Have you ever had a situation in life when you cried out to God, “Lord, I don’t know what to do. Can you please just tell me?”, and God seems silent? I encountered this when I was in high school in my church’s youth group. I distinctly remember one of the seniors wrestling with the decision about which college to go to. They had multiple excellent options, and they didn’t know how to decide. So they prayed and prayed, asking God to make the decision for them.
God never responded in any clear way.
In the end, that person chose a college. The process of making a conclusive decision was a very unsettling experience because they carried a lingering doubt: “What if I made the wrong choice?” That was 35 years ago, and things turned out just fine for them.
Yet, I suspect many of you sometimes find decision-making and the will of God to be a fraught concept. I have about ten books on my office bookshelves about the topic, and I prefer Garry Friesen’s book Decision-making and the Will of God. Friesen writes about the many wonderful biblical principles for wise decision-making. But still we come across those times in life when we wish God would just break out of the heavens and make it ultra-clear what he wants us to do.
This coming week on the blog will be one of those times. I’m serious. God is going to tell us his specific will for us. Think I’m joking? I’m not. In the passage that guest blogger Debbie Marks will be writing about, 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18 and 25, we read the phrase, “…this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
The apostle Paul wrote that. What is Paul saying is God’s will? It is very specific and important. Read the passage ahead of time, and then join us next week as Debbie teaches it.
Engaging Scripture 