:34: That's actually the one I was thinking of.
04:38: The command of God is to love your neighbor as yourself.
04:41: What one comes right before that? That's right.
04:46: It goes together.
04:47: And love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
04:50: And love your neighbor as yourself.
04:52: Brother, sister, team.
04:52: Got it.
04:53: All right.
04:54: So that's example of the commands of God's prohibitions.
05:00: What are the prohibitions that God has set? Yeah.
05:09: Give me a thou shalt not.
05:13: Who said? Did you say it? Okay.
05:16: All right.
05:17: Actually, it's murder.
05:18: I don't want to get into it.
05:19: There's a different nuance there.
05:22: In the Hebrew, a lot of us say thou shalt not kill.
05:25: That's what the term is, murder.
05:27: And the reason why I make that point, not that it really has to do anything with this lesson, is there are times in which it, like a soldier in battle or a police officer defending his life, there may be a responsibility that he has to take a life.
05:40: Even the state has given the right to take a life.
05:43: So that's why we say murder is unjust killing.
05:45: So we make that a little bit more of a definition.
05:48: But in the sense, yes, thou shalt not unjustly kill.
05:52: So that's one.
05:53: Kill, murder.
05:54: What's another prohibition? Thou shalt not lie.
06:00: Thou shalt not covet.
06:01: You guys are going to cry.
06:01: I know that.
06:04: Thou shalt not steal.
06:06: There ain't another one? There's six hundred and sixty something other one.
06:09: Come on, break it up.
06:11: There's ten commandments, but there's like six hundred and something prescribed laws in the Old Testament.
06:19: It doesn't matter.
06:19: Go ahead.
06:22: Have no other gods before me.
06:24: Absolute prohibition, right? That there be no idolatry.
06:28: All right.
06:28: So in God's prescriptive will, he has commanded certain things and he has prohibited certain things.
06:39: Very clear.
06:40: We understand this.
06:42: Where do we find God's prescriptive will? Where do we find it? Courtney had her hand up just a split second before.
06:53: Go ahead.
06:54: In the Bible.
06:58: And where? This is kind of this.
07:04: Yeah, well, the ten commandments are in the Bible.
07:06: That's good.
07:09: Yeah, the laws in the Bible, but the law is also somewhere else.
07:16: Huh? The Torah, that's the law.
07:19: That's the first five books of the Bible.
07:22: Constitution.
07:25: That's funny.
07:27: Actually, in the Bible, it says that the law of God, right from wrong, has been written on our hearts.
07:35: There is a sense in which our conscience.
07:42: By the way, what does the word conscience mean? Yes.
07:47: Be aware.
07:50: It does.
07:51: That's right.
07:52: The word conscience is two words.
07:55: It's a prefix and a suffix.
07:59: The suffix is science.
08:01: What does science mean? Science is knowledge.
08:07: Con means to be with.
08:09: So our conscience means that we have a knowledge.
08:13: We are with knowledge of what? Right.
08:18: And wrong.
08:21: We have a knowledge of right and wrong, which is intuitive.
08:25: That means it comes from within.
08:27: God has placed it there.
08:30: He has placed it within us.
08:32: So we have a prescriptive will of God in the word.
08:37: We have the prescriptive will of God in our hearts.
08:41: Now, if your heart ever disagrees with the word, which one's right? The word.
08:47: The Bible says our heart is deceptive and wicked.
08:51: It can lie to us.
08:52: Because you know why? We know what's right from wrong, but we want what's wrong.
08:57: So we cover up what's right.
08:59: We suppress the truth and unrighteousness.
09:01: Romans chapter one says we push it down like a spring.
09:03: We're pushing it, pushing, pushing, holding it down.
09:06: So if there's ever a disagreement between my heart and the Bible, the Bible is God's prescriptive will.
09:15: OK, so how do I know God's will for me? Well, the prescriptive will of God is in the Bible.
09:25: He gives us commands and he gives us prohibitions.
09:30: Now, we're going to talk about number two, which is the sovereign will of God, the sovereign will of God.
09:39: We start dealing with if God has prescribed something, thou shalt not kill.
09:47: But in the world, does everybody obey? No one.
09:56: No one here thinks everybody obeys, right? We all know there are people out there that disobey the prescriptive will of God, right? So God has to allow if there's going to be a breach in his command, he has to allow it because he is sovereign.
10:17: Everybody understand that? This is very important because we know that God is not the author of evil.
10:30: The Bible uses that term very clearly.
10:32: God does not author evil, but God does have the power to eliminate evil.
10:39: But yet there is still evil in the world.
10:43: Everybody agree? There is still evil in the world.
10:46: It's all over the world.
10:48: And the only reason why it's there is God has allowed it by his sovereign will of decree.
10:53: He has decreed to allow men to exercise their sinful nature.
10:59: He has allowed that.
11:03: He has a purpose for it.
11:09: We talked about this early on.
11:11: We talked about why do bad things happen to good people? Why do bad things happen? Because God allows for them because he ultimately has a purpose in the end, whether it is to increase judgment, whether it is to demonstrate his power.
11:25: In the Old Testament, the Amorites were coming against the Israelites.
11:29: And God said that he purposed that the Amorites would come against the Israelites.
11:35: But at the same time, he was going to judge the Amorites for their sin.
11:41: So even though God had purposed to allow them to come in, he purposed to allow them to destroy the Israelites because he was judging them.
11:48: He also judged the Amorites because what they were doing ultimately was sinful.
11:52: So though God allowed it, he had a purpose for it.
11:57: OK, all that still doesn't answer the question, because the most important part of this question is this part.
12:06: How do I know God's will for me? Well, God has a prescriptive will.
12:12: He has commanded us to do certain things.
12:15: He has prohibited us to do certain things.
12:18: So the first thing you have to ask yourself when you're dealing with a subject and you want to know what God's will is for you specifically is to ask yourself the question.
12:31: Does God's word command this or prohibit this? OK, so let's say I want to know what God's will is for me tonight.
12:43: I'm thinking about going to get drunk.
12:47: I'm really not.
12:48: I'm painting a picture.
12:50: Come on, kids.
12:51: I wanted to wake you up because I like the look I got from all these kids.
12:55: What? I'm really not thinking about going to get drunk.
12:59: But I'm trying to paint a picture for you.
13:02: The question is, how do I know God's will for me? So I say I'm thinking about going and getting tipsy, turvy, drunk.
13:10: I'm getting drunk, drunk, like all over drunk.
13:17: Is that God's will for me? Everyone, is it God's will for me? No.
13:27: How do I know? Huh? Because the Bible tells me clearly that we are not to be drunkards, that we are not to get drunk on wine or heavy drink, that we are not to be controlled by anything, especially alcohol.
13:48: So right there, the Bible tells me clearly that I'm not supposed to do that.
13:51: Right.
13:52: There's an easy one.
13:53: I'm trying to.
13:54: We're going to build up to the hard stuff, but we're starting with the easy stuff.
13:56: The easy thing is if you've got a situation in your life and you don't know what God's will is, the first thing you do, you need to do is you need to determine whether or not God has addressed this subject in his word.
14:13: You need to determine whether or not God has addressed this subject in his word, because sometimes people do things and they didn't even think about consulting the Bible first.
14:25: They didn't even think about consulting the word first.
14:28: For instance, I'm a beautiful 16, 17, 18 year old girl and I found this boy and he's the love of my life.
14:35: He's so gorgeous.
14:38: I'm going to marry him and we're going to have 15 babies and we're going to go on and live forever on a cloud of cotton candy and every day.
14:59: And somebody says, is this young man a Christian? I don't know.
15:06: He looks just like the boy from Twilight.
15:24: Here's the thing.
15:26: Sometimes we get caught up in our inner wants so much.
15:31: We get so caught up in what we think we want that we don't consider God's prescriptive will.
15:38: So much of our life would be directed better if we were more obedient to God's word.
15:47: Because in that situation, yeah, he might look like Jacob.
15:50: Yeah, you might have saw butterflies and lollipops every time you looked at him and he might be beautiful and gorgeous, but he's not a believer.
16:00: He's not a Christian.
16:01: And the Bible tells us that we are not supposed to be unequally yoked with someone who is not a Christian.
16:08: What does it mean to be yoked? A yoke is what they would put on the neck of an animal that was used to pull a cart.
16:16: And they would have these that had two yokes on it.
16:19: And imagine them putting a yoke on a bull and a yoke on a poodle.
16:27: All right.
16:28: That is an unequal yoke.
16:31: And they're going to pull each other apart.
16:34: The same thing is true when you grow up and you meet that person who makes you happy emotionally, makes you happy in your mind and in your heart.
16:46: But if that person is going to pull you away from God, if that person is going to pull you away from Scripture, then that even though they may, they may look, sound and smell great.
16:58: Trust me, smell is a big deal.
17:02: I'm telling this for all the young men in the room.
17:04: Smell is very important.
17:07: Seriously, they may look, sound, smell great, but they may not be the one that God has assigned for you, that God has created for you.
17:15: So, again, there are these prescriptions in the Bible that we need to always go to first.
17:21: But here's the hard part.
17:23: Here's the hard part.
17:24: I'm going to give you an adult scenario because this isn't something a kid would usually deal with.
17:29: But I'm going to paint a picture for you.
17:32: Let's say an adult has an option.
17:41: They don't have a job and they have an option for two jobs.
17:47: Job A would not violate their Christian conscience, would allow them to behave godly in the workplace and would pay them a certain amount of money every year that would take care of their family.
18:02: Job B does not violate their Christian conscience, would allow them to exercise their Christianity in the workplace, would not be a bad thing either.
18:13: And it is the equal amount of money.
18:16: So you've got two jobs here, both of them are equally good, both of them are equal money, both of them are equal opportunity.
18:25: And now you have to ask yourself the question, what is God's will for me? That's when it becomes hard because there's no book of jobs.
18:36: There's a book of Job, but no book of jobs to tell you where to go.
18:41: There's no Hezekiah 4, which has all the answers to every one of life's questions.
18:48: So how do we know that the decision that we make is God's will? I want to show you one verse of the Bible.
19:01: I'm going to tell you that we're going to stop halfway through the verse.
19:05: Normally, I wouldn't do that.
19:07: But turn in the book to 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, I'm sorry, chapter 4, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 3.
19:38: It says in verse 3, subsection 8, because we're only looking at the first half of it.
19:46: And it's important because it goes on to talk about sexual immorality.
19:49: And we're not getting into that.
19:50: The most important part is the first part.
19:53: For this is the will of God, your sanctification.
20:03: And stop there.
20:05: For this is the will of God, your sanctification.
20:18: What does the word sanctification? Go ahead.
20:27: It's no, it's not sacrifice.
20:29: It's a good guess.
20:30: The word sanctification sounds like that.
20:33: What's what's does anybody know? I tell you what, there's a lot of adult Christians that don't know the answer to this one.
20:38: The word sanctification, but it actually is a root word for saint.
20:47: Yes, it's not salvation.
20:53: It's close to purification.
20:54: Yes, the sanctification.
20:57: And I'll give you the textbook definition.
21:01: The process by which we are conformed to the image of Christ.
21:07: It is the process by which we are conformed to the image of Christ.
21:13: Let me put it in layman's terms for you.
21:17: Sanctification is our life becoming more and more Christlike.
21:24: It's our daily walk with Jesus, wherein we become closer.
21:30: You ever walk with somebody and at first you're walking and they're walking and your steps are out of sync and you hear clippity clack, clippity clack, but then eventually it's click, click, click because you get in step with one another.
21:42: Do you ever do that? And then finally, you're both you're marching together almost because you're stepping together.
21:47: That's sanctification.
21:49: When we first come to Christ, we are walking out of step with him.
21:55: But as we get closer to him, our step gets closer to him.
22:00: We become closer and more conformed to him.
22:04: That sanctification, a pastor friend of mine says it like this.
22:09: He said sanctification is Jesusification.
22:16: He said it's Jesusification, which is not a great word, but it's good theology nonetheless.
22:25: That's God's will for you.
22:28: God's will for you is that you be conformed to the image of his son.
22:34: Romans chapter eight says, God works all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
22:43: For whom he foreknew, did he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son? That's what we have been called to, to be conformed to the image of Christ.
22:56: So here is what I want to tell you today.
23:00: I think this makes it all kind of come together.
23:04: If we are actively conforming ourselves to Christ, if we are actively growing in our Christianity, actively praying and seeking God and seeking to be like Christ, when those times come, when we have two options and we don't know where to go, we stop and we pray and then we decide.
23:47: If you have worked towards being conformed to the image of Christ, go with what you want because you have conformed your wants to his wants.
23:58: And God will confirm in your heart because you will always, of the two, want one more than you want the other.
24:06: And if you have tried to conform yourself to Christ, you can then begin to listen to that little voice inside of you that's saying, go this direction and not that direction.
24:18: But here's the thing, the problem that most people have is they don't conform themselves to Christ.
24:25: They live with this constant me, me, me-ism.
24:29: And then when it comes to these questions, they go with the one that they want, but it wasn't the right one because they weren't concerned about being conformed to Christ.
24:37: They were concerned with their own desires.
24:40: If we first conform ourselves to Christ, if we first seek after him with everything that we have and make sure we're in his prescriptive will, then we can listen to what he places in our hearts.
24:52: One of the Bible verses that I love is from the Old Testament.
24:57: It says, delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.
25:03: Some people take that to mean, well, if I delight myself in Jesus, he's going to give me a Mercedes.
25:08: He's going to give me a new house.
25:09: He's going to give me a new car, a new wife, a new family, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
25:15: That's not what that means.
25:17: The health and wealth false teachers have taught us that that's what that means, but it's not what it means.
25:21: Here's what it means.
25:22: It's very simple.
25:23: Delight yourself in the Lord and God will guide the desires of your heart so that your desires will be his desires.
25:34: Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart because your desires will be his desires.
25:42: You will want what he wants for you.
25:47: I'm telling you guys, you guys are little and this is hard to understand.
25:50: This is adult material, but I hope it's helped you some to know this.
25:55: The goal of your faith, the goal of your Christianity is to be closer to Christ every day.
26:03: And if that happens, your heart will change to be like his.
26:08: And what you want will be what he wants for you.
26:12: Everybody understand? All right, let's pray.
26:16: Lord, thank you for this opportunity to study your word.
26:18: I thank you that you've given us clarity in your word and even on the subjects that we don't know the answers to.
26:24: What jobs to take and who to marry and things like that.
26:26: We know one thing, Lord, if we can form ourselves to Christ, you will give us the desires of our heart.
26:32: So we thank you for that truth.
26:34: We just pray for constant sanctification and a closer walk with you in Jesus name.
26:40: Amen.