Welcome to the For the Gospel Podcast, where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Costi Hinn. And whether you're listening to this on your favorite podcast platform or watching on our YouTube channel, I'm really thankful that you've joined me for this episode. Now, today I'm beginning a three-week series on walking in God's will in order to help you make decisions with confidence. I'm going to answer some of the key questions you might have on God's will, but also come at the subject from unique angles that maybe you've not considered before. Now, in this particular episode, I'm going to be covering 10 things that are God's will for every single Christian so that you never have to sit around thinking, you know, I wish I knew God's will, and well, I wish I just understood this, or I wish I knew what to do. Well, in this episode, you're going to find that we can know what God's will is and be absolute about what he wants us to do. Now, there are going to be times where we face two decisions and both are good. Or we wish we knew God's will for some other thing he wants us to choose, maybe what house to buy, what job to apply for, what state to move to or not to move to, should you go, should you stay, who should you date, who should you marry, and more. We're going to face a litany of decisions in our lives. And so knowing and understanding God's will is crucial. And so to help you further, next episode, we're going to talk about decision-making cripplers. And I want to walk you through some things that will hinder your ability to walk in God's will and make great decisions. And then finally, in the third episode of this series, I want to take you through what I've developed into a decision-making grid. I use this in my own life. It's going to be titled The Seven P's No Regret Decisions. And last but not least, I have a new copy of my latest book called Walking in God's Will. And you could pick up a copy of this. You can order it on Amazon or wherever books are sold. It comes out March 11th. And so we can go through this study together. It is perhaps my most personal, practical, and pastoral book to date. I would say personal besides my original book that I wrote called God Greed and the Prosperity Gospel. I wanted to share some of the ways that I understand God's will from the Bible, but also practically, how do we make decisions in our own life? Or how do I make decisions in ministry or with my wife or our family? This book will have everything you need to know about God's will. Of course, I derive it all from scripture. And I wanted to help you demystify God's plan for your life and make decisions with confidence. And so that book will be available for you and hopefully a helpful study. So let's jump into God's will for every Christian. The first thing that God wants for us, it is his will, is to be saved. We were made to be God glorifying, God-enjoying image-bearers. That is straight out of some old school Westminster confession. What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And therefore, being saved is where being in God's will begins for us as Christians. This is where we repent of our sin. We acknowledge that apart from Christ, we cannot be saved from eternal judgment in hell. And we turn to Christ in faith and we believe He's the only one who's paid for our sins through his death on the cross, and that he died and he was buried and he was raised again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. And it's God's will that his people, us, throw ourselves on Jesus Christ. You'll have people who worry so much about all of the different little decisions in their life and usually the adventurous ones and selfish motives for their life. I wonder about this, and I wish God would just reveal if I should do that. And we view God's will as a way to get a leg up on getting our own way. But above all of that, even the adventurous things that can be fun and that God is certainly involved in when it comes to making our decisions. God has called us into the simple act of obeying the gospel and sharing the gospel. So that is where we begin. Number two, it is God's will that you be different. What I mean by that is that you live differently as a Christian. First Peter chapter 1, verses 14 to 16 is explicitly clear that it is God's will that we be different than the world around us. Peter explains this. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the holy one who calls you, that's God, be holy yourselves in all your behavior, because it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy. Now, I find this to be one of the clearest passages about how Christians are to live when it comes to God's will, because it's the idea of being set apart. And being holy in that text is not so much about being perfect in the sense that you never sin, you never do anything wrong, but it's to be set apart. It's being consecrated. And it is God's will that you and I be unlike the world when it comes to the way we do things and the way we make decisions. Number three, it's God's will that you be a servant. You know, you never need to sit around for long and say, I wonder what God wants me to do. I wonder what his will is for my life. If you're serving, you're gonna be walking in God's will. From the ministry of Christ to the New Testament epistles, the calling and command for Christians to be servants is clear as day. No Christian ever has to wonder or wonder when it comes to this. Matthew chapter 20, verses 26 to 28, Jesus is teaching his disciples about true greatness, and he summarizes it all by saying it's to be a servant. If you want to be great, you need to be a servant because that's what the Son of Man came to do. And then in 1 Peter chapter 4, verses 7 through 11, Peter tells suffering Christians, not, hey, take a load off, hey, take a vacation, don't worry about serving. You know, God's will is gonna grate on a curve because you're going through a lot. Peter's audience was just being brutally persecuted. No, instead he says, as each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Whoever speaks is to do so as one who's speaking the utterance of utterances of God. Whoever serves is to do so as one who's serving by the strength which God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. The simple truth is nobody is above serving others. Everyone who's a follower of Jesus is called to serve. And Jesus, his disciples, the early church, the modern church. It doesn't matter if you're an athlete, a celebrity, a business owner, a pastor, and everybody in between. We are called to serve. The way up is down. You want to be great, serve. Number four, it is God's will that you be loving. That you be loving. In Luke chapter 10, verses 25 to 28, this lawyer asks Jesus the most important question perhaps anyone could ever ask. Luke records this, and behold, a lawyer stood up and put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? There it is. One of the most important questions a human being could ever ask in their life. Maybe the most important, I would imagine. And he said to him, Well, what's written in the law? Jesus responded, How does it read to you? And he answered, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. And he said to him, You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. What a transformation we would see in the church and in the world if Christians would pause their quests for selfish success and using God's will as a means to their own end, or seeking God's will for a means to their own end, and just say, Do I love God? Do I love others? And I would imagine that beyond everything we want and all of our desires, we do well to think about others above ourselves. It may be a little daunting to confess that you often look at God's will as a transactional thing where how do I know what he wants so I can really get what I want? When we expose that kind of heart, we see we're full of self-love. And from that place we confess and we can cultivate genuine love. It is God's will that you and I be loving people. Number five, it is God's will that we be generous. Far too often we approach generosity with a limited mentality and not a liberal one. We wrongly think that God couldn't possibly give us more if we gave, and so we hold on. Or we selfishly strategize, you know, more for other people means less for me. Or maybe we forget what the Bible says about God owning the cattle on a thousand hills, Psalm 50, verse 10, he owns everything, and that it's God who's given his people the ability to earn wealth, that's Deuteronomy 8.18. And the way Jesus modeled humility in Philippians chapter 2, verses 3 through 7, that's really Paul's point, is that Jesus considered others, that's us, above himself, right down to giving up his life for us. So the generosity and the giving of God is a model for us. So when it comes to walking in God's will, the Christian does not seek to hold on, but rather he seeks to let go. And the follower of Jesus makes it his or her goal to be a giver, not a keeper. 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and chapter 9 are two particular chapters that will put you right in line with God's will for your giving. Number six, it's God's will that you and I be a witness. This is what Jesus told his normal, average, undereducated, least likely disciples when he left them with the Great Commission. The reason I say all those adjectives is to remind you that the apostles were not superstars. They weren't different than you and I in the sense that they had way more education, or they were above average, or they were definitely extraordinary, special people that he would call. No, they were average. If not, they were below average. And Jesus still calls them and says, You're called to be a witness. I'm going to make you fishers of men. It's his will that we be active evangelists. Matthew 28, 18 to 20. And Jesus came up and spoke to them. He said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I've commanded you. And behold, I am with you to the end of the age. There it is. Any way you slice it, you come out with the same command. We are called, it is God's will that we teach and baptize and reach the lost, that they may be found. How would we apply this to knowing and walking in God's will? Well, the reality is this if you're not sharing the gospel, making disciples, baptizing disciples, teaching, then you're not walking in God's will. You can have the best job because you move somewhere and you think that's God's will and you get a promotion. You could have the most beautiful country that you reside in. You could live in the most stylist home. You can be blessed in the most material ways that life can offer and think, wow, I must be in God's will. Everything's going great. And yet you could be completely disobedient and not walking in the will of God, even if you think you are, because you're not sharing the gospel. If you are a Christian, that is why you're here. It is God's will that you be a witness. Number seven, it's God's will that you be spirit-filled. Ephesians chapter five, verses 15 to 28 is this chunk in the book of Ephesians that helps people understand, it's very explicit, what God's will is for his people. And once we understand the passage, then we know without a shadow of a doubt that it's God's will for every believer to live the spirit-filled life. That's what Paul's point is in that section. And he's outlining how believers are to live in light of the gospel, and that is to be spirit-filled, which is to be monopolized by the Holy Spirit in your time, your thoughts, your desires, your words, your actions, and even your emotions, all of life yielded to him. And so that is to be filled with the Spirit. And it is absolutely the will of God. Number eight, it is God's will that we be faithful. And by faithful, I mean the idea of enduring or remaining steadfast no matter what you're facing. It's another explicit directive from the Word of God that's attached to his will. And we find it in Philippians chapter 1, verses 27 to 30. Paul the apostle says this to the Philippians only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear that you are standing firm in one spirit and with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel, in no way alarmed by your opponents, which is a sign of destruction for them, but of salvation for you, and that too from God. Now, here's what I want you to miss. For to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake, experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me and now here to be in me. What is Paul saying? Look, as challenging as this passage may be, it's the bar that he sets. He doesn't lower it for the Philippians in the midst of their trials. He re leaves it right where God does. And it's important that we see Paul in the phrasing he incorporates. He says it's a privilege. It's been granted to you to suffer for the name of Christ. And when we see it that way, it actually changes how we approach faithfulness, endurance, and suffering. I want to say it this way: if God has brought us to it, we can trust him to bring us through it. It is his will that you be faithful. And part of that's going to be having a theology of suffering and understanding that in the Bible, suffering is called a privilege when you're suffering for the name of Christ. Number nine, it is God's will that you be joyful, prayerful, and thankful. I lump all these ones together because in 1 Thessalonians 5, 16 to 18, there's this passage that's great to commit to memory. When you lose perspective on God's will, it says, Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. How good is that? God's will explicitly stated. And I love when God's word is so obvious like that, because you could be in the middle of deciding between two jobs, making big education decisions, or just weighing the options on simple everyday decisions, and you could be in the will of God by remaining joyful, prayerful, and thankful. Finally, number 10, it is God's will that you be filled with scripture. Colossians 3:16 to 17 illustrates this aspect of God's will and how being filled up with scripture is what he wants for his children. Paul says this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, let the word of Christ dwell richly within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name, that's the reputation, in line with the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. It has long been said by mature Christians and heroes in the faith that a Christian ought to be so full of the Bible that if you cut us open, we'll bleed Scripture. The reason it's God's will that we be saturated with his word is because it creates the river through which all wisdom flows into and out of our lives. And so we need to be filled, saturated with Scripture. That is God's will. Now, in closing, I want to give you the ultimate summation here. I know that there'll be a lot of practical decisions that you make every day, and we're gonna get to a lot of that in the series, and a lot of that is covered in the book. That's why the subtitle is Demystify God's Plan for Your Life and Make Decisions with Confidence. It's important to make great decisions. But I also understand that there'll be decisions you make that don't exactly have a Bible verse telling you whether to go right or left or forward or back. But based on what the Bible teaches, I know that if you were to spend the majority of your life living out the 10 steps I just laid out for you, you're gonna end up right where God wants you. But there's one more truth that I want to provide for you as we close out this episode. It's a phrase from Psalm 37. And it is the perfect summation of all 10 steps I just laid out for you that are God's will for you to take. And it is the phrase, delight yourself in the Lord. That one little verse is going to change the way you think about God's will and maybe even change your life. Here it is in its context. In Psalm 37, verses 3 to 5, it says, Trust in the Lord and do good, dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness, delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desire of your heart, the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him, and he will do it. Now, I used to think that Psalm 37, 4 was a promise that would get me whatever I wanted, because the passage says, delight yourself in the Lord, and he'll give you the desires of your heart. I thought if I just delight in God, I can get what I want out of him and he'll do my will. Well, after I started studying God's word and certainly taking it more seriously, I studied that verse properly and realized it means that if you focus on delighting in the Lord, and you do that, he will place the desires he wants for you in your heart, meaning the desires he wants you to have. He's gonna give you the right kind of desires so that the things you want are the things that come from him. So you delight yourself in the Lord and He will implant, place in your heart, he's gonna give you the desires of your heart. What's in your heart and you desire it, when you're delighting in God, will be aligned with God's will. And when your heart is all wrapped up in him, everything else will fall into place. And so you might think this is provocative to say, but I believe it's true. If the 10 things I laid out for you that are God's will are a pattern in your life, and you're delighting yourself in the Lord, then wherever you walk, you will be walking in God's will. Make the move or don't. Take the job or keep blooming where you've been planted. Choose the school down south or go to the one up north. Buy the car or don't buy the car, invest in that home or sell it. Rent one apartment, not the other. Date him or don't. No matter what, if the 10 steps are first and everything that follows is ordered and aligned and reordered biblically, well, guess what? You are going to be in God's will. When you delight yourself in the Lord, you're not gonna love sin. When you're delighting yourself in the Lord, you're not gonna marry the wrong person. When you delight yourself in the Lord, you're not gonna go and do something that's crazy, foolish, or unbiblical because you're delighting in the Lord. And so it's so important that the focus of everything be Jesus, day in and day out, and what he has called you to. I know there's gonna be some gray area decisions. I know you wish that he would just lay it out. What do you want? All right, Lord, check the box, I'll do that. Well, the word of God gives us guidance for all of this so that in the midst of those decisions where there can actually be a lot of freedom. Delight in the Lord, you can have peace about what you're doing. Well, that's it for this episode. Thanks for listening, thanks for watching, and thanks for supporting. Don't forget, you can pick up a copy of Walking in God's Will, my newest book, on March 11th. It's sold everywhere online. Uh, you can pick it up at Amazon, they have it at Target, they have it on Arts and Nobles. And then uh if you want to go to Christianbook.com or other outlets, you can get it there. It's practical, biblical, pastoral, and it will help you a ton when it comes to making decisions. I'll be back next Monday with another episode of Keep on Living for the Class.