If God Still Guides How May I Know His Will

00:01 Amen. We want to give glory to God this morning, so let the church say amen. It's a good thing to be together again on this Lord's Day and appreciate the testimony time that we've had and the songs that went along with that. And bless each of you in the name of the Lord. If you're still there in Romans chapter 12, you may want to stay there for a bit. 00:22 We'll be looking at a variety of scriptures this morning. But thinking of this subject, "If God still guides, how may I know His will?" And I've toyed with the different titles for this about the divine guidance. Does God still guide? 00:42 And how may we know what His will is? And the Bible says here in our text this morning, Romans 12:2, I want to pay special attention to that phrase at the end of the verse that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. So he starts there in verse 1 by saying, 01:04 "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 01:16 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." One of the ways that we know the will of God and the both general and specific will of God is to be renewed in our minds, 01:32 to have our mind renewed that we might think God's thoughts rather than our own, that we might think and feel God's heart and His values and His ways, which are higher than ours and wiser than ours and more fulfilling than ours. 01:52 Someone said this, his name was George Truett, said this, "To know the will of God is the greatest knowledge. To find the will of God is the greatest discovery. And to do the will of God is the greatest achievement." I kind of like that. The greatest thing on earth is to be in the will of God. 02:11 The safest place on earth is to be in the center of God's will. And so we do believe this morning that God has a will. He has a will for our lives. He has a will for your life, both in a general sense and in a specific sense. He has a will. 02:32 And so we want to think this morning, how may I know that will? He says here that you may prove what is that good and perfect will. The word prove there means to test or to discern, to examine, to discover, that you would discover through examination God's will. 02:53 It also has the idea of something that is tested and found to find out how valuable it is. And so when we think about the will of God, we want to test our lives and test our values and test our thoughts and test His will to really understand how valuable it is. 03:14 And he refers to that will as being good, benevolent, profitable, useful. And it is holy. It is acceptable. The word acceptable there means fully agreeable, fully agreeable and well-pleasing. 03:33 God has a well-pleasing will and a perfect will, complete of full age, a mature will. And the word will there means a determination, an inclination, a desire. He has a desire for our lives that is good. It is pleasant. It is pleasing. 03:53 And it 03:57 is the best place to live. No better place to live than in the will of God. But sometimes we wonder and ask ourselves the question, how may I know His will? Does He still speak today? How does He speak? 04:12 And sometimes we wish that we could maybe have a heavenly herald that would be published every morning that we could just have in our mailbox, find it in the Bible for the plan for that day. Or maybe we wish we'd have a burning bush experience like Moses. 04:31 Or maybe we wish we could have a special call, like a verbal call, an audible call. When I was recently involved in an ordination and a young man said that when he was called to the ministry, there was a specific call. 04:51 He said it wasn't something he could hear with his ears, but he heard it in his spirit, in his heart. And oh, to have those experiences is a blessing. But then there's many, many, many times, many days where we wonder, well, what is God's will in this or that decision that needs to be made? 05:12 And especially when we realize that our lives are made up of the sum total of all of our decisions, the decisions that you made as a young person or as a child. If you're no longer a young person or a child, you're still reaping those decisions. And you add to decisions, 05:32 more decisions and more decisions and more decisions and more decisions. And you finally find a pile of decisions that contribute to who you are and what the quality of your life is and the measure of your walk with God. And so we need to somehow answer the question, 05:54 how may I know the will of God? First of all, let me say this about the will of God. There is what I call the general will of God. If you think about some of these verses like 1 Thessalonians 4:13 or 4:3, Paul says that this is the will of God, your sanctification, 06:15 that you should abstain from sexual immorality. That is a general statement about the will of God. That is a general statement about God's will that is true for every one of His children, every one of His children. God desires your sanctification, your moral and spiritual perfection in Christ, 06:36 and your growth, your spiritual growth, and your abstention from immorality and sin. That's a given. And so when you think about God's will, there are many, many general things. For instance, in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, "In everything give thanks." And finish it for me, somebody. 06:58 For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus, concerning who? Concerning you. And so again, there's the general things of God's will. He wants us to give Him thanks. He wants us to be a grateful people, a thankful people, and to be able to discern His will in that area. 07:19 And then Ephesians 6:6 talks about the Paul mentions that we should do the will of God from the heart. And so he wants people that have a heartfelt conviction and commitment to do His will. 07:37 Like someone has said, it was actually a fellow by the name of Bobby Richardson, a former New York Yankees second baseman. When he offered a prayer years ago at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, he said this in his prayer, "Dear God, Your will, nothing more, 07:58 nothing less, nothing else. Amen." Well, that pretty well summarizes it, doesn't it? Your will, Lord, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. That should be the heart cry of every child of God, knowing that God does guide. 08:18 He does give direction. And Psalm 32:8 says, "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will guide you with my eye." What a blessing. What a promise that God has a better guiding system, guidance system than a GPS. 08:40 He has a 08:43 Holy Spirit GPS, if you will. He wants to guide us with His eye. Psalm 48:14, "For this is our God, our God forever and ever. He will be our guide even unto death." And so He'll take us all the way through if we're open and relying on His will. 09:04 And of course, we know verses like Proverbs 3:4 and 5 that, "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." Psalm 43:23 and 24, "Nevertheless, I am continually with thee. 09:24 You will hold me by my right hand. You will guide me with Your counsel and afterward receive me to glory." Wouldn't that be a great tombstone epitaph to have on your tombstone that God guided us with His hand? He was with us continually, and He guided us with His counsel. 09:45 And afterward, He received us to glory. That's a great testimony that we all want to have. Isaiah 48:17, "I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to prophet, who leads you by the way that you should go." Now, we're not quite in the same way where we have a physical guide, 10:06 where like the children of Israel when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, after that, the children of Israel would journey to the place where the cloud settled, and there they would remain. And so the glory of God was the cloud and the pillar of cloud by day and the fire by night. And as they would travel, 10:26 they would watch that cloud, and then they would abide where that cloud took them. And so we think about the general will of God. In fact, I think it was Rich Mullins who was asked one time about the will of God, asked a number of times, and someone overheard him say this. He said, 10:45 "We should be concerned about the general will of God in this sense that God wants us to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then to love our neighbors as ourselves and to love God and to love people. And that's what we should really be concentrating on and not worrying so much about," and this is my paraphrase, 11:06 "not worrying so much about the specifics, but about the general." And then he would, with his smile on his face, he said, "And if God wants you to go to Egypt, He will certainly arrange 11 jealous brothers to get you there." So in other words, let's emphasize the general will of God and then the specific things of the will of God will, 11:27 as we're functioning in the general will of God, will be revealed to us and made known to us and will happen. And we'll be able to walk through those doors as God arranges. And so I think as a young person, I was very concerned, very determined to do the will of God, 11:46 but often frustrated because how do I know what the will of God is? I mean, when you're young, especially, and that doesn't change, young people, when you get older, there's decisions to be made. There's places to go. There's people to see. There's things to do. And we certainly want to do those in the will of God. 12:07 But if we're taking care to be in His overall will, He will set the things right that we need to do specifically. And so the dilemma is often not between good and bad because those choices are easy. We know where to do good. We know where not to do bad. 12:27 That's an easy choice. Then there's a little bit harder choices between something good and something good, between two good things. Sometimes you can't do everything good that you'd like to do. I tell people if I could be two places at the same time, then twice as much would be expected of me. 12:45 And so it really doesn't matter. It's not worth it. So you have to sometimes choose between something good and something good and something better and something best. And those choices get a bit harder. When it really gets hard is when you have to choose between a couple bad things or what appeared to be bad. And you find out you make a choice. 13:07 You do it to the best of your ability. And then maybe, maybe, maybe you find out that it was in your mind the wrong choice. But someone asked the question, how do you know when the wrong road has become the right road? Well, I remember reading about a man. 13:25 He was a pastor back in the days when they would walk the circus and ride the circus. And he came, not the circus, but the circus, the circuit riding preachers. And he was called upon to be at a certain place. And he came to a fork in the road, and the road was not marked. And so he decided he's got to take one. 13:46 And so you pray for guidance, Lord, to help me to know which one of these to take. And he came to the end of the road, and it was the wrong road from his perspective. It did not take him where he wanted to go, but it took him where God wanted him to go. He found at the end of the road, there was a woman there. 14:06 This was back in the sticks and back years ago. There was a woman there who had been praying for 20 years for somebody to come by there and share the gospel with them and with her family. And this preacher ended up in that one place that one day thinking he had taken the wrong road, finding that he had taken the right road to get to the woman's house, 14:27 shared the gospel, and led that family to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so sometimes when we think we've taken the wrong road, God actually is able to redeem that and to make something beautiful out of what we thought was maybe a bad situation. 14:46 And so we all have opportunities to test and approve God's will. The word there means to often has the sense of finding out the worth of something by putting it to the test and in actual practice. So if you want to know the will of God, 15:06 you've got to get off the fence. You've got to get out of your chair and start walking. Amen. Sometimes one person told me he was thinking about an invitation that had come to him to pastor a church somewhere years ago. And he said, "Well," he said, "I don't know what God's will is specifically, but we're going to start moving. 15:27 We're going to walk through this door. And if God wants us to do it, a moving vehicle is easier to steer than a parked one." And so that was his philosophy. And I kind of like that. You start moving. You pray. You discern. You get counsel. 15:46 And some of the things that we'll look at here this morning. So if God still guides, how may I know His will? I would like to suggest to you there are a number of ways today that we come into a position where we can discern the more specific things of God's will. And so if you're looking at some specific decisions, 16:07 here's some things I think that may be helpful for you. First of all, we want to look at the inner life because the inner life is important for us to be in a position where we have surrendered to the will of God, verse one. We've presented our body, soul, and spirit as a living sacrifice. 16:27 We're not being conformed to the world, and we're being transformed by the renewing of your mind. That is an inner world life, inner decisions that take place. And so in order for us to understand the will of God, we have to know that we have our inner world connected to His will. 16:46 And the first thing that we may want to look at would be an earnest desire to know. What is our desire to know God's will? Some people like to use Jeremiah 29:11. 17:05 I want to show something to you there because Jeremiah 29:11 is specifically for the Jewish people in God's interpretation. 17:18 "I know the plans that I have for Israel, thoughts of peace and not of hope to give you a future and a hope." But it also can be applied to us. It's not the interpretation, but the application can be applied to us. Yes, God does know the thoughts toward us and thoughts of peace. 17:37 He wants to give us a future. And in verse 13, He says, "And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." And so part of knowing the will of God, those plans that He has for us, is to search for God with all of our heart, not searching for His will, but searching for Him. 17:59 That's an important distinction. We are sometimes more concerned about God's guidance than we are about the guider. And so we want to seek the Lord and seek His will in relationship to that after we have sought Him. 18:18 But you need to be in the will of God. We need to have a Christocentric life and a Christocratic life. Let me explain that. Christocentric means that Christ is the center of our life. And Christocratic is that Christ is in control of our life. 18:35 He is the one who we are seeking not as a constitutional monarch. Constitutional monarch is what Britain has. Britain has a constitutional monarch where the monarchy really doesn't have much to do with governing the country. It's a figurehead. It's a figurehead. 18:56 And the management of the country belongs to the Prime Minister and to the Parliament. But you got to have that king or queen up there to make it look legitimate. That's not what Christ is. Christ is not a constitutional monarch. He is not one who sits up at the top and then authorizes you to set up a government for your life. 19:15 No. He is the king. He is the leader. He is the manager and not just the owner, but the manager of the team. And we do well to have Him as center of our lives and also as governor of our lives, not as a last resort. 19:36 After we've tried all of our stuff and it fails, then we go to God and say, "Well, now, God, what was Your will? What was Your will in this?" But as a first resource, going to God as a manager and as a director. John 2:25, "Jesus knows what is in us. He did not need anyone to testify of man, 19:57 for He knew what was in man." He knows the heart and the mind. The Bible says that He tries the reins, the intentions, the motives, the mind, the thoughts. And He knows what is best for us. Jeremiah 1:5, "He knows everything about us. 20:15 Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. And before thou cameest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee and ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." That's how much God knows us. God knows our past. He knows our present. He knows our future. 20:31 He knows the repercussions of our decisions and 20:38 the repercussions of our decisions and our purpose here in life. A genuine believer always has a desire to do God's will. 20:48 It may be a battle to know what it is, but our earnest desire to know, to know God and to know God's will is a very important part of our inner life in getting in a position where Christ can share that will with us. Romans 8:14 says, 21:07 "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God, to lay aside our agenda and take on God's agenda." Isaiah 30:21, "Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, 'This is the way. Walk ye in it.'" And we want to hear those words. 21:26 But we must be connected to Christ. We must be doing verse one and two and seeking Him and not just His will. The second thing about our inner life is that there must be a ready obedience to do His will. There needs to be an earnest desire to know it, but then there needs to be a readiness to do it. 21:48 Go over to John 7:17. I want to show you a verse that is very encouraging when it comes to discernment. 22:01 It comes to discernment, and it comes to discerning not only false prophets but also true prophets and the will of God. 22:11 John 7:17, Jesus was teaching them about how to know who He was and what His doctrine was and where it came from and where He came from and to know His will. Verse 16 of John 7 says, "Jesus answered them and said, 'My doctrine is not mine, but is His who sent me. 22:34 If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak of my own authority.'" If anyone wills to do His will, if anyone desires to do His will, 22:55 He will be in a position where He can know it. And so if our desire is not to do the will of God, that's not part of our heart condition, then we're not going to be able to discern it. We're not going to be able to find it. We're not going to be able to understand it. God's not going to reveal it to us because we don't want to do it anyway. 23:16 Sometimes, every so often, my wife I'll be very careful here, honey. But sometimes we have disagreement, and she will ask me, "Well, what should I do?" And I know her mind is already made up about what she wants to do. And so I said, 23:35 "Well, just do what you want to do because that's what you're going to do anyway." No, that's not true very often. That's my carnal response. But she could say the same thing about me. Is our mind made up, and we're just wanting input so that we can validate our decision? Or do we really want to know? 23:55 Sometimes we come to God and say, "God, I'd like to know that You agree with me." And then God says, "I don't agree with You." And say, "Well, I didn't really want to hear from You anyway. I want to do my own thing." And that's not right. Why ask if we're not going to listen, if we're not going to answer? 24:16 And so if we want to know His will, we must do His will. If anyone wills to do His will, it's a matter of ready obedience to God. This is the way of Jesus, desire and decision. 24:31 John 4:34, "Jesus saith unto them, 'My meet is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work.' Then He said, 'Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God,' in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do the will of God. I have found David," Acts 13:22 said, 24:50 "of David, the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart which shall fulfill all my will." What made David a man after God's own heart? It was the fact that he would fulfill the will of God. He had a predisposition to do the will of God before God revealed to him what that will was. 25:08 So there must be a commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in our lives in order for us to understand the will of God. The third thing about the inner life is there must be pure motives and desires. If you're still there in John 17:17, "If anyone wills to do His will, 25:27 he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak of my own authority. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory. But he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is true, and no unrighteousness is in him." So the glory is an important part of the will. 25:48 Who do I want to see receive glory? If it's God, then that is an indication that I'm on the right track. If it's man receiving the glory, then we're on the wrong track. And so a ready obedience of pure motives and desires. 26:09 So we can ask the question, when you're trying to discern the will of God, who do you want to get the glory out of this decision? Who do you want to get the praise? And who do you want to get whose kingdom do you want to advance? You want to advance your kingdom? You want to advance my kingdom? 26:29 Do you want to advance God's kingdom? Do you want God to have glory? Do you want man to have glory? And this gets down to the pure motives and pure heart desires. Where are we at? What do we want? What's our goal in this decision? So He said, "He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory. 26:49 He who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is true." And so there's the principle of the inner life, the inner world. Psalm 37:4, "Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart." Why can God give us the desires of the heart? Because we're delighting ourselves in the Lord. 27:12 If we're delighting ourselves in the Lord, His desires are becoming our desires are becoming His desires. His desires are becoming our desire. There's a coming into unity between the will of God and the will of us. And it's not that God's will is conforming to us, but our will is conforming to Him. And when our will is conforming to Him, 27:32 then He can give us the desires of our hearts because our heart is to will to do His will. Makes sense? Pure motives, fervent desires to do His will. And then there's one more, fervent prayer. Fervent prayer. Luke 22:42, 27:53 "When Jesus said, 'Father, let this cup pass from me. But if this cup cannot pass from me, then give me the strength to walk through it according to Thy will, not my will, but Thy will be done.'" And so what is prayer? 28:13 Fervent prayer, as we seek His face, not just when we're in crisis. By the way, let me refer to Proverbs 3:5 and 6 again. "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart. Lean not on understanding. In all Thy ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct Thy paths. In all Thy ways." I used to think that that meant in all the ways that pertain unto that decision, 28:35 acknowledge Him, and He'll direct you. That's not what it says. It doesn't say in all the ways that pertain to that decision, acknowledge Him. It says, "In all Thy ways, acknowledge Him, and then He will direct Thy path." So always, always being in a position where we want God's will to be done. 28:58 Fervent prayer and prayer and fasting is intercessory. Yes. And it's about proclaiming the will of God over a situation and circumstance. But prayer is often about changing my heart more than changing God's mind. 29:20 You wouldn't want God to change His mind when His mind and way is perfect, would you? No. We would want more that our way would change to conform to His way. And so what happens to prayer in prayer is there is a change of attitude towards my circumstances. 29:39 There's a change of attitude toward my way and my desires and my plan and my agenda and my kingdom and my will to His will. And so when we pray, "Thy kingdom come," what are we praying? We're praying that God would establish His authority and Thy will be done. 30:01 Again, we're praying that God's will and authority would be done. And that requires a change of my inner world to come under His authority. And pray that for others as well. 30:14 As you pray for other people, pray that God's authority would come over them and that they would surrender to that authority. "Thy kingdom come." A king has a kingdom. A kingdom has a king. And that king speaks of authority. 30:34 And when we pray that God's authority would be established in a person's life, that's opening the door for the kingdom of the king to be established and His will to be accomplished. And it changes not only the heart of the person that you're praying for, but it changes my heart as well. 30:57 Let's move on because then we have the directions from without, from outside of ourselves. So sometimes we look at the will of God as something that's very subjective. What is God speaking to me? But we also need some directions from without, 31:17 scriptural instructions. These are not necessarily in order of importance. They're all important. They're all important. Scriptural instruction, scriptural commands, biblical directives. 31:31 Psalm 119:105, "Thy word is like a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." Psalm 19, "Moreover by them is Thy servant warned, and in keeping of them, there is great reward. 31:45 Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed thereto according to Thy word." God speaks through His word. And if God does speak in the sense of giving impressions or giving thoughts or giving impulses that we could or should do this or that, 32:05 and we pray for direction and we try to discern, God's primary speaking is through His word. And His word will never be violated in any sense in order to make it look like His will is something contrary to His word. 32:26 God speaks through His word. He will never speak contrary to His word when it's rightly interpreted and rightly divided. 32:34 "Search the scriptures, for they have the moral principles that we apply in every area of life." When we look to His word in the area of marriage and business and finance and relationships and education and sex and occupation and all of those things, 32:55 what does God's word have to say about this? Then we can know that God's subjective impulses will never violate His objective commands and instructions. And so scriptural commands. He's not going to give you more revelation or insight if you reject that which you have. 33:16 Some people say, "Well, God, I've got this, and I know Your word says this, but I want this. And so how am I going to get this? So I'll redefine and reinterpret." Or maybe I'm violating God's word in a particular area, and I want light in another area. "No, there must be in all Thy ways, 33:35 acknowledge Him, and He shall direct Thy paths." God is not going to give you more revelation and insight if you reject that which He has given you. I think we understand that. In addition to that, and alongside of that, I should say alongside of that, we have Holy Spirit guidance. We have the Holy Spirit to guide us. 33:57 Jesus said, "He is the Spirit of truth, and He will guide you into all truth." Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me." A stranger's voice, they will not hear. They will not follow, but they will flee the voice of a stranger. 34:14 But they understand that my voice is that still small voice like Elijah heard. Sometimes we want the spectacular God. We want to hear You in the earthquake and in the fire and in the wind. And Elijah heard Him in the still small voice saying, "Now, this is what I want you to do. 34:36 My sheep hear my voice." Listening to the voice of the shepherd, that can be a subjective experience alongside of an objective revelation as the Spirit of God illuminates us into the paths that we should walk. And so we have the Holy Spirit giving guidance and direction. 34:58 One of the things that helps us in this area of discerning the will of God is how God directs our thoughts. How is God directing your thoughts? Oftentimes, I have through the years prayed something similar to this, "Lord, if this is not what You want to have happen, 35:19 would You just take the thought away from us so that we're not bothered by those stray thoughts?" And if it is something that You want us to pursue, then continue to lay it on our hearts in a compelling way. 35:35 And so that is bringing our mind under the subjection of God's Spirit and so that the Holy Spirit can give us the thoughts that He wants us to have. And it's amazing. When you pray that and you go about your day, how the thoughts either leave you or they get impressed upon you. 35:54 And that is one of the ways you can discern that still small voice as opposed to your own will. Because when we talk about Holy Spirit guidance, we're oftentimes confused between what is God saying and what do I want? 36:10 See, we have to cut through the confusion and get away from what I want to what God is actually saying. But we also have to be careful with that because God doesn't always speak in a way that is foreign to what our desires would be. 36:26 So just because you have a desire to do something doesn't mean that it's a bad thing if God has given you that desire. So this is where it becomes a bit confusing. 36:36 So we learn to obey the promptings, the promptings of the Holy Spirit as He prompts us and as He gives us thoughts about a situation. Sometimes when we're praying about a situation, a thought will come upon us that you say, 36:55 "Boy, I'm not smart enough to think of that idea. That must have been God because it certainly wasn't me." And then you can test that thought, and that may be the way forward. Sometimes when a husband and wife are praying together, we've had this happen. My wife pray about something. I pray about something. Sometimes we don't even know that we're praying about the same thing. 37:16 Or maybe we do, and we come together after a time of prayer, and we are thinking the same thoughts because we've been listening to the same Lord and hearing the same thing. And so in the multitude of counsel, there's confirmation. And so we can learn to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit. 37:37 There have been many times when I wish that I would have obeyed. 37:42 God has given me a thought, and sometimes, sometimes I'll say this, sometimes the thing that God wants us to do is completely opposite of what our natural inclination would be because our natural inclination is oftentimes an expression of our flesh and our will and our comfort. 38:04 And when that thought comes to pray for somebody or to call someone or to text someone or to visit someone, say, "Lord, I don't want to do that." That's the initial thought. 38:16 Then maybe a good chance that that's God giving you that thought that you need to act on because not always are God's thoughts 38:27 foreign to us, but many, many, many times they are. So Holy Spirit guidance. And then there are the renewed mind. 38:35 And we talk about that a little bit already this morning in Chapter 12:2, renewing of your mind so that you can think God's thoughts, delighting ourselves in the way of the Lord and seeking Him and experiencing that new capacity to think in His ways. 38:54 One of the frightening scriptures is found in 1 Psalm 106:15, "And He gave them their requests but sent leanness unto their soul." Have you ever had that happen? You're praying, praying, praying, "Lord, I'd like to do this. Lord, would You let me do this? 39:10 Lord, how about this?" And you know that it's more within God's permissive than within His directive and perfect. Is there a difference between God's permissive will and God's perfect will? I think there is. There are some things God will permit that He has not ordained. And sometimes that happens in relation to marriage. 39:29 Sometimes it happens in relation to courtship. We're not seeking the Lord. We're seeking our own will. And we go into a marriage. We go into a relationship. And then we find out that God permitted it, but it wasn't the best thing. But then when you're married, that then becomes God's will for your life. There's no second guessing that, no backtracking. So that renewed mind, 39:51 the mind is the ability, the renewed mind is the ability to think God's thoughts as He gives them to us. And then there will not be leanness in our soul. And then there's confirmation. This is the role of confirmation. What is it that God uses to confirm? 40:12 An internal sense of peace, Colossians 3:15, "Let the peace of God rule and reign in your hearts through Christ Jesus." I was explained one time as a young person that it is as an umpire. The peace of God is like an umpire directing whether or not this is of God or whether it's not of God. 40:31 And so a lot could be said about that. The peace of God rule in your heart, to which also you are called in one body, and be thankful. Remember, my wife and I were attempting to buy a house one time years ago when we lived in Oregon, and we just did not have that sense of peace. We did not have it. 40:50 We couldn't get it. We went to the realtor's office to sign some papers, and we had decided before we got there, we're not going to walk away from it. We're not going to sign the papers. And I remember walking into that office with no peace. We didn't sign the papers. I walked out of that office, and I had perfect peace. And I said to my wife, 41:09 I said, "This is the way I want to feel when I do buy a house." And so it wasn't right. It wasn't the right time. There was no peace. And then there is the external confirmations. We look for confirmations. A lot can be said about this. 41:30 The confirmation of open and closed doors. Is the door open? Is the door closed? Has God opened the door? Does God close the door? If He opens the door, walk through it to see if the next door opens. If the next door opens, if the next one opens. If it closes, don't force it. Walk away from it, back away from it. Maybe the timing isn't right. 41:50 Don't limit God. There may be something that you are not seeing. And if you walk through, if you force open a door, you may have avoided the next door that God was really wanting to open for you. Someone says before God gives you an open door, 42:09 oftentimes He will give you another door that you could walk through 42:15 as a test to see if you want His will or your will. Keep going His direction. Don't limit God. There may be something that you're not seeing. Many has been the time when we've been forced, been at the door to make a decision, make a decision. And we could go one direction. It seems like it'd be an option, but it doesn't feel quite right. 42:37 There's not enough confirmation. So we back away from that only to find out that a little bit later, there was the door open that God wanted to open. I'll give you an illustration of that. 42:50 When we were about before Living Water started, there was a church in the local community that we were invited to sit with the elder team and consider being their pastor. And it didn't feel right. 43:11 It just didn't feel right. It would have been, I mean, it wasn't anything you couldn't go to a verse and say, "This is the verse." And you couldn't objectively say, "Well, there was sin involved in this church that would keep us from going." It just was not, there wasn't the peace. There wasn't the open doors. 43:31 There was not the rest. So we did not pursue that. And within a short period of time, God opened the door for Living Water to be born. And that was where God wanted us. But had we bypassed His perfect will for His permissive will, 43:52 we may have bypassed the opportunity and the blessing that we've had the last 25 years to be a pastor and shepherd here at Living Water. Another confirmation is godly counsel, godly counsel. Where no counsel is, the people fall. But in the multitude of counselors, there is safety. 44:15 So how do you do this? How do you balance that inner sense of peace with Holy Spirit guidance, with the Word of God, biblical directives, with prayer? And you kind of actually have to line all those things up. And when they line up, then you can know that God is directing. 44:35 If one of these things is out of balance, out of kelter, then you must be suspicious as to whether or not you're hearing His will correctly. So we've already asked the question, "Do you want advice or do you want agreement?" So when you go to somebody and ask them, "What do you think about decision X, 44:54 Y, or Z?" One of the questions you need to ask before you go, "Am I looking for advice or am I looking for agreement?" Because we can easily stack the decks. 45:04 So many of these things can be easily manipulated to accomplish what we want. I remember a couple coming to us one time, and they definitely wanted to know. We were thinking about doing this or that, and we would definitely want to know. 45:23 And oftentimes we'll give a green light as pastors. We would love to see people serve. But in this particular case, we didn't give a green light. We said, "Well, would you take a step back and just think about this?" And that was the way that they chose, 45:44 and God blessed them for it. Godly counsel. And then we've already talked about sanctified common sense and a renewed mind. One of the things that we have to add to this equation is sanctified common sense. Now, 46:04 you're not going to go to the Bible and find out that there's a verse that says, "Use your common sense. Use your head," because faith sometimes doesn't seem very common sense-like. But there are some things that are way outside the bounds. So for instance, saying, "If he wears a blue shirt tonight, 46:25 I'll know I should marry him. If he wears another color shirt, I know I shouldn't." That has happened. Those kinds of things have happened. And you're tempting God. That's not using sanctified common sense. That's not a very good way to go. We didn't talk about fleeces this morning. 46:45 We didn't talk about the use of lots. We didn't talk about a lot of those other secondary things. It'd be nice to have angelic visitors sometimes. Give us a word from God. No, we walk by faith. And faith in this process of being able to discern the will of God, what we've been talking about this morning is discerning the will of God, 47:05 lining up these points in agreement and saying, "God, I really, really want to know. But until You give me the specifics, I'm going to walk in the general will of God that I know without the shadow of a doubt that is God's will for me today." Let's pray. 47:26 Father, thank You for this day. Thank You for the opportunities of the day. Thank You for this congregation. And I pray, Lord, Your blessing. Lord, should there be someone here this morning who's struggling with a specific decision, a direction, a word that they need to hear from God, I pray, Lord, 47:45 that in the integrity of their heart, the integrity of the heart, 47:52 all of these things without sinister or personal sinful motives, that they would be able to hear Your voice say, "This is the way. Walk in it." Lord, we long to hear that and have that will of God proved that it is good, 48:13 well-pleasing, and perfect. Shall we stand together this morning? I'd like to close with a benediction here from Numbers Chapter 6. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. 48:30 The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.