God has a will for our lives and he wants us to know and in most cases He wants us to know it worse than we want to know it. One question is how in the world does God speak to us through Scripture and how are we to use the scripture to determine and discern God’s will for our lives?
God’s never going to lead you to build a boat and put in a couple of all the animals. You probably won’t be in a situation where you are to march around a building or a city seven times and it fall right down.
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Video Highlights
At 11:23, Andy Stanley’s Message talks about how God doesn’t do anything the same way twice:
God doesn’t do anything the same way twice. Have you noticed that we just look around the room at all our different faces? You know there’s never an exact same snowflake and there are over 600 kinds of beetles. I mean God is a God of variety and so the odds of your situation paralleling the situation of someone in the Bible and therefore you do exactly what they did that that’s not the best way to use scripture.
Isaiah wrote, he said for My thoughts and speaking for God for My thoughts are not your thoughts in other words God saying and this isn’t new news you saying we don’t think alike but we don’t think alike about anything. My thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways. In other words, the way you would normally do something is not the way I would normally do it. The way that you would normally respond to circumstances is not the way I would normally respond to the way you handle yourself and finances and family. What comes very natural to you and what seems very logical to you God would say is not my way at all declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts then your thoughts.
Before you start making decisions and before you even entertain asking the question God what is your will you need to know right up front we don’t think alike. What is naturally intuitive to us may actually lead us astray in the situation since we are using our own reasoning powers. When it comes to discerning God’s will our logic from God’s perspective may be illogical. To make a decision as it relates to relationships when our heart is telling us something and our heart is leading us in a direction it may very well be that that’s not the direction God would have us lean it all. We can’t necessarily trust our hearts, and we can’t even necessarily trust our ability to reason, and we oftentimes can’t trust our intuition when it comes to discovering God’s will on all three accounts we come up short because God’s ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts.
At 13:57 Andy Stanley talks about three things to consider on decisions:
There are three things that come to bear on the decision one is you know the context in which are making the decision, the second is your perspective and the third is the outcome.
Every time we make a decision it is limited to what we know and what we’ve experienced. So there’s a limitation in terms of perspective. Our perspective is impacted by our desires and our fears. What if we had the perspective that started in eternity past and went right through this life into eternity to the future? What if we had the opportunity to peer into a mind that knew the outcomes of every one of our options and outcome of every decision.
In the scriptures what God has given us is a slice of His thinking, and in the scriptures God has given us a piece of His mind. In fact He’s giving us more here than we will ever comprehend in a lifetime and in doing so here’s what He said. I want to broaden your context, I want to add to your experience, the experience of hundreds of thousands of men and women who have come before you. Here is page after page of what happens when men and women trust me and what happens when they don’t trust me. God has invited us to look into His thoughts and look into His ways to become so familiar with His thoughts and His ways that over time our thoughts become His thoughts and our ways be become His ways and in doing so we learn to discern and sort out God’s will for our lives.
At 26:50 Andy Talks about What You Reap is What You Sow:
Whenever you make a decision it is going to cross with or intersect with one of the principles of God’s Word. You reap what you sow, in other words whatever you put into something you can expect to get something similar out. The second one just an example this is the book of Proverbs says he who walks with the wise grows wise the companion of fools suffers harm. The third one is to raise up your children the way there to go and when they’re old they won’t depart from it.
The principle of unconditional love. Unconditional love is the most powerful force on the human soul. Nothing leverages change at the level of unconditional love that where there’s hurt and where there’s rejection and where their sorrow massive doses of unconditional love have the power to change and reshape the human soul.
Whenever you make a decision, it is going to cross with or intersect with one of the principles of God’s Word, the way things work, and the more familiar we are with the ways of God the easier it is to discern the will of God when it comes down to making a decision.
Conclusion
When you become familiar with my thoughts and familiar with my ways your ways will begin to mirror my ways your thoughts will begin to mirror my thoughts you’ll become more like me and you will be able to figure out my will for your life which is my heart’s desire.
Heavenly Father I want to figure you out and to learn to anticipate what you would have me do as I learned to sort out and discern your will for my life.
