(Renjith Krishnan - FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
(Again, please see Henry Blackaby's book Experiencing God for the original collection of the 4 ways God often communicates His will to us).
If we can confirm that the direction we believe God may be leading us is in line with God's Word, we can next look to situations and circumstances to continue to discern how God is directing our steps. It's been said that there are no coincidences, and philosophically and logically, I believe that to be true. The question of causation always has to come back to a First Cause. Consider the concept of all that occurred to create the universe in which we now live, often known as the Big Bang Theory. We can look forward from the Big Bang and posit that there are always actions that cause reactions - the leaf falls because the wind blew, the wind blew because of a storm, the storm came to be because of the way the weather systems formed, and so forth and so on. But going all the way back, we need a First Cause, the uncaused cause of all other things. In the Christian faith, this is God.
Now if we can see God as the ultimate cause/first cause, and we can agree that the Scripture describes Him as a personal God, it makes sense that situations in our lives are likely caused or influenced by God. An example might help here. Let's say that money is tight and I am wondering if I should pay a bill that has arrived in the mail. If I look into the Word of God, we see that God affirms the idea of not being in debt (Romans 13) and being true to one's word (Matthew 5:37). So we can begin by knowing that yes, God wants us to pay our bills. Next, we go to church on Sunday and hear a sermon about following through on commitments. Coincidence - possibly, but we note it down that another situation has seemed to affirm the idea of paying this bill. Next, we get a note from a friend and in it we find a $100 bill. The note says, "I know things have been tight - hope this will help". Could it be that God wants me to go out and get a new pair of shoes with thing money? Not likely. And then let's say that we get a call from the company to whom we owe the money and they say, "We had an accounting mistake and you don't owe us $150, you only owe us $100."
If we can confirm that the direction we believe God may be leading us is in line with God's Word, we can next look to situations and circumstances to continue to discern how God is directing our steps. It's been said that there are no coincidences, and philosophically and logically, I believe that to be true. The question of causation always has to come back to a First Cause. Consider the concept of all that occurred to create the universe in which we now live, often known as the Big Bang Theory. We can look forward from the Big Bang and posit that there are always actions that cause reactions - the leaf falls because the wind blew, the wind blew because of a storm, the storm came to be because of the way the weather systems formed, and so forth and so on. But going all the way back, we need a First Cause, the uncaused cause of all other things. In the Christian faith, this is God.
Now if we can see God as the ultimate cause/first cause, and we can agree that the Scripture describes Him as a personal God, it makes sense that situations in our lives are likely caused or influenced by God. An example might help here. Let's say that money is tight and I am wondering if I should pay a bill that has arrived in the mail. If I look into the Word of God, we see that God affirms the idea of not being in debt (Romans 13) and being true to one's word (Matthew 5:37). So we can begin by knowing that yes, God wants us to pay our bills. Next, we go to church on Sunday and hear a sermon about following through on commitments. Coincidence - possibly, but we note it down that another situation has seemed to affirm the idea of paying this bill. Next, we get a note from a friend and in it we find a $100 bill. The note says, "I know things have been tight - hope this will help". Could it be that God wants me to go out and get a new pair of shoes with thing money? Not likely. And then let's say that we get a call from the company to whom we owe the money and they say, "We had an accounting mistake and you don't owe us $150, you only owe us $100."
Given - this is a pretty clear scenario from God about what we should do, but please don't miss the point. God uses situations and circumstances to direct us into His will. He directs people to us that will speak a message into our lives. He places opportunities in front of us that are oftentimes hard to miss. But we must go back to our earlier portion of this discussion and test our own hearts - when the Word confirms and situations seem to be pointing toward God's will, do we have the will/faith to move forward into whatever God has for us?
A cautionary note: do not practice 'voodoo theology' (a phrase from Chuck Swindoll) and think that everything is a sign from God. For example - I'm wondering if I should take a flight to Hawaii for a vacation that I cannot afford, but I wake up at 7:47 a.m. and take it as a sign that I should get on a 747 plane and go. This is a dangerous way to live our lives. What if we randomly opened the Bible to see God's will for our lives and our eyes fell on the passage that said, "Judas hung himself"? We close our Bibles, certain that this isn't God's will, so we flip it open again and read, "And they all rejoiced..." Clearly, we don't want to turn God's will into hocus-pocus. My recommendation is to wait on circumstances and see if God uses multiple situations to confirm how He might be speaking to you. No, we cannot wait forever, but we also should not rush ahead because of one blip in the radar. God will often use other people to confirm His will in your life (our topic for the next post).
God uses situations and circumstances to share His will with us. If we are grounded in His Word to confirm God's broader will, He will sometimes use these non-random occurrences to show us what our next step might be. Psalm 139 tells us that He knew us before we were born, that He formed us in our mother's womb. If that's true, it makes sense that He certainly would take the time to put us in places where He speaks His will to us through situations and circumstances.
- tC
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