Most of His Will Is Already Written Down

A man came to me about a decision and we talked for forty minutes and I want to tell you what I eventually asked him, because it was not kind and it turned out to be the right question.

He had a choice between two things. Both were reasonable. He had been praying about it for five months and had heard nothing he could describe as an answer, and he was beginning to draw conclusions about himself.

He said the sentence that people in this state always say eventually. He said: I just want to know what God wants.

And I asked him how much of what God wants he had already read.

He looked at me. And I want to be careful here, because that question can be a cruelty, and in the mouth of a certain kind of teacher it is a way of saying the problem is your Bible reading, and I am not saying that and I do not believe it.

What I meant was narrower and stranger. There are sentences in Scripture that begin with the words this is the will of God, followed by something plain. He had not read any of them recently. Neither had I until a season of my own when I went looking for them.

The sentences that begin that way

They are not hidden and there are not many of them, and they are startlingly ordinary.

For this is the will of God, even your sanctification. (1 Thessalonians 4:3, King James Version)

That is the first one, and it is about character rather than about geography. Not where to go. What to become.

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

That is the second, and it is a practice rather than a plan.

For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. (1 Peter 2:15)

That is the third, and it is about conduct in front of people who are not favorable.

None of them tells anybody which job to take. And that is the point I want to make carefully, because it is easy to hear this as a dodge. It is not a dodge. It is a description of what has been published, and what has been published is enormous, and it is about the person rather than about the itinerary.

You have been given a great deal of His will already, and it was published rather than whispered so that nobody would have to be spiritually gifted to receive it, and 1 Thessalonians 4 states it in a sentence beginning with the words this is, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a written sentence into something a person can actually walk in.

Why the unpublished part feels louder

Here is the honest mechanics of it, and it is not a fault in anybody.

The published will is general. It applies to everyone, which makes it feel as though it is addressed to nobody in particular. The unpublished part, the one a person is actually asking about, is intensely specific and it concerns their real life next Tuesday.

So the general one, which is available, feels weightless, and the specific one, which is not available, feels like the only thing that matters. That is not rebellion. That is how attention works.

You have been given something solid to stand on while the other thing stays quiet, and 1 Peter 2:15 says plainly what pleases Him in front of unfavorable people. The same Spirit is the one who makes a general command land on one particular week.

Moses puts the two categories side by side in one sentence, and it is one of the most useful verses in Scripture for a person in this position.

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29:29)

Two categories, plainly named. Secret things, which belong to Him. Revealed things, which belong to us, and which we are given so we can do them.

You are holding something that belongs to you, and the revealed half was handed over permanently rather than loaned while you wait for the rest (Deuteronomy 29:29), and it is the Spirit who keeps a person from despising what has been given because of what has not.

This is not a method for finding out

I want to put a fence here, because there is a version of this teaching that turns into a technique and this site will not sell one.

Nobody is saying that reading the published half unlocks the private half. It does not work like that and Scripture never says it does. A person can obey everything they have been given and still not know which of two roads to take, and that person has done nothing wrong.

So this is not a step in a process. It is simply a correction to an accounting error. A person who says I do not know God's will while holding several plain sentences about it has understated what they have.

You have not been kept in the dark, and the silence about your decision is not a silence about you, and Deuteronomy 29 puts the secret things on His side of the ledger without any suggestion of withholding, and the Spirit is the one who is present with a person in the not-knowing rather than absent from it.

And nothing here explains the silence. I do not know why He speaks about some decisions and not others, and where Scripture is quiet I intend to be quiet, and anybody who hands you a reason has invented it.