HOW TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD
"If any man will do His will, he shall know
of the doctrine, whether it be of God." --JOHN vii. I7.
THERE is an experience which becomes more and
more familiar to every one who is trying to follow Christ--a feeling of the
growing loneliness of his Christian life. It comes from a sense of the
peculiarly personal interest which Christ takes in him, which sometimes seems
so strong as almost to make him feel that his life is being detached from all
the other lives around him, that it is being drawn out of the crowd of
humanity, as if an unseen arm linked in his were taking him aside for a nearer
intimacy and a deeper and more private fellowship. It is not, indeed, that the
great family of God are to be left in the shade for him, or that he is in any
way the favourite of heaven; but it is the sanctifying and, in the truest
sense, humbling realization that God makes Himself as real to each poor unit as
if he were the whole; so that even as in coming to Christ at first he felt
himself the only lost, so now in staying with Christ he feels himself the only
found. And it is, perhaps, true that without any loss in the feeling of saintly
communion with all those throughout the world who say "Our Father" with him in
their prayers, the more he feels that Christ has all of him to Himself, the
more he feels that he has Christ all to himself. Christ has died for other men,
but in a peculiar sense for him. God has a love for all the world, but a
peculiar love for him. God has an interest in all the world, but a peculiar
interest in him. This is always the instinct of a near fellowship, and it is
true of the universal fellowship of God with His own people.
But if there is one thing more than another which
is more personal to the Christian--more singularly his than God's love or God's
interest--one thing which is a finer symbol of God's love and interest, it is
the knowledge of God's will--the private knowledge of God's will. And this is
more personal, just inasmuch as it is more private. My private portion of God's
love is only a private share in God's love--only a part-- the same in
quality and kind as all the rest of God's love, which all the others get from
God. But God's will is a thing for myself. There is a will of God for me which
is willed for no one else besides. It is not a share in the universal will, in
the same sense as I have a share in the universal love. It is a particular will
for me, different from the will He has for any one else--a private will--a will
which no one else knows about which no one can know about, but me.
To be sure, as we have seen before, God had
likewise a universal will for me and every man. In the Ten Commandments, in
conscience, in the beatitudes of Christ, God tells all the world His will.
There is no secret about this part, it is as universal as His love. It is the
will on which the character of every man is to be formed and conformed to
God's.
But there is a will for career as well as for
character. There is a will for where--in what place, viz., in this town
or another town--I am to become like God as well as that I am to become
like God. There is a will for where I am to be, and what I am to be, and what I
am to do to-morrow. There is a will for what scheme I am to take up, and what
work I am to do for Christ, and what business arrangements to make, and what
money to give away. This is God's private will for me, for every step I take,
for the path of life along which He points my way: God's will for my
career.
If I have God's will in my character, my life may
become great and good. It may be useful and honourable, and even a monument of
the sanctifying power of God. But it will only be a life. However great and
pure it be, it can be no more than a life. And it ought to be a mission. There
should be no such thing as a Christian life, each life should be a mission.
God has a life-plan for every human life. In the
eternal counsels of His will, when He arranged the destiny of every star, and
every sand-grain and grass-blade, and each of those tiny insects which live but
for an hour, the Creator had a thought for you and me. Our life was to be the
slow unfolding of this thought, as the corn-stalk from the grain of corn, or
the flower from the gradually opening bud. It was a thought of what we were to
be, of what we might become, of what He would have us do with our days and
years, our influence and our lives. But we all had the terrible power to evade
this thought, and shape our lives from another thought, from another will, if
we chose. The bud could only become a flower, and the star revolve in the orbit
God had fixed. But it was man's prerogative to choose his path, his duty to
choose it in God. But the Divine right to choose at all has always seemed more
to him than his duty to choose in God, so, for the most part, he has taken his
life from God, and cut his career for himself.
It comes to pass, therefore, that there are two
great classes of people in the world of Christians to-day.
(1) Those who have God's will in their
character;
(2) Those who have God's will likewise in their
career.
The first are in the world to live. They have a
life. The second are in the world to minister. They have a
mission.
Now those who belong to the first class, those
who are simply living in the world and growing character, however finely they
may be developing their character, cannot understand too plainly that they are
not fulfilling God's will. They are really outside a great part of God's will
altogether. They understand the universal part, they are moulded by it, and
their lives as lives are in some sense noble and true. But they miss the
private part, the secret whispering of God in the ear, the constant message
from earth to heaven. "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" They never have the
secret joy of asking a question like this, the wonderful sense in asking it, of
being in the counsels of God, the overpowering thought that God has taken
notice of you, and your question--that He will let you do something, something
peculiar, personal, private, which no one else has been given to do--this
thought which gives life for God its true sublimity, and makes a perpetual
sacrament of all its common things. Life to them is at the best a bare and
selfish thing, for the truest springs of action are never moved at all; and the
strangest thing in human history, the bounding of the career from step to step,
from circumstance to circumstance, from tragedy to tragedy, is unexplained and
unrelated, and hangs, a perpetual mystery, over life.
The great reason possibly why so few have thought
of taking God into their career is that so few have really taken God into their
life. No one ever thinks of having God in his career, or need think, until his
life is fully moulded into God's. And no one will succeed in knowing even what
God in his career can mean till he know what it is to have God in the secret
chambers of his heart. It requires a well-kept life to know the will of God,
and none but the Christlike in character can know the Christ like in career.
It has happened, therefore, that the very fact of
God's guidance in the individual life has been denied. It is said to give life
an importance quite foreign to the Divine intention in making man. One life, it
is argued, is of no more importance than any other life, and to talk of special
providences happening every hour of every day is to detract from the majesty
and dignity of God; in fact, it reduces a religious life to a mere religious
caprice, and the thought that God's will is being done to a hallucination of
the mind.
And there is another side to the objection, which
though less pronounced and definite, is subtly dangerous still--that there does
indeed seem to be some warrant in Scripture for getting to know the will of
God, but that, in the first place, that probably means only on great occasions
which come once or twice in a lifetime; and, in the second, that the whole
subject is so obscure that, all things considered, a man had better walk by his
own common sense, and leave such mysteries alone.
But the Christian cannot allow the question to be
put off with poor evasions like these. Every day, indeed, and many times a day,
the question rises in a hundred practical forms. What is the will of God for
me?" What is the will of God for me to-day, just now, for the next step, for
this arrangement and for that, and this amusement, and this projected work for
Christ? For all these he feels he must consult the will of God; and that God
has a will for him in all such things, and that it must be possible somehow to
know what that will is, is not only a matter of hope, but a point in his
doctrine and creed.
Now without stopping to vindicate the
reasonableness of such expectations as these, it may simply be affirmed as a
matter of fact that there are a number of instruments for finding out the will
of God. One of them is a very great instrument, so far surpassing all the rest
in accuracy that there may be said to be but one which has never been known to
fail. The others are smaller and clumsier, much less delicate, indeed and often
fail. They often fail to come within sight of the will of God at all, and are
so far astray at other times as to mistake some other thing for it. Still they
are instruments, and notwithstanding their defects, have a value by themselves,
and when the greater instrument employs their humbler powers to second its
attempts, they immediately become as keen and as unerring as itself.
The most important of these minor instruments is
Reason, and although it is a minor instrument, it is great enough in many a
case to reveal the secret will of God. God is taking your life and character
through a certain process, for example. He is running your career along a
certain chain of events. And sometimes the light which He is showing you stops,
and you have to pick your way for a few steps by the dimmer light of thought.
But it is God's will for you then to use this thought, and to elevate it
through regions of consecration, into faith, and to walk by this light till the
clearer beam from His will comes back again.
Another of these instruments is Experience. There
are many paths in life which we all tread more than once. God's light was by us
when we walked them first, and lit a beacon here and there along the way. But
the next time He sent our feet along that path He knew the side-lights should
be burning still, and let us walk alone.
And then there is Circumstance. God closes things
in around us till our alternatives are all reduced to one. That one, if we must
act, is probably the will of God just then.
And then there are the Advice of others--an
important element at least--and the Welfare of others, and the Example to
others, and the many other facts and principles which make up the moral man,
which, if not strong enough always to discover what God's will is, are not too
feeble oftentimes to determine what it is not.
Even the best of these instruments, however, has
but little power in its own hands. The ultimate appeal is always to the one
great Instrument, which uses them in turn as it requires, and which supplements
their discoveries, or even supplants them if it choose by its own superior
light, and might, and right. It is like some great glass that can sweep the
skies in the darkest night and trace the motions of the furthest stars, while
all the rest can but see a faint uncertain light piercing for a moment here and
there the clouds which lie between.
And this great instrument for finding out God's
will, this instrument which can penetrate where reason cannot go, where
observation has not been before, and memory is helpless, and the guiding hand
of circumstance has failed, has a name which is seldom associated with any end
so great, a name which every child may understand, even as the stupendous
instrument itself with all its mighty powers is sometimes moved by infant hands
when others have tried in vain.
The name of the instrument is Obedience.
Obedience, as it is sometimes expressed, is the organ of spiritual knowledge.
As the eye is the organ of physical sight; the mind, of intellectual sight; so
the organ of spiritual vision is this strange power, Obedience.
This is one of the great discoveries the Bible
has made to the world. It is purely a Bible thought. Philosophy never conceived
a truth so simple and yet so sublime. And, although it was known in Old
Testament times, and expressed in Old Testament books, it was reserved for
Jesus Christ to make the full discovery to the world, and add to His teaching
another of the profoundest truths which have come from heaven to earth--that
the mysteries of the Father's will are hid in this word "obey."
The circumstances in which Christ made the great
discovery to the world are known to every one.
The Feast of Tabernacles was in progress in
Jerusalem when Jesus entered the temple to teach. A circle of Jews were
gathered round Him who seem to have been spell-bound with the extraordinary
wisdom of His words. He made no pretension to be a scholar. He was no graduate
of the Rabbinical schools. He had no access to the sacred literature of the
people. Yet here was this stranger from Nazareth confounding the wisest heads
in Jerusalem, and unfolding with calm and effortless skill such truths as even
these temple walls had never heard before. Then "the Jews marvelled, saying,
`How knoweth this man letters, never having learned?'" What organ of spiritual
knowledge can He have, never having learned? Never having learned--they
did not know that Christ had learned. They did not know the school at
Nazareth whose Teacher was in heaven--whose schoolroom was a carpenter's
shop--the lesson, the Father's will. They knew not that hidden truths could
come from God, or wisdom from above.
What came to them was gathered from human books,
or caught from human lips. They knew no organ save the mind; no instrument of
knowing the things of heaven but that by which they learned in the schools. But
Jesus points to a spiritual world which lay still far beyond, and tells them of
the spiritual eye which reads its profounder secrets and reveals the mysteries
of God. "My doctrine is not Mine," He says, "but His that sent Me"; and "My
judgment is just," as He taught before, "because I seek not Mine own will, but
the will of the Father which hath sent Me." And then, lest men should think
this great experience was never meant for them, He applies His principles to
every human mind which seeks to know God's will. "If any man will do His will,
he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God."
The word doctrine here is not to be taken in our
sense of the word doctrine. It is not the doctrine of theology. "Any man" is to
know if he will do His will. But it is God's teaching--God's mind. If any man
will do His will, he shall know God's mind; he shall know God's teaching and
God's will.
In this sense, or indeed in the literal sense,
from the first look at these words it appears almost as if a contradiction were
involved. To know God's will, it is as much as to say, do God's
will. But how are we to do God's will until we know it? To
know it; that is the very dilemma we are in. And it seems no way out of
it to say, Do it and you shall know it. We want to know it, in
order to do it; and now we are told to do it, in order to know it! If any man
do, he shall know.
But that is not the meaning of the words. That is
not even the words themselves. It is not, If any man do, he shall know;
but if any man will do. And the whole sense of the passage turns upon
that word will. It means, "If any man is willing to do, he shall
know." He does not need to do His will in order to know, he only need be
willing to do it. For "will" is not at all the sign of the future tense as it
looks. It is not connected with the word do at all, but a separate verb
altogether, meaning "is willing," or "wills." If any man wills, or if any man
is willing, to do, he shall know.
Now notice the difference this makes in the
problem. Before, it looked as if the doing were to come first and then the
knowing His will; but now another element is thrown in at the very beginning.
The being willing comes first and then the knowing; and thereafter the doing
may follow--the doing, that is to say, if the will has been sufficiently clear
to proceed.
The whole stress of the passage therefore turns
on this word "will." And Christ's answer to the question, How to know the will
of God? may be simply stated thus: "If any man is willing to do God's will he
shall know," or, in plainer language still, "If any man is sincerely trying to
do God's will, he shall know."
The connection of all this with obedience is just
that being willing is the highest form of obedience. It is the spirit and
essence of obedience. There is an obedience in the world which is no obedience,
because the act of obedience is there, but the spirit of submission is not.
"A certain man," we read in the Bible, "had two
sons; and he came to the first, and said, `Son, go work to-day in my vineyard.'
He answered, `I will not': but afterward he repented and went. And he came to
the second, and said likewise. And he answered, `I go, sir': and went not.
Whether of them twain did the will of his father?" Obedience here comes out in
its true colours as a thing in the will. And if any man have an obeying will, a
truly single and submissive will, he shall know of the teaching, or of the
leading, whether it be of God.
If we were to carry out this principle into a
practical case, it might be found to work in some such way as this. To-morrow,
let us say, there is some difficulty before us in our path. It lies across the
very threshold of our life, and we cannot begin the working week without, at
least, some notice that it is there. It may be some trifling item of business
life, over which unaccountable suspicions have begun to gather of late, and to
force themselves in spite of everything into thought and conscience, and even
into prayer. Or, it may be, some change of circumstance is opening up, and
alternatives are appearing, and demanding choice of one. Perhaps it is some
practice in our life which the clearing of the spiritual atmosphere and
increasing light from God are hinting to be wrong, while reason cannot coincide
exactly and condemn. At all events there is something on the mind--something to
do, to suffer, to renounce--and there are alternatives on the mind to
distinguish, to choose from, to reject. Suppose, indeed, we made this case a
personal as well as an illustrative thing, the question rises, How are we to
separate God's light on the point from our own, disentangle our thoughts on the
point from His, and be sure we are following His will, not the reflected image
of ours?
The first process towards this discovery
naturally would be one of outlook. Naturally we would set to work by collecting
all the possible materials for decision from every point of the compass,
balancing the one consequence against the other, then summing up the points in
favour of each by itself, until we chose the one which emerged at last with
most of reason on its side. But this would only be the natural man's way out of
the dilemma. The spiritual man would go about it in another way. This way, he
would argue, has no religion in it at all, except perhaps the acknowledgment
that reason is divine; and though it might be quite possible and even probable
that the light should come to him through the medium of reason, yet he would
reach his conclusion, and likely enough a different conclusion, quite from
another side.
And his conclusion would likewise be a better and
sounder conclusion. For the insight of the non-religious method may be
impaired, and the real organ of knowing God's will so out of order from disuse,
that even reason would be biassed in its choice. A heart not quite subdued to
God is an imperfect element, in which His will can never live; and the
intellect which belongs to such a heart is an imperfect instrument and cannot
find God's will unerringly--for God's will is found in regions which obedience
only can explore.
Accordingly, he would go to work from the
opposite side from the first. He would begin not in out-look, but in in-look.
He would not give his mind to observation. He would devote his soul to
self-examination, to self-examination of the most solemn and searching kind.
For this principle of Christ is no concession to an easy life, or a careless
method of rounding a difficult point. It is a summons rather to learn the
highest and most sacred thing in Heaven, by bracing the heart to the loftiest
and severest sacrifice on earth--the bending of an unwilling human will till it
blends in the will of God. It means that the heart must be watched with a
jealous care, and most solemnly kept for God. It means that the hidden desires
must be taken out one by one and regenerated by Christ--that the faintest
inclination of the soul, when touched by the spirit of God, must be prepared to
assume the strength of will and act at any cost. It means that nothing in life
should be dreaded so much as that the soul should ever lose its sensitiveness
to God; that God should ever speak and find the ear just dull enough to miss
what He has said; that God should have some active will for so e ready to make
it our daily prayer, that we may know God's will; and when the heart is
prepared like this, and the wayward will is drilled in sacrifice and patience
to surrender all to me human will to perform, and our heart be not the first in
the world to be ready to obey.
When we have attained to this by meditation, by
self-examination, by consecration, and by the Holy Spirit's power, we may b
God, God's will may come out in our career at every turning of our life, and be
ours not only in sacramental aspiration but in act.
To search for God's will with such an instrument
is scarce to search at all. God's will lies transparently in view at every
winding of the path; and if perplexity sometimes comes, in such way as has been
supposed, the mind will gather the phenomena into the field of vision, as
carefully, as fully, as laboriously, as if no light would come at all, and then
stand still and wait till the wonderful discerning faculty of the soul, that
eye which beams in the undivided heart and looks right out to God from every
willing mind, fixes its gaze on one far distant spot, one spot perhaps which is
dark to all the world besides, where all the lights are focussed in God's
will.
How this finite and this infinite are brought to
touch, how this invisible will of God is brought to the temporal heart must
ever remain unknown. The mysterious meeting-place in the prepared and willing
heart between the human and divine--where, precisely, the will is finally moved
into line with God's--of these things knoweth no man save only the Spirit of
God.
The wind bloweth where it listeth. "We hear the
sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth." When
every passion is annihilated, and no thought moves in the mind, and all the
faculties are still waiting for God, the spiritual eye may trace perhaps some
delicate motion in the soul, some thought which stirs like a leaf in the unseen
air and tells that God is there. It is not the stillness, nor the unseen
breath, nor the thought that only stirred, but these three mysteries in one
which reveal God's will to me. God's light, it is true, does not supersede, but
illuminates our thoughts. Only when God sends an angel to trouble the pool let
us have faith for the angel's hand, and believe that some power of Heaven has
stirred the waters in our soul.
Let us but get our hearts in position for knowing
the will of God--only let us be willing to know God's will in our hearts that
we may do God's will in our lives, and we shall raise no questions as to how
this will may come, and feel no fears in case the heavenly light should go.
But let it be remembered, as already said, that
it requires a well-kept life to will to do this will. It requires a well-kept
life to do the will of God, and even a better kept life to will
to do His will. To be willing is a rarer grace than to be doing the will of
God. For he who is willing may sometimes have nothing to do, and must only be
willing to wait: and it is easier far to be doing God's will than to be willing
to have nothing to do --it is easier far to be working for Christ than it is to
be willing to cease. No, there is nothing rarer in the world to-day than the
truly willing soul, and there is nothing more worth coveting than the will to
will God's will. There is no grander possession for any Christian life than the
transparently simple mechanism of a sincerely obeying heart. And if we could
keep the machinery clear, there would be lives in thousands doing God's will on
earth even as it is done in Heaven. There would be God in many a man's career
whose soul is allowed to drift--a useless thing to God and the world--with
every changing wind of life, and many a noble Christian character rescued from
wasting all its virtues on itself and saved for work for Christ.
And when the time of trial comes, and all in
earth and heaven is dark and even God's love seems dim: what is there ever left
to cling to but this will of the willing heart, a God-given, God-ward bending
will, which says amidst the most solemn and perplexing vicissitudes of life:
"Father, I know
that all my life
Is portioned out for me;
The changes that are sure to come
I do not fear to see;
I ask Thee for a present mind,
Intent on pleasing Thee."
This document (last modifiedJuly 09, 1998) from Believerscafe.com
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