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God Reveals Himself, His Purposes, and His Ways

One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to help us know God’s nature. The Spirit also helps us understand the ways of God, for God does not act the same way people do. On our own, we will never discover what God intends to do. God must reveal that to us through His Holy Spirit.

God always has far more on His heart to accomplish through our lives and churches than we could possibly imagine. How tragic for us to become so preoccupied with our plans and strategies that we do not even take time to hear what God intends to do.

The sequence is seen throughout the Bible: patriarchs, judges, David, prophets, and the disciples. When God was about to do something. He took the initiative to involve His servants.

He spoke in order to reveal His purposes and plans. Then God invited those people to become involved so He could carry out His eternal purposes through them.

We often dream our dream of what we want to do for God. We formulate plans based on our priorities. Then we pray and ask God to bless our efforts and help us accomplish our goals. What is really important, however, is what God plans to do where we are and how He wants to accomplish His purposes through us.

Planning is a valuable exercise, but it can never become a substitute for hearing from God. Your plans only have merit when they are based on what God has told you He intends to do. Your relationship with God is far more important to Him than any scheming you can do.

God intends that we follow Him. He expects us to get our direction from Him. It is possible to achieve all our goals and yet be outside God’s will.

The reason there are so many divided and splintered churches today is that church leaders have sought to impose their plans on God’s people rather than seeking what God intends to do through them by His amazing power.

When we do the work of God in our own strength and wisdom, we will never see the power of God in what we do. When God achieves His purposes in His ways through us, people will come to know God, and God will be greatly glorified. People will recognize that what has happened can be explained only by God. He alone will receive the glory!

God wants us to know Him and follow Him. As He speaks to us, He reveals His nature so we can have faith to trust Him in the assignment He calls us to do. He reveals His purposes so we will become involved in His work and not just dream up plans of what we will do for Him. God reveals His ways so He will accomplish His work through us in a manner that gives Him glory and shows that He is God.

Spiritual Concentration

Our problem is that when we pray, we usually don’t relate our prayers to anything that subsequently happens. After you pray, practice spiritual concentration. When you pray in a particular direction, immediately anticipate God’s activity in answer to your prayer. Throughout Scripture when God’s people prayed, He responded.

Blackaby notes that as he regularly reads the Word of God, the Spirit of God—who knew the mind of God for him—was in the process of helping him understand what God was doing in his life. God will let you know what He is doing in your life when and if you need to know.

Consider the account of the death of Lazarus in John 11, verses 1-45. When Jesus arrived, Lazarus had been dead four days. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died” (v. 32). It seemed to me as if Jesus said to Mary and Martha: “You are exactly right. If I had come when you asked, your brother would not have died. You know I could have healed him, because you have seen Me heal people many times before. If I had come when you asked Me to, I would have healed him. But you would have never known any more about Me than you have known before. I wanted you to experience that I am the Resurrection and the Life. My refusal and My silence were not rejection. They were opportunities for Me to disclose to you more of Me than you have ever known.”

Sometimes God is silent as He prepares to bring you to a deeper understanding of Himself. Sometimes His silence is designed to bring you into a state of absolute dependence on and trust in God.

You can respond to God’s silence in two ways. You can become frustrated, feel guilty, or be impatient. Or you can expect that God is about to bring you to a deeper knowledge of Himself. These responses are as different as night and day.

God Speaks Through Circumstances

The Holy Spirit uses the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and God’s people to speak to us—to show us the Father’s will. The third means—circumstances—is illustrated in the way Jesus knew what the Father wanted Him to do. This is how Jesus knew the Father’s will for His life and daily activity (John 5:17, 19-20).

Jesus always looked for where the Father was at work; then He joined Him. This is exactly what Jesus wants us to do through His lordship in our lives. We see what He is doing; then we adjust our lives, our plans, and our goals to Him. We are to place our lives at His disposal—where He is working—so He will accomplish His purposes through us.

You can get into difficulty if you look at God from the middle of circumstances. What should you do? First, go to God and ask Him to show you His perspective on your circumstances.

Experience Alone is Unreliable

Your experience alone cannot be your guide. Every experience must be held up against the Scriptures. Throughout your life, there will be times when you want to respond based on your experiences or your wisdom.

We don’t know how God intends to use good or difficult life events to build our character, to influence other people, or to further His kingdom. Trying to discover God’s will based on our understanding of circumstances alone can be misleading. Always rely on the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth of your situation through God’s Word.

The Truth of Your Circumstance

When circumstances seem bewildering, follow this sequence:

1. Settle in your mind that God forever demonstrated His absolute love for you on the cross. His love will never change.
2. Do not try to understand what God is like from the middle of your circumstances.
3. Go to God, and ask Him to help you see His perspective on your situation.
4. Wait on the Holy Spirit. He will take the Word of God and help you understand your circumstances.
5. Adjust your life to God and what you see Him doing in your situation.
6. Do all He tells you to do.
7. Experience God working in and through you to accomplish His purposes.

When you face confusing circumstances, don’t blame God. Don’t give up following Him. Go to God. Ask Him to reveal the truth of your circumstances. Ask Him to show you His perspective. Then wait on the Lord.

Radically orient your life to God. If you recorded a day in your life, you might find that your prayers, your attitudes, your thoughts, and your actions are intensely self-centered.

Never determine the truth of a situation by looking at the circumstances. Don’t evaluate your situation until you have heard from Jesus. He is Truth.

The hardest part of your relationship to God is remaining God-centered. If you were to record a whole day in your life, you might find that your prayers, your attitudes, your thoughts—everything about that day—was radically self-centered. You may try to explain to God what your perspective is, but the key is God’s will. As your Father, He has every right to be:

• the Initiator in your life;
• the Focus of your life;
• the Director of your life.

That is what it means for Him to be Lord.

Suppose God says to your church, “Take the gospel to the whole world,” and the church says, “We can’t. We’re too small.” Truth stands in the middle of that church, as the Head of that congregation, to say, “Believe Me. I will never give you an order without releasing My power to enable it to happen. Trust Me and obey Me, and it will happen.”

The Holy Spirit takes God’s Word and reveals God’s perspective on the circumstance.

Spiritual Markers

In a decision-making time, your greatest difficulty may not be choosing between good and bad but in choosing between good and best. You may have several options that appear to be equally attractive. At a time like this, begin by saying with all your heart, “Lord, whatever I know to be Your will, I will do it. Regardless of the cost and regardless of the adjustment, I commit myself ahead of time to follow Your will. Lord, no matter what that will looks like, I will do it!”

You need to commit to that before you seek God’s will. If you cannot say that when you begin to seek God’s will, you do not mean “Thy will be done” (Matthew 6:10). Instead, you mean “Thy will be done as long as it does not conflict with my will.”

Sometimes, you may find yourself in difficult or confusing circumstances. To understand these events, God’s perspective is vital. Never determine the truth of your situation by focusing on the circumstances. You cannot know the reality of any situation until you have heard from God.

Often people in the Old Testament set up stone markers or altars as reminders of their encounters with God. Places like Bethel—house of God (from Jacob’s dream with a ladder to heaven in Genesis 28:10-22)—and Rehoboth—room (from Isaac’s well in Genesis 26:17-25)—became reminders of God’s great activity in the midst of His people. Moses named an altar The Lord is My Banner (Exodus 17:8-16), and Samuel called a stone Ebenezer, saying, “The Lord has helped us” (1 Samuel 7:12). These altars and stones became physical markers of great spiritual encounters with God. They provide opportunities for people to teach their children about God’s activity on behalf of His people.

God wants to involve you in His purposes. God has been working in the world all along (John 5:17). When God is ready for you to take a new step or direction in His activity, it will always be in sequence with what He has already been doing in your life. He does not go off on tangents or take meaningless detours. He builds your character in an orderly fashion with a divine purpose in mind.

Identify spiritual markers in your life. A spiritual marker identifies a time of transition, decision, or direction when I clearly know God has guided me. As Blackaby notes, “Over time I can look back at these spiritual markers and see how God has faithfully directed my life according to His divine purpose.”

Prepare a spiritual inventory of your life and identify your spiritual markers. These may begin with your heritage, your salvation experience, and the times you made significant decisions about your future.

God Speaks Through the Church

The bible teaches that our walk with God is personal, but not private. Sin makes people independent. Salvation makes us interdependent on one another. Scripture teaches that the church is a body in which each member is vitally important to the others.

One problem many churches face today is they have so emphasized the doctrine of the priesthood of the believers they have lost their sense of corporate identity. Christians think their walk with God is independent of anyone else and they are not accountable to the church. It is true Christians have direct access to God through Christ. However, God created the church as His redemptive agent in the world. He has a purpose for the church. God places every member in a church to accomplish His redemptive purposes through that congregation.

A church is a body—the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27). Jesus Christ is the Head of every local church, and God places every member in the body as it pleases Him.

God made us mutually interdependent. We need one another. Apart from the body, we cannot fully know God’s will for our relationship to the body. Every member needs to listen to what the other members say.

Depending on God to Speak through the Church

It is important to note that a need does not constitute a call. Without proper guidance, many well-meaning Christians see every need in their church as a divine call for them to respond. Don’t ever be afraid to let the body of believers assist you in knowing God’s will.

Usually, you need to take all the counsel of people for clear direction. What you will find is that a number of things begin to line up. What you are hearing from the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church will all point to the same thing. Then, you can proceed with confidence.

You cannot fully know God’s will for your involvement in the body of Christ apart from the counsel God provides through other members. All members of the body belong to each other, and they need each other. You can and should depend on God to speak through other believers and the church to help you know what assignment you are to carry out in the ministry of the kingdom.

As we function in relationship to the church, we depend on others in the church to help us understand God’s will.