Walking in the Will of God — Don Wilkerson

World Challenge, P .O. Box 260, Lindale, TX 75771 or calling 214 -963 -8626. These messages are copyrighted and you are welcome to make copies for free distribution to your friends.

I'm not going to say anything different tonight than what the Lord prepared my heart for before we came here. And I want you to remember that as we go along. My brother David did not know what I was going to preach tonight at all, didn't discuss it at all.

Walking in the Will of God Through Matthew 12

And that's important for me to say that in light of the message tonight. Matthew chapter 12, if you have your Bibles, turn with me to verse 46 through verse 50. Walking in the will of God. Matthew 12 verse 46, I'm reading from the New American Standard.

It says, while he was still speaking to the multitudes, behold, his mother and brothers were standing outside seeking to speak to him. And someone said to him, behold, your mother and your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak to you.

And he answered the one who was telling him and said, who is my mother? And who are my brothers? And stretching out his hand towards his disciples, he said, behold, my mother and my brothers. For whosoever does the will of my father who is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and our father.

We thank you tonight for the work that the Holy Spirit has already been doing and searching out hearts tonight. We thank you for the call of commitment that already went out in this service. We thank you for the prayers that have been lifted in behalf of the needs tonight.

We pray also your blessing around the communion table as we break bread together. And now as we serve the living bread, the living word, anoint thy people, anoint thy servant tonight. Lord, we want to hear from you.

Let the word take root in our hearts tonight. Let it not fall upon hard ground, but may it fall upon soil and hearts that are ready to receive and to hear and to do. In Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated.

You may be seated. One of the burning questions frequently on the heart of a truly committed Christian. Excuse me. Someone say something. Oh, I thought somebody said we can't. You can hear all right. I thought somebody said they can't hear.

Discerning God's Will in Life's Decisions

All right. One of the let me start again. You pardon me. One of the burning questions frequently in the heart of a truly committed Christian is this. How can I know God's will for my life? It is possible to be led by the spirit in the decision making issues of life.

Young people face God's will relative to their future. We all face whether it be in little things or in major things. We face decisions in which we desire to know the mind of God, the will of God, so that we will do what he wants us to do, not doing what another man wants us to do, not doing what we want to do ourselves, or not doing what the enemy would have us to do, but doing and being led by the Lord.

Bob spoke Sunday on discernment, discerning right from wrong, discerning truth from error. But once you begin to walk in discernment, there is also the need not only to choose between righteousness and unrighteousness, but sometimes we have to choose between the good and the best.

Sometimes we have multiple choices. And what happens when you have, not only do you have to turn against wrong, but what happens when you have two or three rights, two or three things, and you need to know the right decision.

You want to know God's will. And so I want to address myself to this subject. This will be by no means an exhaustive study on it, nor will it be the last word on it from this pulpit. God does promise us that he will never leave us nor forsake us.

He says, Lo, I am with you always. If we walk in righteousness, we walk in holiness. He says he is with us. And certainly this refers not only to his presence, but I believe it refers to his providential and personal guidance in our life.

Rejecting Signs, Formulas, and Human Spiritual Advisors

Knowing the will of God is not as complicated as we sometimes make it out to be. You know, I'm amazed and amused at the same time by some Christians' attempt to find God's will. There are some people, they'll go to the Christian bookstore, they'll find the latest book on the four easy steps how to find God's will, and they'll look for some magic formula.

Or other people depend on dreams or on visions. Or Bob spoke Sunday morning about people who open their Bibles and say, Lord, show me a verse and lead me in this verse. And he didn't, you know what that's called?

I don't know if you know what that's called. It's called scriptural roulette. Scriptural roulette. Because as Bob said, a man opened his Bible and talked about a man who hung himself in one part, and the next part said, go and do thou likewise.

So you've got to be careful. When we were over at Town Hall, there was a young man who came into the meeting. He just came one night, was only in one service. He was from out of town, but I watched him.

He sat right in the front, and I noticed that he didn't respond. He didn't listen to the word. And at the end he came up to me and he said, I have no direction in my life. I have no guidance in my life.

Would you say a word over me? Would you give me a word? And I said, no, we don't do that here. We don't do that type of thing in this church. There is also no lack of so-called spiritual advisors in the church.

You've seen it when you go through your neighborhood. Somebody will pass out a little slip of paper announcing about some spiritual advisor on the block. Well, not only are they in the neighborhood, they're also in the church.

And you have to beware, there's always somebody that will give you some advice that will confuse you. I think of the fellow who, a young man was working on a farm. Just new in the Lord, and he's working out on the field.

And all of a sudden he saw written in the sky, the initials GP. He looked at those words. He stopped, he parked his tractor. He jumped out of his tractor, ran across the field. Ran into the church to his pastor.

He said, pastor, he said, God has called me to the ministry. God's called me to the ministry. He's all excited. And the pastor said, sit down, sit down, tell me about it. He said, how do you know you're called to the ministry?

He said, I saw it written in the sky, GP, go preach. Pastor knowing the young man, he said, young man, that means go plow, go plow. I had a young man approach me on the campus of a Bible school. I wanted to preach there.

And he came up to me. And he had in his mind's eye, he saw in his mind's eye the letters GPWW. Now that's not exactly what he saw, but it was the equivalent of it. What he saw was he believed that God had told him to go preach WW without a wife.

And he came up to me. He said, brother Don, he said, I'm getting this feeling that maybe I'm not supposed to marry. And that I think maybe I have the gift of celibacy. And I've known the young man for many years, fathers in the ministry, and he was very sincere.

He said, brother Don, he said, do you think this is of God? He said, do you think maybe this is what God's calling me to do, go preach without a wife? And that I got the gift of celibacy? And I said to him, I said, David, when you look around the campus here, do you see any young ladies that you're attracted to?

He said, oh, yes, sir, I do. I said, you don't have the gift of celibacy. He said, oh, thank you. Thank you. And he ran off. I'm happy to tell you today that he's happily married, has a child, he's in the ministry.

Christ as the Light Who Leads Into God's Will

Beware. Now, how would you like to be, how would you like it if your pastors were like in the Old Testament and we wore priestly robes? Because in the Old Testament, the priest had on their vest, they wore a breastplate of judgment.

And inside it were two unusual stones called the Urim and the Thummim. And one was a dark stone and one was a light stone. And there's a lot of mystery surrounding this, but we do know this, that at times whenever anybody needed direction or the people of God needed direction, that the priest would reach into his breastplate of judgment and he would pull out a stone.

And if it was a dark, if it was a light stone, the answer meant yes. If it was a dark stone, the answer meant no. Now, how would you like to have a pair of those stones to walk around with all the time?

And every time you needed a decision, you just reached into it. Or if we pastors had it, I can just see it now. A young man comes up to me and says, you know, I've got this young lady and I want to know if it's God's will, would you reach in?

And I reach in and pull out a dark stone. Means no. And he said, Pastor, could you try that again? No, we don't have the Urim and the Thummim today, but I want to tell you this. You know what they mean spiritually, what those stones mean?

Urim means lights and Thummim means perfection. And what it means that Christ is the light of our understanding. And if we walk in him, and if we walk in the light, he will lead us perfectly into his divine will.

And that's what I'm talking to you about tonight. Now the teaching, this teaching is drawn from Matthew the 12th chapter during the ministry of Jesus. And while he was teaching, word came to him that his mother and father, excuse me, his mother and some of his family members were outside wanting to speak to him.

Family Opposition to Obedience and Righteousness

Now the reason is not given to us by Matthew, but from other scriptures we can deduct the possible reasons for the interruption. You see, Jesus' mother was concerned for the physical and the emotional state of her famous son.

He had been giving himself without restraint to the crowds. The crowds were pressing upon him everywhere he went. He seemed to have no escape from the hurts and the hunger. He didn't have time, many times to eat properly or to rest properly.

There were hostile crowds that followed him as well. And all of this news came to Mary's attention. In fact, some of his brothers, the brothers of Jesus, even had said to Mary, we're not sure he's alright.

We're not sure everything is alright. In fact, some of them were embarrassed by his behavior because it tells us in Mark 3 .31 that when his own people, meaning his own household, heard of his going about, his doings, they went out to take custody of him for they were saying, he has lost his senses.

And so Mary comes under those conditions and she's worried about her son. And when she arrives, he is surrounded still by a big crowd. She can't get near him and so she sends a messenger out with the word that his mother and his brothers are outside the crowd wanting to speak to him.

And Jesus gave an astonishing answer. Look at it, what it says here, Matthew 12, 47. Someone said to him, behold your mother and I can just see it. They interrupt Jesus or they pass a note to him. Actually, it was a messenger who came to him and interrupted him and said, your mother's outside and there's probably an urgency in the voice.

But Jesus does not react. He does not immediately jump up and go and speak to his mother or to his family. Instead, he counters with a question. And he says, who is my mother and who are my brothers? And then he turns to his disciples that are sitting close to him and he extends a finger, he points to them and he said, behold, right here before your eyes, here's my mother and here's my brothers.

In other words, this is my real family. Now, Jesus, follow me carefully. Jesus was not being rude or disrespectful to his mother, not at all. He knew why they had come. The Bible says that he knew all men.

He needed not that anybody should bear witness concerning him for himself, for he himself knew what was in man. You see, Jesus was not going to be turned aside from his mission, even by a well-intentioned, anxious or worried mother.

He wasn't going to do it by his relatives, some of them who did not believe in him. Now, please listen carefully. And as I said, this is what I became prepared to minister tonight, haven't changed anything in the direction that I'm going to go.

And what we learn, the teaching that I get from this is this, my friend, beware, your own family members can try to deter you from walking in the will of God. If they're unsaved, they'll probably will say the same thing about you as they did about Jesus.

He's gone off his rocker. He's out of his mind. He's lost his senses. He's down there with those, whatever, whatever they call us. I remember one of our young teen challenge converts got saved. And every time he'd visit his family, every time he'd see his family, he'd visit them.

And they got so tired of him. You know, they said of him, he used to come high on drugs, all the time he'd come home high on drugs. Now you come home high on Jesus all the time. And they said, you're nothing but a fanatic.

He said, what would you rather have, a fanatic or an addict? But the wife of another situation, a wife said to, tragically, she said to the young man, she said, I'll take you back as a drug addict. I won't take you back as a Christian.

Your own family, yes, can deter you from seeking the will of God. But you know, more subtle can be the reaction you get from another saved member of your family. Especially when you decide to walk in total righteousness.

Sometimes, for example, either the husband or the wife wants to walk totally in the will of God and the other is still compromising. And you know what the Bible says about that. Some of you know what it says.

I'll read it to you from Luke 14, 26. It says, if anybody comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yea, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

You see, what it means is we are to come against and hate the spirit of compromise or sin or error that's in our family if we're trying to be seduced by it, if they're trying to seduce us by it. You see, another member of the family may very subtly stand in your way of fulfilling righteousness.

The Bible says a man's enemies can be those of his own household. We have a couple that attend our church occasionally on Sunday. They drive about three hours. David may have referred to this one time, I don't know.

He was a pastor in a church, in a city. I'll not tell you where the city is, and I'll not tell you the denomination that he was a part of, lest there be any Assembly of God people here tonight, so I won't mention the denomination.

But this young man began to get a heart for God. He began to get a heart for righteousness and deeper things of God. And he looked around him, and he found that the others near him and other pastors were not moving in the same direction.

And it began to stir his heart for something more. And then he went to a minister's meeting on one occasion. And the topic of the minister's meeting was holiness preaching, why holiness preaching produces kooks.

And he was so disappointed, he was so brokenhearted by that, and he finally realized that he had to cut himself off from the denomination. And left the church, and he's been coming to our church on Sundays.

But you know, the thing I guess that burdened or broke his heart, and I went out with him a few weeks ago, and we had dinner together. His father, who was also a pastor, was so disappointed in him. Now I can understand his father in one hand is disappointed because he's left his father's church.

But on the other hand, the father ought to be proud of his son, because he's trying, and he wants to walk in righteousness. And he goes, and his father is so cold to him, as if he just wants to cut him off, when his father ought to be proud of him because he wants to go on in the Lord.

Avoiding Stumbling Blocks Within the Church

Now my friend, if you're the guilty one, if you're the husband or you're the wife, or you're the member of the family that's holding somebody else back, the Bible warns against that. Romans 14 .20 says, Do not tear down the work of God.

He says, It is not good to eat meat offered to idols, or drink wine, or do anything by which your brother stumbles. My friend, if you try to stand in somebody's way from going on in God, you come under the judgment of God.

Not only can one's own immediate family be a stumbling block to fulfill obedience, but so can other members of the household of faith, or your church. I've seen young converts come and get saved. And pretty soon they go deeper.

They have a hunger for God. They want to go deeper in the Lord. And they bypass the people who led them to the Lord. And I've seen the people who led them to the Lord then turn on them because they want to walk in righteousness.

They want to walk totally with the Lord. I know a young man, or heard of a young man who got saved. And he gave this testimony. He said, For the first six months of my Christian experience in my church, I looked around and I found role models.

I found this man. And I found this person that encouraged me in the Lord, and excited me about going on in the Lord. He said, But then about six months, seven months, eight months of the Lord, he said, I suddenly came to an unusual conclusion.

That everybody else in that church had only grown six or eight months in the Lord. Even though they had been in the church for years. He said, I had no more role models. They were all babies because they had not wanted to go on in the things of the Lord.

And walk in total obedience to the Lord. Now what Jesus demonstrates here is that his next of kin are those who do the will of my Father, which is in heaven. His word is a declaration of the fact that those who abide by his spiritual principles have a closer affinity to him than those who have natural relationships.

And so he tells his mother. He tells his brothers. He tells his disciples. He tells the crowd about him. As well as he tells us that those who have fellowship with him in adhering to righteous principles are nearer akin to him than even the woman who has been so highly honored to bear him and give him his natural birth.

And in light of this, I don't know what this does to the teaching that builds a whole doctrine of mariology based on his mother having some special access to her son. She didn't have it on this occasion.

But how good it must have felt to be one of those disciples. Oh, how it must have felt to be one of the disciples when Jesus turned to them and they knew that his mother was out there wanting to speak to him and he turned and he pointed to them and he said, Who is my mother?

Who's my brother? Who's my sister but him? And he points to them and he says, Here, these who are doing the will of God. It must have made them feel good. Would he do that to you? Would he turn to you and say, You're family.

You're family. You're part of my family. Now, another lesson that Jesus teaches here is that to know him is to do his will. Whosoever does the will of my father who is in heaven, he is my brother, my sister, my mother.

Jesus' Pattern of Obedience to the Father

Now, if anyone asks, How can I know God's will? The answer is simple. Behold the man. Look at Jesus. The first record of Jesus' activity. The first recorded words. If you have a red letter edition in your Bible, you don't need to turn to it but you'll see it.

It's in the second chapter of the gospel of Luke when Jesus' parents had lost him for several days and you know what happened. They found him in the temple. He was teaching the scribes and they were surprised and they were disappointed and when they found him, this is what he said to them.

He said, Why is it that you are looking for me? Did you not know that I had to be in my father's house or in other words about my father's business? Now, remember that most of Jesus' life was not spent in public service but in private obedience.

For 18 years he served willingly and faithfully and fruitfully and obediently in a carpenter shop in an obscure village. He was, if you please, a blue collar worker. He did not go through rebellious teens.

He did not complain about having to make a living. He grew in stature, the Bible says. He did not feel it demeaning to work in a carpenter shop. Nor was he always thinking, Why can't I be in full time service?

Thinking that that was more glamorous or more exciting. But Jesus spent 30 years preparing for three and a half years of ministry. I spent three and a half years preparing for 30 years of ministry. And Hebrews 5 and 8 says, Although he was a son, he learned obedience from the things that he suffered.

Look with me at John the second chapter. Go to John chapter two. When Jesus did then begin his public ministry, you know this story of what happened on this occasion at the wedding of Canaan. Note again what he said to his mother.

Verse three it says, And when the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, They have no wine. And Jesus said to her, Woman, what do I have to do with you? My hour is not yet come. What Jesus was saying here is, Mother, I do not reveal myself according to your timetable.

He was here transferring himself from his parental authority that he had been under. And now he is transferring himself and he's saying to his mother, I don't go by any man's will or any man's wishes.

I don't reveal myself by your timetable, but I am under the authority of my father. And if he works, I work. And that is of course exactly what happened. Look in verse five. His mother said to the servants, Whatsoever he says to you, do it.

And I want to tell you, that's very good advice. And this is how you know the will of God. Now please follow me. We do the will of God by knowing the will of God as revealed in his son. Jesus is the example for us.

The will of God is discovered and must be discovered in a life of personal and direct immediate communion with the Father, with God. It must be discovered by a persistent search of scriptures as to what the will of God is.

And this is illustrated in the life of Jesus. Listen to what he said. He said, I speak nothing of myself. What my father gives me to speak, that I speak. I do nothing of myself. What my father commends me, that I do.

He said, I am not alone, my father is with me. Jesus did the will of God because he knew the Father and he was committed to the Father's will. And he knew the will of the Father because he lived in communion with the Father.

He waited for the Father. He submitted to the Father. He inquired of the Father. And he said, any person who follows me or follows my Father's will, that's my brother, that's my sister, that's my mother.

And Jesus carried out the Father's will as precisely as the servants followed his instructions in the wedding. Look at verse seven. And Jesus said to them, fill the water pots with water and they filled them to the brim.

And they filled them to the brim. And that's what God has called you and I to do is to fulfill the Father's will to the brim. Hallelujah. Let me ask you tonight, how full is your water pot? Is it half full?

Is it three quarters filled? Does it have a leak in it? Or is it full filled with obedience, with a commitment to the obedience of Jesus Christ? You see the secret, the secret to knowing God's unrevealed, please follow me because this is the heart of my message.

The secret to knowing God's unrevealed will for your life is simply to obey him to the brim in every area of his revealed will. Let me say that again. The secret to knowing his unrevealed will, the secret to knowing his divine guidance and direction in your life is first of all obey him.

Whatever he tells you to do, do it. Knowing or finding God's will in matters of personal decision is simple, but it's difficult at the same time. I say it's simple to understand, but the difficulty comes if you don't walk in his revealed will.

And Jesus said that he is close. He is family. He is intimate with those who do his will. And out of that intimacy, out of that closeness, Jesus will be a friend.

This is the end of side one. You may now turn the tape over to side two.

Holiness, Guidance, and the Promises of Scripture

Because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built upon, he shall receive a reward. And my friend, we're trying to minister to you in this church so that when the fire comes, you're on a solid foundation and you can stand and you can say, He will be a revealer of the pathways that we should follow.

Oh, I wish somebody had made it clearer to me when I was younger or earlier in the ministry that there is a relationship between divine guidance and holiness. That when you walk in holiness, when you walk in obedience to his revealed will, he will show you the path that you are to trod.

Like down here on earth, there is a relationship between the two. Listen to these promises. You don't have to turn to them, listen to them. Psalms 1 -6 says, For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous.

And if the Lord knows the way, do you think he's going to withhold it from us? No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. And I believe that includes decision-making areas of your life, divine guidance.

Proverbs 2 -7 says, He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. Psalms 37 -23 says, The steps of a good man or a righteous man are ordered by the Lord. Hallelujah. Proverbs 3 -32 says, The secret, his secret is with the righteous.

If you want to do a fantastic Bible study, get a concordance and look up the word righteous and everything that is accompanied with the word righteous or righteousness, you'll get blessed out of your socks, I want to tell you.

I'm going to write a book on prosperity, about the rewards of the righteous. It all has to do with righteousness. His secret is with the righteous. Listen, Proverbs 15 -19 says, The way of the righteous is made plain.

Now follow me please. The number one reason Christians find it hard to know God's will in personal matters, in business matters, in family matters, is that they have not been fulfilling righteousness in adhering to the commandments of God's revealed will.

It's as simple as that. Obey Him. Do what He tells you to do in the areas of His revealed will and He will lead you, He will guide you. The example of Peter. Turn with me to John 8th chapter. You see, there are times when we cannot understand God's future path for us because we are not stepping rightly in His present path.

Peter's Failure to Follow Before He Was Ready

And so was the case with Peter. John chapter 8. John chapter 13. I'm sorry. John chapter 13. Peter asked Jesus, he said, Lord, why can't I follow you now? Why isn't it my will to follow you now? And Peter boldly proclaimed, he said, Lord, he said, I'll lay down my life for you.

I'll lay down my life for you. But you see, Peter's commitment at that time was only from the neck up. It was only in his mouth. It wasn't down in his heart. Look at verse 36. Simon Peter said to Him, Lord, where are you going?

And Jesus answered, where I go, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow me later. Now, Jesus was going to the cross and Jesus is making reference to the fact that one day Peter would also go to a, he would be martyred as well.

And he said, Peter, you're not ready to enter into this aspect of my will yet. But afterwards, after Jesus had dealt with the sin, the carnality in Peter's heart, after it was exposed and deposed, then Peter could come out of his confusion.

He was able to know clearly what the will of God is. And I know what Peter's going through. I know by personal experience that whenever I am confused about God's will, it's usually because of a breakdown in my relationship to the Lord.

And when my channel is clear to the Lord in walking in righteousness, the channel is clear coming back the other way for Him to lead me in the path that I need to go down here on earth. Divine guidance is the privilege and the very characteristic of God's people.

Romans 8, 14 says, For all who are being led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God. The same grace of God that saves us has given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. Unto life and godliness.

Trusting God for Present and Future Guidance

Now if anybody asks and says, is it possible in everything to know and do the will of God? I want to tell you the answer is yes. It's the believer's privilege to so walk as to please God, to not be conformed to the world, to be transformed by the renewing of the mind so as to prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Now my friend, think about it, think about it. If you have enough faith to believe that God can take you from time square to heaven, can't you have enough faith to believe that He can take you from today to tomorrow to the next week?

I mean, I got enough faith that God can take me to heaven. Well praise God, the same faith, the same grace can take me through tomorrow, hallelujah. Jesus prepares me not only for heaven, He prepares me for earth.

He prepares me not only to die, He prepares me to live now, hallelujah. And He said He will lead me beside still waters. He will restore my soul. He will guide me in the path of righteousness, hallelujah.

Doing the Father's Will as Christ's Family

There's another thing, and I'm going to close with this. There's another interesting thing that Jesus said here that intrigued me. He said anybody who does my Father's will, anyone who does it, that person is my mother, he's my brother, and he's my sister.

And I thought, Lord, how can I be a mother to Jesus? How can I be a brother to Jesus? How can I? But that's what Jesus said. Anybody who does my will, he's my brother, he's my sister, he's my mother. Now, think about a mother.

What does a mother do? What's one characteristic about a mother? And the word that comes to my mind is comfort. Comfort. A mother is one who comforts. And I thought, Lord, you mean to tell me that's what you want?

Yes, when I do your will, I am comforting your heart. You're pleased with me. I think of my own three children who love the Lord and are serving the Lord and are following in his will, how it comforts the heart of my wife and I.

And how much more when you and I do what is pleasing to God, he looks down and he said, there's family, hallelujah. Oh, what comfort you bring to my heart. I want to bring comfort to his heart, hallelujah, by doing his will.

That's what Jesus said. Anybody who does my will is like a mother to me. And then he said, anybody who does my will is a brother to me. And then I turned to Proverbs 117 and it says, a friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity.

And I said, Lord, I want to be a brother to you. I want to be one who is faithful in adversity. Do you know what adversity means in Hebrew? It means a tight spot, a tight place. A brother is born for a tight spot.

When you're really in need of a helping hand, when nobody else will be there, a brother will. And Jesus said, whosoever shall do the will of my father, he is my brother. I thought about this and said, Lord, you want me to be a brother when you're in a tight spot?

And I thought, Lord, are you ever in a tight spot? And you know something? There are times when Jesus is in a tight spot. And you know when it is? It's when you are faced with doing the will of God or not doing the will of God.

It's whenever you are in a compromising situation. It's whenever you are in a situation of temptation and you have to make a choice. At that moment, Jesus is in a tight spot because if you give in to that temptation, you dishonor the name of the Lord.