” How Do I Know God’s Will? ” That was the title of Bro. Stan Lester’s sermon. He took his text from James 4:13; this is a hard subject so I tuned in. I tried to listen as if I were a high school senior trying to find God’s will about the rest of my life. I also pretended to be a lawyer and or a housewife and see if the pastor said anything that would give insight into knowing God’s will.
Lester is pastor at Crosspoint COG in Dalton, Ga., much has been written on this subject but the pastor didn’t refer to anyone else in this message nor did he seem to take into consideration that a lawyer’s work is affected by a jury, a judge and by state laws. A young man’s future may well be affected by colleges that would accept him or by jobs that might be opening up in his area. A housewife is affected by her husband, her children her education and her training. So often we must do whatsoever our hand findeth to do and then do it with our might.
Bro. Lester came across to me as a good man but in this case I didn’t find much that would be helpful in this complex world.
Discussion
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Can you please share
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True with church services in general?
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I recently spoke to a group of Christian college students on a similar subject. The topic was how to make decisions. My main text was Proverbs 5:3, but I showed other scriptures, too. I encouraged them to study the Bible, pray, seek godly counsel and pray with others, consider whether they had the authority to make the decision themselves in the first place. Throughout this process, they seek to see if the Lord is directing them. I also pointed out that God directed certain people in the Bible through dreams. Then, when they’ve acknowledged the Lord in every way, pray for wisdom trusting God, and make their decision, and pray about that and tell God what they were going to do, leaving it open for Him to direct them otherwise (referred to James 1:5-8). I also pointed out that some decisions don’t require a lot of long heavy prayer and deliberation, like what to eat for breakfast in the morning. We should eat with thanksgiving.
When I was wanting to get married, that was the approach a Christian friend of mine I went to took with church. He first introduced the idea by saying, “If I want to make a decision, I pray, ‘Lord, if you don’t want me to do it, stop me.'” I thought that was unspiritual, but then he explained something similar to what I wrote above. A missionary friend of mine gave me similar advice. I’d found someone I really wanted to marry and felt 95% sure I should do it, and it seemed like God was directing us that way. But what if I was wrong, and it wasn’t really God’s will? What if I just messed up her life or something like that?
Finally, I had a time of prayer where I submitted my decision to propose to the Lord in prayer. I laid out my reasons for why I thought it was His will and why I thought it was a wise thing to do. Then I asked the Lord to direct me otherwise or just to stop me from proposing if it was not His will. At that point, I had complete peace about it. I was 100% sure. I did not experience anything resembling ‘cold feet’ about the wedding. I proposed, and we got married. I felt I had learned a lot about making decisions through that experience.
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Will you please pray for me and share my page or help if you can Thank you
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