When God's Will Isn't Clear

Most of the decisions you will make today aren’t explicitly addressed in the Bible. Questions like, should I eat out today? What should I wear? Should I respond to this instance of my child’s sin with correction or forbearance? Should I shop today or tomorrow? Should I check my email again?

The Bible doesn’t even give specific guidance on huge, life-shaping decisions like should I marry this person? Should I give more or save for retirement? Should we adopt a child? Should I pursue a different vocation? Should we homeschool? Should I pursue chemo or try an alternative cancer treatment? Should we buy this home or a less expensive one? Which college should I attend? Is it time to put my elderly parent in a nursing home? Should I go to the mission field? Should I separate from my spouse while we work on these very painful issues?

These kinds of decisions tend to have multiple acceptable options within the scope of God’s revealed moral will, his commandments. Yet he cares deeply about the details and course of our lives. So what guidance does he give to help us navigate ambiguous decisions? He says,

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2).

What does this mean? It means that God has a design in the difficulty of discerning. The motives and affections of our hearts, or “renewed minds,” are more clearly revealed in such decision making.

If God made more things explicit, we would tend to focus more on what we do rather than what we love. Like Pharisees, we would tend to whitewash our tombs with the appearance of obedience — to impress others — rather than deal with the dead bones of our self-righteous pride.

But in decisions that require discernment, the wheat is distinguished from the tares. We make such decisions based on what we really love. If deep down we love the world, this will become apparent in the pattern of decisions that we make — we will conform to this world.

But if we really love Jesus we will increasingly love what he loves — we will be transformed by renewed minds. And our love for him and his kingdom will be revealed in the pattern of small and large decisions that we make.

I say “pattern of decisions” because all of us sin and make mistakes. But conformity to the world or to Jesus is most clearly seen in the pattern of decisions we make over time.

That’s why God makes us wrestle. He wants us to mature and have our “powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:14).

The wonderful thing to remember in all of our decisions is that Jesus is our Good Shepherd. He laid down his life for us so that all of our sins (including every sinful or defective decision) are covered. He will never leave or forsake us. He has a staff long enough to pull us out of every hole and a rod to guide us back when we stray.

And someday we will see that it really was him leading us through the confusing terrain of difficult decisions.

[written by Jon Bloom of desiringGod.org
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/when-gods-will-isnt-clear]

Check This Out

A Study of The Knowledge of the Holy - Chapter 20 - The Love of God

Chapter 20 – The Love of God

·        Prayer - Father, we are often troubled in mind, hearing within us both affirmations of faith and accusations of conscience. We are sure that there is in us nothing that could attract the love of One as holy and as just as You are. Yet You have declared Your unchanging love for us in Christ Jesus. Your love is uncaused and undeserved. You are the reason for the love in which we are loved. Help us to believe the intensity, the eternity of the love that has found us. Then love will cast out fear; and our troubled hearts will be at peace, trusting not in what we are but in what You have declared Yourself to be. Amen.

·        God is love (1 John 4:8) – love is an essential attribute of God, not God Himself.  Otherwise, love = God and we would be bound to worship love.  This can lead to potential heresies.

·        From God’s other attributes, we learn much about His love

o       God is self-existent à His love had no beginning

o       God is eternal à His love can have no end

o       God is infinite à His love has no limit

o       God is holy à His love is pure

o       God is immense à His love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, and shoreless sea

·        Love wills the good of a person and not harm or evil.  “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18).  Fear persists while we are subject to the will of someone who does not desire our well-being.  The moment we come under the protection of one with good will, fear is cast out.  A child lost in a crowded store is full of fear because it sees the strangers as enemies.  In the arms of the mother moments later, all terror subsides.  The known good will of the mother casts out fear.

·        As long as we are in the hands of chance, look to the law of averages, trust in ourselves to outsmart the enemy, we have every good reason to be afraid.

·        To know God’s love and enter into His secret place of refuge, this and only this can cast our fear.  There may still be physical and mental pain, but the deep torment of fear is gone forever.

·        God is love and God is sovereign – His love compels Him to desire our everlasting welfare and His sovereignty enables Him to secure it.  Nothing can hurt one whom God has chosen.

·        God’s love tells us that He is friendly and His Word assures us that He is our friend and wants us to be His friends.  Abraham was called a friend of God (James 2:23) and Jesus said to His disciples, “You are my friends.” (John 15:13-15, Luke 12:4)

·        Love is an emotional identification.  It freely gives to the object of its affection.  Acts of self-sacrifice are common to love. “Greater love has no man that this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

·        God is self-sufficient and yet He allowed His heart to be emotionally identified with us.  “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

·        Love also takes pleasure in its object. God’s purpose in creation was His own pleasure (Revelation 4:11, Psalm 104).  He takes particular pleasure in His saints (Philippians 2:13). True, God hates sin and never looks at iniquity with pleasure, but where people seek to do God’s will, He responds in genuine affection.

·        Christ’s atonement removed the wall to divine fellowship.  Now in Christ, all believing souls are objects of God’s delight.  “The LORD your God is with you and He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you.  He will quiet you with his love and He will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17)

·        According to the book of Job, God’s work of creation was done to musical accompaniment.  “Where were you,” God asks, “when I laid the foundations of the earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the angels shouted for joy?” (Job 38:7).  Music is an expression of pleasure, and the pleasure that is purest and nearest to God is the pleasure of love.

o       Hell is a place of no pleasure because no love is there.

o       Heaven is full of music because it is the place where pleasures of holy love abound.

o       Earth is the place where the pleasures of love are mixed with pain, for sin is there, and hate, and ill will. In our world, love must sometimes suffer, as Christ suffered in giving Himself for His own.  But we have the promise that the pain will finally end and we will enjoy forever a world of perfect love.

·        Love cannot remain silent.  It is active, creative, and generous.  “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8). “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.” (John 3:16).

·        The love of God is one of the greatest realities in the universe.  It is personal and intimate.  The Christian experiences this highly satisfying love that is far above even the purest and noblest philosophy.  This love is more than a thing; it is God Himself in the midst of His Church singing over His people. True Christian joy is the heart’s response to the Lord’s song of love.

The hidden love of God, whose height,
Whose depth unfathomed, no man knows,
I see from far Your beautiful light,
And I sigh for Your rest;
My heart is pained, nor can it be at rest

till it finds rest in You.
--Gerhard Tersteegen

A Study of The Knowledge of the Holy - Chapter 15 - The Faithfulness of God

Chapter 15 – The Faithfulness of God

·        Prayer - It is a good thing to give thanks to You and sing praises unto Your name, O Most High, to show forth Your loving-kindness in the morning and Your faithfulness every night. As Your Son while on earth was loyal to You, so now in heaven He is faithful to us, His earthly brethren; and in this knowledge we press on with every confident hope for all the years and centuries yet to come. Amen.

·        God’s attributes

o       Something that is true of God

o       Not isolated traits or things in themselves, but part of the perfect wholeness of God.

o       Must see them all as one, not separated.

·        In studying any attribute, the essential oneness of all the attributes is apparent.

o       If God is self-existent, then He must also be self-sufficient.

o       If God has power, He being infinite, must have all power.

o       If God possesses knowledge, His infinitude (limitlessness) assures us that He possesses all knowledge.

o       If God is immutable (never differs from Himself), He cannot change, and thus He must remain faithful.

·        Any failure within the divine character = imperfection, which is an impossibility with God.

·        All of God’s acts are consistent with His attributes.  No attribute contradicts the other, but harmonizes and blend into each other.  Is God torn between His justice and His mercy?  Does God incline toward one and then another, unsure and emotionally unstable?  No.  Any human notion of a God that is unstable just proves our limited human understanding of God.

·        “God being who He is, cannot cease to be what He is, and being what He is, He cannot act out of character with Himself. He is at once faithful and immutable, so all His words and acts must be and remain faithful.”

·        How do men become unfaithful?  Desire, fear, weakness, loss of interest, strong influence from without.  None of these things can affect God.  He is His own reason for all He is and does.  He cannot be compelled from without, but forever speaks and acts from within Himself by His own sovereign will.

·        Deuteronomy 7:7-9, Psalm 111, Psalm 145:13, Isaiah 25:1, Rev. 19:11

·        We rest our hope of future blessedness upon God’s faithfulness.  Only as He is faithful will His promises be kept.  Only as we trust that He is faithful may we live in peace.

o       Knowledge of God’s faithfulness brings new hope to the tempted, anxious, fearful, and discouraged.

“There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.” – Martin Luther

Happy the man whose hopes rely
On Israel’s God; He made the sky,
And earth and seas, with all their train;
His truth forever stands secure;
He saves the oppressed, He feeds the poor,
And none shall find His promises vain.
--Isaac Watts

A Study of The Knowledge of the Holy - Chapter 17 - The Justice of God

Chapter 17 – The Justice of God

·        Prayer - Our Father, we love You for Your justice. We acknowledge that Your judgments are true and righteous altogether. Your justice upholds the order of the universe and guarantees the safety of all who put their trust in You. We live because You are just - and merciful. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, righteous in all Your ways and holy in all Your works. Amen.

·        In the Bible, justice and righteousness are synonymous.  The word in the original language can be translated either way.

·        God was held up by the psalmists and prophets of Israel as the all-powerful ruler, reigning with equity.

·        Holy men of compassion, outraged by the injustice of the world’s rulers, prayed, “Lord, God of vengeance, rise up, O Judge of the earth and repay to the proud what they deserve.  How long shall the wicked triumph?” (Psalm 94:1-3)  This was not a plea for personal vengeance, but a longing to see moral justice prevail in human society.

·        Justice embodies the idea of moral equity, and iniquity is the exact opposite (in-equity, the absence of all that is right, fair, honest)

·        “Justice requires God to do this.” – an error in thinking.  Nothing requires God to do anything.  When we speak of the justice of God, we are speaking of the way He is.  When He sentences evil men or rewards the righteous, He simply acts like Himself from within, uninfluenced by anything outside of Himself.

·        The problem for the ages: How does God spare the wicked, if God is supremely just?  None is righteous.  We have all sinned and stand justifiably condemned and guilty before God.

o       The Doctrine of Redemption – through the work of Christ in atonement, justice is not violated, but satisfied.  Mercy does not become effective toward a sinner until justice has done its work.  The just penalty for sin was paid for when Christ our Substitute died for us on the cross.

o       The message of Divine justice discharged (on Christ) and mercy operative (on us) is more than just theological theory.  It announces a fact made necessary by our deep human need.  When infinite equity encounters our chronic and willful in-equity, there is violent war between the two, a war which God won and must always win.  But when the penitent sinner casts himself upon Christ for salvation, the moral situation is reversed.  Justice goes over to the side of God’s trusting children.

o       God’s justice stands forever against the sinner in utter severity.  The popular hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly allows millions to silence their fear of God and practice all pleasant forms of iniquity while death draws nearer every day and repentance goes unregarded.

o       As responsible moral beings, we dare not fool around with our eternal future.

A Study of The Knowledge of the Holy - Chapter 13 - The Divine Transcendence

Chapter 13 – The Divine Transcendence

·        Prayer - O Lord our Lord, there is none like You in heaven above or in the earth beneath. Yours is the greatness and the dignity and the majesty. All that is in the heaven and the earth is Yours; Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, O God, and You are exalted as head over all. Amen.

·        God’s transcendence –  God is exalted far above the created universe, so far above that human thought cannot imagine it.

o       far above ≠ physical distance; “far above” refers to the quality of being.

§         A child strays from a party of sightseers and becomes lost on a mountain and immediately, the whole mental perspective of the people in the party is changed.  Admiration of the grandeur of mountain and nature gives way to distress for the lost child.  The group spreads out over the mountainside anxiously calling the child’s name and searching desperately every secluded spot.

§         What brought about this change of perspective?  The majesty of the mountains is still there, but no one notices.  All attention is given to the tiny two-year old girl weighing less than 30 pounds.  It is because the little girl can love and laugh and speak and pray, and the mountain cannot.  It is the child’s quality of being that gives it worth.

§         As high as the child’s quality of being is to the mountain, God’s quality of being is infinitely far above the quality of being of the little girl.

o       God is spirit, so to Him, magnitude and distance have no meaning. They are only used as analogies and illustrations, in order for God to communicate to our limited understanding.

§         “For thus says the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy. (Isa 57:15)

o       Imagine a race of 2D people living in a 2D world.  How would you communicate a 3D object, such as a box or a house to them?

§         Draw the object using perspective, but even then, they would not fully perceive what we perceive.  They may even be a little perplexed about the lines of perspective.

§         So it is with us, inhabitants of a 3D world, trying to fully perceive what God is like, the place where He resides, how God is three yet one, etc.

·        Though God is far above, He puts in the hearts of the ones He
chooses a desire to seek Him and to know Him.

·        The olden days men of faith “walked in the fear of the Lord” and
“served Him with fear.”  However intimate their communion with God,
however bold their prayers, at the base of their religious life was the
conception of God as awesome and dreadful.  The fear of God was unlike a natural fear of danger, but it was a nonrational dread, a feeling of personal insufficiency in the presence of God Almighty.

o       Genesis 17:1-3, Exodus 3:2-6, Isaiah 6:5, Daniel 10:7-9

o       A vision of the divine transcendence ends all controversy between the man and his God.  The fight goes out of the man and he humbly asks, “Lord, what will you have me to do?”

·        Many call themselves by the name of Christ, talk much about God, and pray to Him sometimes, but evidently do not know who He is. “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of lif,” (Prov. 14:27) but this healing fear is today hardly found among Christian men.

·        People treat the divine name of God as if the incomprehensible, most high Being, who is beyond the reach of thought, were only their equal.  Often, His name becomes a mere word, to which no thought is attached.  If truly they were impressed by His greatness, they would be speechless, dumbstruck with awe and reverent worship.

How shall polluted mortals dare
To sing Thy glory or Thy grace?
Beneath Thy feet we lie afar,
And see but shadows of Thy face.
--Isaac Watts

A Study of The Knowledge of the Holy - Chapter 3 - Why We Must Think Rightly About God

Chapter 3 – A Divine Attribute: Something True About God

·        Attribute – something that is true of God.  We look to His attributes
as answers to the questions, “What is God like?” or “What kind of God
is He?” or “How may we expect Him to act toward us?”

·        These questions and pursuit of the answers are pleasing to God.  Throughout the Bible, we are instructed to seek the Lord.  Desiring to know what God is like is part of what it means to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

·        God has provided answers, not all the answers, but enough to satisfy our intellect and captivate our hearts.

o       Revealed in nature < the Scriptures < in the person of His Son

o       Though the revelation is there, the answers by no means lie on the surface.  However brightly the light may shine, it can only be seen by those who are spiritually prepared to receive it.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Matthew 5:8

·        Attribute ≠ trait, characteristic, quality, words that are proper when we describe created beings.

o       We must break the habit of thinking of the Creator as we think of His creatures.

o       A person’s character is the sum of the traits that compose it.  These traits vary from person to person and from time to time.  They come and go, burn low, or glow with intensity throughout our lives. 

o       With God, He is made of none, neither created nor begotten.  He exists in Himself.  His being He owes no one.  His substance is indivisible.  He has no parts, but is single in His unitary being.

o       An attribute is how God is.  It is what He is.  It is what God reveals, by His spirit, to His creatures.

o       Love, for example, is not something God has which may grow or diminish or cease to be.  His love is the way He is, and when He loves, He is simply being Himself.  That is why John writes, “God is love.”  And so it is with all the other attributes.

·        How does knowing the attributes of God help us practically?

o       Immutability of God – God never changes, constant > a world that changes (often for the worse)

o       Divine Omniscience – God knows all things > things don’t make sense, confusion

o       Wisdom of God – God is supremely wise > human wisdom and understanding is lacking

o       God’s Omnipotence – God’s sovereignty > natural calamity, illness, death, big bully

o       God’s Omnipresence – everywhere, yet separate = He is near yet transcendent > loneliness and fear

o       The Justice of God – All things will be accounted for, no good will be left unrewarded, no evil deed will be left unpunished.  > unrighteous and wicked treatment of the innocent

o       The Mercy of God – renews us and gives us new life when we sin.

·        How does knowing the attributes of God ultimately bring glory to God?

o       By delighting in and being captivated by the attributes of God, and not just intellectually recognizing them, we are compelled to worship the One who is, and thus He receives the glory.

A Study of The Knowledge of the Holy - Chapter 2 - God Incomprehensible

Chapter 2 – God Incomprehensible

·        Prayer:  Lord, how great is our dilemma! In Your Presence, we best be silent, but love inflames our hearts and compels us to speak. Were we to hold our peace the stones would cry out; yet if we speak, what shall we say?  Teach us to know that we cannot know, for the things of God no man knows, but only by the Spirit of God. Let faith support us where reason fails, and we shall think because we believe, not in order that we may believe. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

·        What is God like? “God is not like anything; that is, He is not exactly like anything or anybody.”

·        We learn by using what we already know as a bridge which we pass over to the unknown.  It’s impossible for the mind to crash suddenly past the familiar into the totally unfamiliar.  Even the most daring mind is unable to create something out of nothing by a spontaneous act of imagination.

·        Read Ezekiel 1 – examine verses 5, 7, 13, 16, 22, 26, 27, 28

o       The prophet uses the words “likeness”, “looked like”, “like”, “appearance”, “appears to be”

o       Even the throne becomes “the appearance of a throne” and He that sits upon it, though like a man, is so unlike one that He can be described only as “the likeness of the appearance of a man.”

·        Scripture

o       God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. –Paul (1 Timothy 6:15,16)

o       “Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens—what can you do? They are deeper than the depths of the grave—what can you know? –Zophar (Job 11:7,8)

o       No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
–Jesus (Matthew 11:27)

·        “The yearning to know What cannot be known, to comprehend the Incomprehensible, to touch and taste the Unapproachable, arises from the image of God in the nature of man. Deep calleth unto deep, and though polluted and landlocked by the mighty disaster theologians call the Fall, the soul senses its origin and longs to return to its Source. How can this be realized?"

o       The answer – through Jesus Christ our Lord.  In Christ and by Christ, God is made known.

o       He shows Himself not to reason but to faith and love.

§         Faith is an organ of knowledge

§         Love is an organ of experience

·        “Truly, God is of infinite greatness, more than we can think, unknowable by created things.  But even here and now, whenever the heart begins to burn with a desire for God, she is made able to receive the uncreated light, and inspired and fulfilled by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, she tastes the joys of heaven.  She transcends all visible things and is raised to the sweetness of eternal life.” – Richard Rolle, Christian writer, Bible translator, 13^th century)

·        What is God like? If we mean “What is God like in Himself?” then there is no answer.  The name of God is secret and His essential nature is incomprehensible.

·        What is God like? If we mean “What has God revealed about Himself?” then there is an answer, for He in condescending love declared certain things to be true of Himself.  These we call His attributes.

Only to sit and think of God,

Oh what a joy it is!

To think the thought, to breath the Name 

Earth has no higher bliss.

--Frederick W. Faber, 19^th century theologian

A Study of The Knowledge of the Holy - Chapter 1 - Why We Must Think Rightly About God

Chapter 1 – Why We Must Think Rightly About God

·        Prayer:  Those who do not know You may call upon You as other than You are, and so worship not You, but a creature of their own fancy; therefore, enlighten our minds that we may know You as You are, so that we may perfectly love You and worthily praise You.  In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

·        Worship is pure or corrupt depending on how the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.  So the most important issue before the church is always God Himself, and the most important thing about a person is not what he may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.

·        If we were able to get from a person, a complete answer to the question, “What comes into your mind when you think about God?” we may be able to predict the spiritual future of this person.

o       Share and write down your thoughts about God.

·        “Without doubt, the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God, and the weightiest word in any language is its word for God. Thought and speech are God’s gifts to creatures made in His image; these are intimately associated with Him and impossible apart from Him. It is highly significant that the first word was the Word: ”And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We may speak because God spoke. In Him word and idea are indivisible.”

·        Actual thoughts vs. creedal statements

o       “Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is.”

·        Practical Christian living

o       In these last days, the Christian conception of God is so decadent (self-indulgent) as to be beneath the dignity of the Most High God that it often leads to our own moral calamity.

o       The person who believes rightly about God is relieved of ten thousand temporary problems.

o       But even if all these problems were lifted, there remains one mighty single burden of eternity – that burden is his obligation to God.  When his conscience tells him that he has failed in loving God as he ought, the pressure of self-accusation may become too heavy to bear.

§         The Gospel lifts this burden, but unless the weight of burden is felt, the gospel will mean nothing.  Unless a vision of God high and lifted up is seen, there will be no woe and no burden.

§         Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.

·        Idolatry

o       At the root, idolatry is an insult on God’s character.

o       The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is.  It says this other thing is more worthy than God.  It substitutes the true God for something that is created, including ideas.  “Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous. The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.”

·        Consequences of thinking wrongly about God

o       History of Israel – bondage to sin, idolatry, death

o       The Church

§         Worship, purity, faithfulness, anything godly will rot and decline when the right and true knowledge of God is missing.

§         Only love à(leads to) condone sin; Only justice à no mercy; Only fear à no love; etc.

§         The church that simply gets a wrong answer to the question, “What is God like?” will start to believe that God is different than what He actually is, and that is heresy of the most deadly kind.

·        “The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him - and of her. In all her prayers and labors this should have first place. We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past. This will prove of greater value to them than anything that art or science can devise.”