One of the greatest desires we all have is to know God’s will. We have important life decisions to make and don’t want to mess up. We pray and ask for clarity. We often hear silence and wonder what to do next. Does God speak? How can I know what He wants?

We are so desperate to know God’s will that we start forcing the issue. We start listening for God’s voice in everything around us. We wonder if that thunder and lightning was God saying “Don’t do it!”. Maybe He was giving us a green light because we didn’t catch a red light on the way home. We anxiously sift through our internal emotions and thoughts yearning to hear from Him. Was that the still small voice of God or the burrito I ate for lunch? The problem here is certainty. How can we be confident that we aren’t manufacturing His voice?

Discerning God’s will doesn’t have to be such a difficult and abstract experience. While I don’t doubt God’s ability to speak through creation or to guide us through internal impressions, I do question why we run first to these less clear sources when there is a better resource for accurately discerning His will. God has already spoken His will authoritatively and perfectly in the Bible. We’ve already been given a treasure chest of clarity that’s waiting to be opened. The Bible should be our first and most important stop on the journey of discerning the will of God.

¹⁶ All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,¹⁷ that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

“Breathed out by God”. The Greek word here is “theopneustos”, which means God-breathed. When we read the Bible, we are hearing words that originate from His divine breath. The Holy Spirit inspired the human authors so that what they wrote were His intended words (2 Peter 1:21). God was so intimately and carefully involved in the process that every word in Scripture–down to the very smallest parts–were intentional chosen (Matthew 5:18).

“Complete” and “Equipped for every good work”. Notice how sufficient the Bible is for a godly life. Everything we need to know about God’s will to make good decisions in life is contained in the Scriptures. Do we believe this? Do we treat Scripture as sufficient for making godly decisions? We can be complete and fully equipped if we simply listen, trust, and obey the teaching of the Bible. God’s Word is sufficient.

Our struggle to hear God’s will reminds me of a dynamic that played out with my mom and me growing up. She would get frustrated when I wasn’t listening to her directions. My mom harped on me for “selective hearing”. It’s not that mom was silent. It’s that I tuned out when I knew her message wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Is it possible the same is true with our hearing God’s will? He has spoken at great length his will for our lives. Are we listening and obeying?

I encourage you to stop using abstract methods as your primary way of discerning the voice of God. Go back to studying your Bible more diligently as an individual and in community with other believers. If the Bible says do something, then do it. If the Bible says don’t do something, don’t do it. If the Bible gives a general principle, then seek to apply that across various scenarios. If the Bible is silent on a subject, then realize there is freedom and flexibility in the decision. Use biblical principles, listening prayer and the wisdom of a multitude of godly counselors to discern your next steps. More than anything, I encourage you to remember that God has not left us without directions. The Bible is sufficient. Let’s act like that’s true.

If you struggle to believe the Bible is true or God’s words, then read my post on why I believe the Bible.

If you’d like to take a deeper dive into this topic, then I encourage reading “Decision Making And The Will Of God” by Garry Friesen