Slow martyrs

When I sat in the crowd at the latest Together for the Gospel (T4G) conference in Louisville a few weeks ago, my heart was filled with conviction and joy listening to David Platt talk about God's sovereignty and death-defying missions. He made the thoroughly biblical point that, if we really believe in God's sovereignty, then we ought to have more courage as we confront difficult and even dangerous situations. We ought to willingly face down the prospect of martyrdom with both confidence and joy no matter the outcome. And I couldn't agree more. In fact, as I sat in that stadium, I was ready, not simply on an emotional high, but actually ready, I think, to lay my life down for the cause of Christ and the spread of the Gospel.

Not gonna happen.

Oh, it's not that I know the future. I am neither a prophet nor a prophet's son. But living as I do in the United States, and being called to pastoral ministry here, I think the odds are not in my favor. I won't, in all probability, have one of those great do-or-die, renounce-Jesus-and-go-free-or-stay-faithful-and-lose-your-head moments that make for such inspiring reading later and which serve as pungent testimony to the reality of one's faith. I probably won't have the words of my sermons sealed in blood to be read and heard by future generations of the faithful.

You probably won't either.

Instead, what will most likely happen to me is that I will face, like most of you, a different set of challenges in being faithful. It won't be renounce Jesus or die, it will be the smaller, daily challenge of being faithful to Jesus in renouncing sin and pursuing Him. Of trusting Jesus not to stand with me as the fire is kindled, but to stand with me as I go through chronic disease, disappointing and painful relationship conflicts, raise my children to (hopefully!) fear God and love Him with all their hearts, keep preaching though I wonder on many Mondays whether it works, keep loving dear Karen sacrificially even when we are in conflict, and so on until death or Jesus comes. It's not fast martyrdom, in other words, but slow martyrdom, learning to daily put to death the deeds of darkness and my old man, put on the new self created to be like Christ, and trust Jesus to work in and through me to make me wholly his. This too, is a sacrifice, this too, a form of dying for Jesus, albeit a more normal, less spectacular one. But still, it is a sacrifice, and one I pray that God finds acceptable in His sight and glorifying to Him.

Finding God's Will: God's Directive Will

Now I suspect that many of you have been reading up to now and thinking, “Yes, yes, that’s all true. The Bible does talk about God’s will that way. But what about God’s will for my life?” And if you’re asking that question, then you’re asking about the third category, what I’ve labeled God’ Directive Will. God’s directive will isn’t so much His will about right and wrong decisions as it is about right and left decisions. Does God have that kind of specific will for each one of us? My answer is a qualified “Yes.” It’s a qualified yes because we don’t see very many New Testament examples of God giving specific direction for individual situations. There are a few times when that happened; for example, when Paul had his vision of the man from Macedonia who urged him to come share the Gospel there, and when Ananias had his vision telling him to go see Paul. But remember that these are unusual circumstances, even in the lives of people involved. God doesn’t, as far as I can discern from Scripture at least, normally give people visions about more mundane things like which car to buy, which person to marry, or which school to attend. Having said that though, I do think that God does provide us with his leading for our lives, but that some conditions have to be met for us to have it:

1. We must not be seeking God’s will about things which He has spoken clearly. Should I attend church? Should I give to church? Should I marry a non-Christian? Should I start dating again, even though I'm already married? These things (among thousands of others) are things about which God has already told us.
2. We must have a willingness to obey. If we ask God to lead us in making a decision about something, either big or small, we need to ask while being willing to actually do what He tells us. As James says in chapter 1 of his letter (vv. 5-6), “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.” You can’t be asking God to do something you don’t actually intend to do anything with. What would be the point of giving it you then?
3. “Seeking God’s Will” must not be an excuse for laziness. Believe it or not, there are some people who don’t so much want God’s will as they want an excuse for doing nothing. The Christian author Kevin DeYoung put it this way: “our search for the will of God has become an accomplice in the postponement of growing up, a convenient out for the young (or old) Christian floating through life without direction or purpose. Too many of us have passed off our instability, inconsistency, and endless self-exploration as “looking for God’s will,” as if not making up our minds and meandering through life were marks of spiritual sensitivity.” What those things are is the mark of a lazy, immature person who is using “finding God’s will” as a spiritual sounding way of refusing to obey what God has already said to them in His word. So when you ask them to serve, even if they aren’t doing anything else, they say, “Let me pray about it and see if it’s God’s will.” And amazingly, even though God’s word says that each person has received a spiritual gift they are to use in serving others, God never seems to tell them that they should say “Yes” and start using theirs.
4. We must remember that sometimes, God does give specific leading through His Holy Spirit. God does reveal his will in our circumstances and through the counsel of others. Sometimes He speaks to our hearts directly, and we get the very strong sense that He wants us to make a particular choice. When we have that, we need to follow it and obey it.
5. God’s directions may not be as clear as we sometimes wish they were. Let me give a couple examples. In 1 Corinthians 7, we find God’s most explicit instructions about finding a mate. He says, first of all, that not getting married is also a good choice. Then he says, that getting married is a good thing, and a person who wants to get married should “marry whom [he/]she wishes, only in the Lord.” In other words, even about one of the most life-altering decisions of life, we have tremendous freedom. God doesn’t say specifically to me if I should marry Betty or Sue, or if a woman should marry Ken or Bob. We get to marry anyone we like, as long as we are marrying an opposite sex Christian person. We are also free to choose to be single, so we might serve the Lord unencumbered by family responsibilities. In the same way, in Acts 15:28, we get this marvelous statement by the Jerusalem Council: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” which I take to mean that they had searched the Scriptures, prayed, and then decided to do what seemed wisest and best, recognizing that the Holy Spirit is working through their decision-making and desires to enact His will.
   
6. Remember that God is good, and won’t punish us for making a “wrong” choice when it’s a right or left decision. He doesn’t sit in heaven saying, “Well, if you had married Sue, you’d have had a happy marriage, but since you married Betty instead, you’re condemned to a life of misery. God is good and loves us. Our freedom is real freedom, not an excuse for God to play some sort of cosmic, sadistic, whack-a-mole.
   
7. Remember that following God does not mean that there will never be pain or struggles. Just because something winds up painful, does not mean it wasn’t God’s will. How else, but through pain, could we be transformed into the likeness of His Son?

Finding God's Will: God's Desired Will

Another of the other ways that the Scriptures talk about God’s will is in the way that I have called His desired will. God’s desire is that we, as His creatures, would obey Him and walk in His ways. Yet God has also created us as creatures with a will, and it does not always align with God’s will, does it? 1 Timothy 2:4 says that God “wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” Yet not all men are saved, are they? This is where the human responsibility side of the divine sovereignty and human responsibility side of discussion enters in. God has a plan and purpose which will be fulfilled, yet we can, and do, choose to either obey or disobey His desired will.

Now when it comes to the Christian life in particular and not just humans in general, we have a huge number of commands from God. The whole Bible is saturated with them, isn’t it? Why? Because God wants us to know His desired will for our lives. If we will obey them, we will not only avoid sinning, we’ll also experience growth in Christian maturity, and all the blessings that come from experiencing the fellowship with God for which we were made. So, just to cite a few examples, God tells us in Exodus 20, “Do not worship any other gods…do not misuse the Lord’s name…do not murder... commit adultery... steal... lie... [or] covet.” There are hundreds of other places, both Old and New Testament that give God’s will in all kinds of moral matters like that. But there all also commands that have to do with how to faithfully live life as a Christian.

We have commands that apply to us all on an individual level. In 1 Peter 2:1-2, Peter writes “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.” In other words, if we want to live faithfully as Christ’s followers, then we have to take in God’s Word. We’re also to seek the Lord and trust Him in all our circumstances, just like Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” The intake of the word, by which God speaks to us, and prayer, by which we speak to God, are the basics of the Christian life.

But of course Christianity isn’t a solitary belief system is it? According to the book of Hebrews, we must “not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another…” (10:25). In other words, being a Christian necessarily includes being part of a church family and being with them regularly. And of course, there are also instructions about what we’re to do as part of a church family. In 1 Peter 4:8-10, the apostle writes, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” We’re to love one another from the heart, and let our love for one another smooth over the difficulties that we encounter in relationship with each other. We’re to demonstrate that love in opening our homes and lives to each other. We’re to use our spiritual gift or gifts to serve each other. And this relationship we have with others even includes our financial commitments, as 2 Corinthians 9:7 says: “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

And of course, God has a desired will for our family life too. In Ephesians 5:22, He tells wives to submit to their husbands and then in the next verse tells husbands to love their wives like Christ loved the Church and died for it. In 6:1 of the same book, God says, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” To summarize then, there’s no area of life about which God has not expressed his will about how we should live. And since He is the Creator and designer of life itself, it seems to me wise that we should listen amen?

Finding God's Will: God's Decreed Will

One of the questions I've been asked most often is this one: “How do I find God’s will for my life?” If the old Campus Crusade tract is true when it says, that “God loves [me] and has a wonderful plan for my life,” then just how do I go about discovering what that plan is?

Well, I'm glad you asked. As you look at the Scriptures and study them, you’ll see that there are really three ways in which Scripture talks about God’s will: His Decreed Will, His Desired Will, and His Directive Will.

God’s Decreed Will is the term we can use to describe those thing in the Scriptures which God has decreed in advance will happen. It’s the term for God’s eternal plan and sovereign purposes. Whether everybody knows it or not, God is completely sovereign, and there is not one maverick molecule in the entire universe. God is the Creator, the King of Kings, and all beings and things in the universe must and do bend to His will. The Prophet Isaiah says it best in chapter 46, verses 9-10: Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.

In the same way, in Genesis 1, God says over and over, “Let there be…” and those things appear out of nothing by God’s sovereign power and word. God says, “Let there be light” and there is light. “Let there be an expanse to separate the water in the ocean from the water in the atmosphere,” and the sky came into being. God said, “Let the water be filled with fish,” and the water had more kinds and varieties of swimming creatures than we can count. And so it goes, all the way to the end of the chapter, when God says, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground” (1:26). So all these things came into being, including people. Why? Because it was God’s will that it be so.

Moving forward in salvation history a bit, to after the Fall, God speaks of the Messiah's coming (either in the future or the past) in terms of His Will. In Isaiah 53:10, we read about the Messiah that “it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer” because the Lord had made his life a guilt offering. Peter picks up that same idea in Acts 2:23 in his great Pentecost sermon, when he says, “This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.” And again, John says about Jesus in Revelation 13:8 that he is “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.” In other words, why did Jesus die? Because it was God’s will. Even before God made the world, He knew that humanity would fall into sin and need redemption. And so even before the world was created, the Son, Jesus, was planned to come and die and rise again for you and me.

God has also planned the end of human history. In 2 Peter 3:10, Peter writes, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare…But in keeping with his promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.” There will be an end to all wickedness and wicked people, along with the heavens and the earth in which wickedness occurred. And then there will be a new creation of a new heavens and a new earth, in which redeemed people will dwell face-to-face with God. God’s will is carried out before creation, in creation, in the redemption of fallen creation, and in the new creation. From the beginning of history to it’s end, nothing that He has planned to happen will fail to take place.