How can you know God's will, and be sure that your decisions are right in His eyes?



It always is a difficult question: What is God's will for me when I must make a decision? If I could hear God's voice from heaven, I would not have a problem. But now this is not the way in which God speaks to me. But I can hear His voice in another way: When I read his word, the Bible.

 If, then, I have to make a decision, asking: "How will I know what is God's will for me? the answer is:God told me His will in His word. Therefore I must first read the Bible to see what God wants me to do. I do not mean that you must use the Bible like a magic book, opening it in any place with your eyes closed, and that God will then tell you what to do. Of course God can also tell you what His will is, using this way. But in general we believe that this is not the way in which God shows us His will. Usually he will talk to you through your daily Bible Study, going on according to your daily program, reading what you would have read anyway. He can also remind you of something that you learned because you regularly read the Bible every day.

 Reading the passage that you are reminded of again, you can often see what God wants to tell you. But even if there are not clear answers for every particular situation that you may face, the Bible still gives general guidelines, principles and rules by which you must make decisions and according to which you can act.

 2. A second way in which God shows you His will, is through the Holy Spirit who speaks to you in your heart.This is what people usually mean when they say: "I heard a voice inside that said ..." But you must be sure that the "voice inside" does not say anything that is opposed to what the Holy Spirit tells you in the Bible. The leading of the Holy Spirit in you will never be different to His leading through the Bible.

 3. In the third place the Holu Spirit can help you to know the will of God through your conscience. It is also God's voice that talks to you in your conscience. But, as we have said, you must always test your conscience and the leading that you receive from it by the word of God. A person's conscience definitely is not always reliable in decisions about right and wrong, because even one's conscience is tainted or corrupted by sin. Even if it is true that the Holy Spirit takes control of your conscience when you accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour, and enlightens it, so you can know the difference between right and wrong, you still are an imperfect being. Therefore you may not simply rely on the leading of your conscience, but you must always test it to the principles of the Bible.

 God also gives you peace in your heart when you make the right decision; the peace that goes beyond all understanding and which you can only get from Him.

 4 In the fourth place the Holy Spirit leads you by using our common sense. In the short version of the law in Matthew 22:37 and next verses Jesus Christ said that we must also serve God with our minds. When you accepted Jesus Christ in your life, the Holy Spirit also brought light into your mind so you can make sound decisions. Your common sense, and your knowledge and experience of life are all methods that he uses to show you God's will so you can make the right decisions.

 5. Then there also is a fifth way through which God shows you His will: through the circumstances that you experience In Acts 16:7-11 we read that the Spirit of God stopped Paul and his companions to go to Bithinia, but later the Spirit gave Paul a vision in the night to show him that he had to go to Macedonia to bring the Gospel to the people living there. The Holy Spirit can clearly also use circumstances to open or close a door to you. If you must make a decisione, and a door closes on you, or there suddenly is a new possibility, you must decide that God wants you to decide according to those circumstances.

 6. When Christian friends give you advice, you can often listen to them.

 You can be sure that God is leading you if most of these guidelines have the same message. Usually God will confirm to us in more than one way what His will is.

 We hope that this will help you. A child of God must always pray about decisions, and live in a close relationship to the Father, so you will learn to know His will.



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