I’ve become a fan of Dan Bouchelle’s “Confessions of a Former Preacher.” I want to draw the readers’ attention to a three-part series he’s posted on prayer.
From Part 1
Today, I hear new prayer phrases that bother me. They come in various forms, but they always boil down to asking God to reveal to us something he has already decided for us. For example, “Lord help us find the man you’ve already chosen to be our next preacher.” Behind that request is a massive assumption that God has chosen one person to be the preacher and our only role is to recognized God’s will and give into it. We don’t have to make a decision or exercise our judgment, much less our preferences, we just have to discern God’s choice. This sounds very pious, but is it accurate? Is it an embrace of God’s will or an abandonment of responsibility?
This prayer assumes God predetermines some things but not others. For example, God predetermines who our preacher should be but does not predetermine who he will be. Only one choice is in God’s will, but we can get it wrong. I find that to be an odd set of beliefs about God. Why would he decide everything for us but then give us a role in the choice since he knows 99 times out of 100 we will get it wrong? If he has made the choice, how is he going to tell us? If he is going to use our wisdom and discernment, why does he bother to make the choice? If God so orders the future and we regularly mess it up, how can we ever get back on track once we are off? Do we spend most of life on God’s 2nd, 3rd, or 400th plan for us since we have missed so many decisions in the past? What is the point in God predetermining every decision for us when there is no way we will stay on it? Isn’t that an exercise in futility? Once we are off God’s will, how do we get back on since every decision changes the options in front of us and there is no going back to a previous decision?
What it really comes down to is the question of do we really have free will? Does God’s sovereignty mean that he controls everything in the universe and, therefore, everything that happens is his will? That seems to turn God into a monster and rob humanity of any real dignity or freedom. Or does God’s sovereignty really give us freedom to make choices? Does God leave some things up to our choice—meaning he hasn’t decided them? If so, how wide-spread are those choices? If God decides and controls everything, then why are we held responsible?
From Part 3 —
Maybe my slip is showing, but what I hear in all these glib claims to be following God’s leading is an intentional effort to remain immature and avoid accountability. I know I’m painting with a broad brush and I don’t mean to beat up on anyone. However, this way of talking is harmful both to those intimidated believers who accept it as valid but don’t get such constant communication and to unbelievers who see through it and roll their eyes. In addition, people who talk like this often rebuke those who don’t follow their model with an attitude of spiritual superiority which is as petty as the ubiquitous childhood one-upmanship seen on every playground. The very arrogance and insensitivity this mentality fosters should give away its origin.It sounds very pious to talk like this. It is anything but.
Amen! Amen! Amen! We have developed the belief that God is active in a way that sometimes leads to manipulation. Suppose a young man approaches the elders asking to be supported as a missionary. He’ll inevitably assure the elders that he feels called by God to the mission field. Really? By what means do we distinguish genuine leading by God from wishful thinking? What’s the process?
Well, to hear some tell it, the process is that we elders accept all such claims at face value. But that would seem to remove the need for elders to make hard decisns, right? We should let anyone who feels called to X do X — and pay for it! Is that really what the Bible teaches? (And, trust me, it’s hard to tell someone that you don’t share his dream. I really wish it were that easy.)
You see, the way I have it figured, what such a person really should do is come to us and say something like, “You are the spiritual leaders of the church. I feel led by God to enter the mission field, but to be sure that I’m not confusing wishful thinking with God’s leading, would you please join me in a season of prayer and discernment to see whether I have correctly discerned God’s leading?” A search for God’s will leads to questioning within community and seeking the guidance of our spiritual leaders. A search for a way to fulfill our personal dreams won’t submit to such a discernment process because it’s not really about seeking God’s will at all.
And, as Dan points out, God may not have led this young man at all. Rather, God may be perfectly happy for him to use his gifts in one of several different ways. The question may really be: “Am I gifted to be a missionary? Can I obtain the training and support needed?” The right questions may not be mystical at all — but still very spiritual. Indeed, to ask about gifts is all about the Spirit and quite different from asking whether God has “called” me to a task — an idea that isn’t foreign to the Bible but certainly hasn’t been promised to all believers.
It’s an easy mistake to confuse our desires with promptings from God. And they are not the same.
The mere fact that I strongly feel a desire hardly proves that God has placed that desire within me — even if what I desire seems deeply righteous and holy! Indeed, in the scriptures we find God calling people to do things they don’t much want to do at all! Think of Moses. Think of Gideon. Was Paul thrilled to be blinded on the Damascus Road? Was Jesus excited about the cross?
So, dear readers, how can we genuinely discern God’s leading? What are some tests that anyone should apply before making a serious life change based on a sense of God’s leading?
Or does God even leads us in this way at all? Perhaps it’s all been left up to us to decide, strengthened by the Spirit and instructed by the word? Maybe, as Dan hints, we’ve imbibed some Calvinism that doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny?
Or is the answer somewhere in between? Sometimes, you know, the truth is between the extremes. Not always, but sometimes.
IMHO…If God feels strongly about something, you’ll know…If He doesn’t care or if He’s using the situation to teach you something, He might let you make up your own mind…
Sometimes free will isn’t all it’s cracked up to be…Ask Jonah about Whale Vomit…
What’s the deal with missionaries and their financial support ?? Is there a biblical example of someone being 100% on the church to do missions ?? Shouldn’t they be required to provide their own support ?? Paul had to work and build tents… Seems to me if God called you, He’d of supplied the cash…
I struggle with my own perceptions of how so many people expect God to provide them something akin to direct inspiration of what to do.
My reading of the Text convinces me that the premise of following Jesus is subjugating my will to the will of God.
I think God wants us to make the right choices.
Using Jay’s example, I would counsel that the prayer should be to understand whether this young man is prepared and suited to the responsibilities and life of a missionary. God has not asked us to abandon our intellectual capabilities for inspiration; rather, he wants us to use our intellectual capabilities to make the same choices Jesus would make, if Jesus was in our same situation.
David noted: “I struggle with my own perceptions of how so many people expect God to provide them something akin to direct inspiration of what to do.
My reading of the Text convinces me that the premise of following Jesus is subjugating my will to the will of God.”
But how is one to do that without God speaking directly to him? “Do I marry her? She’s hot!” “Do I take this new job? I hate mine…” “Should I divorce my husband? He cheated on me!”
To effectively subjugate my will to God’s will requires a real-time understanding of God’s will which parallels my experience with my own will. Scripture alone is no panacea. We have forever rationalized our own preferences by quoting scriptures at each other. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would take what is of Jesus and make it known to us. While part of this promise is fulfilled in scripture, not all of it is.
I wonder how we arrived at the place where relying on our intellectual capacities to find the will of God seems reasonable but actually hearing the voice of God does not. Sounds more like Babel than Bible to me.
Dan wrote: “However, this way of talking is harmful both to those intimidated believers who accept it as valid but don’t get such constant communication and to unbelievers who see through it and roll their eyes. In addition, people who talk like this often rebuke those who don’t follow their model with an attitude of spiritual superiority which is as petty as the ubiquitous childhood one-upmanship seen on every playground. The very arrogance and insensitivity this mentality fosters should give away its origin.It sounds very pious to talk like this. It is anything but.
And this particular critique sounds both arrogant and insecure with hints of “crabs in a bucket”. It seems to say, “I don’t hear God directly, so you don’t either!” Such a position does find Biblical precedent, however. It sounds a lot like Joseph’s brothers.
I would add that this “spiritual superiority” does not begin and end with flawed character among charismatics. It is exactly like those who use their study of scripture and language to exert the very same one-upmanship over believers who can’t quick-draw their Thompson Chain Reference. Pot, meet kettle.
Charles,
Perhaps my phrasing was poor.
I do believe in the work of the Spirit of God, but I fear the way we often talk about it results in God getting blamed when things do go the way we want them to go
David, that is indeed true. One of the most important things we learn in hearing from God is to help one another. Sometimes that help comes in the form of a kindly, “Are you SURE that was the Lord? I think you better go back and pray.”
The immature, especially, are prone to blaming God for what is in fact some poor personal choice, or claiming that we heard from God based on the apparent success of something we did. Both excuse and justification can be sides of the same errant coin.
But, sometimes you get tossed in the pit for being faithful to what God did say. Happens.
As noted, and as seen in the Bible, God often has (and I believe does) “call” or “lead” people to a task. Moses was sent to Pharoah. Gideon was called to war (in a way that could only glorify God). Stephen was sent to the Eunuch. Cornelius was sent to Peter at the same time Peter was sent to Cornelius.
I believe that God does indeed lead us, guide us, and influence us through His Spirit and otherwise. Read I Corinthians 2:8-16. Yet, that does not remove our free-will, nor does it imply what we might call “defeatism” (related to Calvinism). Because God INFLUENCES or LEADS does not require that God MAKES things happen in a certain way and/or forces us to make a certain decision. He called Abraham to go, but He did not force him to do so. It does get deep in thinking about what might happen if we do not follow His leading. Perhaps more often, we don’t know it or “hear” it. But, doesn’t He know this also? The Spirit is our guide and help. That does not imply control or even coercion. Rather, it requires us to listen and obey. I do believe that sometimes God’s leading is for US to decide. It may not matter if we do A or B. More often, we have already decided we want to do either A or B and ask God which He has chosen. His answer may be “neither” but we have a hard time hearing that one. Submission does not ask WHICH He has chosen, but WHAT He has chosen if anything at all.
An intriguing example to me is in Acts 21 where Paul was planning to go to Jerusalem. . The church did not want him to go, and verse 4 says, it was “through the Spirit” that they determined this. Yet, Paul, whom we think as being led around on his missionary journeys by God, determined to go anyway. A prophet then comes and shows him and the church what was going to happen to him if he went to Jerusalem. It would have made sense for Paul to have decided that God was leading him not to go and that he had two points of confirmation (the church’s advice and the prophet’s word). Yet, he said he was ready to even die in the name of the Lord Jesus. Do you think he sensed that God was leading him to go in spite of the consequences? While the scripture does not tell us exactly what he was thinking, the reply of the church when he insisted is interesting. In spite of the fact they had been “led” apparently though the Spirit, and the prophet’s word had further confirmed it, they replied, “The Lord’s will be done.” What was it that moved them from the Spirit’s apparent leading and confirmation to accept what Paul believed was God’s leading? It required them to make a free-will decision concerning what they believed was God’s will and/or whether or not they were to follow that leading. Perhaps, they came to believe that it was God’s will that Paul go, but God’s revelation was simply to prepare them for what was to happen by Paul following that leading. Paul ended up with a good perspective that even though there were consequences, he was going to follow the will of God. That makes sense in the context of the scriptures where God most often called people to do what they did not want to do. Moses resisted going to Pharaoh. Gideon asked for miraculous confirmation (twice) that his call was indeed God’s will.
Our bigger concern is not whether or not God leads and guides us, but in learning to recognize and acknowledge how He is working in our lives. Though that may lead us into a “word only” debate, the same principle applies to those who hold that view. God has revealed His word to us (whatever means you may believe He has done so), and it is up to us to discern what He is telling us. Then, we must also accept what we discover. Neither of those do we do perfectly as humans. Part of that process is certainly learning to recognize what He is doing. Job spent a long time trying to figure that out. But, the process of figuring it out was the very thing God was “revealing” to Job. God knows when to be quiet and when to speak. He knows what we will read, what we will hear, and what we will think. Regardless of how He works to “guard, guide, and direct us” (to use one of our old time sayings), it does not take away free-will, nor personal responsibility. In fact, in some ways it adds to it. It requires us to be obedient and to work to listen and learn. We decide if we will even do that.
The interesting question that remains is, “Does God’s will FLEX with our response to His leading”? If He wants one thing, but we choose another, does He then enact a “plan B” of sorts? Was it His will that man would sin? We do know it was His plan BEFORE it happened to do something about it. Was that His “plan B” or His plan all along? Was it God’s plan for Israel to have a king? He knew it would happen and used their decision in His will and promised the Messiah though King David. But, their decision was a rejection of God as king in the first place (I Samuel 8:7).
So, the answer, I believe, is that is it not an abandonment of responsibility to seek God’s will. Nor should we determine that He has no will and has just left everything up to us. All the choices are up to us, even though He may have a preference, and may even work to direct us toward that will. The problem is that we focus too much on the will and the decision rather than on the God who is leading us. The concern is not as much in whether or not we will make the choice God wants us to make (we usually will get that wrong), but in whether or not we are willing to do our best to SEEK His will and try to be OBEDIENT to Him. The sermon on Mars Hill (Acts 17) gives some good insight into this question. Paul says that God put things in place so that “MEN WOULD SEEK HIM”. It is not the choice or the consequences that we live for, but the God in whom we “live, move and have our being” that should be the focus.
Ephesians 1:17 (NIV) 17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, SO THAT YOU MAY KNOW HIM BETTER.
Pingback: Seeking God’s leading | Hey U Guys (and Gals)
I think Jay is right – the process of discernment is a communal process, not an individual one.
Once we see that it isn’t about me, but about “us”, and once we understand our fallen, sinful nature, then, in humility, we should naturally seek guidance and advice from those in our community who are older, wiser, more experienced, and closer to God than us.
In thinking about what I am going to pray to God about, I remember prayers that I listened to that asked God for all kinds of favors. For instance, I had a pain in my back and tried every thing I could think of for relief to no avail, then I prayed to God asking him to relive the pain that I was experiencing. In a short period of time the pain suddenly left and I gave God the Glory for answering my prayer. Most commonly I have heard this type of prayer answering from members of a church testifying how God is working in their lives. Of course another member follows with a simiular story and all exclaim “Praise God”. I then think about the early Christians that were torn to pieces by the beasts, burnt at the stake, etc. and believe that surely they had been praying for that not to happen (remember even Christ’s prayer). If God did not answer the prayers of the early Christians and did answer the prayers for such a trivial situation, and being no respector of persons should those that did not recieve the request of their prayers, possibly needing an apology? Also, could it have been the great diciever that answered the prayers above? He had the power to inflict illness on Job, would he take advantage of an oppurnity to make a person believe that God had answered their prayers knowing that they were evaluating their relationship with God as positive when the prayer was answered? Most of my prayers are not for physical needs, but for guidance, wisdom, etc. in my feeble attempt to further the Gospel to others, and even after prayers in that direction sometimes I feel like the Prophet that felt he was alone, as I see the results.
Trying to grasp what is God’s will and what is not when it comes to our communication with God is laying on ourselves, and others, an impossible task. That is understood when we admit that all of us will ask God for anything that helps us face our challenge of the day. We have no problem in those difficult times convincing ourselves, “This might just be something God wants to change or bring about”. And that’s OK.
For me, and I have learned this the hard way as well from the wisdom of others, total honesty with God, even with requests, keeps me face to face with the one who feeds the birds and clothes the flowers of the field, with whom even the hairs of my head are numbered. From this, I don’t watch and listen for answers that come like bolts of lightning, but from the still small voices that come from his little ones each moment of the day.
James brought up the following biblical anecdote: “An intriguing example to me is in Acts 21 where Paul was planning to go to Jerusalem. . The church did not want him to go, and verse 4 says, it was “through the Spirit” that they determined this. Yet, Paul, whom we think as being led around on his missionary journeys by God, determined to go anyway. A prophet then comes and shows him and the church what was going to happen to him if he went to Jerusalem.”
This passage illustrates something which happens often in hearing God, and that is moving from revelation to intuition when we APPLY what we hear. The church did hear that something bad was going to happen. That’s the Lord. They then begged Paul not to go. That was a conclusion born of personal concern Agabus gave Paul some detail about what was going to happen. He did not tell Paul “the Spirit says do not go”. Paul did not continue to Jerusalem because he rejected the revelation. He simply responded to it in a way which seems counter-intuitive to others. But that should not be such a shocker if you read Jesus telling us “if a man steals your jacket, give him your shirt”.
If God tells you, “If you preach that sermon, you will be fired,” does that necessarily mean you should not preach it? Sometimes the challenge comes not in hearing God, but in knowing where we stopped hearing Him and started listening to ourselves.
Charles,
Exactly. And it often works the other way as well regarding “Revelation”….we hear what we want to hear….even if God isn’t saying it.
The challenge is to learn to see ourselves in light of God and SEEK His will even if we don’t LIKE (I use that term loosely) His will. Ultimately, our goal is not to know or interpret everything correctly. We can’t and won’t do that. But our goal is to come to know HIM better which is the emphasis of Ephesians 1:17. Not that we would know it all, but that we would come to KNOW HIM BETTER.
Larry testified of God healing his back and went on to note: “Of course another member follows with a simiular story and all exclaim “Praise God”. I then think about the early Christians that were torn to pieces by the beasts, burnt at the stake, etc. and believe that surely they had been praying for that not to happen (remember even Christ’s prayer). If God did not answer the prayers of the early Christians and did answer the prayers for such a trivial situation, and being no respector of persons should those that did not recieve the request of their prayers, possibly needing an apology? Also, could it have been the great diciever that answered the prayers above?”
Larry, I would observe that you moved in two sentences from “Praise God!” for the healing of believers to considering that “maybe the devil is the one who really healed them”. That line of thinking is not from the Lord, my brother. If you want to see what sort of deception the enemy DOES deal in, re-read those two sentences. They seem reasonable and rational… and deprive God of His glory in just a few seconds.
A skillful and convincing liar, our enemy.
This conversation is interesting – but is filled with imponderables.
Jerry,
I agree. I find this one tough. It’s awfully hard to tell someone who feels led by God to do X that his experience is false, but it would be foolhardy to accept every such claim as absolute truth. I know many people who felt led who were sadly mistaken, and many others who were led to accomplish great things for the Kingdom.
Hence, our response has to be something like a period of discernment with those who are more experienced and wiser — not just the person’s best buddies.
I think of a talk given by the good people at Kairos. People who wish to be supported as church planters come to them for a process of discernment. They spend time in interviews, prayer, and even psychological testing. Some are told that they aren’t ready to be a church planter. They may need to spend time working on their marriage or their tempers or their submission to authority.
At one presentation, prospective planter who was turned down spoke about how blessed he was to have gone through the process, as he was told what he needed to do to get ready.
Of course, some people show up and are just the wrong kind of people for the work. Not everyone is a leader. And they are blessed, too, because they don’t waste years of their lives seeking to be something they are not.
Leaders have to have the courage to say “no” and to honestly say why. And it’s hard to tell good people that they aren’t qualified to follow their dreams. But letting them try and lose a decade of their lives in futility is no kindness either. It just avoids the pain of having to tell an unpleasant truth.
I seem to be saying this a lot today. Look for the fruit and trust God to make good even when we misunderstand what He is trying to tell us or the other believers. The only thing I can trully say is that we can’t automatically assume that such leadings are wrong – unless they obviously are crossways with the Scripture.
Following Jesus was never intended to be a solo experience. Likewise, learning to hear God is not intended to operate in a vaccuum. Take prophecy, for example. We are all “clay vessels” and subject to making mistakes. But when the believer is surrounded by loving, mature believers who can speak to him both correction and encouragement, our discernment does develop. While I agree that we reject anything which obviously contradicts the revelation of scripture, we need not feel required to accept just ANYTHING which someone declares as “thus saith the Lord”. God puts us together for a reason.