OF LEARNING GOD'S WILL

The wisdom of the fathers

OF LEARNING TO KNOW GOD’S WILL

This unreserved surrender to obey, as it is the first condition of entering Christ’s school, is the only fitness for receiving instruction as to the will of God for us. There is a general will of God for all His children, which we can, in some measure, learn out of the Bible. But there is a special individual application of these commands—God’s will concerning each of us personally, which only the Holy Spirit can teach. And He will not teach it, except to those who have taken the vow of obedience.

This is the reason why there are so many unanswered prayers for God to make known His will. Jesus said, ‘If any man wills to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God.’ If a man’s will is really set on doing God’s will, that is, if his heart is given up to do, and he as a consequence does it as far as he knows it, he shall know what God has further to teach him.

It is simply what is true of every scholar with the art he studies, of every apprentice with his trade, of every man in business doing is the one condition of truly knowing. And so obedience, the doing of God’s will as far as we know, and the will and the vow to do it all as He reveals it, is the spiritual organ, the capacity for receiving the true knowledge of what is God’s will for each of us. In connection with this let me press upon you three things.?to be continued

(from "The School of Obedience" by Andrew Murray)