How to Discover God's Will for Your Life

This morning's topic is how to discover God's will for your life. We're going to be looking at Deuteronomy 29:29 and other different passages. And I'm going to be weaving my testimony in and out of this message, not because I think that I'm the golden example of how to discover God's will for your life, but largely because as a young Christian man, I felt like there were, there was a lot of ways I did it wrong. And the Lord brought some mature Christians into my life.

Early enough in my life, I think to save me from some problems and, and I'm very grateful for what the Lord taught me as I matured in Christ. And so I'd like to share some of that with you guys this morning. you guys may remember a couple of weeks ago, Pastor Milton and using one of his illustrations, he used a, a book called God Smuggler by Brother Andrew. Do you guys remember him talking about that book?

I read that book, when I was 14 years old, right after I became a Christian. And after reading that book, I was convinced that God wanted me to be a missionary. And not just any missionary, but I was going to be a missionary to smuggle Bibles into Russia, just like Brother Andrew, and I was convinced that that's what God wanted me to do with my life, and I proceeded. I had no idea what a missionary was other than it's somebody who goes on 007 type adventures.

And smuggles Bibles into dangerous areas and gets to see miracles worked by God. And so, I began to, to go on different summer mission trips. I went to Washington DC one year with Student Venture. I went to Hawaii of all places with Campster State for Christ and worked at McDonald's on Kalikawa Boulevard and then did evangelism in the afternoon, learned Pidgin English like shaka bra and Emanuao and stuff like that, and, and had some wonderful experiences.

Decided to go to college, majored in English so that maybe I could teach English overseas, then got sidetracked into a Christian rock band for a while thinking we were going to make it, and that just destroyed everything for a couple of years. that's a whole another story. I started dating a Christian gal in early college, who was very godly and also had missions on the mind. but one of the things that marked my early Christian life was an uninformed view of how to determine God's will.

And it wasn't that I didn't want to know God's will. I wanted to know God's will desperately. I prayed for God's will. I, I read the Bible regularly, looking for God's will for my life.

however, what I couldn't see What was what I didn't know. There were things that I had not experienced and aspects of God's word that I did not know. And God used some loving brothers and sisters that came into my life over time that were mature, more mature in the Lord than I, and began to point some things out and said, Mike, have you ever considered this? Have you ever considered that?

And that's part of the subject of this morning's message. And I'm going to be sharing with you some of the things that I learned as I just matured in Christ, by God's grace and how God used different, older men and women in my life. perhaps this morning, you are thinking about a job change. Maybe you've been thinking about moving your family.

Maybe you're thinking about marriage, maybe you're thinking about what college to attend or what college to send your kids to. Maybe you're thinking about how to school your children or whether you should go on a mission trip or go into full-time ministry or be a missionary. And even if you're not thinking about any of these particular questions, the concept of just determining God's will is something that I think Christians are always trying to figure out, right? I think everybody in this room, if Christ, you want to know what God's will is for your life.

And so we're going to try to develop that concept this morning. Now in your bulletin there is a handout that you can use to track this morning's message. It's similar to what the kids have. I'd like you to turn that over and draw these 3 concentric circles.

We're going to come back to this over and over again this morning and it's important for you to keep the center circle dotted. Because I'll try to remember to point that out why we have a dotted center circle and the other one solid. On the outside. As we talk about God's will this morning, I'm going to say some things that could be misconstrued, as if there's some confusion within the Trinity or some confusion between God's God's sovereignty and our responsibility and things like that.

And I just want to just start off. And while this isn't intended to be a big old theological sermon, just remind us that God has a unified will. There's one thing that God is doing in the universe, and he's not. He's not contradicting himself.

He's not confused. God is, is unified in his providence, He's unified in his desire. And, and while we may not always understand all these things mesh, God has one unified will. But the theme of this morning's message is this, is that is in order for you to know God's will for your life, you need to rightly relate yourself to Him in three respects.

We're going to talk about 3 different aspects of God's will, and we'll relate ourselves properly, I believe that these 3 aspects of God's will, then we can know what God's will is for our lives. And so let's talk about the first way that we need to relate ourselves to Him. That is number 1, obey God in respect to his known will. Obey God in respect to his known will.

Deuteronomy 29:29, I have on the overhead, you can look at your copy of God's word. If you wish. But Deuteronomy 29:29 says this, the secret things belong to the Lord our God. But the things revealed belong to us and our sons forever, that we may observe them, all the words of this law.

What we see in this verse is there are clearly things that are secret within the counsels of God, things that he has not yet revealed, or maybe things which he will always keep secret. But there are things that he has clearly revealed to the children of Israel, to the parents and to their children. And by way of application today, God has clearly revealed things to us as a Christian community. And he wants us to pass on those revealed things to our children.

God's revealed Himself through His Word. And he's revealed Himself through providence as it takes action in our world in time and circumstances. As soon as we see something occur in time or in circumstances, we know that it was within God's will of decree. But we look at God's will and His word, and we see things that God clearly tells us are His word.

And so in the first circle, I want you to write God's known will, God's known will. There are things that we know God wants us to do and to know about Himself. We pray, Your kingdom come, Your will be done. in Ephesians 5, Paul says, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

It's Ephesians 5:17. We're to understand what the will of the Lord is. First Timothy 2:4, God is a God who desires, who wills all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. God wants people to come to a knowledge of His will.

And so as we look at the Word of God, there's clearly things on the pages of Scripture that says, this is my will, and they're not mysterious, they're not difficult to figure out. We just need to look at what the Bible says, and we can know that aspect of God's will. And if we'll relate ourselves properly to God's known will, if we'll obey God's known will, then I'm going to propose later, then we have greater access to God's unknown will. We'll talk about that in point number 2.

So how is it that we can obey God's known well? What are some aspects of God's known well? Well, first of all, obey God's known will by being saved, right? Jesus says in John 3:3, Truly, I say, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

We're not going to understand God's kingdom purposes. We're not even going to see the kingdom, let alone know God's will if we're not born again. it's, it, it's vain for someone who has not saved to seek God's will. you might be here this morning wondering who should I marry?

What college should I go to, so on and so forth. If you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ, none of that really matters. The first thing that we know that is God's will, God's will of desire for you, is that you would be saved. I was, I came to know the Lord Jesus Christ when I was 14 years old.

And God used a woman who came to live and be our live-in babysitter that we, we called Mammer. Her name was Judy Slade, but we referred to as Mammer, like a form of grandma. And she came and began to minister the scripture to me and my sisters as we lived, in our home with an unsaved family. we arrived in a home with my father through some interesting circumstances.

We, I was living with my mom and unsafe stepdad who was an alcoholic. My mother discovered that he was being abusive, pulled up in a car one day, said to me, Get in the car. I left my bike with my friend, and she drove us 200 miles up to Bishop and got us situated with my grandparents. And we lived in Bishop for about 5 or 6 months while my dad down in Anaheim was getting a home ready for us to come live with him.

Unbeknownst to us while we were up in Bishop, some churches got together and got some clothes together for us because my mom didn't even take time to pack clothes. She just got us in the car and took us away. And so the Lord used these Christians to come and provide clothes for us, and my grandparents took us in and my aunt began to teach us the Bible up there. And then we came to live with my dad and my dad realized that these are some pretty honorary kids.

These are some kids that I have been living in a situation, where they are little animals. And, my dad said, I need some help. And so he went out and found a very loving but very firm, nanny, and, she had already been offered a job for more money. but as Mammer sought the will of the Lord and said, God, what do you want me to do in this situation, she felt very clearly that God was calling her to come work for my dad, even though he could not give her as much money.

And she said, I'll come work for you, as long as I can teach the kids about the Bible. And my dad said, as long as you don't talk to me about it, you can talk to them. So she moved in and began to teach us the scriptures. And, so that was when I was 9 years old.

And when I was 14, I confessed Christ as my savior and began to follow him. I began to understand that I was a sinner, that I needed Christ. He had died on the cross for me. And God reached down in love, and saved me.

But, if I was trying to seek God's will for my life up to that point, what does God want me to do? I really, I couldn't care less about God, but there was really nothing. that there was nothing about God's will that could have been communicated to me without being saved. It was really only after I got saved, after I was born again, that the important questions of life began began to slowly become more and more into focus.

And so if you're here this morning, maybe you're growing up in a Christian home, but you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ, or maybe you're visiting this morning, God's will for you, his desire for you is that you would be saved this morning. that you will call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and believe on him as your only savior, not trusting in your works, not trusting in your intellect, but trusting in Christ alone, who died for you and was raised from the dead. And if you'll be saved today, then these other things we're going to talk about are important.

If you don't know Christ's day, then everything else we're talking about really, really has no import for you.

Jesus Christ saved me and he dressed me in his righteousness. And so now I was able to begin to go on this journey of discipleship and determining God's will for my life. The second thing that we would need to do to obey God's known wills, obey God's known well by being spirit filled. By being spirit filled.

Ephesians 5:17 and 18 says this, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. What is the will of the Lord? Do not get drunk with wine, that's dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit. It's the will of the Lord that every Christian be walking in the fullness of the Spirit.

How do you, how do you get filled with the Spirit? Well, you don't do what I did at 14 and just laid on the floor with the lights out, turning on some Christian music, waiting for something to happen to me. That's what I did. At that point in my life, I didn't realize that Romans 8:9 says, I already have the Spirit.

If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, it does not belong to him. If you have the Spirit of Christ, you belong to him. So I had the Spirit. What I didn't understand is that to be spirit filled is to live a Christ conscious life.

Like it says in Colossians 3, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. To be led of the Spirit is to be led of the Spirit that Christ has sent, the Spirit which wants to glorify Christ and draw us to Christ, and it draws to Christ's words. As we're being drawn to Christ's words of the Spirit, we say, I want to do what Christ wants me to do and what's in his word, that is being spirit filled. Jesus himself was always filled with the Spirit on the earth.

Luke 4:1, Jesus being filled with the Holy Spirit was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. And so even when we're not spirit filled, we look to a Christ who is always spirit filled. We're going to come back to that. By the way, being radically committed to Christ, I think, is part of what it means to be spirit filled and young people, one of the things that you can do to ensure that you're walking in the will of God is to be radical about the Lord Jesus Christ.

the Lord saved me from a lot of problems. And I'm not saying this to puff myself up. I'm just telling you what the Lord did in my life from, from the age of 14 on throughout high school. God just filled me with the Spirit, and I was just sold out for Christ.

So what? Because I was such a freak for Christ, there's a lot of girls that didn't want to have anything to do with me. They thought I was a freak. Guess what, I avoided a lot of problems in high school.

there's even a gal in our church that I really like. She's a Christian gal, and I had a crush on her, and she knew I liked her. And I said, Well, hey, what's the deal? What's wrong?

What's the, what's the problem here? And she's like, Well, I could really see you as a husband but not a boyfriend. She wanted, she wanted to just have fun and fool around or whatever. She could tell I'm not that guy, but when she wanted to get serious about life, then maybe she'd come back to me.

That's basically what she was saying. but the Lord, the Lord kept me out of a lot of trouble because the Spirit was upon me. And, and so I was about the Lord's business. And because I was about the Lord's business, what, my best friends were about the Lord's business.

And when we were out hanging out with ungodly people, guess what? It was because we wanted to be an influence for Christ. I hung out with all kinds of ungodly people, party people, people that were doing all kinds of ungodly things. But the reason I was hanging out with them was because I wanted to have an impact on them for Christ.

When we're walking spirit filled, we begin to God's will becomes more sharply and focused for our lives. so being spirit filled. Thirdly, obey God's will. We obey God's will and respect his known will by being sanctified, being sanctified, sometimes when we talk about this topic of discovering God's will, we can think, wow, it's so mysterious.

How do you discover it? there's a lot of aspects of God's will. It's just not, not mysterious at all. Just look at 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.

1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 3. For this is the will of God. Man, I, how do I determine God's will? Paul comes along and says, this is the will of God.

Here we go, your sanctification. You're being set apart, you're being set apart unto God for holy purposes, for Him. What does he mean? He goes on to explain your sanctification, that is to abstain from sexual immorality.

That you would know how to possess your vessel in honor, not in lustful passion. Verse 7, for God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but sanctification. Consequently, he rejects this is not rejecting man, but God who gives us His Holy Spirit to you. Let me ask you a question.

Can you be pursuing the will of God and sleeping with your girlfriend at the same time? Can you be trying to discover God's will and sleeping with your boyfriend at the same time? Can you be cheating on your wife and trying to pursue the will of God at the same time? Paul tells us right here, here is the will of God.

Stay away from sexual immorality. Stay away from adultery. Stay away from adultery of the heart. Unfortunately, it's, it's becoming a growing problem in the church, young and young people and older people, of, of people not really seeing the big issue with sexual immorality.

This is the will of God. He rejects this is not rejecting men, but rejecting God. This is, we do, we do not want to grieve the Holy Spirit. Now, if you've fallen in, you're falling into Ongoing sin and you want help, come talk to one of the pastors, talk to your care group leader, talk to somebody in your care group.

If don't be beaten down by repetitive sin, confess it, we can, we can work on it together. But if you're stiff arming the Lord in these areas of your life, don't expect to find the will of God for your life. So we obey God's known well by being saved by being spirit-filled, by being sanctified by the way, Jesus Christ is our sanctification. And he is the perfect sanctification.

We're going to come back to that later. while I was able to avoid a lot of problems in high school, I'll just say that God protected my virginity till marriage, but I fell into some issues in college, where I found it hard to find the, the will of God, because I was not keeping myself entirely pure. I'd fallen into some sin. And suddenly began things got fuzzy and hazy, and I couldn't figure out the will of God.

Duh, right? You're not going to figure out the will of God, if we're walking in, we're not walking in purity. By God's grace, God woke me up. God got me on the right path.

And God can keep us on the right path as we continually confess our sin and look to Christ. Amen. Second, fourthly, obey God's known will by being submissive, by being submissive. And we're gonna, I'm gonna run through a bunch of different passages here.

What does the Bible mean by being submissive, submissive to whom? Well, first of all, to human institutions. First Peter 2:13, submit yourself for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether king, as our governors, verse 15, for such is the will of God. It's very clear.

The Bible is very clear about the known will of God. Here's the will of God. Submit to governing authorities and any authority in your life. Submit to your boss.

You want to know God's will? Submit to your boss. You want to know God's will for your life? Submit to the policeman.

You want to know God's will for your life. Submit to our governors and our presidents as long as they're not asking us to do something that's violating another principle of God's word. We carry an attitude of submissiveness. We pay our taxes.

We're good citizens. We submit to authorities. We speak well of authorities in front of other people and our children, and so on. Be submissive to your parents.

We always honor our parents, no matter how old we are, and we can always seek their advice, but particularly children who are in the home, be submissive and obedient to your parents. 6, Ephesians 6:1, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. This is the Lord's will. A wise son listens to his father's rebuke, but a scoffer does not listen.

I I, to my shame, I don't, I don't ever remember as a Christian young man going to my dad, who was not a Christian, and just saying, hey, Dad, what do you think I ought to do when I grow up? Hey Dad, what college should I, do you think I ought to go to? Hey, what do you think about me dating this particular gal? my first girlfriend?

I never went to him. I think there is this assumption in my thinking and in my theology that he's not a Christian. What does he know? But he was my dad, and God had placed him as an authority in my life and, and somebody that God could use in my life.

And I think later on, the Lord began to teach me that even Jesus Christ, Luke chapter 2, verse 51 was subject to his parents, perfectly, right? We're going to come back to Jesus Christ's perfect submission to his parents. later on in life, when I met a gal, Named Katie And got to the place after our courting where I thought, I think I'm gonna ask this girl to marry me and, and I talked to my dad about it. I asked her dad for permission, but I remember the day I went to my stepmom and asked what she thought about me marrying Katie.

doesn't know the Lord. And she said, you guys, I really see your personalities meshing very well. your previous girlfriend, who my stepmother loved and really liked, she says, I never saw that working out. she would not have, here's what my stepmother said.

She says, she would have been the mom and you would have been a child. But Katie brings out your leadership. My stepmom saw that. And the Lord gave me direction through my non-Christian stepmom, in, in, in approaching and asking Katie to marry me.

And so the Lord can use and will use your parents as you're submissive to them. another aspect of this is, submission to your spiritual leaders. We could look at First Peter 5, but I'll just mention Hebrews 13. Remember those who lead you.

13:17, obey your leaders, submit to them, for they watch out for your souls. And we see in Ephesians 4, isn't it Christ Himself who gives to the church, pastors, apostles, pastors, teachers. And so if Christ is so concerned to give us these leaders, And then the Bible is telling us to submit to these leaders. And Christ Himself is the one who places himself under his leaders, the Father, when he came to do his ministry, who are we to say that we don't need our leaders?

We don't need our leaders in the local church to determine God's will for our lives. Now I don't want you to get the wrong impression, some of the unbelievers in my life when I was a young Christian. I remember being made fun of. somebody said, Yeah, Mike doesn't even go to the bathroom unless he asks Jesus or the church for permission.

That's not what we're talking about, right? we're talking about, you're coming into major decisions in your life and you're trying to figure out is God calling you to ministry? Is God calling you to be a pastor, you're thinking you want to get married to this gal and this and that, you're looking for career decisions. Go to your spiritual leaders, go to your care group leaders, go to your elders and say, hey, here's what I'm thinking, here's what I've been praying about.

Pray with me. it's not like we're talking about some dictatorship. We're talking about the body of Christ, finding the will of God through the Spirit. And this is clearly on the pages of scripture.

I remember first church I started coming to when I moved out here to the Inland Empire. I still had Russia on the brain, and I was convinced I was going to go on this, this summer trip to Russia, and I went to my local church and I think the way I put it was something like this, Hey, I'm going to Russia. Would you guys like to pray for me and support me? I'm pretty sure that's the way I put it.

and, my, our pastor very graciously went and talked to the elders, they prayed, and then they came back to me and they said, my, we think you're a great guy, and we know you're really involved in your campus ministry, but other than Sundays we don't really see you around the church here a whole lot. And we don't really know you that well yet. And we'd personally like to be able to get to know you better and be able to disciple you and see where your gifts lie, and where's the Lord leading you and, and not only do we not want to support you to go to Russia this year, we want to ask you to stay home.

And we'd like you to serve here and get involved in a summer ministry here at the church.

And then let's, then let's move forward from there. And that rocked my world at first. I personally wasn't upset at it. I just was like, wow, this is interesting.

But when I told some of my friends about that, some of my friends got irate. They're like, Who, who do those guys think they are to come and say that you can't go to Russia? Who do some of those guys, who do those guys think they are to crush the dreams of a young man? And, but, as I prayed about it, I was like, I had a lot of respect for my pastor.

And I saw him as a man of God. And I said, I think he's got, he's on to something here. And I, I submitted to that council and I stayed home that summer and they actually put me in charge of a summer, ministry here in the city where we did evangelism and outreach right here in Riverside and, learned a lot and learned a lot about the value of the local church. I learned a lot about the value of leadership in the local church and, and I, and I was very grateful that that leadership had the boldness and the love.

To tell me some things that could have very easily offended me and maybe sent me packing somewhere else. but they have the love and the boldness to come to me and say, here's what we think you ought to consider. And it changed my life. It changed my life to see how God and how the Holy Spirit works through the local church and to the leaders of a local church.

And And, I, I, I saw some amazing things happen in my life after that. a final thing I want to say in this section is just to submit yourself to godly friends. First Peter 5 says, all of you clothe yourself with humility towards one another. We're to come, I wanna encourage everybody, I, and I'm sure, I know that many of you do as I look out in the congregation, but to have people on your list that you're bringing important decisions in your life to, and that you have people that you're transparent with, obviously, those that are married here, husbands and wives, but, friends, that you trust or counsel, you've, you've gained their trust, they've gotten to know you.

And you come and you, and you bring things to them. I would say, like, on the, on the negative side to my shame, When I started going out with my first girlfriend, I don't honestly recall asking anybody about that decision. I've never had a girlfriend before. I found out somebody liked me.

She was a very godly gal. And I was thinking, wow, somebody likes me. And before I knew it, we're hanging out and before I knew it, we're going out and she's a godly gal. I'm allegedly a godly guy.

We go out for 2 or 3 years and then break up and from a human perspective, and obviously God uses that in the sovereignty and stuff, from a human perspective, it was a waste of 2 or 3 years of both of our lives. We just waste wasted that time. Got so caught up in each other, distracted from ministry, just was not a good idea. And honestly, I have no memory of talking to any of my good friends before I got involved in that relationship.

Wasn't as involved in my local church at that time as I probably should have been. I'll tell you what, in 1993, when we were over at the Y, And I've been single, so to speak, for 2.5 years, and all of a sudden this gal named Katie started coming around and, and found out that she was reading Spurgeon and Calvin and Archie Sproll and stuff like that. I was like, all right. I got some counsel, man.

I went. I went and got some counsel from Pastor Jim Brown. I talked to my friend Kevin and Carlos, and I got some counsel about this baby before we jumped into things. And so, we're friends for quite a while and then courted for quite a while, and then her parents, my parents put the, the seal on the whole deal and we got engaged and got married in 1995.

And very thankful for, the lessons that people taught me, to bring into that, that courtship. After we, had been married, I was thinking that, what, I just wanna do a year of Bible school. I'm just gonna do a year of Bible school and let's get to Mexico, man. We're gonna go do some missions.

I don't wanna be hanging around a bunch of whiny Americans, all with their comforts. I don't wanna be messing with any facilities. Let's just get down to the real ministry down in Mexico. And I don't waste time with all this doctrine.

Let's just do the Bible school that they want you to do, and let's do the, let's do the ministry. it was my wife that just said, what, I, I just, I don't see that for you. I just, I just think the Lord would have you go to seminary and as I'm looking at your gifts, I just, I just think seminary is a thing that we ought to consider. And, and so the Lord, was, was, was ministering and speaking His will to me through my wife.

And as we prayed about that, we came, and I'll talk a little more about just the part that the elders at Cornerstone played and the Lord sent us off to, to, to ministry there. so godly friends. And then lastly, the, As we're submitting ourselves to human institutions and parents and, and spiritual leaders and friends, we're submitting ourselves to God's known well and institutions and filled the Holy Spirit. I think the final thing is, is just do what you want after that.

The Bible says in Psalm 37:4, delight yourself in the Lord and he'll give you the desires of your heart. And I think if you're just delighting yourself, you're saved and your spirit filled, you're trying to be sanctified. And, you're, you're submitting yourself to the and all the ways the Bible says to submit yourself. I don't know that I've ever seen a Christian that really wants God's will that went out and just missed it.

When they really desired God's will. I've been around. I've been a Christian for 25 years or so, and I don't think I've ever seen that someone that just really, I want to know God's will for my life and I'm I just want to do. I don't know if I've ever seen anybody just totally miss God's will, like God just took the carpet, yanked out from under you, and said, I'm punishing you for past sins.

I haven't seen that. What I have seen, however, is people who pretend like they want God's will, but they really want something else. Or maybe people that grow up in the church, and they know their parents want them to want God's will, but they really want something else. I've seen a lot of that.

And we need to be careful of that with our own hearts. And as we're raising kids, we need to try to warn them and watch out for that. And folks, we need to study God's will in certain areas before we arrive at that situation in life. Those of you that aren't dating yet, you need to have a theology of dating or a theology of marriage before you get in it.

Have you ever been trying, you ever tried to talk somebody out of a relationship when they're dating an unbeliever and they're already in it? Forget it. 9 times out of 10, it ain't gonna work. They're already in it.

They're not going to think theological when they're in that relationship, right? You ever try to talk somebody out of divorce who's already in the proceedings? They've already convinced themselves that my divorce is biblical, and yet, it's unbiblical. You're going to, you're going to sit down with the word of God and convince them it's biblical or unbiblical what they're doing.

That's never going to happen. You've got to figure these issues out before you're in it. And and help your children figure out before they get in it, because once you're involved in the situation, very difficult to get them to think about God's will, once they're in it. Not saying it never happens.

Holy Spirit does his work, but very difficult. So this is what we're talking about as far as determining God's will, I would say the first thing The most fundamental thing, and this is why we've spent so much time on this, is to obey God in respect to his known will. So let's talk about God's unknown will. These are things that God has not revealed yet, but can be revealed.

he may reveal it through providence or circumstance, or as we seek Him. The reason we have a dotted circle is because the unknown will can become the known will as God reveals it through circumstances, time, or as we seek Him through prayer and so on. Proverbs 25:2 says it's the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings to search out a matter. God gets glory by concealing certain things in his universe, whether it's electricity or a cure for penicillin, or some new species of animal that's yet to be discovered.

And he also gets glory as we're learning and discovering aspects of His will in our own lives. And God gains pleasure as we throw ourselves out on his lap and say, Lord, I want to know your will. And so he calls upon us to seek and to search for his will. How do we do that?

How do we seek God's unknown will? Well, first of all, we have to seek God's unknown will in submission to God's known will. We've already covered that. We're not going to find his unknown will properly, if we're not obeying his known will, correct?

OK, so the second thing here is, is seek God's unknown will through prayer. We come and we pray without ceasing. Proverbs 2 talks about seeking for the knowledge and fear of the Lord. As for hidden treasure, we're going after it.

You ever like, you play hide and seek. I don't know if you've ever taken like some money. We're going to try to do this in care group if you guys buy into it this afternoon or Friday. Take some, take some money, dollar bills.

It's got to be big enough where the kids really are interested. Don't just put pennies around the house, hide some dollar bills around the house and give the kids, OK, you got 2 minutes to go find these dollar bills. Kids are going to go crazy, right, looking for the dollar bills. We need to, we, we understand, hey, we're we're seeking the knowledge of God, we want the will of God.

God gets glory and pleasure by us just coming and pursuing Him. We're coming after him. And, and we want to do it, not by ourselves, but with others. Do not seek God's unknown will alone.

Do not seek God's unknown will alone. We're not talking about, definitely, you need to have your private prayer time. We're not just talking about your private prayer closet. We're talking about praying corporately, praying with others, letting people know, and seeking this, not in isolation, but with others.

Open up in your Bible to Acts 13, to 1 of the, I think, a very important passage in this whole discussion about determining God's will for our lives. This particularly has to do with Missions, but you can apply it to other areas. Remember, Paul received a direct divine revelation in Acts chapter 9, remember? Jesus told Paul, you're going to be a missionary, or you're going to go preach the gospel to the Gentiles, right?

He got this internal call. Paul could have just got up and just took off and just started doing the ministry. Jesus Christ himself spoke to him directly. that's what I wanted to do at 14 after I read God Smuggler.

I was ready to get on a plane, fly to Russia, start smuggling Bibles. That's what I was ready to do. The Bible has another aspect to this. There's a corporate aspect, 13, starting in verse 1.

Now, in the church that was in Antioch, skip down to verse 2. There's a bunch of teachers there, including Saul, as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Now separate to me, Barnabas and Saul, for the work to which I have already called them is the grammatical idea here. The Spirit had already called Paul and Barnabas to this ministry in the past, he'd already given them an internal call. But now as this local church gathers to pray, the Holy Spirit reveals to the whole church, now set apart for me, Paul and Barnabas.

They had an internal call. Now the Holy Spirit gives the whole church an external call. God spoke to the church leaders, and to the church in general. All that to say, we need to submit as we're seeking the Lord and seeking his unknown will, submit our take on what we think is God's unknown will to our brothers and sisters in Christ, to your local church, to your church leaders, make sure your inward call has an external confirmation.

Let me say that again, make sure your inward call has an external confirmation. When I wanted to go to Hawaii and do some ministry, I had a great time ministering in Hawaii. I don't ever remember running across anybody's plate to say, I'm going to Hawaii. Later on, through discipleship and some mentoring and whatnot, Katie and I felt that we were being called to seminary.

We brought that concept to the elders here at Cornerstone Fellowship Bible Church. I had been ministering and worship, leading worship at Cornerstone for a while. They'd watched my ministry. They had heard me teach, Katie and I came and said, Here's what we're thinking.

What do you guys think? We say we affirm your call. And right here in this church, right down here, the elders laid hands on me and laid hands on Katie and sent us to the master seminary in 1996 and sent us up to Labeck Community Church to do internship work up there with a youth group. And so when we made that decision, it wasn't our decision.

It was our decision. And when Katie and I ran into issues and troubles and, and, and trials when we were up in the back or seminary, we never once questioned our call to that ministry, because we didn't make it in isolation. We didn't make it by ourselves. We made it as a church.

And I praise the Lord for the leadership that God provided us and the oversight that God provided us here at Cornerstone Fellowship Bible Church. And, and I would just submit that to you as well. You don't want to be out in Timbuktu somewhere because you made an isolated decision to go serve the Lord with no input from anybody. When you hit some hard times, guess what?

The mind's going to start ticking and say, Should we really be here? You don't ask those questions when you might ask those questions, but you've got that backing of of of your local body and how the Holy Spirit spoke to the community when you're out there in that other situation. So let's, let's hit the final point here. We want to write and relate to ourselves in respect to God's known will, God's unknown will, but what do you do when you're seeking the Lord?

And there's just things that just God has not revealed. He's not, he doesn't seem to be revealing. Maybe he's not going to reveal it throughout your lifetime. Maybe there's things that have happened, you've got totally derailed and what you thought the plans were, and you're frustrated, or maybe something terrible happened to you in your life.

And you found yourself at times saying, Lord, why? And there's no answers coming. God's challenge to us, Deuteronomy 29, the secret things belong. To the Lord.

There are secret things. Proverbs 35 and 6, we are called to trust the Lord with all of our heart and lean not on our understanding. There's some things that you and I will perhaps never understand in this life. And God's calling us by his, by his with his love, to trust Him.

Just imagine how it must have felt to Paul, as he's moving through Asia. And he goes to Phrygia in Galatia, and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit says, no, not here. He goes to Misian and the Holy Spirit says, No. He goes to Bethenia, and the Holy Spirit says, No, I don't permit you to preach here.

Wait a second, Jesus told me to preach the gospel and the Holy Spirit telling me, no, not here, not here, not here. And then he goes to Philippi, and Lydia comes to Christ. And maybe that was part of the answers, the Holy Spirit was directing him towards Lydia. But there, there's a whole other groups of people that Paul wasn't able to go preach to because the Holy Spirit forbid him.

We don't know if that was circumstantial or prophetical. But in God's counsel, there's things that are secret, and we trust the Lord with those things. Let me get some final bits of counsel and then we'll close here. As we're seeking the Lord's unknown will, I think it is important for us to remember that God does not steer parked cars.

We, we want to look at what, what is God's known will. And let's be about doing what we know that he says. And let's be praying corporately. And God, he's in the business of guiding his people.

He, he delights in guiding his people. It's a glory of God to conceal a matter, but he loves to see it searched out and discovered. And so we move along and we're, and we're driving the car and we're saying, OK, Lord, where are you directing me? And sometimes it may feel like we're in this carnival maze of mirrors and we bump into that mirror and we bump into that mirror and then there's a door here and then we bump into another mirror, but we're moving the car.

We're moving the car by God's grace and faithfulness. Katie and I, when we went up to Lebeck, we ministered there for a couple of years, and there was some incredible ministry going on. And then all of a sudden, there was this situation where it was like the Lord was moving us back down to Cornerstone. And, and through Cornerstone's oversight and their protection of us and, and the things that were going up in the church in Lebeck, Cornerstone said, come on home.

And, and while we were glad to come back to Cornerstone, there was another part of our hearts that felt ripped out because we had developed such strong love and relationships with the people in that church and those children, and we found ourselves saying, why? Why is this going on? But we come back. To Cornerstone.

Previously I'd been in a situation where I had no medical insurance. I come back to Cornerstone, they give me medical insurance. Boom, my wife gets pregnant and I get cancer. And Excuse me.

then we began to see this was part of God's plan. we still didn't understand. There's still questions we have to this day about, some of those kids up north and so on, but, what, what, what could have happened with me getting cancer, no medical insurance, or my wife, getting pregnant with Joshua. I can remember laying in bed wondering, am I ever going to really be able to raise this little guy.

But God in His, his, his faithfulness was guiding us. And we saw the, his hand of love upon us. And I, I'll tell you what, I've never been more glad to not be by myself, that we hadn't made these decisions in isolation from our local church. We were underneath the protection of this body.

We had brothers and sisters in this church that cared for us and this leadership that cared for us. We came back and lived at the Kumamoto's house, Hotel Kumamoto, and, and had their jacuzzi and all that stuff there and they got our apartment and, and, and, we've been here ever since. And so we've just seen how the wisdom of the Lord and putting us in a body. Making decisions corporately, being humble enough to say, I don't know it all.

There's a way that seems right to a man, but Doesn't always lead to the good thing, right? And so doing this stuff corporately. The final thing I wanna say and then we're gonna have the guys come on up and, and, and lead a little bit of a closing song is, is what if I've blown it? we've been talking about all these things and how to discover God's well, you, you might be sitting there saying, I haven't, what, I, I've blown it.

I, I have not always aligned myself with God's known will, or maybe you're not in alignment with God's known will this morning, or you say, I haven't always sought, God's own known will the way I should and with the passion I should. none of us have. There's nobody in this room. I, I've shared a little bit of my testimony this morning.

I hope you get the idea that, I'm a mixed bag. I've, I've done some things ignorantly, and God by His grace has brought some information in my life, and I'm not saying that now I've arrived and I'm always doing things the way I ought to do it. there's times where I'm stiff arming, the knowledge that God wants to give me in my life. but what, we have a savior who always does the things that pleases His Father.

He always does God's will. And we are dressed in His righteousness. And guess what? In Romans 8:26 and following, we don't always know what to pray for, but the Spirit does, and he prays according to the will of God.

And the, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself is at the right hand of the Father, and he is always interceding for us. And so there's nothing that can separate the true believer from the love of God. So even, even if you've gotten derailed, and you've missed the will of God, I feel like there's, from a human perspective, I can look back on my life and say, there's definitely times in my life where I've gotten derailed and blew it. it's never too late.

Jesus Christ prays for you, the Holy Spirit intercedes for you. And, and he is the only one who has perfectly kept the will of the Father. And so we come to Him, we confess our sins, and we find that salve every day at the foot of the cross. Let's, bow in prayer.

We'll have the team come on up. Lord, we thank you so much that you have so clearly revealed your known will, and that you call us to seek you. We ask God that by your grace that we would seek you diligently. We know that you are the one who works in us both to will and to do for your good pleasure.

We pray that we would labor more abundantly than they all. Guide each and every one of us this morning, we pray that Your Spirit would help us apply these principles to our lives, in the way that you are leading us. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.