Dear BPCWA worshipper, For this year’s Church Study Series, I chose the topic of “Finding God’s Will”. This was concluded in 3 parts at our fellowships, with the Chinese video having been dubbed offshore. While this series is available on our church’s YouTube channel at www.bpcwa.org.au/youtube, I will briefly summarise in this and next week’s pastoral what was covered during the 3-part series since all worshippers should understand God’s will so that we can do it in all aspects of our daily lives. Given how crucial it is for us to be able to discern God’s will, I hope that this will spur our readers to view the full videos online or listen to the audio versions on our websites. 

The importance of knowing God’s will, yet often misunderstood. Our choices can affect the paths of our lives, our ministry, and our usefulness for our Lord, and may change our lives permanently. These choices determine whether our lives are vessels to honour or to dishonour (2Tim 2:20) or whether our works will abide or be burned (1Cor 3:14,15).  But sadly, this topic of seeking God’s will in our lives is often greatly misunderstood. For example, 1) Some of us seek to know God’s will only at major crossroads or junctures of our lives. We fail to realise that the choices we make every day, some major and some seemingly insignificant, have a bearing on us now and in the future. 2) As a result of this misunderstanding, some feel that such a topic is irrelevant to them since much of their life’s key milestones have passed and there is nothing remaining of much significant importance that requires them to seek God’s will. 3) Some of us want to know God’s will to satisfy our curiosities of what will happen to us in the future, almost like how some unbelievers would turn to astrology and fortune tellers. At the back of the minds of many Christians without them even being conscious of it, God’s will is only relevant when they want God in the picture. Otherwise, God’s will fades to the recesses of their minds and what God wants them to do is very much not in their minds or considerations. 4) Some of us have already made up our minds about what we intend to do, and when we say we are seeking God’s will, we do not realise that we are just seeking how to proceed with what we have already chosen. For example, we have already decided to take a huge bank loan to buy something we want and we are just asking God’s will about which bank to take it from, not whether we should go ahead with the purchase in the first place. When all these failures happen, we can end up with a life that doesn’t really bear much fruitfulness for God because our choices were not made with God and His will in mind. 

The Christian must know God’s will with the intent to do it. We are Christians because we are followers of Christ. As Christ said that He “came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me” (Jn 6:38), it must be so for us as well. Doing His Father’s will was so intrinsic to Christ’s nature that He compared it to something as basic and common as eating when He said “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work” (Jn 4:34). Only when we realise that we are obligated to do God’s will even to this seemingly minute extent will we realise that finding and doing God’s will must be something that we consider every day, all the time, in all things, as our obligation in our covenant with God. God would not command us to be wise by “understanding what the will of the Lord is” (Eph 5:17), to “be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” (Col 1:9), and to “prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom 12:2) if He intends to hide His will from us. God wants us to do His will and will reveal to us His will so that we can walk in it. 

The sevenfold will of God. Some theologians have attempted to use the various wills of God to help us understand the workings of His mind and will. These different aspects of His will may interact at any one time. Understanding these aspects help us to understand and interpret God’s workings in our lives. 1) Preceptive will. This refers to God’s moral law, statutes, and judgements through his written revelation, the Bible. This is the starting point and the checkpoint of all our attempts to find God’s will for us. It starts with reading, learning, and meditating on the Bible since His Word in the Scriptures “is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Ps 119:105). That is the reason why we stress so much about coming to church to study His Word. The clearer and more abundant we are in this knowledge, the more we are able to make choices based on His precepts. Many fall because of failure in this aspect. 2) Desiderative will. This reflects God’s goodness of grace and love and mercy towards the creature in his sin and need. God’s thoughts and will towards His creature is good and so He offers in His goodwill His salvation to all, “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2Pet 3:9). 3) Directive will. While in the Old Testament we read much of God appearing in dreams and visions, God directs us today towards His will for us through His Word, His providence, and godly counsellors. God has a specific will for each of us in our lives, and He causes us to know this through His directive will for us. 4) Cooperative will. When God shows us His directive will for our lives and we follow in obedience to the best of our ability, God’s blessing and leading us as we walk in this path He has set for us is His cooperative will. When we walk in His will, we have His divine help, His provision, and arrangement of the affairs because we are doing His work. This is the blessedness that when we seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness, “all these things shall be added unto you” (Mt 6:33). We must not misunderstand cooperative will as God cooperating with us to do what we will for ourselves.  5) Punitive/ Chastitive will. This is a will that every Christian should avoid having to walk in. When we disobey God and do not do His will, He stands as an adversary to us. For believers, this is His chastisement to chasten us to make us chaste and sanctified. 6) Permissive will. Our Sovereign LORD may permit evil and trouble to come, but even when He does so, good will always result despite the evil and sinful intentions of men. This is clearly displayed in God permitting Satan to bring much misery to Job. Also, God permitted Joseph to be sold into slavery by his terrible brothers, but the Scriptures reveal that “God meant it unto good . . . to save much people alive” (Gen 50:20).  7) Decretive will. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it succinctly, the “decrees of God are His eternal purpose, according to the counsel of His own will, whereby for His own glory, He hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.” God’s decrees are executed unfailingly through His decretive will in everything that comes to pass. While man remains responsible for the evil they contrive and do, God sovereignly works all affairs out well.

The world drums into us daily to fulfill our potential and follow our hearts. To them, to do otherwise is foolishness. To the Christian however, the worth of our life is determined by the proportion of our lives spent in doing His will. On that day when we stand before God in judgement, He will not be judging us against how much we have amassed or achieved in this world, but against how much we have lived as our Saviour lived – doing and fulfilling the Father’s will in all things. This is the identifier of a Christian, one who does God’s will.

Mr 3:35  For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.

Yours in our Lord’s service,
Pastor