STU:Finding the Lord's will

   Finding the Lord's will is the problem that faces every Christian on
the earth. The problem is how to ascertain the will of God. After all,
a Christian is one who has renounced his own will and submitted to
God's will for his life and all that he does. Jesus was assigned a
specific task on earth, and He said in John 17:4, "I have finished the
work which thou gavest me to do," and He said before Pontius Pilate, ".
. .for this cause came I into the world." He knew why He was here, what
He was to do and how He was to do it. So, it is our responsibility to
learn from the Lord the plan He has for our lives. It goes without
saying that this plan cannot be found without obeying Romans 12 :1-3 .

   God reveals His will to His children on the basis of their obedience
to Romans 12:1-3. No Christian can find the will of God unless he puts
himself into opposition with the world system in which he lives. The
reason why many Christians never find out what God would have them do,
and instead live their lives according to their own plan and by their
own ways and means like Jacob did, the life of sight instead of the
life of faith, is because they refuse to obey Romans 12:1-3.

   Romans 12:1-3 indicates three wills of God for the child of God: an
acceptable will, and a perfect will. and then a will that although it
is good, God will not accept it. We read about a good will; that is, a
Christian living a good life that God pays no attention to; an
acceptable will, as the Christian follows the Lord's plans for his life
in some places but omits it in others; then the perfect will, the
step-by-step process whereby the Christian from day to day accomplishes
God's will for his life. So, there are three wills of God for the child
of God.

   A Christian can live a life that is a good life, exactly like some
unsaved men live a good life, and although the Christian may go to
heaven when he dies, he receives no rewards for this life because it
had nothing to do with what God wanted the Christian to do. It was
negative. It was merely avoiding trouble or living a good life in the
sense of not too much sinning.

   Then we have the acceptable will, which God will accept, and yet it
is not exactly what God wanted him to do, but God will take it as a
second alternative. There are many cases of this in the word of God. A
man can live a good life without doing what God intended him to do. A
man whom God has called to preach can be very successful as a banker, a
lawyer, or a doctor and help people out. The Lord cancels his whole
life on the grounds that it is not what God wanted him to do. Then a
Christian can do certain things secondhand, like Paul going down to
Jerusalem (Acts 18:21). Although God told him not to, he went ahead
anyway (Acts 21:10-13). The Lord blessed it and used it as a testimony
and turned it to His own end (Rom. 8:28), and yet at the same time Paul
lost two years of his ministry in jail which otherwise he could have
had, showing clearly that although the Lord may allow the Christian to
do certain things that look good, this doesn't mean that this is what
God intends for the Christian to do.

   There are many people who have submitted their wills to Satan under
the pretense of submitting to the Holy Ghost. These demon-possessed
Christians have mistaken the unclean spirit for the Holy Spirit (2 Cor.
11:4) and have yielded themselves to Satan for Satanic suggestion.
Then, instead of obeying the word of God, they go by an inner voice
which they think is the Holy Spirit. Their lives are completely wasted
because their entire lives are in violation of God's word. They have
never submitted themselves to God's word; they submit to an inner voice
which they believe is the Holy Spirit, which sometimes is and sometimes
isn't. You can always spot these Christians by the fact that they have
no written authority by which they go by. They don't have one final,
infallible authority. They have their own opinion about what is true
and what is not true and what they like and what they don't like in the
word of God. They have never submitted to the word of God.

   God has a plan for every lifea divine blueprint for each one of
God's people. This plan is suited to your particular personality,
talents, needs, potential, and environment. "For we are his
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath
before ordained that we should walk in them" (Eph. 2:10). God has
ordained certain specific tasks: works for each individual Christian.
There is a different race for each one of us. When Paul got through
living he could say, "I have finished my course" (2 Tim. 4:7). He
fulfilled his ministry, and his work was completed. In Acts 22:14 he
said, "The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest
know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of
his mouth." God wanted Paul to know His will. So, God's plan for you is
very personal: it is just for you.

   In Psalm 32:8 the Lord said to David, "I will instruct thee and
teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine
eye." He also said in Psalm 37:23, "The steps of a good man are ordered
by the Lord;" that is, God doesn't deal with the distant future. He
deals with your life step-by-step. This plan is continuous. We read in
Isaiah 58:11, "And the LORD shall guide thee continually." The plan is
definite and specific (Isa. 30:21, Ps. 143:8).

   The will of God should not only be good and acceptable, but perfect
for the particular believer. It is a sad fact that it is possible to
miss the plan of God by doing your own planning, in your selfish and
stubborn way. This is a tragic mistake that needs to be avoided, mainly
because we are not capable of planning our own lives. The Bible says,
"Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own
understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy
paths" (Prov. 3:5-6). Jeremiah said wisely and well, "O LORD, I know
that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to
direct his steps" (Jer. 10:23). Only God knows the future, and He is
the One capable of choosing your vocation or path. Like the song says,
we may not know the future, but we know Who holds the future, and He
holds us.

   The tragic shipwreck of thousands of Christian lives shows that very
few Christians obey Romans 12:1-3, and even fewer of them submit to the
authority of the word of God. Instead, they run around picking up
translations and try to get the translation to say what they want it to
say because they think their preference is more important than absolute
authority. These unsurrendered, unyielded Christians are often
fundamentalists. They often profess to believe the Bible, and some of
them occasionally teach in institutions where someone in the
institution occasionally leads somebody to Christ. This does not mean
they are in the will of God or that they are accomplishing God's
purpose for their lives. It simply means they are rebellious Christians
who think they are smarter than the Bible. The highway of life is
littered with the wrecks of Christians who get up to be fifty or sixty
or seventy and suddenly discover they have been walking by sight and
spending their whole lives doing what they wanted to do instead of what
God wanted them to do. I have talked to many a man who got to be fifty
and confessed to me that he had spent thirty years trying to make money
when he should have been studying for the ministry, taking up his
cross, and following Christ. The same is true also of many women who
marry early because they figure that is more important than obeying God
or finding God's will for their life, and at forty or fifty they
suddenly complain, or whine, or sometimes cry about being called to the
mission field and never having made it.

   The man who will not deny himself and take up his cross daily and
follow Christ need not talk about being led by the Spirit of God. He is
led by a demon. These people, who talk about being "led by the Spirit
of God," are very rarely ever talking about surrendering to God and
then obeying His word. They are talking about surrendering to an
experience, and then they are following an inner compulsion which they
pretend is the Holy Spirit.

   Now, there are certain conditions on the Lord's guidance. First of
all, trusting in the Lord (Ps. 37:3). Second, delighting yourself in
the Lord; be eager, be willing to know His will and obey it (Ps. 37:4).
Third, committing your way to the Lord (Ps. 37:5). Also in the passage
we are told to "rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him" (Ps.
37:7). God has promised to guide according to His word, but not
necessarily to reveal His will the same day that you request it. Then
this is absoluteIy essential: you must surrender to the will of God. We
must be willing to obey His will. Christ said, "If any man will do his
will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." The only
way that you can know what God said is to obey John 7:17.

   The only way you can prove what God's will is for yourself is to
obey Romans 12:1-3. There are no other alternatives. An old song says,
"Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to
trust and obey." It isn't a matter of getting screwed up doctrinally in
Acts 2:38 so that you run around and blubber about some feeling you
had, and try to prove that you have a gift and you are spiritual
because you are smart. That has nothing to do with it. It has to do
with your presenting your body as a living sacrifice to God for what He
wants to do with you, and through you, and to you in this life. It has
nothing to do with you whining and complaining to God or trying to get
from God things that you think you need so that you can go around
pretending to be more spiritual than your brothers and sisters in
Christ. It has to do with you laying yourself on the altar for God to
make you conform to His image, and His will, and His way in opposition
to the world system in which you live.

   "Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed" (Rom. 12:2).
The reason why hundreds of thousands of Christians in America today
aren't worth the powder and shot it would take to blow them to New
Jerusalem is because they have never yet taken a clear-cut stand
against the world system in their home towns. They look like the world.
They talk like the world. They think like the world. They act like the
world. And some of them smell like the world. They don't have any more
nerve to tell a man he is going to hell than they do to try to fly to
Venus backwards with a pair of water-wings. Separation from the world
and from known sin is a prerequisite for knowing God's will, and
without it you will never know His will.

   Your mind cannot be in tune with the Lord until it is in tune with
His Book. Finding God's will is not obeying a still, small voice that
isn't in line with His Book. One of the great faith healers, who has a
school in Oklahoma and says the Holy Spirit does not always lead and
guide according to scriptural principles, is as close to blaspheming
the Holy Ghost as you can come. The Holy Spirit always goes by
scriptural principles, and always guides by spiritual principles, and
never goes contrary to scripture or scriptural principles. At a recent
meeting in a church of people who thought they had gifts, where all of
them got together and tried to go back to Rome, one of the Roman
plenipotentiaries said, "Get away from mother scripture. Don't be tied
to the apron strings of mother scripture." The Book says, "if they
speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in
them" (Isa. 8:20). So, if you have a Bible translation that differs
from the word of God in 31,000 places (like the ASV or the New ASV) or
differs from the Holy Bible in 44,000 places (like the so-called Living
Bible or New English Bible), there isn't any chance at all that you
will ever know what God wants from you. Your destiny is to pretend that
you are doing God's will on the basis that you think you are smarter
than God. That will have to be the beginning and length and finish of
your life because if you sit in judgment of the word of God there isn't
any reason why God should reveal anything to you.

   How does God reveal His will to the seeking individual? Primarily
through a Book. After all, "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1).
Men communicate with each other through words, so it stands to reason
and stands to scripture that the first and main source for God to
reveal His will to you is through His Book. As a matter of fact, there
are some statements that are so clear about this matter in the Book
itself that if you have a new bible, you never saw them. The new bibles
are designed to confuse the word of God so that you can't understand
it. Reading from the King James Bible is going to give you what you
didn't get from any translation on your shelf.

   "And the child Samuel ministered unto the LORD before Eli. And the
word of the LORD was precious in those days" (1 Sam. 3:1). "Now Samuel
did not yet know the LORD, neither was the word of the LORD yet
revealed unto him" (1 Sam. 3:7). "And Samuel grew, and the LORD was
with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground" (1 Sam.
3:19). "And the LORD appeared again in Shiloh: for the LORD revealed
himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the LORD" (1 Sam. 3:21). In
these verses we are told that if a man doesn't know the word, he
doesn't know the Lord; when he knows the Lord, he knows the Lord by the
word; when the Lord reveals Himself, He reveals Himself by the word;
where there is no revelation of the word, there is no revelation of the
Lord; and when the Lord reveals Himself to a man, He reveals Himself to
the man by the word. These words, called collectively "the word of
God," are called the mouth of the Lord (l Kings 13:21). They are called
the oracles of God (Rom. 3:2). And they are no more connected with the
corrupt Vatican and Sinaiticus texts behind the New ASV and the ASV
than they are with Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck.

   God uses the Bible to reveal to His children what He would have them
to do. God guides through verses of scripture that sometimes speak
almost aloud to you. Saturate yourself with the word of God, if you
want to know God's will. God's will is never contrary to the Bible. God
was never the author of any bible that omitted "through his blood" in
Colossians 1:14. God would not write a book like that. If you have a
book that says ''Jesus" instead of "Lord" in Luke 23:42, when the dying
thief got saved, you know it was God's will to never have a bible like
that. That bible is under the permissive will of God, the same will
that Satan operates under. God's will is never contrary to the Bible.
No bible that God had anything to do with said that Jesus Christ had
Joseph for a father in Luke 2:33. If you have a bible that says Joseph
was Christ's father in Luke 2:33, you have a bible that is a Satanic
counterfeit of God's will, and you cannot find God's will from such a
bible. God will not show you His will from such a bible. Your job is to
"study to show thyself approved" (2 Tim. 2:15) and know the word. As an
old Bible says in the preface, "Ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of
Christ.''

   How does God reveal His will to the seeking individual? Secondarily,
inner conviction that is given by the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy
Spirit will guide and lead you according to what the scripture says
(John 16:13). The test of the spirit (1 John 4:1) shows that if the
voice that comes to you goes contrary to the word of God (that is, if
the voice tells you that you have the gift of tongues when the Bible
tells you that tongues are for a sign unto Israel, 1 Cor. 14:22), then
you know that you are listening to an unclean spirit. If the inner
voice tells you that you have the gift of tongues, and you find the
gift of tongues is only used three times in the New Testament and every
time is a sign to unbelieving Israel (Acts 2, 10, 19), then you know
what to do with the spirit that is talking to you. If the guiding and
leading voice in you tells you that you have the gifts given to the
apostles, and you read in the Bible that the apostles were all
circumcised Jews who died out before the New Testament was complete,
then you know that the voice is a lying spirit.

   The Holy Spirit has been given for the purpose of guidance, and
Christ said when He comes, "he will guide you into all truth" (John
16:13). So the Holy Spirit never guides or leads contrary to the truth
of the written word, for Christ said, "thy word is truth" (John 17:17).
If any spirit is guiding you contrary to the written word, that is the
unclean spirit. You don't have the Holy Ghost; you have the unholy
ghost. Imagine the Holy Spirit writing a Book and then giving you
directions contrary to what He said! It won't happen. The Holy Spirit
who came at Pentecost and put the apostles into Christ and witnessed
with tongues to unbelieving Israel, that Holy Spirit that wrote the
account in Acts 2 said that the gift of tongues was a sign (1 Cor.
14:22), that signs were for Jews (1 Cor. 1:22), just like the miracles
of healing. The apostolic signs in 2 Corinthians 12:12 ceased with the
Acts of the Apostles because the apostles ceased (1 Cor. 13:8). If the
spirit in you or in the pulpit told you something different, you are
listening to the lying spirits (Rev. 16:13-14) that do signs and
wonders (2 Thess. 2:9), and those spirits are called liars (Rev. 2:2).

   Now, don't get mad at me. Get a Bible and read it, and I don't mean
a newer translation. I mean a Bible, so you can tell who is talking to
you. That explains why thousands of demon-possessed Christians in
America today are filled with an unclean spirit. They have listened to
and yielded to and followed a spirit that is contrary to the Holy
Spirit Who wrote that Book.

   How does God reveal His will to the seeking individual? Another way
we can check on things after consulting the Lord's Book directly (what
He told us to do) is, we can watch circumstances. God, by
circumstances, closes one door and opens another. Nothing happens to a
child of God by accident; that is clear from Romans 8:28. Each item is
planned by the Father or allowed by the Father. What happens to you is
either the directive will of God or it is the permissive will of God.
God permitted Paul to be sick and stay sick all his life (2 Cor.
12:5,9). You hear a lot of stuffed shirts these days talking about "God
doesn't want you sick,'' and "It's God's plan for every Christian to be
in good health." That is a bare-faced lie. It was God's plan for Paul's
life that he stay sick of infirmities his entire life and carry a
registered physician with him who is called "Luke the beloved
physician" (Col. 4:14), and before he is beheaded Paul has this beloved
physician with him (2 Tim. 4:11) because of his infirmities (2 Cor.
11:30).

   You say, "But I thought...." You thought nothing of the kind.
Ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of Christ. Because some man quoted
four or five verses at you and because you wanted to get healed, you
believed the Bible said something it didn't say in order to obtain your
own desire. This is what it means to disobey Romans 12:1-3. To say that
it is God's plan for everybody to have good health and be well in this
life is to insult and make a liar out of the Author of scripture, the
Holy Spirit. Paul was sick by the permissive will of God and had a
thorn in the flesh which was said to be the messenger of Satan (2 Cor.
12:7), and it is up to you to read it and search the scriptures and see
if these things are so.

   If you are a child of God, the time is long past when you could
afford to believe everything you hear over a radio station or read in
the newspaper or read in a translation. The time has come when you are
going to have to get a Book and pick it up and see if somebody is
giving you the shaft or not. Nothing is more pitiful than five of six
hundred thousand Christians in America who are going by ''inner
voices'' and ''inner lights,'' and all they are doing is acting like
politicians. Why, ''love'' and ''peace'' are the two words every
politician uses to get in office. Somebody is giving these suckers the
gaffed act. In driving, red lights are equally valuable for guidance as
green lights. So when God closes a door we should observe it, and when
He opens a door we should observe it. When the door closes we are to
wait on God and thank Him for closing the door and pray for another
door.

   How does God reveal His will to the seeking individual? Sometimes
the Lord guides by the advice of other people. Sometimes God reveals
His will, along with the word of God, through opportunity,
circumstance, the wishes of parents, the advice of friends, the
evaluation of one's own ability, personal inclination, the needs for
the day, and the conscience. "In the multitude of counselors there is
safety" (Prov. 11:14).

   It is very unsafe for any man to sit down in prayer, answer a small
voice, and get up and say, ''God is leading me to do this and that.''
That is the most unsafe practice you could possibly imagine. After all,
your flesh wants to do this or that. These fellows say, ''Oh, I'm so
anointed today, and the Lord is leading me to say this," and then puts
in a pitch to sell records. I don't know of an unsaved record salesman
in America that wouldn't feel led to do that. They say. ''Oh, the Lord
just led me to do this and that.'' Why, the flesh always leads a fellow
to do something to get him some attention. You had better check it.
Before making big decisions it is wise to ask, not only your parents,
but your friends and your enemies. Sometimes your enemies can give
better advice than your friends because they know your faults hetter.

   George Mueller was a great man of God who lived many years ago and
who accomplished things through prayer that perhaps no other man ever
accomplished. I don't have the exact statistics available on George
Mueller's work in the orphanage at Bristol, but George Mueller was an
amazing man in that he never asked anybody to send him any letters, he
never asked anybody to send him any prayer requests, nor did he get
their addresses to try to get any money out of them. But George Mueller
raised more than four million dollars in American money and supported
more than two thousand orphans in a lifetime, feeding them three meals
a day, and sent out more than a million dollars to foreign missions.
How did he do it? He did it simply through prayer, without once
publicizing his work or putting out circulars about his work or putting
out bulletins or letters about his work and without once telling
anybody about his needs. He prayed in the money. Not once did he say,
"Send in for this little sticker,'' or ''Send in for this plastic
plate,'' or "Send in for this olive leaf from the Mount of Olives,'' or
''Send in for this piece of wood from the table of the Last Supper";
you know the gimmicks for the gaffed act.

   George Mueller prayed in over four million dollars in American
money, raised over two thousand orphans who never missed a meal a day,
and put a million dollars in the mission field, or twenty-five percent
of his income. Don't you think it might be wise to ask George Mueller
what his formula was for finding the will of God? Let's ask him, shall
we? ''Brother Mueller, what is your formula for finding guidance?" Here
he answers:

   1. Surrender your will; have no definite choice in the matter; lay
yourself at God's disposal; surrender your will to God. 2. Seek the
Holy Spirit's will through God's word, the King James 1611 Authorized
Version. George Mueller never used or read or worked with any other
Bible in his lifetime than the King James 1611 Authorized Version,
which he called ''God's word.'' 3. Note providential circumstances. 4.
Pray for guidance. 5. Wait on God.

   F.B. Meyer once wrote these words: ''When the word of God, the
impulse of the Holy Spirit in my heart, and the outward circumstances
are in harmony, then I am convinced that I am acting in accordance with
the will of God." The first item is, ''When the word of God'' is in
harmony with the other two. Where you don't have the word of God and
you confine the word of God to the original manuscripts, which you have
never seen, you never know whether the circumstances and the Holy
Spirit are in line with the word of God or not. So, many of you who
profess to be guided by the word of God are in a terrible circumstance,
because your Christian education has talked you out of believing that
you have a copy of the word of God. You are in trouble.

   Both of these men say that the absolute essential for finding the
will of God is to study God's word and make sure it is in line with
what you are about to do. If you don't have God's word, the Holy Bible
(and when these men speak, they are speaking of the Authorized
Version), you are in trouble, for you have no map.

   Guidance is often a combination of several factors. You only need
light for one step at a time. Above all, obey the light that God has
already given you, and then He will give you further light. Don't
reject light from the word because it contradicts what you have been
taught or what you felt. Never reject light from the word because it
overrules your prejudices or makes you feel humble or upsets some of
your theological convictions. "Light rejected becomes lightning." There
is no way to discover the will of God by rejecting light from the Bible.

   Remember that God wants to give you both the master plan and the
minute details of your life, so wait patiently on Him. "But they that
wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with
wings as eagles" (Isa. 40:31). Never go back on guidance; never perform
autopsies on guidance. That is, having put your hand to the plow, don't
look back (Luke 9:62). Or, as Paul said, "Forgetting those things which
are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before"
(Phil. 3:13). Start today with God, seeking light from the word of God
today and obey the light that God gives you today. The right road leads
out at the right place. Or, as a famous preacher once said, "The best
preparation for tomorrow is to do what you ought to do today."
