Page 106 - Discipleship Ministries Student E-Book

Study Section 13: Seeking God’s Will as a Disciple

“The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their
enemies by loving them.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

13.1 Connect

Did you know that the average person makes an eye-popping 35,000 choices per
day? Assuming that most people spend around seven hours per day sleeping and thus blissfully
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choice-free, that makes roughly 2,000 decisions per hour or one decision every two seconds.
That’s a lot of choices. Most of these are relatively minor choices that really don’t much matter
in the scope of things. However, quite often we must make decisions that are extremely
important, the result which could change the course of our lives. How do we know how to make the
right decisions?

We know that God is in control of all things. We also know that God has a plan for not only the ages,
but for our lives, and how we fit into the flow of history. God has a perfect plan for each of us to follow.
The difficult aspect of that truth is to know how to determine what that plan might be.

If you have lived any length of time, you will observe that in your life there are chapters – just like in a
book. Each chapter was a result of a major decision you had to make. For example, selecting a mate is a
huge decision. I asked my mother about my choice of a wife, and she said, “that woman will do you
good the rest of your life.” Turns out, she was right. That one choice determined who my children and
grandchildren would be! In that choice I sought to find the will of God. Was the woman I selected God’s
plan, or mine? I had to find out. But how? How does one find something like that out? Her name was
not in the Bible anywhere! Should I just open the Bible randomly, point to a verse, and see if it tells me
what to do?

There is a man who was trying to find God’s will that way. He decided to open his Bible randomly and
select a verse by pointing to whatever was on a page. His first passage opened to, “And Judas went out
and hanged himself.” He didn’t care for that verse, so tried it again. “Go thou and do likewise.”
Surprised, he sought further council using the same technique. His random choice fell to this verse,
“And what thou doest, do quickly.” Is that how God wants us to find his will. Should we take the
approach Gideon did and fleece God? Let’s find out…

13.2 Objectives

1. The student should be able to explain the process of finding God’s will for their lives.

2. The student should be able to list the obvious Bible commands that are definitely the will of
God for every believer.

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