God's individual will - what really matters II
Vern Peterman · Jun 13, 2004
Will of God, No. 11
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826238173955

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

This morning we're still using this sheet here if you happen to have your copy. There's some spares on the table if you don't. And the idea is we've got these seven points. Let's add some more fingers. Seven points that we're working with here. And one of the things we said last week is that kind of the gateway to all these is scripture.

And one of the things that I would suggest to you as we look at these seven points, we've got scripture, the Holy Spirit, godly wisdom, mature counsel, personal desires, circumstances, and special guidance. Here are the two areas that errors tend to creep in through in people's understanding and seeking out God's will. The two errors are one, failure to use the scripture as the final measure of all things. Two, people tend to gravitate towards one thing or the other and let that determine the whole picture in terms of God's will. What we've done is we've presented these things for a reason, that these things are to be looked at in totals. And let me explain what I mean. Suppose someone...

Have you ever run into anybody who looked entirely to circumstances to determine God's will? Ever run into anybody that did that? I talked to some Christians recently who They were in a church situation, not around here, so I'm not speaking of anybody in a local situation here, but they were in a church situation where they had determined to make a certain move. And the church leaders, not formally but informally, chastised them for making this move because their view was if the circumstances didn't force you to make the move, then you're going against God's will.

Now what's wrong with that? What's wrong with that picture? Now what's going on What's going on here is God does use circumstances to give us... Actually, the circumstances are going to give us the situation in which we have to make a decision, right? You're going to find out, well, this door is open and that door is closed, and that determines your forks in the road, right? But to say that you can't move until God uses the circumstances to force you into decision is to deny all the guidance from these other things.

How about Scripture? How about Scripture? We looked at, for example, mature counsel of other believers. What about having a sense that I shouldn't be here? Sometimes there's a reason to make a move because you have a sense by the Holy Spirit's working. a conviction of heart saying I need to move on to some other situation. Application of biblical knowledge is wisdom. So if we're only looking at circumstances to force us into God's will, then it's denying godly wisdom. So that would be an example of how someone uses one of these at the exclusion of the others. Now, can you think of some instances where people would attempt to, and I would use that particular preface, attempt to rely just on the Holy Spirit for determining God's will?

Can you think of some circumstances or groups of people who tend to do that? Puzzling question? Exasperating? No. There are folks, and I would tend to put them of a charismatic bent, who tend to look for, you know, it's the Holy Spirit made me do everything.

And, you know, God told me this and, you know, they're looking for the Holy Spirit to move. And the tendency is often to look to the Holy Spirit to move them internally or to have somebody give them a word of knowledge or something of that sort. And they look exclusively to that, oftentimes to the point of not applying Scripture. Again, our gateway to these areas of understanding the individual will of God is Scripture.

And so oftentimes, Scripture will not be looked at as, okay, is there some test here? Have you ever heard someone say, for example, that because the fruit of the Spirit is what? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. Along the list is peace, so one of the tests people will apply is, well, do I have peace about it?

Now, is that valid? Does that have a place? Yes, that's right. As we look at this, that passage, you know, here's the fruit of the Spirit, yes it does. It is not, however, again, contrary to these other things. I still want to apply scripture. Does this fit? Is this consistent with godly wisdom? If I were to seek mature counsel, would that be consistent with what I get here? I'm going to look at the different factors and the more important the decision, the more I'm going to be thorough about looking at the different factors and making the decision. Example, one lady came the week before school was supposed to start. She was a public school teacher and the administrator. She were both Christians. She came to the administrator and said, I'm not going to be teaching this year.

And he said, what? He says, I've got to find a teacher to jump into this place here in less than a week. And she says, but I have peace about it. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. He used that as an opportunity. He says, well, you've got the piece and I've got the pieces, you know. And so you can see here's an instance. Is that a valid test? Yes, it is. But it's not to be used in exclusion. You see the point?

The bottom line is, is that consistent with Scripture for her to come up and just at the last minute say, I'm not going to do it, you know. Is it consistent? Would she get wise counsel from, say, other mature Christians along those lines? Is that what this administrator would advise her to do? What you want to do is, what's the full spectrum of pieces of guidance? Do they converge on this answer?

So here's a case where she used a singular test instead of looking at at what are the different inputs that we've got as believers and do these all point to the same answer? It's a key thing. As we look at these, this is where people get out of whack. They look at one at the exclusion of the other and attempt... Can you say you shouldn't listen to the Holy Spirit? No. The point is that you want to use all the different things that are available to bring you to an understanding of God's individual will. And not just one.

Yeah, Gary? Along with that, I think you could include another area, is that people take things out of context. Okay, and what do you mean by that? What do you mean by out of context? Take the passage, Behold, I sent the door knock. Yes, okay. talking to the Christian believers at Laodicea, it has nothing to do with them, the laborers, and you get the picture of Christ standing at the door knocking to unbelievers.

Yes, yes. What I'm saying is people take things out of context in Scripture and misapply it. Yes. And that's another area where God's will for your life could be totally messed up because you're not keeping it in context, you don't understand it. Yes, yeah. You're saying the scriptural context. Good point.

It's one of the reasons why we want to, and we've put a fair amount of emphasis here, we want to understand what does scripture truly say. Scripture has, the author and the inspiration of scripture is in the direction of one intended meaning. Multiple applications, many applications, but one intended meaning. And so we want to know not just what does everybody think, but what is the intended meaning? And your point is well taken here.

We study scripture, we use scripture as the gateway for understanding everything else about God's will, and that's the final measure, the final test. But understanding everything in context is going to be exceedingly important. We want to know not just can I get some random piece of guidance out of this, but what was intended. How many of you have heard the method of finding God's will where you open up the page, you stick your finger in like this and you read it?

And you probably heard the joking one. You put the finger in, you land on there, and Judas went out and hung himself. And you do it again. and go about and do likewise, you know? Or some guy's wondering, you know, should I date this gal? And so he puts his finger on there and says, greet one another with a holy kiss, you know? So you can imagine these different things.

If we use Scripture not as, what does it say? but is some sort of a Ouija board, we're going to end up with crazy conclusions. That's not the way scripture is intended to be used. And it's an abuse of something that is good. And that is where, as you look at each one of these things, when we talk about something in exclusion, one of the things you notice, it's something good used abusively. It's something good used often exclusively. You see that? And that's why we say, These things need to converge. They need to point together at the same path, the same decision.

Now, while we make these points, something else we pointed out, God's not particularly concerned whether I wear my black shoes or my brown shoes this morning, although I'm sure the black shoes and the white socks wouldn't go together, but God's not terribly concerned about those kinds of decisions. God doesn't pace the floor of heaven wondering, you know, is Vern going to get it? I want him to have eggs instead of cornflakes this morning. God is not concerned about those kinds of things.

At some point in time, though, at some level, you begin to say, well, this decision is more important than this other one, right? There is a, you know, if you're saying God's will is a range of decisions, includes a range of decisions, the truth is that there are a number of things that we are called upon to just use reasonable judgment and logic to go ahead and make a decision. And God's not wringing his hands, pacing the floor of heaven, worried about whether or not you're going to put this piece of clothing on versus the other one.

At some level, we begin to recognize this is something that begins to have some impact, some import. And we tend to think in terms of buy this house, move to this place, get married to this person, and those kinds of things. At some point we say this has a level of impact, and it dawns on us that this begins to be pivotal. And those are the kinds of things we come to the Lord with and bring these questions, don't we?

And what we do is we look at these particular areas, recognizing what is sovereign, the Lord has already determined, recognizing what the Lord has already laid out as this is his moral will. But then as we look at the individual will of God, we recognize that there's a range of decisions that he's not looking at us to sit there and get tortured about and wait five days before we decide what we have for breakfast. Could it also be that there may be some fairly momentous decisions that the Lord is saying, you know, here's three different things you could do, and you know, go ahead and make the decision. Go ahead and make the decision. That the Lord isn't necessarily going to say, you know, you've got to do this one, not that one. You're not going to get special revelation about every single thing.

One of the points we could make here is in the book of Acts, you've got 30 years period of time, roughly. He's got about 28 chapters, about three decades of time. So it's a book that covers a pretty good chunk of time. And in that 30 years period of time, there's only two instances I can think of where people had special revelation about do this and not that. And this is during a miraculous time of the Apostles.

Isn't that something? And those instances are one with Philip. Remember his encounter with the eunuch? Philip, I want you to go here. And the other is in Acts 16, where Paul and the people that are accompanying him are thinking they're going to head up into what we call now the northern part of Turkey. It's the area where Peter wrote 1 Peter to. And just as they're thinking, do that, the special revelation comes to a dream and it hears this man from Macedonia saying, come here, we need you.

And so that was the call that brought them over to start the ministry on the continent of Europe, changing all of history and starting the church at Philippi, which began by, as far as we can tell, a single Jewish lady, first convert in the continent of Europe.

But those are the only two instances in the entire book of Acts where we can see an explicit special guidance from the Lord. It's exceptional, even in the apostles' time. And so I think we could conclude from that that special revelation is not impossible, but we should not consider it the norm.

I've talked to a lot of people and they'll say, you know, I need to know God's will. I need to have them drop some kind of a screen out of heaven that's got the words on it. painted on a cloud or something so I can see. The truth is, when God has not provided special revelation, the other things that he's given us are sufficient.

Isn't that right? One other thing, as you look at that instance, here's Philip and here's Paul, in those two places in Acts where we have special revelation, in neither instance were they in the least bit doubtful about what the message was. Key point.

God is not going to sit there and dance some little mystical, wispy message to us if He really does have something in mind that's specific. If God is going to use special revelation, and as we've suggested, it will be rare, for the believer who has in mind to look to the Lord, it will be abundantly clear. You won't be wondering about, okay, I came up to the traffic light and it was green, and so when I was praying the light was green, and so That means the Lord said yes. No, it won't be like that. It will be something that will be abundantly clear and not imposing a meaning on the circumstances.

Yeah, Gary? You know, I'm trying to think of specific circumstances. I can tell you an instance in my grandfather's life. This would be a rare occurrence even in his own. I'll tell you one instance. My grandfather was born in Great Bend, Kansas, raised there the first 20 years of his life, and I don't think he ever saw anything else. You know, he, what's that? In there, done that, yep.

And he and another fellow, you know, each milked 11 cows and, you know, went around and, He delivered the milk around Great Bend on a buckboard. Well, at about age 20, he became a believer. And sometime after that, he was with a traveling evangelistic group. And it was their practice to have somebody sleep at the tent every night. And so there was kind of a couch that was at the edge of the tent that they had set up. And he took his turn, you know, at the couch.

And in the middle of the night, he heard a voice said, get up and get your coat. Why should I get my coat? I don't know. But anyway, he got up and got his coat. Well, right then there was a big, heavy tent pole that I guess the wind had picked up and the pole went wham and just, you know, splattered the couch, just smashed it in two pieces seconds after he got up.

You know, I could look at that. I would think that that's some evidence of a special revelation event. It's rare. He doesn't have a whole string of experiences like that to tell. It spared his life. I'm here today because of that event. And so it would be an instance of special revelation, I think, And here it is something, you know, get up off the couch, get your coat. That didn't sound terribly pivotal other than that saved his life. And so, you know, that might be an instance. It was rare in his life. I don't know. I can't look to anything like that in my own life, you know. So there, I think, would be instances of things like that.

I think it would be exceptional based on the example we have in Scripture. during what was obviously a very miraculous period of time there in Acts. And I think you could probably come across some other instances where it's fairly clear that something went on. Some other instances are maybe a little more questionable. But I think the examples that you see in Acts communicate a couple of things. One, it's to believers. Two, it's unusual, but God can do it. And three, when it happens, it's clear.

I wouldn't go around looking for it. In neither case were the apostles looking for it. It just became clear that that's what was happening. So I think that's another key point. Don't go around looking for that as if that's the answer. Use what God has made available. And so I think that's a key point as we look at here. If God is going to use special revelation in your life, and it may never take place, You won't doubt that something miraculous happened and something very specific has happened.

Let me take a for instance here. My coming here was an instance and we can use that as kind of case in point where we're testing these points here, okay? Well, we had just moved down to Texas so I could finish up the classes that I'd started by extension. So within three weeks, then I get this email from Mike Doyle. I'd had some previous contact with him. He says, we're looking for a pastor. And I looked at, you know, kind of what they had on the website.

And I said, well, it looks great, but too bad it's like six months before I'm out of here. And he says, well, send in something anyway. Well, I didn't even have anything. So anyway, I was so busy studying, it took about three weeks for me to even get a resume out. But notice, I put the resume out. I did respond.

Some people will sit there and cross their arms and fold their legs and say, I'm not doing anything unless the Lord tells me. There will indeed be need to check things out. And if the circumstance is going to close, then that's fine. But we can't expect the Lord to just bring answers passively to us. Then some weeks later, I got six doctrinal questions. So I looked at those and I said, well, first of all, I was so busy with going through seminary because I was trying to get through it. I didn't have a job at the time. I'd quit. And Nancy wasn't working except at the seminary to pay for my tuition.

And so, you know, I had to get done with this thing. So I was busy. Anyway, I got these six doctrinal questions and I looked at them and I said, I can answer all those for my Tyndale homework. So I just cut and paste out of the Tyndale homework. Okay. So then I sent, I emailed those back. Well, I didn't find this out till later. There was apparently a couple dozen different people that applied, okay? And so out of the, I guess they sent that to out of the couple dozen, six people, okay? And then apparently myself and one other fellow were, came back with answers that they liked. But again, what was happening on my end, I'm just saying, okay, let's put something out here and I'll respond scripturally and see what happens.

The folks on the Holly Hills end of things were looking at it and they're saying, we're going to use scripture to test what this guy says, right? So what's happening? Each end, scripture ends up being the gateway, isn't it? Alright, now, then this thing goes on.

Apparently, Hal tells me he called up the other fellow first, I talked to him and said, well, we're going to be sending some more doctrinal questions, and the guy went ballistic. What? More questions? So I guess he said when he hung that phone call up, he said, well, I guess that's not the guy, you know? So he called me up and I didn't know what he was talking about, but he says, well, I guess you're it. I didn't know what he meant, but...

But the bottom line is, you'd use Scripture to narrow things down here. And certainly, not every instance is a pastoral search, but the point being, Scripture ends up being a test here. Then finally, out of the two, you really have almost kind of a If this guy is responding this way belligerently, then that's not the guy. Logically, you're left with, here's the guy. So what's happening on Hal's end, he's looking at it and he's saying, okay, we've used scripture to narrow this down. This guy has responded this way and so this ends up, here's our choice.

Well, as it turns out, I never applied anywhere else. A lot of people, you hear about the fan resumes all over the place. I never applied anywhere else. First of all, I never had time. And then when Hal called and said, well, I guess you're it. And I didn't quite understand what he meant. He says, well, we'd like you to come and teach. Well, I said, OK.

And as soon as I hung up, I thought, man, how am I going to have time to prepare for this? Then just a week before I was going to come, I get in the email 69 more questions. 69 questions, you know, and that's what this heavy guy was going to get belligerent about. So you got belligerent? Well, no, at first I panicked. You know, first page is fine, a few more questions. Wait a minute, these students keep going and going, you know. And the first response was panic, and that would last for about 5 or 10 minutes.

But then as I began looking at the questions, I found, well, I've already answered all these questions in my homework. That's cool. So then, you know, Windows is a wonderful thing. And that's when computers are nice. And it was cut and paste from my homework to answer all the questions, you know, cut, paste, cut, paste, cut, paste.

So there was answers pretty well prepared for each one. So at the end of two days, I sent the answers all back, you know. And that was like, I guess I printed out like about three-eighths of an inch thick by the time they're all done. But, you know, it was all bang, get it all done, turn it back, send it back to him, because I had to get on with my homework, you know?

But see, what you see happening here is your continual use of your scripture, okay, to look at this. Now, it's obvious how scripture is going to apply here, because you've got a situation where you've got some doctrinal questions, and you may not have that, okay? It may be other things in a more practical sense, but nonetheless you want to apply as much of scripture as fits. Now, let's look at how does the Holy Spirit have a part in a decision like this? Here's Vern on this end, and here's the people at Holly Hills trying to find a pastor at the other end. Where does the Holy Spirit come into play here?

To give you peace about it. There should be a sense of peace about this. Yeah? This fits with what God has in mind. Yes? Oh, please. Yes. Yes. And one of the things that James says, if any of you lack wisdom, what do you do? Pray. Yeah. You need wisdom, don't you? So James comes out with a response, any of you that lacks wisdom, pray. If you lack wisdom, ask for it. Ask for it, by all means. Ask for it. And each side was praying, you know, Lord, what's wise here? What's wise?

And there will be a confirmation of the Holy Spirit, not by necessarily some audible voice, not necessarily because the you know, a screen on the front of the church ends up with this mystical message, you know, Hire Vern, you know. But because the Holy Spirit is in the believer and is able to testify about whether this makes sense. Now let's go down the list there. You have those. What about godly wisdom? Is there any sense of godly wisdom in this selection process? I'm sorry, go ahead, yes. the comments you've made, but when you talk about special revelation, wouldn't that really come under the category of the Holy Spirit?

I really think you would be the working in our mind. And I was thinking when you gave the example of your grandfather, that I think it's hard for any believer using our faculties and our memory, et cetera, to come up with times when we say the Holy Spirit spoke to me or God spoke to me. But I think as believers, you can put a tag over your life. And I think very clearly that we can see where the Holy Spirit has led us down Avenue A versus Avenue B. Avenue A is special revelation.

Yeah, it is a less dramatic form, if you will, but yes, it may not be as an audible voice or a message suddenly flashing on the screen. But yes it is, because what is going on? The Lord is in your specific circumstances providing guidance. And some of it may be objective, where I got the scripture to work with, and some of it is going to be subjective.

Do I have a sense from the Lord, in a sense of peace, that fits with everything else? Not like this teacher that suddenly gave notice less than a week before school starts. But instead, do I have a sense from the Lord that's consistent with the other indications that the Lord has that this is the right thing to do? And it is a more a subtle form of special revelation. It's individual guidance that the Lord is giving you through that.

How about godly wisdom in a circumstance like this? Like the one I'm in, or the one I was in, just to use that as a test case here. Godly wisdom, how would that make sense? By the way, what's the difference between godly wisdom and wisdom that isn't? Let me give you one particular bit of circumstance that came up. One of the things that happened was apparently the discussion on the Holly Hill side of things was, well, you know, we've been talking to Vernon.

We haven't even brought up salary. That sort of thing. And one of the people here in the process said, well, the right guy, that won't be top of his list. And it turned out that was the last thing we talked about. Not the first thing. And so here's a piece of godly wisdom. It is going to be apparent that this guy is going to be first interested in what really counts. and at the salary end of this thing is not that you don't consider it, but it's not going to be the top priority. Other things are going to count first. So here's a piece of godly wisdom that came in the circumstance. How did you get your name? Pardon? How did the church of Hal and Mike come up with your name? The whole thing came up this way.

They put out in various means that they were looking And I never saw any of those. But when I had started some of my seminary studies, I had done various searches for material when I was going through the study of the Book of Romans for one of the courses. And one of the things I came across was some material that Mike had. And so I ordered the material and used that as part of my response to the Romans questions and that kind of thing. And so there was off and on contact after that with other things with Mike. And I talked to him on the phone and things like that. So Mike went to the seminary that you were attending? No. They had no connection to the seminary. As a matter of fact, they had never heard of it. Most people haven't heard of it. It's a little tiny seminary. So yeah, there wasn't any going to the seminary. I just happened to have searched out the materials that Mike had. available and come across it. And so I had contact with him via the phone a little bit and some email. And so then when he just happened to let me know, we're looking for somebody.

Sure. Let's look at this mature counsel issue. One of the things I did on my side is I went to several guys who were either pastors or guys of the seminary and I gave them the information about Holly Hills and I said, you know, here's the stuff, what do you think? They said, looks great, you know, this is really good, go for it, you know. So I sought counsel on my end and of course I think there was also counsel among those, you know, on the Holly Hills side.

But it's just a matter of instances, getting some insight from somebody else. In some cases, it may require looking for somebody with particular expertise, experience in a certain area, training in a certain area, in order to pursue that mature counsel. Now, why do we put the preface it with mature counsel? What's the difference there? In the case of somebody with some wisdom.

Okay, yeah. There's some spiritual maturity there. Have you ever heard some bad advice? Oh boy! Okay, yeah. You've probably all heard it. You've heard people give it to others. It's like, oh man! And so that's why we preface it, mature counsel. It's counsel that is based on a knowledgeable believer's experience, you know. And then we have on here personal desires. Now, boy, we better check that one out.

Why would we put that down as an indicator? Why is that of value in checking out God's will, trying to find out God's will? Why would we put that down? Does everybody's personal desires lead them towards God's will? No. Okay, I see pretty readily Head shaking, okay. No. Okay, why not? Because I believe God's will most frequently would not lead us contrary to personal desires. Okay. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. Ah, okay.

God in eternity past has created us and we're all, all of our circumstances throughout life and our personal desires seem to kind of impair us to a large degree for what God's will for our life is. You hardly hear of people that are going, you know, there are some instances, I think in most cases as far as our Christian experience, our God is, the Holy Spirit is so subtle in leading us that our personal desires and His will for us usually don't coincide. He doesn't ask us to do something to be 100, totally 100% opposite of what we If we're filled with all this grace and time, we're looking at it for God.

Yes. This is to be cautioned. This isn't, say, just do whatever the flesh comes up with. This isn't a whim. But there's, I would say, a more mature desire, a desire that's matured by a walk with the Lord. be in the direction of God's will and it will be consistent with scripture. It will be, as has been mentioned, a work of the Holy Spirit to bring about those desires. And it's usually the personal desire that got us there in the first place. That's right. That's right. And so this personal desire doesn't originate from us. This is the bottom line.

This is the Lord's working and one of the ways in which He will indicate His will is by this personal desire. Let me ask you this, did Paul have a strong personal desire to do what the Lord had him do? You can tell that he was strongly motivated to go out to those churches. That was not what he had in mind, however, on the road to Damascus. The Lord can change a person's personal desires. His personal desire as he was headed towards Damascus was I want to take those Christians out. So the Lord can change your personal desires too. I think that's something to be aware of. The Lord can change what you wish.

Okay, circumstances. Certainly the Lord is in many cases going to indicate to us, here's an open door, here's a closed door. The circumstances will be what the Lord will use. We will not use those in exclusion. because we're going to use all these other things in order to lead us to that point. Let me check the time here. Okay. Circumstances. Is it possible for me to misread the circumstances? And how? How could that happen? How could I misread circumstances as an indicator of God's will?

Yeah, in exclusion. That's where the error comes. Let me put it to you this way. If a door is open, does that mean that that is what God intends for you to do or to consider? I guess, let me put this another way. Are there things that God intends for you to say no to that are open doors?

Yes, yes. Certainly, and why? It's because the circumstances are certainly there because God is sovereign. But indeed, there are many things that we have to say no to. Isn't that right? If we look at the imperatives, and this is only the first step, but if we look at the imperatives in the New Testament, most certainly do this, most certainly don't do that.

Paul writes to the church of Thessalonica. He's writing to the guys there in the church, and he says, this is the will of God. Boy, that'll get our ears perked up. The specific phrase, this is the will of God, he says, your sanctification. And what is that? You are positionally made holy. Done deal. He writes to the church of Corinth, and that sanctification is in perfect tense. But what he's talking about here is He wants that positional sanctification that you already entirely have.

That's God's sovereign will. He wants that to be carried out in your daily condition. Day by day by day by day. That's God's will. And then he proceeds that you abstain, and this would be only one instance, but he makes it clear to the Church of Thessalonica that you abstain from sexual immorality, he tells them. So here's God's will, your sanctification. That's the direction. In this case, he's spelling out to them a specific that you abstain from sexual immorality. Why?

It's a door you'd better learn to say no to. That's inconsistent with God's will, which is your sanctification. There are most certainly going to be open doors that we should say no to. As a matter of fact, learning to determine God's will is a matter of looking at a bunch of open doors and saying, what do I say yes to and what do I say no to? And some of them are explicitly to be said no to, aren't they?

Otherwise, there would be no reason to have to appeal for what's right and what's wrong. There would be no reason if God just closed all the doors to what was wrong. But he doesn't do that, does he? He instead is relying not on the circumstances but on his scripture and the Holy Spirit, all the other things that he's laid out to make that clear. Okay.

Now, as we've looked at these here, one of the key things to make a distinction about is there is a sharp dividing line between godly wisdom and wisdom that isn't godly. And what's interesting, we some weeks ago looked at a chart that addresses the dividing line between godly wisdom and wisdom that isn't godly. It's interesting, most of the New Testament references to wisdom refer to godly wisdom. There are a limited and substantially smaller number of places that refers to wisdom that's worldly, wisdom that isn't godly. Next week, that's what we'll be looking at particularly. What's that dividing line? what's godly wisdom like and what is ungodly wisdom like and what's the difference?

Because that's an area where the discernment and the distinction becomes critical for us. Okay, let's pray. Lord, thank you that as we look at these principles out of scripture and passages that bring these truths out. Lord, we look at this and we're just thankful that you indeed have a will for us and so much of it is laid out and part of your sovereign will and yet there are other things too that you have laid out as our individual will for the believer, for each one of us. And Lord, in the midst of that, we know that the key thing is you have in eternity past determined that you want to have an eternal relationship with us, an eternal fellowship with us.

And that's at the core of this whole question. Not so much what fork in the path that we take here on planet Earth, But what's the next opportunity for fellowship with you? That's what you look to and long for and the reason you bought us. And to glorify your name. We just pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.