Does God Whisper? or Finding the will of God

This is a playlist of all three the introductory videos to the 3 Solid Grounds dealing with today’s topic.

Greg Koukl from Stand To Reason (STR), whom I think is one of the clearest and most logical Christian thinkers of our day, has done a series of Solid Grounds since May that handles the very common issue of whether God gives us as Christians daily guidance, and whether we need to discover God’s perfect will for our lives. BTW, Solid Ground is STR’s bi-monthly mentoring letter in which Greg tackles all kinds of subjects such as the text of the Bible, Jesus’ Historicity, and more. Greg handles the issue of God whispering in our ears, being “led” by the Spirit, by going straight to the Bible, and the oft misquoted texts to prove this idea, and then dismantles them one by one showing how the evangelical church has taken Biblical texts and given them new meanings. These teachings can be found in the May/June, July/August and November/December issues of Solid Ground. Greg also did a teaching series on the subject that is available on MP3 or CD on this subject, and it truly is well worth getting. It is available from the STR Store, and if you buy the MP3 series, it will cost you only $9.99 and is downloadable immediately.

The intro to the MP3 series at the link provided in the previous paragraph puts it like this:

“First you're going to be mad; then you'll be thankful.

You're going to be mad because this teaching is going to question much of what you understand about the "leading" of the Holy Spirit. You will challenge Greg's orthodoxy and accuse him of quenching the Spirit.

After a careful examination of the Scriptures, though, you'll see decision making in a completely new light. By the time you're done with the final session, you will have the tools you need to make sound choices. You will experience a deeper sense of relief and freedom in decision making than you've ever known before.”

The issue of “finding God’s will for my life” is a very prominent topic in the church, and it seems to me is filled more with myths and hoaxes brought upon an unsuspecting and gullible church. I was under this trap for many years, and we were taught that we could surely learn to hear God’s voice, as if the sovereign God of the universe found it immensely difficult to penetrate the mind and hearing of His own people, the Christians, unlike the Christian-killing Paul on the road to Damascus of course! We were taught that we should not do anything before we heard directly from God on an issue. How debilitating is that?

Back in 2007 I did a multi-post review of Garry Friesen’s book, Decision Making and the Will of God. In this book, Garry tackles this whole notion, going through every passage of Scripture normally used for the God-speaks-to-us-all-the-time notion, presents a proper exegetical interpretation of these passages, and then presents the Biblical way of knowing God’s will for our lives. It will be a good idea to read this multi-post review of Friesen’s book. I have also written a blog post called Being led by the Spirit doesn’t mean what you think it does! In it I deal with the two passages where the idea of being led by the Spirit or walking by the Spirit comes from. Also read this.

When you are first challenged on this issue, you will probably get angry, but do not let your emotions dictate the truth of this issue, rather let Scripture speak for itself. Also, anecdotal evidence of being “led” by the Spirit is not adequate. Scripture, and Scripture alone determines truth. Anecdotal evidence does not determine truth, for that will merely drill down to pragmatism. Whatever “works” will determine truth, no matter how that truly “works.”

So, take these thoughts and think about them, in context of Scripture.