“Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “this is the way, walk in it”. Isaiah 30:21
This is one of the many verses used when it comes to discerning the will of God. Whether it is who to marry, which job to choose, the right colour of shirt to wear, or what colour of toothbrush to buy; we don’t want to set out for the day going against God’s will even concerning our wardrobe (Yeah, I know I’m being petty). I believe God cares about the minute details of our lives but just like the drugs we use to cure cough can be abused and used for selfish and wrong reasons, verses of the Bible can be misinterpreted and used inappropriately in discerning the will of God for our lives. The verse quoted earlier has been limited to only mean when you need to make a decision, you will literally hear a voice telling you which job to take, who to marry, whether to move or not and the list never ends.
This approach to discerning God’s will tells us that the first step to take when faced with decision making is to listen for a voice because as the popular saying goes, “the problem isn’t that God doesn’t speak, the problem is that we don’t know how to listen or recognize that still faint voice.” I have been in a Christian community where validation of spirituality was dependent on one’s ability to “hear God”and you would be right if you thought a number of us had to either battle with indecision while waiting so long to hear God tell us what to do, or got stuck with the consequences of ill-informed decisions from imagining a tiny voice say “right right right”. We wanted to “fake it till you make it”. Don’t get me wrong, God can override the normal and speak to us, even in a gentle voice but only if he wants to, normalizing it and requiring him to do that in every situation goes against His word (God does tell us the way to walk in, in the Bible, fully inspired by the Holy Spirit ). Kevin DeYoung captures it better in his book, Just do something,
“when we read the bible, we hear from God with a confidence we find in no other book and from no other voice. We can read the scriptures knowing that this is what the holy spirit says. And as we read and re-read and ponder and study the scriptures, we will, as 2 Timothy 3:15 says, become “wise unto salvation”.
You might say, “that doesn’t sound easy”. Yes! The bible isn’t a tailor-made manual that tells us to marry Jane and not Janet because the ‘t’ behind Janet stands for trouble, Just do something walks us through how we can lean on the scriptures to make life decisions within God’s will for us. Kevin DeYoung sits in the place of his readers, asking and biblically answering questions we might have about seeking God’s will concerning crucial life decisions. Here’s a question, “whether you’re facing a choice between two jobs or considering a career change or just beginning to explore your vocational possibilities, how does godly wisdom help you make a decision?”
Our desire to seek the will of God for our lives hold good motives; We want to use our lives to please our creator and rightly so. We want to make sure we’re following his plan for us. This desire can also hold unconscious impure motives like, we want to be able to figure everything out completely, so we can now trust God. We would certainly not need to trust God in our life’s journey if what we need to trust is certainty.
But there are still some big elephants in the room, if the Bible is God’s voice to us today how do we deal with dreams, visions, fleeces, impressions, open doors, random Bible verses, casting lots, liver shivers, writing in the sky, peace of mind, etc in discerning God’s will? I haven’t seen another 143 paged book that biblically, contextually and carefully addresses these questions and more.
I hope in this book you find a liberating approach to finding God’s will. It provides practical sessions on things to think about, talk about and like the topic encapsulates, ultimately to do.
Kevin DeYoung ends the book this way;
“So, the end of the matter is this: live for God. Obey the scriptures. Think of others before yourself. Be holy. Love Jesus. And as you do these things, do whatever you like, with whomever you like, wherever you like, and you’ll be walking in the will of God”
I pray you will understand after reading this book why all you need to do is to seek ye first the kingdom of God and Just do something!
You can get the book here: https://amzn.to/2suUIoC
Victoria is unlearning and learning about God and life and hopes to communicate this through her writing. She has a vulnerability towards books and can never imagine herself saying no to reading.