How Do We Know The Will Of God - By Revelation & Study
Passage: Ephesians 1:5
“…having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,…”
It is common today to hear people speak of God telling them this or that. It happens all the time, so frequently that it is almost ordinary. The problem is... They are claiming to have heard from God often without ever having interacted with the one, sure way of knowing His will - by dealing with His Word.
The problem is brought into sharp focus when we remember the nature of man as it applies to man's capacity to perceive truth. When Adam fell in the Garden of Eden the curse that God placed upon him was pervasive and affected every aspect of his being. This included his rational abilities with the result that he is unable to make sense of the spiritual. It is foolishness to him. He has no native ability to tell spiritual truth from spiritual error. That ability must come from outside of himself.
Hence, the need for revelation. Adam had the ability to communicate intimately and fully with God. The fall resulted in the loss of that ability as well as God shutting Adam off from His very presence. As a result, man wanders as a spiritual hobo, knowing that truth exists, yet lacking the resource or the desire to seek and find it by himself.
God must reveal it to him. That is the only way man can know and understand the truth. Apart from the revelation of God, man is cut off from the truth entirely and utterly. Where there is no truth, there is no salvation!
The obvious problem with claiming to hear from God, yet doing so apart from a proper understanding of the Word of God becomes clear when we remember these truths. Apart from this revelation, we have no way to know what God has said and what He wants us to do! Apart from the revealed Word, there can be no knowledge whatsoever of the will of God because we have no ability to know it apart from what God has revealed.
God will never contradict Himself. He is entirely consistent and completely accurate. The combination of those two characteristics makes it impossible for Him to say one thing at one time, and something contradictory at another time. It is not in His nature to say things that contradict. As human beings, we often do this. God is far different than this, He never makes that mistake. He is utterly consistent in all that He says. This is especially true of His written revelation, His Word.
The way to understand what God has commanded, to know His will, then, is to know the Word of God, the Bible.
Though this is by no means as simple a matter as it appears on the surface, neither is it the mysterious and difficult matter that many make the mind and will of God out to be. The degree to which we are immersed in the Word of God, taking it in, and meditating upon it, digesting it and ruminating upon it, is the degree to which we will know the mind and will of God. This is true not only of the generalities of the matters of life that are directly addressed in the Bible, but in the specifics of life that the Holy Spirit of God will address by using the Word to communicate to us the wisdom of the eternal mind of Christ.
If wisdom finds its origin in the fear of the Lord, knowledge finds its origin in obeying the command of God to study and meditate upon His Word. The sooner we learn this truth, and act upon it, the better off we will be!