Let's go!

So, for both standarisen shows this week, I'll be sharing a special talk with you, and it's on the most controversial topic I've ever addressed.

If you're like most people, you'll either love it or hate it, since I'm challenging a received tradition about how Christians are supposed to find God's will, and I'm going to supplant it with what I am convinced is the actual biblical model.

So, you'll be the judge here as the first installment of decision making and the will of God.

Well, tonight I want to do your favor, but I have a feeling a lot of you are not going to appreciate it, at least not at first.

Because, characteristically, when I talk about this material, the first response that most people have, generally speaking in churches as they get mad at me, in fact, I've even been called a heretic in the middle of teaching this material.

Someone got up in the middle of a session, pointed their finger at me and called me a heretic.

So, this is controversial. I'm just letting you know in advance, but I want to take issues that are really important and then assess them or judge them or determine their worth based on what Scripture says.

And sometimes that's not easy because there are controversial issues and you go to the text and the text aren't clear.

I don't think that's true here. I think the texts are really, really clear on this one.

And part of my job is to help you to see that, to see texts that you thought meant something else actually means something else.

When we're done though, I think many of you will be thankful, and if you're not, maybe in a few weeks when you reflect more on this, you will be.

Because I have never had a teaching offered to our organization stand a reason in which people have said it has changed their life so much.

I want to talk about the will of God, decision making and the will of God.

This obviously is a really important issue because as my brother once observed, we are either making decisions or we are living with decisions we've made.

And it's hard to imagine in practical terms an issue more important for day-to-day Christian living than making decisions based on the will of God.

And here I'm presuming the best of intentions by Christians who want to live in a manner that's pleasing to the Lord.

They want to do what God wants them to do.

At least that's their intention and I know we all struggle with actually getting that done.

And other things distract us and sometimes the good that we want to do we don't do.

And Paul talks about Romans 6 and I understand that.

But in general our desire is to set our trajectory on the life of the Spirit, Romans chapter 8.

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