Zambia Hunt

Do you share a passion for Christ and desire for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10)? Discovering and living in alignment with God’s will should be the sincere longing of every Christian’s heart. 

While God has blessed us with minds to think and reason, these faculties alone are insufficient for knowing His will perfectly. Our intellects have been corrupted by the fall and do not naturally function in full harmony with God’s purposes.

To discover and obey God’s will, we must understand two key aspects: His general will revealed in Scripture for all believers, and His specific will for the circumstances and decisions of our individual lives. Many Christians are preoccupied with knowing God’s specific will, but we cannot properly discern His particular direction unless we first discover and submit to His general will.

God’s General Will Revealed in Scripture

The general will of God encompasses everything He clearly expresses through His written Word. Here are four foundational truths about God’s general will:

God’s Will is for Your Salvation 

“This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4).

Our loving Creator made us for intimate fellowship with Himself. But through an act of rebellion, sin entered the human race like a poisonous current, severing our relationship with God. Scripture describes God as perfect, self-existent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent – and also as a holy, just, loving, merciful Spirit who cannot tolerate sin.

In His justice, God pronounced sin’s penalty of death upon mankind. Yet, motivated by mercy and love, God devised a plan to satisfy His own justice and restore our relationship with Him. He sent His Son Jesus, God in the flesh, to take on human form and become the substitutionary sacrifice to pay sin’s penalty on our behalf.

No amount of human effort can appease God’s wrath against sin. Only by receiving Christ’s provision of forgiveness can we be saved and reconciled to God. If you are not one of His children through faith in Jesus, God’s first directive to you is to accept His offer of salvation!

God’s Will is for His Children to Be Nourished by Scripture

“It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man” (Psalm 118:8).   

God communicates His will to His children through the revelation of Scripture. The Bible puts on display God’s very character and attributes, which must be the foundation for how we make decisions as Christians. Perhaps the greatest hindrance to doing God’s will is a lack of knowledge about who He is.

While Scripture does not contain all knowledge, it does deliver the truth we need about God and His purposes for our lives. Paul instructs believers to be devoted to the public reading, teaching and study of God’s Word, because “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).   

If you wish to discover God’s will, you must be immersed in and submitted to Scripture as His revealed truth. John MacArthur in his excellent little book, Found, God’s Will suggests five foundational principles for discovering God’s will, “God’s will is that you be saved, Spirit-filled, sanctified, submissive and suffering.”

God’s Will is for His Children to Live Spirit-Controlled Lives

“Do not get drunk with wine…Instead, be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18).

At salvation, the Holy Spirit takes up residence inside every believer. God’s will is for us to daily submit to the Spirit’s control, rather than being mastered by fleshly desires. The commands of Scripture are to be obeyed, but only through the Spirit’s empowerment can we accomplish what God wills.

God’s Will is for His Children to Live Pure Lives  

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification…” (1 Thessalonians 4:3)  

God’s will is that we experience ongoing sanctification – being set apart from the world’s ways and freed from slavery to sin’s immorality and impurity. This process begins at salvation but requires diligent pursuit of holiness by God’s Spirit and Word throughout our lives.

These four foundational truths from Scripture summarize God’s general will for believers. As we become immersed in Scripture, the Holy Spirit will continually reveal other specifics of what God wants for how we are to think and live.

Discovering God’s specific, individual will begins with aligning our lives to the truths of His general will. Are you saved? Submitted to Scripture? Walking in the Spirit? Pursuing holiness? Root yourself in these revelations of God’s will first. In my next post, we’ll explore how to discern His specific guidance for your unique circumstances.  Stay tuned!

This article was edited with claude.ai