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 lifeÄa 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."