In our Sunday school class, we have been discussing the will of God and how we can discern it. In class we have talked about the known will of God, but here I want to discuss the unknown will of God. What I mean by that is that God tells us things that are his will. He tells us that He wants all to come to repentance and no one to perish (though we understand many will choose Hell), He tells us to give thanks for all things, He tells us to pray without ceasing. All of these are known wills. We know them because He tells us them. Sometimes though we need specific answers to circumstances we find ourself in. These require us to either know the unknown will of God, or get it wrong.
MANY asked Mr. Müller how he sought to know the will of God, in that nothing
was undertaken, not even the smallest expenditure, without feeling certain he
was in God’s will. In the following words he gave his answer:
“1. I seek at the beginning to get my heart into such a state that it has not will of its own in regard to a given matter. Nine-tenths of the difficulties are overcome when our hearts are ready to do the Lord’s will, whatever it may be. When one is truly in this state, it is usually but a little way to the knowledge of what His will is.
“2. Having done this, I do not leave the result to feeling or simple impressions. If so, I make myself liable to great delusions.
“3. I seek the will of the Spirit of God through or in connection with the Word of God. The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also.
“4. Next I take into account providential circumstances. These plainly indicate God’s will in connection with His Word and Spirit.
“5. I ask God in prayer to reveal His will to me aright.
“6. Thus through prayer to God, the study of the Word, and reflection, I come to a deliberate judgment according to the best of my ability and knowledge, and if my mind is thus at peace, and continues so after two or three more petitions, I proceed accordingly. In trivial matters and in transactions involving most important issues, I have found this method always effective.”
And did this plan work? one asks. Let Mr. Müller’s testimony answer.
“I never remember,” he wrote three years before his death, “in all my Christian course, a period now of sixty-nine years and four months, that I ever sincerely and patiently sought to know the will of God by the teaching of the Holy Ghost, through the instrumentality of the Word of God, but I have been always directed rightly. But if honesty of heart and uprightness before God were lacking, or if I did not patiently wait upon God for instruction, or if I preferred the counsel of my fellow men to the declarations of the Word of the living God, I made great mistakes.”
Taken from “George Müller – Man of Faith and Miracles,” by Basil Miller, pp. 50-51 and as found on GorgeMuller.org
What if we were so consumed with doing God’s will that we didn’t make any decisions, great or small, apart from seeking his will and then waiting until we had found it. Isn’t that how Jesus lived his life? How the world would be turned right side up if only a few men practiced what Müller preached and lived.
Finding the will of God is extremely important to me. I do not want to go through my life and find that I completely missed what God had for me. I understand that God’s will may not be what I want. It will lead through sufferings and possibly deaths that I would rather avoid. However, it is my goal to find, and do Gods will even if it means I go through the shadow of the valley of death, because it is there that he will be with me. I want to say as Christ, “Wist ye not that I must be about my father’s business?” Or “thy will be done.”
Isn’t that What Christianity is? The pursuit of Christ as Lord of our lives. Saying I’ll go wherever, do what ever. “To do thy will O, God.”
S. T.
Acts 20:24
"But none of these things move me..."
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