How to Know God’s Will:
Wisdom or “Promptings”?

For detailed instruction on this topic, please refer to the “Making Wise Decisions” album.

    Life is a constant stream of decisions.  But it is not just our decisions that determine what will happen in the future, it is our decisions combined with the other events that will take place that we can’t foresee. For that reason throughout history man has tried to figure out ways to get some inside information about the future to help in decision making.
     Leo Oppenheimer, in the department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago has studied ancient cuneiform writings of Sumaria, Assyria and Babylon, and he says that about 90% of all the writings found — secular and religious — have to do with divination (the attempt to find out from the gods what will happen in the future, so they will know how to make decision).  Man has always been very zealous to discover anything he can discover to help with decision making.
	Even in our culture, where we pride ourselves on being scientific and rational, there are countless forms of divination including examining animal intestines, astrology, fortune tellers, palm readers, Ouija boards, channelers, psychics, and countless other superstitions. Man will always be involved in divination because our decisions, combined with the other things that we can’t foresee that will happen in the future, determine our destiny. 
    What about Christians who seem to have an inside track on decision making?  They claim God speaks to them.  While the rest of us are struggling with trying to make wise decisions without knowledge of the future, these people claim they just ask God what to do, and God tells them. 

Does God Speak to us in that way?

    If God did speak to us that way it would be entirely appropriate to say things like, “God told me to go to that city and spend a year there doing business, and if I do, I’ll make money.” But James says God wants you to say this: if the Lord wills. . .(Jas.4:13-17)  The “if“ means you don’t know for sure.  God wants you to live and make decisions based on wisdom rather than inside knowledge into the future. When we as Christians look for inside knowledge into the future – even if we seek it from God - we become guilty of a kind of Christian divination.

Examples:

* Holy Hunch
Some people clear their mind and assume that the first thought that comes to them is the voice of God.

* Bible Roulette 
By this method you let your Bible flop open, or scan for a verse that pops out, and then claim it as a special message from God about your specific circumstance.  This turns the Bible into a book of magic, and crosses the line into divination.  Those who do this end up using God’s own Word in a way that is detestable to God, as God hates divination. 

•	Feelings as Messages from God
Many people assume that if they are in God’s will, they will have a feeling of inner peacefulness, and if they feel a sense of uneasiness, it must not be God’s will. 
    If that’s the case, why was Jesus crying out with loud shouts and tears and sweating great drops of blood when He was right in the middle of accomplishing God’s perfect will for Him? He was undergoing turmoil on the inside that is impossible to imagine.  And what about Jonah? He was on a ship running from the will of God and he had such a deep, inner peace that he could sleep through a terrible storm!

•	 Putting out a Fleece
In Judges 6 God spoke to Gideon in clear Hebrew and told him to attack Midian. Gideon wanted to know for sure that it was God, so he asked for a miracle. So God gave him one. Gideon prepared a sacrifice, and God sent an angel and consumed the offering with fire from the angel’s staff.
    So Gideon was convinced. He gathered an army. The men knew it would take an act of God for them to win, so Gideon asked God for two more miracles to prove He was with them. “If there is dew on the wool fleece, but the ground is dry, then you know the Lord is with us.”  Then, just to triple check, he asked for a third miracle (this time dry fleece and wet ground), and he got it.
    There is nothing wrong with “putting out a fleece” to discern if something is from God, but many people misunderstand what constitutes a fleece.  Gideon was asking for a miracle to confirm that the voice he heard was from God. If I say, “If the phone rings in the next 45 minutes, I will take that as a sign from God that I should go golfing” that is not a fleece because there are other explanations for how the phone might ring.  To be comparable to Gideon’s fleece, I would have to first of all hear an audible voice tell me to go golfing, and then say something like, “God, if the phone gets up and hits a 9-iron 150 yards, then I will assume it was You who spoke to me.”
    The purpose of miracles is to confirm the words of God. Anytime you think you hear a voice from God, this is a good way to test it. 
    Can God speak to you supernaturally, directly, miraculously? Yes. He can, and sometimes does. But should we live our daily lives looking for that? No. God can and has spoken through a donkey, but we don’t go down to the barnyard for guidance in decision-making!

* The Open and Closed Door Policy
	Sometimes people use circumstances as some kind of signal from God about His will.  Someone has a job prospect, and every time he tries to make contact with them, something happens to prevent it, and so he says, “Maybe God is trying to tell me this job is a bad idea.” 
    That’s the approach the people on Malta took. When Paul escaped a shipwreck, but then was bitten by a snake they said, “He must be a murderer.’ Then when he didn’t die, “He must be a god.” 
    When you try to divine God’s thinking by interpreting circumstances, you run into a big problem: what’s the correct interpretation? It’s like interpreting dreams. Usually when people interpret circumstances as God’s voice, they end up just reading their own ideas into whatever happens. If they really don’t want to do something, and it rains, they say, “God must be telling me to stay home.” But if they really want to do it, they say, “Boy the enemy sure is attacking today.”
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Scripture absolutely forbids divination of any kind.
Dt 18:10-13 Let no one be found among you who . . . practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. 12 Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD

	All this is not to suggest that God does not speak to us or guide us through life. He does! He has promised to speak to us.

Isa.30:21  Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." 

God leads us like a shepherd leading sheep (Ps.23:2). And God’s voice is not ambiguous. God is capable of making Himself perfectly clear.  There is no need for magical efforts to discern His voice.
	It may be helpful to think of God speaking to us in one of two ways. One way is with a miraculous, audible voice from heaven. When God speaks this way it is not a vague impression about a generalized concept. God uses clear, complete sentences (with subject and predicate, etc.).  When Scripture reports God speaking this way He is quoted word for word.  When Eve sinned, He didn’t just cause some vague, indistinct thoughts to come into her head (“Eve…childbearing…pain…husband…rule…”)

Gen.3:16  To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.  Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." 

    Today you hear people say things like, “I can’t tell you why, but I’m sensing that the Lord is telling me to leave this church and move on.”  Compare that to the Lord speaking to Ananias.

Acts 9:15-16   But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name."  

    Indecently, those two examples are 4000 years apart.  This is the way God has always done it.  And nothing happened at the cross that obscured God’s voice from then on.  In fact, when we look to the future, it seems God will still be speaking the same way: 

Rev 1:17-20   When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: "Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. 18 I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades. 19 "Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later. 20 The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches…. 

    He spoke to Abraham and Moses in Hebrew, He spoke to Ananias in Greek, and if God were to speak to me I would expect that it would be in plain, clear, complete English sentences. But many people today would have us believe that hearing the voice of God is a game of Wheel of Fortune.  “This man is my chosen _______________ to carry my ___________…”

	So on rare occasions God has spoken this way and has used miracles to confirm that it was indeed His voice. This is not the normal way God guides us in everyday life however. God’s more common way of guiding us through life is through wisdom. Pr.6:20ff., talking about the commands and teachings of wisdom, says Bind them upon your heart forever; fasten them around your neck. When you walk, they will guide you;’ when you sleep, they will watch over you; when you awake, they will speak to you. 
    How does God guide us through life? In what form does His guidance come? Wisdom.
God wants us to make decisions based on wisdom, not knowledge of the future.  And He makes this promise: if we make decisions based on wisdom, He will take care of the events in the future.
Ps 1:6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Ps 37:23 If the LORD delights in a man’s way, he makes his steps firm 
Even seemingly random things: Pr.16:33 The lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the LORD
    If you make wise decisions, God will take care of the other ingredient (things that happen out of your control). In fact, the promise goes even beyond that. If you are a believer God will carry you through life. He will see to it that you end up exactly where you are supposed to be. Pr. 16:9 In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.
19:21 Many are the plans of a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.
    That’s why 20:24 says A man’s steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way?  Look back over the last 20 years: You made all the decisions along the way, but did you determine that path? Who can understand his own way? I can’t figure out how I got here. When I was 10, I didn’t plan on going to California, then Illinois, then Minnesota, then Colorado, then Oklahoma, then Colorado. But that is what happened. I made all the decisions along the way, but Someone else is master planning the whole thing.

	Someone may object at this point and say, “That doesn’t sound like God speaking. That sounds like God just left us with some tools and stopped speaking.” That is not what I am suggesting. I believe God speaks to me personally every day. But He does so not with a voice from heaven, but by providentially guiding my thoughts. God is ultimately sovereign over all things, including my thoughts, moods, attitudes, impressions, judgments, etc. He is in control of whether a specific piece of information will catch my attention or not. He is in control of whether a fact is noticed by my consciousness or not. He is ultimately in control over whether I forget or remember something. When I weigh pros and cons, He can allow or not allow various influences that will cause me to consider a particular pro or con to be especially significant or insignificant. 	So when I pray for guidance in a decision I am asking God to guide my thought processes and inclinations and affections in such a way that I will arrive at the correct conclusion. 
	So then here is the key question – How do I know when God has answered that prayer? How do I know when I have arrived at a particular conclusion because of His guidance? 
	To answer that question one must first understand that God guides us by means of His Word and wisdom. God does not lead us to violate the principles of wisdom or His Word. Rather, He leads us by opening our eyes to the truth of His Word or to wisdom principles. 
	So if a person is trying to decide whether to marry a particular person, God may lead that person by opening her mind to correctly understand and accept the principles in 1 Cor.7:39 about marrying someone in the Lord. How does she know it was God who led her to this conclusion? By submitting her reasoning to others who are adept at interpreting Scripture. If no error in interpretation can be found, she can have confidence that this is the correct conclusion. If a blind person is groping for a prize, and then his eyes are opened and he can now see the prize clearly, he may not know exactly how his eyes were opened, but he does know that he can now see clearly.
	It works the same way with wisdom. If a man is trying to decide whether to buy a house or to rent, and in the decision making process it becomes clear to him that in his case renting would very obviously fit the wisdom principles in Proverbs better than buying – his ability to see that clearly is nothing less than God guiding him through the Holy Spirit. 
	We should never assume God is leading us to violate His Word or the principles of wisdom. There is never a time when we should violate either one.  If the principles of wisdom all point toward decision A, you should never opt for decision B – no matter what your gut feeling is.  Living by wisdom glorifies God (because it requires so much faith – you have to trust God for those things you have no knowledge of or control over).

What is the wisdom process? 
	When making a decision always follow these steps: First, eliminate all sinful options. Second, eliminate all foolish options. Third, choose whichever of the remaining options you most desire. 
	The most difficult of these is step 2. To get better at step 2, study Proverbs and the rest of the Wisdom literature, learn from experience, and seek advice from wise people to gain wisdom. Wisdom teaches you how life generally tends to go and which things are more important than other things.