Word For The Day: Reading The Word of God to Know the Will of God
One of the things that people wrestle with in their minds is the idea of God’s will for the lives. At some point in our lives, we have asked ourselves what the will of God is in a specific situation we are facing or decision we have to make; usually this happens when such decisions or situations are life changing. Unfortunately, we usually go about it the wrong way because our “spiritual senses” are not well trained by constant exposure to God’s Word to know his will. Therefore, I would like to share with you about the importance of READING THE BIBLE IN ORDER TO KNOW GOD’S WILL. Let us look at the Scriptures:
Romans 12:2
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.
What does the text mean?
In verse 1, Paul commands the believers to present their bodies to the Lord in a way that is worshipful in everything they do. Then in verse 2, he commands them that their minds and thinking be transformed so that they would not think and act as the world does. As we learned yesterday, knowledge and wisdom (which happens in our minds) only occurs when we expose ourselves to God’s Word and meditate on it regularly, that is, the only way our minds can think the right way is when we constantly meditate on what The Lord says.
Paul then ends the verse by saying that, once you have renewed your mind, you will discern/know the will of God because you have tested everything as you run it by the filter of his Word. This is the heart of the matter; you can only know God’s will if you are constantly going to the source of it—the Bible. Sadly, when we faced a decision, we attach moral value to the decision itself and not to our lack of following biblical commandments. We think that the whole issue is about the big decision we have in front of us, but it is not ultimately about that, it is about following God’s revealed will in the Bible. If you know that the decision you are making is in light with God’s reveled will and if the Bible has been constantly renewing your mind to conform it to him and not the world, then you will make the choices that are pleasing to him. Nevertheless, that will only happen when you spend time in the Bible getting to know your God and what he desires of you. In short, if you are to know God’s will, you have to go to the Bible. It is not a magical formula, but it is something that happens over a long period of time.
What does it mean to me?
I have already hinted on practical issues above, but let me give you some examples. 1 Thessalonians 4:3 says “that the will of God is your sanctification…” If you are trying to decide whether you should move out of Kitwe, you need to ask yourself “would this decision help my sanctification?” “Will it help me grow more in Christ”? There might be other factors involved, but that is a basic question. If you want to know if you should be dating someone or not, the same passage of 1 Thessalonians 4:3 tells us that we must abstain from sexual immorality. You then can ask yourself, “is this relationship helping me be more holy or is it inciting me to sexual immorality?” Let’s suppose that you have been praying for employment and someone offers you a very good job that pays very well, but you have to work late and you have to work on Sundays; if your senses are trained by the Word and you test everything by its filter, then you would know that this job is a temptation; it does not come from God because he does not will that we stop congregating and having fellowship with God’s people. Again, there could be other circumstances involved or even different situations, but I think you get the idea.
In short, if you constantly struggle with knowing what to do and focus to much on the decision itself and not on the principles of God’s Word, then you might need to begin daily meditations on the Bible and begin to train your spiritual senses in the gym of the Scriptures, only then you will learn to filter every decision through the lenses of the Word.
May God help you
Pastor Hector