By Steve Horn
In 1993, Ron Wolf was the General Manger of the pro football team, the Green Bay Packers. Mike Holmgren was the Head Coach. The late Reggie White, a devout Christian and free agent at the time, publicly declared, “I want to go where God wants me to go.” Mike Holmgren called Reggie and said, “Reggie, this is God, go to Green Bay.” Ron Wolf, reportedly called too and said, “Reggie, this is Ron Wolf of the Green Bay Packers. I would like to offer you 17 million dollars over 4 years for you to come to Green Bay.” Finally, Brett Favre, quarterback of the Green Bay Packers called and said, “Reggie, I want you to come to Green Bay, so I can be assured that you want hit me anymore.”
How do you know the will of God? Wouldn’t you like for God to write His will for you in the sky? “Jim, marry Jennifer!” “Take that job!” Don’t take that job!” “Go to UL!” “Go to LSU!” “Teach 1st grade Sunday School!” But all of us have lived long enough to know that since the coming of the Holy Spirit, rarely if ever to my knowledge, has God spoken in the kind of dramatic ways we read about in the Bible. So, how can we know God’s will?
- To know God’s Will, we must seek God. (Jeremiah 33)
We seek the answer, God seeks the relationship. God could give us the answer right away. He could write in the sky or speak audibly, but what we would lose is the process to a deep, abiding relationship with Him.
In Jeremiah 29:13, we read, “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” We will know Him to the degree that we wish to know Him.
- To Know God’s Will, we must believe that God will speak. (James 1:5-8)
Henry Blackaby wrote a classic work titled Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God. In that book, Blackaby suggested that God speaks by the Holy Spirit through…
- Bible
- Prayer
- Circumstances
- Church
These 4 areas are expounded in Henry Blackaby’s classic work, Experiencing God. I’ve always understood that if God is going to speak to us by these four ways, we must understand two keys.
2 Keys to Understanding God’s Will:
- Consistency in these 4 areas.
That is, you must constantly be searching to discover God’s will. If you believe that God speaks to you through the Bible, you must read, study, and meditate on the Bible so that God might speak.
- Consistency of these 4 areas.
That is, you know God is speaking when you begin to sense that these 4 areas are all saying the same thing.
- To know God’s Will, we must surrender any will of our own. (Luke 22:42)
This is the hard part.
I’ve learned that sometimes knowing God’s will is not our struggle, but doing God’s will is our real struggle. A pastor by the name of John Sartelle said, “Most of us do not want to know the will of God to do the will of God, but to consider doing the will of God.” George Truett, long time pastor of First Baptist, Dallas, said, “To know the will of God is the greatest knowledge; to do the will of God is the greatest achievement.”
Steve Horn is pastor of First Baptist Church in Lafayette and a past Louisiana Baptist Convention president. Horn’s editorial first appeared in his blog, which can be accessed here.
