The Misnomer About God’s Will

We often hear a great misnomer about following God’s will. It usually sounds something like this: “God has commanded me to do x, so I’m going to go into x blindly without fear.” A phrase like this has elements of great truth—faith should carry us. But it’s missing a piece.

Sometimes God instructs us to follow Him quickly and blindly. When that’s the case, we should certainly do it. However, His commands should almost always be combined with the abilities that He has given us, including logic and rationality. We have to find the balance. If we get too rational, it can be at the detriment of God’s will; we can reason ourselves out of taking the risks God wants us to take.

Joshua, the leader of the Israelites after Moses, is a great example of proper behavior within God’s will. He learned from Moses and led out of that strength and experience, but he was led by the Spirit (Deuteronomy 34:9–12). He also did the proper legwork, even though he knew that God had guaranteed success if he and the people were faithful.

We see a glimpse into this strategy in Joshua 7:2–5, the battle of Ai. Joshua sent spies into enemy territory before invading it. He then paced the troops by sending only a small regiment at first (Joshua 7:3). Despite his proper behavior, Joshua was unsuccessful because of the people’s disobedience (Joshua 7:1).

After this, we see the pain that Joshua felt as a result of the people’s spiritual failures (Joshua 7:6–9). Yahweh didn’t allow for this to continue, though, because He was aware of the root cause of the problem; God called Joshua to find it and change it, so he did (Joshua 7:10–26).

Joshua shows us what it means to follow God’s will: receive a call, be trained, act out of wisdom and preparation, accept defeat when it comes, seek Yahweh’s will again to fix it, and then confront the problem head on. The result: success (Joshua 8:1–29). Following their victory, Joshua rededicated himself and those he led to Yahweh (Joshua 8:30–35).

If we understood how to function within God’s will, we would be much more successful for God. We would see great and miraculous things happen. And this understanding is not just reserved for the leader, but for all people.

Adapted and modified excerpts from Connect the Testaments
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the Lexham English Bible, LEB © 2012 by Logos Bible Software.
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