…let Holy Spirit be the leader, and then take the step of faith to live up to His call…
(Hanny Setiawan)
Finding God’s Will is indeed a challenge that people of God face relentlessly. Where we want to settle
down, what School we should attend, what business we must work on, whom we will marry, how many children we should have are only few common questions that we face daily in our lives.
There are many attempts to discover the secret of finding God’s will. But all comes down to a conclusion that rarely (not impossible) does God provide His guidance that directly addresses our questions.
God knows that His Word is adequate to lead our path (Psalm 119:105; II Cor. 3:16-17). That’s all we have. General direction! The issue raised is whether it means that to find God’s Will we are ‘pushed’ to try and error every decision. After all, who can really make a decision in ‘darkness’ with full confidence? And if we make mistake, won’t God take care of us anyhow?
Trial and Error becomes a common approach given the nature of the matter. However, God never teaches us to “try first” or “we’ll see’ type of attitude. His desire is to reveal His heart to His beloved. The
pitfall is that many times we cannot distinguish the difference between Trial & Error and Walking in Faith. They both look the same, but the paradigm underlies
the matter is completely different.
Walking in Faith will never result an error. That’s for sure. It leads us to the next step that God
desires. On the other hand, Trial & Error will cause many problems along the way. It is merely based on
the most convenient path. It never knows what the result might be. God never leaves us in total
darkness.
He is the Light of the world. Thus, in every decision that we make, if we don’t know what the
result should be, we are not walking in faith but just trying a path.
The good news is if we are sincere, eventually we will get to the destination because God is good. He is
always faithful even when we are not. 2 Timothy 2:13 “if we are faithless, He will remain
faithful, for he cannot disown Himself”
However, Trial & Error will cause many emotional baggages, spiritual bruises, and sometimes even get
physical such as financial problem. It is very destructive. It is the source of our misery. Consider
following rhetoric questions:
* How much money that will cost us if we change our major, business so many times?
* How much time we waste before we ‘finally’ settled down in the right place?
* How many emotional scars that reside in our heart because of all the ‘fail relationships’ that we ‘try’ before we find the right one?
* How miserable it is to find out that we work on something completely wrong?
* How sad it is if in the end of our life we find out that our life is just nothing but a series of Trial &
Error?
Think it through, pray harder, fast, ask Godly friends, consider our past mistakes (can be a
pattern), let Holy Spirit be the leader, and then take the step of faith to live up to His call. Don’t just try all convenient paths and at the end we regret them. It’s not just wasting our precious time, it hurts God, others, and ourselves.
RELATED:
Godly Advise: Finding God’s Will (1)
Brokenness: Finding God’s Will (2)
Writing His-Story : Finding God’s Will (3)
Don’t Try, But Walk In Faith : Finding God’s Will (4)
Hanny Setiawan - Indonesia
Chairman of Kingdom Family Network that envisions New Indonesia. In literatur ministry, his desires is to "translate prophetic messages" into natural language of politic, social, economy, business, IT, education, music, etc in a view of "reformed charismatic theology"
