Three conditions to meet to know God’s will for your life
The First Condition: You Must “Trust in the Lord.”
For the unsaved, it is God’s will that you get saved. God has a decreed will and a permissive will. God has decreed some things that will happen. God decreed the death of Christ for our sins before the foundation of the world. In Acts 2:22-23, wicked men carried out the predetermined plan of God when they crucified Christ. Even the decreed will of God does not eliminate human responsibility for which these wicked men are accountable to God.
God also has His permissive will or what He desires but does not decree. God desires the salvation of all people. 2 Peter 3:9 says clearly the “Lord…is longsuffering to us ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” This is what God desires not what God has decreed. This is God’s wish.
This is absolutely the first step to knowing God’s will. You must trust Christ as your Savior. You cannot attempt to know God’s will in other areas until this issue is settled.
The Second Condition: You Must “Trust in the Lord, with all your heart.”
First, we must be saved and next, we must be surrendered to know His will. Paul says a similar thing in Romans 12:1-2. The question is, “Is it possible to be saved and not surrendered?”
Paul calls for our surrender in Romans 12, not Romans 1.
In Romans 1-3, Paul convinces all that they are sinners.
In Romans 3-5, Paul says the convinced sinner can be justified by faith.
In Romans 6-8, Paul informs the justified believer of how to live the holy life.
In Romans 9-11, Paul comforts us with God’s sovereign control of our lives.
In Romans 12, Paul finally challenges us to “present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God…. that you might prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
Have you come to this point in your Christian life where you can honestly say, “Not my will but thy will be done?” Why would God reveal His will to someone unwilling to do it? When I was first called to preach, I told the Lord, “I will preach, but I will not be a missionary.” Three years later as a junior at Piedmont Baptist College, I finally surrendered to God’s will whatever that entailed. I started planning to go to the mission field in Brazil with Jimmy Rose for the summer. At the same time, God opened the door for me to pastor my first church. It was not God’s will for me to go to the mission field but God wanted me to be willing before He would lead me into His perfect will.
The Third Condition: You must “Trust in the Lord, with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him.”
In addition to being saved and surrendered, we must be saturated with God’s Word to know God’s will. The better we know God’s Word, the better we will know God’s will. The word “Acknowledge” comes from the Hebrew word (yada) which means “Know.” In Genesis 4:25 “Adam knew (yada) his wife, and she bare a son.” If we know God intimately and experimentally through His Word we can better know His will.
Chuck Swindoll wrote of “a man who was driving through Washington, D. C. when his car stalled in front of the Philippine Embassy. He took that to mean that he should be a missionary to the Philippines. Then there was the woman who wasn’t sure she ought to go on a trip to Israel. One night she was reading through the travel brochures and tour information and noticed that the flight was to be on a 747. She woke up the next morning, 7:47 was on her digital clock, and took that as a sign she should go to Israel. This sort of nonsense is what I call ‘voodoo theology.’ It is nothing more than superstition …. God has spelled out many of His directives very clearly in Scripture” (Charles Swindoll. The Mystery of God’s Will, page 39).
In God’s Word, you will find Precepts or Specific Commands.
These verses are like the traffic sign, “Speed Limit 35.” These are the specific commands regarding God’s will. For example, Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4:3 wrote, “This is the will of God, that you should abstain from fornication.”
In God’s Word, you will find also Principles or General Guidelines. These verses are like the traffic sign, “Drive Carefully.” The meaning of this sign will vary according to road conditions. When I was praying about getting married, no verse commanded, “Tim White, thou shalt marry Becky Bender.” But there is a general principle in 1 Corinthians 7:40 that I am to marry “only in the Lord.” With this general guideline and others, I knew it was God’s will to marry Becky Bender.
When we meet these conditions, God states the consequence: “He shall direct your path.”
The word “direct” comes from the Hebrew word yashar, which means to make straight or smooth. It is used in Isaiah 40:3 to describe the future ministry of John the Baptist who would ‘make straight’ [Hebrew yashar] in the desert a highway for our God.” In Isaiah’s time, the way one a country rolled out the red carpet for a visiting king was to send road workers to fill in potholes “every valley shall be exalted” and shave down the big bumps “every mountain and hill shall be made low” and also straighten the bends in the road “the crooked shall be made straight.” John prepared the people spiritually by preaching repentance and straightening them out as much as possible in preparation for King Jesus.
If you know and do the will of God, it will make your life smoother in contrast to rebelling against God’s will. Proverbs 13:15 states the opposite of 3:6: “The way (or road or life) of transgressors is hard.” I have some friends right now, who would give anything to go back and undo major sins and get back into God's perfect will. In Part 3, we will examine the three methods, God uses to lead us into His will.