Video Transcript: God's Will for Your Life

Video Transcript - God's Will for Your Life (Dr. Feddes)

To be reading God's word from the book of Romans, chapter 12, the first 11 chapters of Romans speak of God's way of salvation from the terrible plight of our sin, and something of God's eternal plans that were unfolded among the people of Israel and among non Israelite people. So those first 11 chapters show God's plan of salvation, perhaps more clearly and in more detail than any other part of the Bible. And then in chapter 12, and following we move into the therefore because God has done such things. What are we to be like? Therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. You're not conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good pleasing and perfect well. Provide a grace given to me . I say to every one of you do not think of yourself more highly than you are. 

But rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. for justice, each of us has one body with many members and these members do not all have the same function. So in Christ we though many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us if your gift is prophesied by prophecy in accordance with your faith, if it is serving, then serving, if it is teaching, then teaching, if it is to encourage them give encouragement. If it is giving, then give generously, if it is to lead, do it diligently, if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. Love must be sincere, hate what is evil, cling to what is good. be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above your Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord. be joyful in hope. patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you bless, do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice mourn with those who mourn. live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud. Be willing to associate with people of low position. 

Do not be conceited. Do not repay no one evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. It is possible as far as it becomes on you. live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge. My dear friends will leave room for God's wrath For it is written. It is mine to avenge I will replace as the Lord. On the contrary. If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give them something to drink and do. Doing this you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. This ends the reading of God's Word. And God always blesses His Word to those who listen. Knowing God's will, is a great desire of many people. For some, it's a great desire because they really know and love and trust God, and they want to understand his ways for them better. For others, knowing God's will is a great desire because they're not that wild about God, maybe. 

But they know that God runs the show. And if they could get some tips on what they should do in order to have a prosperous and successful life, they would like to know what the next step ought to be. And so there may be noble and God given reasons for desiring to know God's will, and some not so Noble or great reasons for desiring to know God's will. But a lot of people do want to know God's will. If you're not interested in knowing God's Will at all, well, then you've got a bigger problem, that you do not know God, or care about him at all. And it is vitally important that you come to know Him and to trust Him and to love Him and to serve him. But for those who do have a relationship with God or desire to then know what God wants, or what his will is, is very important. And in thinking about that, we need to first of all just settle what is meant by God's will. What do we mean when we talk about discovering God's Will or doing God's will? And what is Paul talking about in this particular passage in Romans 12:2, when he says vineya will be able to understand what God's will is, what does he mean by that? 

My God's Will, well, there are a few different senses in which the phrase will of God or God's will is used. And it's really very important to understand what Paul means by this passage and when you're studying other passages, what they're talking about when they talk about God's will. One meaning, and the most common meaning in the Bible is God's moral will God's desire for us. It's revealed in his commands and in the principles that are revealed in Scripture. And the Bible is not silent about what God desires. The very core of it is the commands love God above all, love your neighbor as yourself. That's unfolded further in the 10 commandments, the first part of which tell us about loving God. And the last commandments tell us and guide us in loving our neighbor. And so you have the two great commandments love God above all and your neighbors yourself. You have the 10 commandments, which elaborate further on that and then you have lots of stories. 

principles and details of Scripture, which reveal more about what God wants everybody to be like. The moral will of God revealed in Scripture is what God wants every human being male or female, to be like, and the commands that he wants us to follow. There's another sense in which God's will is used. And it's not so much his moral will or his desire for us as such, but his sovereign will or his decree, not just for us, but for everything that happens in the universe, because God as the almighty, creator of all things, who runs everything, according to his wisdom and plans, has a plan for the whole universe. And this sovereign will is hidden in this secret plan which predestined everything that happens. God appoints all that happens, and that's different from his moral will. For one thing is different in that it covers all things and not just as commands to people were for another thing is different in that not everything in God's sovereign will is something that God likes, or that God enjoys, or that God is pleased with in and of itself, God's sovereign will include sins that people do horrible things that happen, not because God enjoys it or likes it, but because it's part of his great plan for the whole universe. And he takes even the bad stuff and incorporates it into his plan and into his appointment. 

But that is very far from saying that, therefore, anything that happens is stuff that God really enjoys just because it's part of his plan and appointment. And it's very important when you're looking at different passages of the Bible. Sometimes it talks about God who does everything according to the counsel of his will. It's talking there about his sovereign will, and he 's in Romans 8:28. It says God works all things together. For the good of those who love Him, He works them together for them. That doesn't mean he enjoys all of them, or desires, all of them in and of themselves, but even the bad stuff, he can work for the good of those who love Him. So there is this moral well, and it's very important to know that it's different from his sovereign will and the One God gives us to be known. He wants us to know what he desires and commands and he wants us to follow it. And the other most of it, he doesn't even want us to know. He gives us the big picture in the Bible, but he does have a great will that incorporates all things, that he has a great plan of salvation. And the Bible reveals how God unfolds that plan of salvation, and invokes it to even reveal some of the great things about the future of the big picture. But God does not reveal every detail of his sovereign will to all of us ahead of time. And there's a third sense in which God's will is often used in books that are written about discovering God's will, and in conversation among Christians. And that is the sense of an individual Will you might label it, or that God has an ideal detailed life plan uniquely designed for each person, which he progressively reveals to a believer through inward impressions and outward signs. So God's got a specially tailored plan for you. And ideally, you will get the details as you need them for that plan. And you'll live by that direction each day. And if you get that direction, follow it, you will be in God's perfect plan for your life or in the center of God's will, as it is sometimes described. 

And if not, you won't be in this plan, understood in this way is that God has a will for the various things that you choose to do and he definitely has choices He wants you to make and they're not revealed in the Bible. But they are things He wants you to do. And so your job, if you will, is to find out what that is, by the means God provides and then do it. Now, it's important when thinking about this, to realize that the concept of an individual will have its problems. It is true that God has a plan for your whole life. But is it true that he reveals to you those plans in detail ahead of time, so that you can follow that individual step by step? Now notice, this is a different question than asking, Does God ever give individual guidance? Or is he interested in the individual details of your life? 

The answer to those is yes. He is interested in the details of your life. He does, in fact, in his sovereign will have appointed and planned even ahead of time, but does he have an ideal life plan where if you blow it, you've blown it. And now you're already into Plan B and Plan C and kind of moving down the list of less and less desirable plans because you didn't get the memo, or didn't follow the memo at a particular juncture of your life. Well, someone who's really done a lot of work and evaluating that particular idea of the individual will of God that we're supposed to kind of discover an unfolding will as God reveals it to us is Gary Freesen. In his book decision making, and the will of God, he does a lot of detailed biblical study, and also explores some of the practical things that are involved in this. So here's kind of how he outlines the common view of God's individual will for you. The basic premise or assumption is that for each of your decisions, God has a perfect plan or will that he intends for you to know. The purpose is that your goal should be defined. God's individual will make decisions that fit it and the process usually isn't you interpret inner impressions and outward signs and kind of see how they line up in making those individual choices. And this is how the Spirit leads you into this individual will. And then the proof that you actually were walking in his individual will is that you'll have a sense of inner peace, as well as an experience of outward success to confirm that you decided rightly, and that you're in the center of God's will. 

Now, Dr. Freesen, believes that this concept is wrong, that it's mistaken. He also observes that many people who have followed this process have actually been blessed, have been led in God's will and have flourished. And he says that he considers this to work for some people, not because the actual idea is correct, but because they are godly people, and they are people who desire to know God's Will God doesn't always wait till we have everything straight in our minds with perfect clarity before he blesses and guides us in our life. And so it is very possible that when people who are immersed in God's word and have a lot of God's wisdom anyway, but have a slightly misunderstood idea of how the individual will have God works, they may still be blessed a great deal. And so it'd be a big mistake. So anybody who holds this view is just out of it, and they're always on the wrong track. Well, not necessarily. But nonetheless, I agree with Dr. Friesen that we shouldn't try to discover God's individual will in the manner that is described as he puts it. God does not have an ideal detailed life plan uniquely designed for each believer. He does have that life plan but that it must be discovered in order to make correct decisions. That's the part that is disagreeing with God. How's that? How's And plan for your life. But it's not in the sense of the individual ideal life plan that you've got to discover a step at a time or you won't be doing God's will. The concept he says, of an individual will of God cannot be established by reason or experience, or by biblical example, or biblical teaching. So he says there's nothing, you know, rational that says, This is how God would have to do things. There is nothing in our experience that says God always operates this way. It certainly doesn't prove the fact that God would lead someone in a specific way to say that that's how God always does it all the time. 

Okay, that God gives a specific leading now and then is very far from saying that before you make any decision, you should have God's specific individual will for that choice to be made. And you say, Well, what about biblical examples? If we look at the Bible, the Bible is full of God's guidance. Paul was travelling around, and then he had this vision come to Macedonia and help us and he knew we had to go to Macedonia. Philip was on a mission and the angel of the Lord told him to go out into the desert. And when he went out into the desert, like he was told there he met an important government official who shared the gospel with us and we've got all these examples of people being guided by God. True enough? Does that mean that's how God always ordinarily guides people? No, Paul had one vision and most of the time he was just traveling from city to city because he knew he was called by God to be a missionary. And so he moved from one town to the next to the next. So actually, the biblical examples would indicate that that kind of guidance was real, but it was the exception, not the rule. What about biblical teaching? 

The Bible says God is our guide, even to the end and he, our Shepherd leaves us and all those passages about God's leading while those passages are true But don't equate them with the idea that God tells you in advance your individual life plan. And every decision you make is to be based on your awareness of what the next step in the plan is. The Spirit does give personal guidance as he chooses, but not very often by giving us the advanced details. Now, Dr. Friesen, I outlined some practical problems of seeking that individual will and I apologize if I spend too much on saying what God's Will doesn't mean in this passage. But very often in reading the Bible, it is very important to understand what it doesn't mean, or we get very confused about what it does. For one thing, the view just gets a you have to ignore this view. In countless ordinary decisions of life. How many of you when you got up this morning prayed about what color socks you would wear? Or which shoes you would wear? And should you feel guilty about not Having prayed about that, or waited for an impression about which you ought to do? How many of you prayed about what church you ought to go to today? 

Maybe some of you did. But for many of you the fact that you just woke up and said, Well, we, we go to family faith. So that's where we're going today. You really didn't need to think about it very much, because that's just what you do. There are a great many. Now there are people who actually tried to follow that down to the detail. And it's even been detailed in books about somebody who would actually say that you should wait on the Lord and not do anything until his next prompting. And so she would well as you can guess, lie in bed till noon or later, go deal with the time and have a hard time getting dressed because no detail of her life could be acted upon until she knew that day with a specific leading from the Holy Spirit what she ought to do. So in ordinary decisions, you'll just have to ignore that view entirely. If you're to get ahead in life, because the Holy Spirit is not going to give you a specific heavenly prompt, for every act you do, and every choice you make, it also has a problem in that when you have equal options, you live in fear that you're going to blow it, you say, well, should I go into engineering or computer science? Boy, career choice is important. 

And I gotta gotta gotta know from God, what school I would go to and which of those careers to go into, and I need some Holy Spirit tips on this. Well, the Lord may guide you but very often, if you have equal options, what if God is leaving it up to you to make a choice, there's nothing that he speaks in his revealed moral will against it. And so there may be times when there's equal options, and God will leave it up to you. Let's say you're a young man and you know, three different girls, and they're all kind of nice, and they're all decent looking. And they're all Christians. But you have not had a tap on the shoulder that says she's the one. And if you marry her, your life will be happy. Well, what do you do? One approach is to just wait and wait and wait until you get the tip of which of the three is best. The other might be to get to know each of the three a little better. Or just say, Hey, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna

see if I could start a relationship with one and, and see where it goes and how the Lord leads on that. But you can. You can live in such anxiety when God has not given any command telling you not to do something or what command did God give on, on whom to marry. He said, marry whoever you want, but they must belong to the Lord. That's basically what he said. Now, you have to use other biblical wisdom and Part of it is being attracted to somebody that's biblical to read the Song of Songs, you really should not marry somebody, you know in whom you have no interest or attraction at all that just be very foolish to do. But the Bible does not say that you should marry somebody only after the Lord has said, You shall marry somebody. In fact, they're one of the few cases where God actually told somebody to marry somebody if you shouldn't do that. He told the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute. Because that was a very unusual and exceptional occurrence in which God the Prophet was going to reveal to Israel how unfaithful she was to him. 

But that's one of the rare occasions where God actually gave the name and what he ought to who he ought to marry, and you should not follow that precedent. Now, another problem, you know, aside from the equal options thing, where there are equal options, and both of them are within God's moral will to make your choice. Another danger is that you just get very subjective and inward about it. It's not revealed in the written word of God. And so you're always searching your gut and your impressions and rummaging around in there when you should maybe be consulting instead the mind that God gave you and the wisdom that he intends to expand anybody's Holy Spirit. Another difficulty with this problem is that it frequently promotes very rash and immature decision making. You're not deciding based on the revealed Word of God or on wisdom and common sense, but instead on just always wanting a particular kind of prompting, and that can lead to certain kinds of decision making. I'll give you examples that Dr. Freeze and also mentioned. One is the old God told me card, you can't even discuss things because God told me Okay, in the discussion because who is going to argue when God has said something, you can't even begin to test it with fellow Christians. 

Because no fellow Christian has a voice as important as the voice of God. And so you defend the unwise choices by saying, well, I had it straight from the top. I do not need to talk with anybody else about it. Another problem is delays and delays. Like I mentioned the lady who needed a prompting from the Holy Spirit before she got out of bed, man, I would never get out of bed. I was waiting for that special prompting from the spirit, I think, but I got stuff to do that day and it's time to get up. So but again, there are people who say, Well, I'm not going to start dating a certain person unless I have a direct prompting from above that I ought to. Well for a good interview. Welcome to lifetime singlehood. there are delays to not do anything and also to make a decision. Okay? Now this is not to say that there's never a time to wait on the Lord and say, well, Lord, I'm kind of confused right now. And I'm just going to wait until I have a clearer sense of what I ought to do there. There is a place for waiting on the Lord, don't get me wrong on this. But always waiting on the Lord until the direct message from heaven comes in a very perceptible way, is a good way to miss out on most of life's opportunities and to blow on most of life's important decisions. Now, the difficulty is that sometimes you right off your personal preferences, you know what you want, but you say, but, you know, that's just me. 

What if God wants something totally different? Well, the short answer to that is if he wants something totally different, let him show it to you. And otherwise, if you want it and it's within the realm of God's will go for it. Because God also created you with your desires and preferences and the kind of person that you are and you Keep in mind also what's said here in Romans 12. Paul says now, don't overestimate yourself. Remember the kind of gifts you have and the abilities you have. And then act out of the kind of person God's created you to be with those Holy Spirit given gifts and exercise those that don't try to be somebody else. Another is using fleeces or letting circumstances really, you know, the fleece thing. Gideon said, well make the fleece wet on a dry night. And then he wanted to sign again only to make it dry on a wet night. And ever since then, people have talked about using fleeces to determine God's will. 

So they'll set up a condition in their mind. And if it occurs, then that's their go ahead from God. I'll give an example that has been used by some folks in the dating game. A guy will say okay, here's my fleece. If I call and she's not there, that means that the Lord wants me to wait. If I call and she says no I can scratch off the list. If I call her and she says, Yes, she is the girl for me for sure. Now, maybe it'll turn out that way, good luck it won't. But, but just using setting up a condition that if it turns out that way, then you know, it's the Holy Spirit's guidance is not a very sound approach to decision making, but it is an overused one. We all want to know the future. I remember you know, we're all superstitious. I think I know I am or was and still am, in various ways. I imagine I remember just warming up for basketball games. If my first shot went down during warm up, I thought, Oh, I'm gonna have a good game today. 

Well, didn't didn't always pan out that way. But I would always, you know, that was my marker for how's it going to go today? You know, we were just kind of that way. Another difficulty is that we can make great decisions as long as we are really sincere in our heart because we are very inward focused in this whole approach. And so who even needs to seek counsel as long as you're certain enough and sincere near enough. And And the final one is misusing the Bible in specific decisions, you're wondering whether to move to a new town and that happens to be that day and your Bible reading, you read about Antioch and you know that there's a town called Antioch somewhere. So that's your signal to move there. You know, there's a host of ways in which we can take Bible reading very much out of context as a way to try to get it personalized to us when it was never written to apply to us in that manner. So these are some of the practical ways that we can have immature decisions if we're just waiting for God to unroll the tape. He's got a whole tape of his ideal plan for our life. And he unrolls it a few days in advance or in some cases a few months in advance to show us what he wants and what the next step ought to be. Now, again, just to review there is this moral will of God in which God tells us what he likes. What he expects from us and what he wants us to do, there is the sovereign will in which he appoints all things, but which he largely keeps hidden from us. And then there is this concept of individual will, where the key to pleasing God is finding out in advance his plan for your personal life, and then revealing it to you and you follow it. And I'm suggesting that that's not a helpful concept. 

Again, don't get me wrong, we should look for personal guidance and personal wisdom. And God will sometimes give it in quite unusual and extraordinary ways, but it is not the usual plan. Again, just remind you that great passage, that verse Deuteronomy 29:29, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us in our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law. So God reveals his moral law for us to obey. He conceals most of his sovereign well until the things happen and he doesn't promise to reveal a personal life plan to you or tell you to discover it. So then let's think just a bit about God's sovereign will, because that's a very important sense of God's will to understand we've talked about that already. So be very brief. Remember, James was saying, don't just say we're going to go to us in such a city and make lots of money, and do whatever and have all our big plans, because you're forgetting that God's in charge, and you don't even know if you're going to be alive tomorrow. So whatever plans you make, say if the Lord wills will do this, so that we should make our plans humbly, and remember always that God has the final say. 

And then as Romans 8:28 says, we should trust God to work all things together for good even though he doesn't reveal his sovereign plan in advance. The good news is, he knows the sovereign plan. And the good news is that if you belong to him and love him, he has got all those details working for your good and His glory and you might not be able to figure it out. In fact, a good deal of the time Don't even try to figure it out. Because it will just give you a headache. There are certain things in life that are such a mystery and some of them so terrible that we cannot figure them out. But we can trust that God is working even those things for our good. And another thing to keep in mind then living under God's sovereign will and making decisions is that he's sovereign over the open doors and opportunities and circumstances of every decision. But the requirement of us is not that we are all wise like him. We don't have to become omnipotent.

We don't have to figure it all out. We need to do what He commands in the scriptures and follow the path of wisdom. And he'll be our secret guide, arranging the details of our life, as we follow his revealed direction and then as we're also open to further promptings from the spirit on occasions when he gives those Dr. J. I Packer says that personal messages from Heaven are not and never word God's usual way of leading and guiding even in the Bible where God was sometimes give special leading they were never the usual way by which he guided people. He gave them his law. He gave them his word. And that was their main guide. And then on special occasions, he would give an additional leading God's regular way of showing us what he calls us to is by appropriate application of the ones for all revealed truths of the Bible. We need to understand what's the rule and what's the exception, otherwise, we'll go very far off the tracks. If the rule is know your Bible and know it well and grow in wisdom, then it would be a very great mistake to be waiting for the message a minute approach to following God's will. So Paul says we want to be able to test and approve what God's will is. 

And he uses similar language and other passages he prays that will be filled with a knowledge of his well in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord fully pleasing to Him bearing fruit and every good word. and increasing in the knowledge of God. That's clearly a case of God's moral revealed will, and it's using that same sense in Romans 12:2, his moral revealed will, again, what is his? Well? Well, it's pretty clear in John, if you just need one verse first John 3:23, is pretty good one. This is his command, to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ and to love one another as he commanded us. That's actually a pretty big agenda, to live by trust in Christ, and to love each other. And that will go a long way. When you're asked to get up in the morning and say, What's God's will for today? Well, trust me, for starters, and then love the people around you. And you've already got most of the marching orders you needed for that day. You might be waiting around saying, Lord, I want you to reveal to me who the perfect spouse is going to be. Did you ever think that he might be working on making you into a better prospective spouse before he was going to tell you who the perfect ones were going to be? You know. You say Lord show me what my career ought to be so I can prosper and flourish. And his will for that day might be Would you please help your mom with the dishes? 

Because you're looking for the big picture, and just faithfulness to today's opportunities is what is really required. You even know if you have tomorrow you do know what you have today. Love one another. He's as he's commanded, help out where you can do the things that help you to grow in grace. This is God's will for you, your sanctification. That was brief. That's what I put on the cover of the bulletin today, you may have noticed only a little different translation. God's will is for you to be holy. That's Paul's explanation of God's will he didn't write you know, he wrote a lot but really he didn't write a whole book even on knowing God's will. He has this that God's will is holy. And then he goes on in that context to talk about sexual holiness, and about keeping oneself pure and being able to find a mate in a way that's pure and then being faithful to them and he goes into lots of other details, but the overarching thing is to be holy. Another password talks about the will of the Lord. Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise making the best use of the time because the days are evil. 

Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine for that as debauchery but be filled with the Spirit. One of the most important times of life when people are really thinking hard about God's will is in your late teens or early 20s. And you'd really like to get some tips on the big decisions of life. You will not get that many tips. If you haven't understood that God's will is for you to be holy, and to live in sexual purity and get rid of debauchery and a party life. Don't expect Revelation on the big hard decisions when you're already violating the things that you know to be the will of God for you so understand the Lord's will. And then, of course, this great passage, I appeal to their four brothers, by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God. 

That's your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing, you can discern what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable in perfect. So, Paul's telling us here, how to walk in the will of God. I just want to highlight what's going on with that, to work in the will of God is basically to live as the new you. Earlier in Romans, he says, consider yourself dead to sin, alive to God in Christ Jesus, live as the new you and here's how you go about it. You have a self that is defined by God's mercy and Christ, and it's experienced in the Holy Spirit. You're led by the Holy Spirit, the holy Spirit gives assurance to you, that your children of God, His Spirit testifies with your spirit. And so you're living out of the knowledge that you belong to him that he loves you that he cares for you. Don't even try looking for the will of God until you have understood his mercy. And his grace, and his love so much talk about the will of God in so many attempts to pursue the will of God, whether specifically or in other ways, is burdened by a lack of grace, and by the heaviness of commands. And you need to know that you are under mercy. And you need to know that God is with you. 

And that even when you're making bad decisions, he is walking with you. And if you belong to him, he's going to be working things for your good so live by Mercy because when you blow it, you say, Oh, no, I just ruined the rest of my life. And if you have this specific approach, you may Just think you're just ruining everybody else's too. Because if you were meant to marry Myrtle, and you miss the direction to marry Myrtle Well, you blew it for you and Myrtle. And so you're going to be living in Plan B. But what about the guy who wasn't supposed to marry Myrtle and now ends up with her because you didn't, you know, you could ruin the whole universe by blowing it on one day. You have to live under God's mercy, and under his wisdom and his overall sovereignty and not think there are consequences when we make decisions that do violate God's Will don't don't get me wrong on that. But don't think you've missed everything because you missed those unseen clues for one thing that were never meant to be discovered in the first place. And even when you blow it in relation to God's revealed, well, what you do is this, you repent, you ask God's forgiveness, you beg him to wash away your sin by his blood, and then you start again, and you are in the center of God's perfect will when you do That, because you have just been, again, cleanse, you've been forgiven. 

And now you're in God's will, and he's going to walk with you from there. So you hear a message like this. Some folks might get a little discouraged if you say, well, knowing God's will is important. And you have a solid Well, the foundation of it all is God's mercy in view of God's mercy. Paul goes on to say the rest of what he says. The next thing is you offer your body or your whole self for God's service. consecration, you are devoted, take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to sing that whole song and all the parts of your body and everything that you are. You offer yourself your body to God as a living sacrifice. And that is very key for God to continue to reveal His will in your life and to make you sensitive to it and to walk with it. Someone who said that 95% of knowing God's will is desiring to do it before he finds out. 95% of discovering God's will is desiring to do it even before you find out. And of course, a great deal of what you find out is gonna be found out from the scriptures. If you have no desire to know God's will, you won't even get into the scriptures. But having studied the scriptures and learned from wisdom, and we'll maybe talk about some more things in the future message. If you really aren't interested in walking with God, guess what? You're not going to find out very much. So this whole being consecrated gone, say God, I'm yours. Show me what you want me to know. Use me as you want me to be used. Do with me as you will. If you offer yourself to God, he's gonna do some things in your life. He's going to make some things clear to you. He's going to help you sort things out and he's going to help you to make the decisions and the actions that you need to. 

Very important then is a mind renewed by God's truth. Don't know be conformed to the pattern of this will be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is how most good decisions are made by a renewed mind, not by being faded, you know, here's the next decision. Here's the next one. Here's the next one. Here's the next one. But by having your whole mind, your whole way of thinking, renewed and saturated in the way God thinks, as Paul puts in one place, we have the mind of Christ. He doesn't have to tell us what to do every five minutes. Because when you have the mind of Christ, you know what to do most of the time. And so we need our minds to be renewed if you're immersed in the pattern of this world. And boy, is it easy to do that in the age we live in, especially with all the entertainment that surrounds us constantly, and all the things that provide us input that are not from God. It's vitally important that we have our minds weaned from a lot of the false inputs, and that we have our minds nourished and renewed. By God, and when you have a mind renewed by God, then your thinking and your decision making most of the time is going to be directed by God without God even needing to tell you further instructions, because you have the kind of mind and the kind of will, that he's working in and renewing, but because of course on this side of heaven, our minds still have many confusions and our will still has many wrong priorities. 

We do need sometimes just specific guidance from God and specific course corrections from him. And then we need a will in tune with God's goodness, and that flows out of the other things. He says, if your body is offered to God and you're built on the foundation of God's mercy. And if you've got a renewed mind that thinks like Christ, well, then you're going to be able to figure it out. You're going to be able to test and approve what God's will is, and so the best and most important and central way of discovering God's will for your life. is to be the new you and be the kind of person who makes the sorts of choices that Jesus would make in your shoes, because the mind of Christ dwells in you. This is what we must seek brothers and sisters to grow in maturity in the way of Christ. So that, that we in turn, have the mind and the very will of the Spirit at work in us. Let's pray together, 

Dear Lord, we pray that you will indeed be our guide as you promised that you will be our good shepherd and lead us in paths of righteousness for your name sake, and that not only will you go ahead of us and beside us, but your goodness and mercy will pursue us and follow us all the days of our life and we can dwell in your house forever and Lord on the path that leads there, we pray that you will be our guide and protector and stay each day. Give us your wisdom. Give us learn deeper insight into your word that we may love it and study it and more, and more absorbed the truth of the Word in our lives and illuminated by the presence of the Holy Spirit and his power, able to see how that word applies to our situations now, Lord, you know some here who are really desiring a guidance from you and a sense of what to do and important decisions that they must make. Give them Lord, a sense of confidence that you are planning their life, that you are surrounding them with your love, that you are upholding them by your mercies and forgiveness. And then Lord helps them to make decisions out of a renewed mind that's not conformed to the world, but that is driven by the truth and the love and the reality of Christ for his sake. Amen.