Sunday night we attended Shepherding Group at Scott and Grace Tucker’s house. The group leader that night was Keith Kenyon. What a great small group leader! He taught clearly while at the same time engaging input from everyone in the group. We had a great time scanning through Scripture in answer to the classic question:
How do I know the will of God?
We looked up all of these references in our brief study that evening:
Proverbs 3:5,6 and Proverbs 12:15; 15:22; Psalm 119:99-105; Romans 12:1-2; Psalm 37:27-34; Proverbs 16:1-4; Psalm 25:4-10; Colossians 3:16-17; Psalm 119:24-27
As we shared together in observations and applications from these passages we helped one another understand the Word and its immediate application. I hope you attend a shepherding group, or some small group Bible study, regularly. If you don’t you are missing a wonderful means of grace God has designed for you.
I also wanted to include something that Keith shared with us last Sunday evening. He concluded the study time by reading this quote from George Muller. It is a gem! When asked, “How do you know the will of God?” That great man of God gave the following answer:
1. I seek to get my heart into such a state that it has no will of its own in a given matter. When we are ready to do the Lord’s will—whatever it may be—nine-tenths of the difficulties are overcome.
2. Having done this, I do not leave the result to feeling or simple impression. If I do so, I make myself liable to great delusions.
3. I seek the will of the Spirit of God through, or in connection with, God’s Word. The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also. If the Holy Spirit guides us, He will do it according to the Scriptures, never contrary to them.
4. Next I take into account providential circumstances. These often plainly indicate God’s will in connection with His Word and Spirit.
5. I ask God in prayer to reveal His will to me.
6. Thus, through prayer, the study of the Word and reflection, I come to a deliberate judgment according to the best of my ability and knowledge. If my mind is thus at peace and continues so after two or three more petitions, I proceed accordingly. I have found this method always effective in trivial or important issues.
When asked how well this worked:
“I never remember” he wrote in 1895, three years before his death at the age of 93, “in all my Christian course, a period now of sixty-nine years and four months, that I every sincerely and patiently sought to know the will of God by the teaching of the Holy Ghost through the instrumentality of the Word of God, but I have always been directed rightly. But if honesty of heart and uprightness before God were lacking, or I did not patiently wait upon the Lord for instruction, or if I preferred the counsel of my fellow men to the declarations of the Word of the living God, I made great mistakes.”
George Muller