I was hit square between the eyes by a sermon preached about how to discern God’s will by John Piper today. I absolutely love when that happens. I love a man who cares enough to take a hatchet to my dense skull in effort to affect and infect me with truth. Sounds weird but I love a strong reproof from someone I deeply trust.
Here are my personal thoughts:
[12:1] I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. [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.
(Romans 12:1-2 ESV)
I’ve often wondered in any number of practical life decisions, “how can I know the will of God concerning this?” Piper smashed me in the face with the above verses-and powerfully. How often do we find ourselves pleading with God [or I would argue its sometimes more whining with an inflected and questioning tone] to know what he would have us do.
Verse 2 of Romans 12 above is a command: Christian be “transformed” and not “conformed” so that you can discern what is the will of God.
I’m sure you ask, as I often do when reading a command in the scripture, “ok, how do I do that?” Well verse 2 says, “by testing” we discern what is the will of God. Ok, the rabbit hole goes deeper. So how then do we test? What does Paul mean “that by testing you may discern…the will of God”. I don’t think God would have us traveling down each possible path in life to see which is the best before fully committing to a choice. First and foremost because it’s not a faithful endeavor to test each path. Secondly, we’re lazy people who most naturally pick the path of least resistance which is almost never the path the Lord wills. And lastly, we are likely to continue to be indecisive and we ought not be women and men who are divided within ourselves.
After listening to Piper’s sermon, it seems clear to me that we must know God’s decreed will [that is what he has said, or decreed, as being his will in the bible] in order to know and obey his will of command [what he would command and desire us to do in any given situation]. More practically: we must bath our minds in the decreed will of God [His words, the bible] so that we know his character and have our mind “transformed”. By filling ourselves [our minds] with the Word of God, we have something against which to test our choices so that we can more accurately discern God’s will.
As Piper says, it is only in the bible that God’s will is most sharply and finely defined. We must be filling ourselves with that, before we ask what is his will for this.
Tags: discernment, Knowing God's Will, led, Romans, Whining