What the Bible Says: The Blessing of God’s WillSample

Blessing #5: We can avoid indecision. 

The Bible gives absolutely no plan for discovering God's individual will. In fact, the idea of a personalized, divine will for our lives creates a lot of indecision. People spend inordinate amounts of time agonizing between good choices. Believers are stuck waiting for “the revelation,” looking for it and longing for it while important decisions need to be made. People can become dangerously indecisive, or worse, they can manufacture evidence to prove to themselves that God has in fact directed them individually. Those who insist that faith involves waiting for God’s go-ahead on every decision often end up angry at God for not being specific. They resent Him, even though God has given them a wonderful opportunity to make many small choices according to their preference and all big decisions in accord with scriptural wisdom. 

For example, some sincere Christians practice what can only be described as Bible roulette. Wanting to know God’s will, they flip open the pages of a Bible and drop their finger down on a verse, expecting God to direct their random pointer finger. They will take words and phrases out of context, apply them to situations they are facing, and make tragic decisions. 

Bible roulette is a foolish, dangerous way of trying to determine God’s will! So are Christian fortune cookies. Well-meaning Christians buy Scripture memory cards (sometimes shaped like loaves of bread or treasure boxes). They flip open the lid, draw the card, and expect to magically get a word from God regarding their lives. These simple tools designed for Bible memorization get misused as God’s will-telling oracles. Rather than relying on the wisdom of God’s open Word and the power of the Holy Spirit, they want to treat God as a fortune-teller and His holy Word like a crystal ball. He wrote a whole Book for us! And we are to study “to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15). We must carefully, wisely handle God’s Word. 

In addition to Bible roulette and Christian fortune cookies is the first-thought approach. An old friend of mine explained, “Whenever I want to know what God’s will is, I just pull the lever on my recliner, lie back in the chair, put my feet up, and try to clear my mind of every single, possible thought. Once my mind is completely empty, the next thought that occurs to me—that’s God’s will for me.” Perhaps that’s more aptly called the “empty-headed” approach to God’s will, and that is such a bad plan! It provides an invitation to Satan. Jesus gave a chilling description of what happens to an empty space that isn’t immediately filled with something good (Matt. 12:43–45). The Bible never tells us to clear our minds of everything. The Bible does tell us to fill our minds with the truth of God’s Word (Romans 12:2). 

We can be drawn into silly little superstitions, trying to discover or even control God’s so-called specific will for our lives. Don’t get caught up in trying to discover an individual plan for life’s minutiae, only to discover the hard way that it does not exist.