Does God have a plan for your life? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
I work at the Post Office at my seminary and many times, new students come in to get a Post Office box. I often ask them what they plan to study. Sometimes, they do not know. They just want to go “Where God leads them.” I instead ask them, “What do you want to do?”
This is a far better question to ask because the former tends to assume God has a plan for your life and actually, for everyone’s. God has a blueprint laid out and you need to follow it for optimal living. I would hope many of us would realize in a momentary reflection that if such a plan existed, we have already messed it up. Not only that, but by messing it up, we have messed up everyone else’s plan that involved us. If one person marries the wrong person, then exponentially going down, no one can marry the right person.
Yet do not count on Shirer to recognize this. She is still caught up in this idea that God has a plan for your life. She quotes John 7:17 in the NLT.
Anyone who wants to do the will of God will know whether my teaching is from God or is merely my own.
The NLT is a paraphrase, but even then, Shirer is doing massive eisegesis. The will of God Jesus is talking about is not an individual will for your life. A look at BibleHub shows several translations of this verse. The idea is that if people really want to do what God wants, they will recognize Jesus as being from God. This is a verse about Jesus. Shirer makes it a verse about us.
Shirer then goes on to talk about waiting on God to do things in His “perfect timing.”
But, boy, it hasn’t always seemed like God was operating with perfect timing in my own life. I’ve sulked and fumed more times than I can remember when I’ve needed clarity about a specific circumstance yet felt as though He wasn’t providing it.
Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (pp. 173-174). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
In reading this, I just see Shirer as a petulant child whining. It is quite a pathetic claim to read. Shirer. God does not owe you anything. Instead of whining, why not do what Scripture says and redeem the time and follow the path of wisdom?
She then quotes John 16:13 saying the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth. First off, this was said to the apostles. Second, are we to think that this would mean the apostles would become omniscient? After all, would not all truth mean all truth? Of course not. Jesus has in mind that which is relevant to their high personal calling that Jesus Himself gave them.
The same does not apply to Shirer.
Let me reiterate: on the occasions when you are pressed for time and a decision has to be made “by noon tomorrow,” choose the option that, to the best of your knowledge, will give God the most glory and cause your relationship with Him to flourish.
Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (p. 178). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Sigh.
So if God does not show up on your timetable, just do what you think based on what you know will give Him the most glory.
The problem is that should be what is said EVERY TIME!
Shirer misses it. She is so caught up in her ideology that she does not see what is going on. Would that she spent as much time cultivating wisdom, which Scripture tells us to do, as she does using an unscriptural methodology that Scripture nowhere tells us to do.
Oh. If you want to know what God’s will for your life is, it is really simple. It is to conform you to the likeness of Christ.
Do what you think will get you towards that goal.
Two more chapters to go!
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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