The will of God. Ever hear of it? No, the will of God is not Jesus lesser known brother William. How do you decipher what the will of God is? What criteria do you use to determine which decision to go with at the crossroad? What does He want, really?
I know what I do. I like to lay out all the information and see what makes the most sense. I like to weigh all the circumstances and use logic to decipher an illogical God.
For instance I think, “That is a great church. They made me a good offer to be Youth Pastor, they have a good group and a great facility. The pay will help my family. My kids love the ministry for children there. My wife and I already know a lot of the people there so the transition will be easy. It is close to our house. I really want to do it. OK, let’s pray about it.” Then we do pray but it comes out like this “Thank you God for the wonderful opportunity you have placed before us. Help us as we take this job to be your representatives and to lead the youth of church X to know you better.”
Somewhere between the review of the offer and “Let’s pray about it” I have already made my decision based on the fact that it makes sense. Surely if all these things line up God must have rubber stamped it and signed off on it. The problem is when I look at the Bible. I make my choices based on what “makes sense” and then read how an ax head floats to the surface of the river. I weigh the prospects and decide that logically it would be dumb to make a different selection, then I read where the water rolled back and the people walked across on dry land, twice. I say “look how God has opened the doors for this,” then I read of one man killing a thousand with the jawbone of donkey, the virgin birth, the blind receiving sight, the lame walking, the dead raised and Jesus and Peter walking on water.
THOSE THINGS DO NOT MAKE SENSE. If God bound Himself to the concept of appearing logical to us humans in every situation, He would not be God. He would be a human; no more than a manager. I have been putting God on trial with the burden of proving Himself logical to my seen world when all along He sees the entire picture without even the bother of time to cope with. I’m not making a bid for stupidity. I’m not trying to say that when faced with a decision we automatically choose the most ridiculous, most lunatic choice possible. However, we shouldn’t eliminate those crazy ideas based on this faulty criteria, either.
I Corinthians 1:27 “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty”.
What has God done in your life that doesn’t make sense? What made sense to you to begin with, but turned out to be wrong?
ramblingwiththebarba.wordpress.com 
Hi Ken. Just discovered your blog. Good stuff! Loved the post on authenticity.
This thing about God not always making sense, I am with you. I worked with YWAM for years, and this is a lesson that we had to learn time and again. In fact, we learned it so often that we almost went too far with the principle: we acted like if our decision DID make sense, then God couldn’t be in it. [Face-palm!]
Anyway, thanks for the great reminder. I’ll be back here for sure. Blessings on your work.
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Thanks Jason and welcome to my blog. I am learning the delicate balance everyday. Through the years we have had a YWAM association of sorts. We had several friends in YWAM and since moving to Paraguay we have met numerous others from some bases in Brazil as well as a missionary friend here grew up at the Kona, Hawaii base. We love YWAM. We will have one of the JOCUM (Latin American version) members stay with us for a while starting next week.
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Yeah, I grew up in YWAM, and even though I’m pastoring now, I still consider myself one of them. We’re all over the place… Make sure you put your guest to work!
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Love it! Thanks to Matt Appling for posting a Tweet!
My whole life with God is illogical. Especially when I consider the supernatural. The supernatural freaks me right the heck out – but I have grown to love it. I have been a supernatural believer since the beginning. That was well before I actually read the entire Bible. I needed so many things, so much healing, so much knowledge and so much teaching. I did NOT know how to live in the natural, and I had no clue how to live in the supernatural.
It’s been a long process. I have seen the sick healed, tons of accurate words of knowledge, and amazing foretelling of events by the body of Christ. I have seen demons cast out, and God has spoken ever so softly to me about many events in my life while in prayer, reading the word, and through others in the church.
I just had one of those logical opportunities. The Lord said I would lose my job back about 7 or 8 months ago, and I would have a new one by September 1st, 2012. (I prepared for the shaking by reducing my debt.) I lost my job a few weeks back, and found a rental and job in the same town as my church which I drive 55 miles to each week. I thought for sure it would be all wrapped up in a nice little “blessing” package. It all fell through this morning. I did however get invited to minister for a week in 6 states – the stretch is buying the $500 plane ticket to get things going. I think more prayer is needed.
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Glad to have you David. I love Matt Appling’s blog,it’s a must read. Thanks for sharing. I am like you so many times thinking God could box, wrap and put a bow on what I think makes perfect sense. Then I find Him stretching me to make me better. Thanks for reading.
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We both are learning this lesson. It’s tough to over look what seems to “fit” so well and keep looking. Thanks for reading TC
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Ken, this whole year doesn’t make sense to me. I had to get real raw & honest with folks-and then I was surprised that God moved in a big way. I wrote about this today.
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I find the longer I live the less things make sense. I guess in this case that’s good.
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I made a decision to quit a job and move my family to seminary. It made not sense. The thing is, I used a formula to make the decision because I didn’t want to say that it made not sense, but I was goingl to do it anyway. I wish I had had the guts to simply say that God wanted us to do this, but I can’t tell you why. It would have been honest.
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I get what you’re saying Larry but it’s good you went with His call anyway even if you had to justify it with logic.
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I could name about 12 million things that could fit that criteria. Most recently though my living situations went through a major change. We had choices and had to pick one, but random chance led to one that made no sense but worked out the best.
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He knows what’s best for even when it doesn’t make sense now.
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