5-29-11 Learning to Hear God’s Voice – Part 4: God’s Will

Today we are finishing the last part of a four part series entitled “Learning To Hear God’s Voice.” We’ve said that we should expect God to speak to us if we have been baptized and confessed our faith that Jesus is Lord and are seeking to follow him in our life. God is Spirit and we have been created in his image, and therefore we have a deeply spiritual component to us. God created us in such a way that he could be in relationship with us. We were created to be able to hear his voice. This morning I want to investigate a perplexing thing for many Christians, called God’s will. Jesus taught us to pray:

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Matthew 6:9-10 (NIV)

What is God’s will? Do you know? Jesus teaches us to pray for “God’s will to be done and for God’s kingdom to come, but how are we to know God’s will? Is God’s will a mystery? For many it is.  We cannot fully know God, because God is much bigger and much more complex than our minds can comprehend.  However, God doesn’t keep us in the dark about his will. He doesn’t keep us guessing about who he is and what he desires. We can know God’s will. In fact, Jesus expected us to know it.

We’re finishing up a series called, “Learning to hear God’s voice,” and one of the best ways to discern if God is speaking to you is to know his will.

Let’s start with the word “Will”. What is a will? We typically use the word “Will” in a different context, than it was used in the Bible. If I say, “my grandma died and her will was read yesterday” what does the word “Will” mean? It means that when she created her will, it was her way of saying “This is what I desire you to do with my possessions after I die.”  Similarly, you can find out a lot about a person by reading their will, because in reading their will, you find out what was important to them.

When we talk about God’s will, we are talking about God’s desire. We are talking about what God wants done. When we are talking about God’s will, we are indirectly talking about the kind of God he is. Read the rest of this entry »