God's Will

“What is God’s will for my life?” That’s the sixty-four thousand (or hundred, million, billion – choose your own denomination according to your level of angst!) dollar question, isn’t it? “If I only knew what God wants me to do, I would do it!” Or, “What is God’s will for my life – I have cancer, you know?”

Is God’s will a mystery that one must discern in prayer and deep communion with the Lord? Well, let’s analyze that for a bit. To use the term “God’s will” implies that we believe He has a plan for our lives. The best way to know His will is to hear what He has to say about His plan for our lives. So, how does He speak to us? How do we know His plan for our lives?

Let me say up front that I believe God’s will for our lives is revealed primarily through His Word. In Colossians 1:9, Paul told a group of people he had never met that He prayed regularly that they would know God’s will for their lives. What follows is not what we hear about today when people speak of knowing God’s will. Paul didn’t talk about discovering where they should work or who they should marry or whether or not they would recover from a particular sickness. He talked about living lives that are pleasing to the Lord, knowing where the strength to live such a life comes from, and the wonders of salvation in Jesus Christ – and while Paul was talking about Christ, well, the rest of the chapter is about Jesus.

We can know that everything God says to us in His Word (the Bible) is true. He talks a lot about His will for our lives in the New Testament, but He speaks in general principles rather than in specifics. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 tells us that it is God’s will for us to thank the Lord in every kind of circumstance. In the previous chapter, Paul had told his friends that it is God’s will for them to be morally pure. The author of Hebrews connected God’s will with a life that pleases the Lord (13:21). In 1 Peter 3:17, the Apostle Peter clearly states that it may even be God’s will for us to suffer persecution – actually, 2 Timothy 3:12 states that as more of a certainty rather than a possibility. Some folks’ theology does not seem to allow for such a contingency. Once again, God’s will has more to do with the way we behave in all circumstances, even (maybe, especially) in unpleasant ones. In fact, just about the only place in the New Testament God gives instructions about His will for our lives in a specific situation is found in James 4:13-17 where He warns us about making future plans without taking Him into consideration. Let’s take the time to consider this passage.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” – yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

What’s the point? We do not know what tomorrow holds. Those words have never been truer for Linda and me. We have a great deal of hope these days! Doctors say that Linda is doing better than they could have hoped. Her tumor is shrinking when the best doctors hope for during radiation and chemotherapy is for the tumor not to grow. Although her progress is slower this week than it was over the last couple of weeks, we are greatly encouraged because she is rapidly decreasing the steroids that she has been taking without losing any motion she has gained on her left side. Steroids reduce swelling in the brain, thus allowing her motion to increase, so it has to be a good sign that she is retaining the progress she has already made!

So are we convinced that she will beat this illness? That is in the hands of the Lord, isn’t it? We are very hopeful for a number of reasons, some of which I will delineate below. But, as I have repeatedly said, I may die tomorrow in a car wreck and Linda may live 40 more years, fully functional after this initial bout with a brain tumor. Our concern is God’s will for our lives, and God’s will has more to do with how we live the years we are given (Psalm 90:12) rather than being concerned with how many years we actually live.

Over the course of my Christian life, I have thought and prayed much about God’s will for my own life. Early in my life I believed that while biblical principles, circumstances (including open and closed doors), wise counsel, talents and giftedness all played a role in determining how God leads us, He would always speak to us through a still small voice as He did to Elijah in 1 Kings 19:11-18 and that He would let us know what He wants us to do. I failed to take into account that this was God’s specific way for dealing with His specially called prophet at a critical juncture in Israel’s history. Nor did I consider that in addition to the gentle whisper, Elijah carried on a conversation with God - I did not anticipate that. Eventually, influenced heavily by Gary Friesen’s book, Decision Making and the Will of God, I concluded that God almost never speaks directly to individuals today in a “gentle whisper,” but always communicates with us through His Word. The Holy Spirit directs us in His Word, of course, but biblical principles and solid decision making determine the path for the godly believer.

The problem with my new approach to discerning God’s will was that I forfeited intimacy with God for quite a few years. Oh, I am not blaming Friesen – I agree with many of the things he said, but there is no question that my walk with the Lord today includes a sense of His presence and a sense of His direct leading at times that I did not have during those years. I am not talking about audible voices at all, but I often have a sense about not only what God is leading me to do, but about what He is going to do in a specific situation. Some would say that is simply instincts, and I would not argue. I NEVER think that a feeling I might have about how God will work in a person’s life or in the life of our church is infallible. Far from it – I often doubt my instincts, but I have found them to be better than I usually expect them to be. Is that because God is leading me? I hope so! I do believe that some people are given a spiritual gift of discernment (1 Corinthians 12:9), but please note that it is a spiritual gift, not the right of every believer, and it is certainly not my spiritual gift!

Well, there are enough qualifications in that paragraph to frustrate the most careful of readers! You’re welcome. So, what do I think will happen with Linda? Will she beat this illness or not? Neither one of us has any sense in our hearts about what God is going to do, but we have tried to discern God’s hand in all this. Our observations give us hope! First, I cannot remember ever hearing so many people say that they are praying for someone else, in this case, Linda. I am talking about hundreds of people who do not know her that are praying every day for her to be healed! It encourages us that God would burden so many people to pray specifically for Linda to be healed. And it gives us hope!

Furthermore, several people have told us that they have a real peace that God is going to heal Linda. That inspires us! Perhaps we are too close to the situation to have that specific assurance, but it encourages the fire out of us (a Southern thing, don’t you know?) that so many of you have peace. Also, we hear more and more stories about people who have had the same tumor and lived much longer and better lives than they were told they would – in fact, most of them are still living, from two to five years after they were given a few months to live. Linda seems to be moving in that direction rather than the other one.

So, what is God’s will for Linda? That she live a life pleasing to God, loving Him with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving her neighbor as herself. Period. If we take all the data in the last two paragraphs and conclude that God is definitely going to heal her but circumstances turn out differently, what then? Have you ever missed on such a thing? Have you missed on something this important? It is unwise to be too convinced of anything that will happen tomorrow (in addition to James 4, see Isaiah 55). Our call, no matter what, is to say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” We will not lose our faith if Linda is not healed, nor does saying so mean that we do not have sufficient faith for her to be healed. We are invited to pray, believing that God will answer our requests. But the decision is ultimately His, not ours, regardless of the “level” of our faith.

Now, I need to say that one of the reasons I can speak as freely as I do about accepting God’s will, no matter what, is that I have not allowed myself to think deeply about losing the love of my life. I did not even go there during that first week when the prospects seemed quite bleak to us all. It is not that I am refusing to deal with reality, it’s just that I need to be positive, for as you know, a positive spirit is crucial in recovery from cancer – and you better believe we want Linda to recover! If it becomes apparent that God wills for her is to come to be with Him sooner than we would like, then I will face that reality and those emotions head on at that time. For now, there is no question that Linda and I are called to face our mortality – as are you, for goodness sake, if you are still reading this post! And so we must consider what is really important, what is really God’s will for us. And so we have.

Well, thank you for caring so much! Since we are invited to bring our requests to the One Who loves us and Who can do something about our troubles, would you remember a few specific requests? First, pray that the swelling in Linda’s brain will not return as she goes off steroids. Second, pray that God will continue to grant her the high spirits with which He has blessed her thus far. Third, pray that she will get in at Duke (we still have not heard from them) if she is supposed to be there. Fourth, pray that God will grant her a good week of rest as she concludes her radiation on Wednesday and has a week-long break from chemotherapy as well.

And may God grant you rest, rest in Him, trusting His guidance no matter what life may bring you. It is late, and I am going to bed!