“What is the will of God for my life?”

To search for the will of God can be an exercise in piety or impiety, an act of humble submission or outrageous arrogance—depending on what will of God we seek.

God delights to hear the prayers of His people when they individually ask, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” The Christian pursues God, looking for His marching orders, seeking to know what course of action is pleasing to Him.

The Question is, when I determine the will of God for my life, am I going to do it?

There are many things that we know are the will of God for us, they are plain and simple, are we already doing those now?

Think about the disastrous destruction of Jerusalem, long predicted by Jeremiah, you think the prophet would have enormous credibility among the survivors. The sad reality is that he has enough credibility for them to consult him, but no more (Jer. 42). What they want is divine approval for the plan they themselves have already concocted. They do not want God’s best, or God’s will, but God’s approval of their will.

Jeremiah carefully seeks God, and ten days later (42:7) the word of the Lord comes to him. The substance of the message is: stay in Judah, and God will protect you; fly to Egypt, and God will take this as a further sign of rebellion, and God’s wrath will pursue you and destroy you there, just as it recently destroyed so many in and around Jerusalem.

Most movements that spring up from the fertile soils of Christendom appeal, in one way or another, to the will of God. Few probe the will of God very deeply. God is for evangelism; therefore he is for the way we are proposing to do evangelism, and we invoke his will to sanction our methods.

We say, God is love; therefore he is against church discipline except in the most horrible cases (which either never arise, or, if they do, by the time they do they too are covered by the love of God), and we invoke God’s will to sanction our determined niceness.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians that “by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain”; and then went on to say, “but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (1 Cor. 15:10).

In that inspired statement, the apostle makes it clear that God’s divine grace and power undergird the faithful and obedient effort of believers. His declaration that “I have been

Three times in Psalms 143 8–10 David prays for guidance. Each petition has a slightly different focus. “Show me the way I should go”, reflects David’s confusion, but also hints that there are unique and individual elements to the guidance he needs

“Teach me to do your will” (143:10a) now focuses entirely on God’s agenda (“for you are my God”). Knowing and doing God’s will is the very stuff of guidance. “May your good Spirit lead me on level ground” (143:10b) is to admit that we may trip as well as rebel, stumble as well as stray, and always we need help.

HEBREWS 13:20

20 Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep with the blood of an eternal covenant, even our Lord Jesus, 21 make you perfect in every good thing to do his will, working in us that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

The thrust of the prayer is twofold: first, that God would equip “you” (the Christian readers) “with everything good for doing his will”; and second, that he would work “in us what is pleasing to him” (13:21).

There is a tremendous emphasis on doing God’s will, on living in ways that are pleasing to him. Although the prayer is for Christians, the entire focus is on God and what pleases him. The most important prayer for Christians is that they do God’s will, that God will work in them what is pleasing to him.

If I do good, it is God working in me both to will and to do of his good pleasure. If I do evil, or fail to do good, it’s my fault. If that sounds too convenient for God, “It’s the way it is.” It doesn’t remove all mystery, but it seems to me that it puts it within a kind of biblical framework.

Human beings are morally accountable for what they choose to do, because it’s what they want to do.

The Biblical Meaning of the Will of God

The biblical meaning of the will of God is a very complicated matter. To approach it simplistically is to invite disaster. At times, wrestling with the complexities of the biblical concept of the will of God can give us a headache. Yet ours is a holy quest, a pursuit that is worth a few headaches along the way. But we must guard against proceeding in a simplistic way, lest we change the holy quest into an unholy presumption.

We note at the outset that the Bible speaks of the “will of God” in more than one way.

The term boule has its roots in an ancient verb that means a “rational and conscious desire,” as opposed to thelema, meaning “an impulsive or unconscious desire.” The ancient subtle distinction was between rational desire and impulsive desire.

In the New Testament, boule usually refers to a plan based on careful deliberation; it is used most often with respect to the counsel of God. Boule frequently indicates God’s providential plan, which is predetermined and inflexible

Here the resolute decree of God is in view, which no human action can set aside.

The Decretive Will of God

The “decretive will of God” is that will by which God decrees things to come to pass according to His supreme sovereignty. God brings to pass whatsoever He wills. When God sovereignly decrees something in this sense, nothing can prevent it from coming to pass.

A serious danger faces those who restrict the meaning of the will of God to the sovereign will. We hear the Muslim cry, “It is the will of Allah.” We slip at times into a deterministic view of life that says, “Que será, sera,” or “What will be, will be.” In so doing, we embrace a sub-Christian form of fatalism, as if God willed everything that happened in such a way as to eliminate human choices.

Classical theologians insist on the reality of man’s will in acting, choosing, and responding. God works His plan through means, via the real choices of willing and acting creatures. There are secondary as well as primary causes. To deny this is to embrace a kind of determinism that eliminates human freedom and dignity.

The Preceptive Will of God

The decretive will of God cannot be broken or disobeyed. It will come to pass. But, there is a will that can be broken: “the preceptive will of God.” It can be disobeyed. It is broken and disobeyed every day by all of us.

The preceptive will of God is found in His law. The precepts, statutes, and commandments that He delivers to His people make up the preceptive will. They express and reveal to us what is right and proper for us to do. The preceptive will is God’s rule of righteousness for our lives. By this rule we are governed.

It is the will of God that we not sin. It is the will of God that we have no other gods before Him; that we love our neighbor as we love ourselves; that we refrain from stealing, coveting, and committing adultery. Yet the world is filled with idolatry, hatred, thievery, covetousness, and adultery. The will of God is violated whenever His law is broken.

One of the great tragedies of contemporary Christendom is the preoccupation of so many Christians with the secret decretive will of God to the exclusion and neglect of the preceptive will. We want to peek behind the veil, to catch a glimpse of our personal future. We seem more concerned with our horoscope than with our obedience, more concerned with what the stars in their courses are doing than with what we are doing.

It is easier to engage in ungodly prying into the secret counsel of God than to apply ourselves to the practice of godliness.

Protestants are particularly vulnerable to this distortion. We seek refuge in our precious doctrine of justification by faith alone, forgetting that the very doctrine is to be a catalyst for the pursuit of righteousness and obedience to the preceptive will of God.

God’s Will of Disposition

The will of disposition, is tied up with the ability of man to disobey God’s preceptive will.

This aspect of the will of God refers to what is pleasing and agreeable to God. It expresses something of the attitude of God to His creatures. Some things are “well pleasing in his sight,” while other things are said to grieve Him. He may allow (but not via moral permission) wicked things to transpire, but He is by no means pleased by them.

Let’s look at the verse that says the Lord is “not willing that any should perish” 2 Peter 3:9, Which of the above-mentioned meanings of will fits this text? How is the meaning of the text changed by the application of the nuances?

Try first the decretive will. The verse would then mean, “God is not willing in a sovereign decretive sense that any should perish.” The implication would then be that nobody perishes. This verse would be a proof text for universalism, with its view that hell is utterly vacant of people.

The next option makes sense. God is not willing in the sense that He is not inwardly disposed to, or delighted by, people’s perishing. Elsewhere, Scripture teaches that God takes no delight in the death of the wicked. He may decree what He does not enjoy; that is, He may distribute justice to wicked offenders. He is pleased when justice is maintained and righteousness is honored, even though He takes no personal pleasure in the application of such punishment.

If we say that God has no secret will and proposes to do only what He commands and nothing more, then we would perceive God as one whose desires and plans are constantly thwarted by the harassment of human beings. Such a god would be impotent, and no god at all.

How about the story of Joseph, whose brothers, out of jealousy and greed, sold their innocent brother into slavery in Egypt. At their reunion years later, and upon the brothers’ confession of sin, Joseph replied, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20). Here is the inscrutable majesty of God’s providence. God made use of human evil in bringing to pass His purposes for Joseph and for the Jewish nation.

Joseph’s brothers were guilty of willful and malicious sin. By directly violating the preceptive will of God, they sinned against their brother and against God. Yet in their sin, God’s secret counsel was brought to pass, and God brought redemption through it.

What if Joseph’s brothers had been obedient? Joseph would not have been sold into slavery; he would not have been taken to Egypt; he would not have been sent to prison, from which he was called to interpret a dream. What if Joseph had not become prime minister? What would have become the historical reason for the brothers’ settling in Egypt? There would have been no Jewish settlement in Egypt, no Moses, no exodus from Egypt, no law, no prophets, no Christ, no salvation.

Can we, therefore, conclude that the sins of Joseph’s brothers were, in fact, virtues in disguise? Not at all. Their sin was sin, a clear violation of the preceptive will of God, for which they were held responsible and judged to be guilty. But God brought good out of evil. This reflects neither a contradiction in God’s character nor a contradiction between His precepts and His decrees. Rather it calls attention to the transcendent power of His sovereignty.

Is it possible for us in this day and age to obey the preceptive will of God and yet be in conflict with the secret will of God? Of course this is possible. It may be the will of God, for example, that He use a foreign nation to chastise the United States for sinning against God. It may be in the plan of God to have the people of the United States brought under judgment through the aggressive invasion of Russia. In terms of God’s inscrutable will, He could be, for purposes of judgment, “on the side of the Russians.” Yet at the same time, it would remain the duty of the civil magistrate of the American nation to resist the transgression of our borders by a conquering nation.

An understanding of the will of God is desperately important for every Christian seeking to live a life that is pleasing to his or her Creator. It is a very practical thing for us to know what God wants for our lives.

Do we really want to know the will of God for our lives? Do we plan to do what we understand it to be?

How about we start doing what we already know the will of God is, living a life that Jesus wants us to live.