How do we believers determine God’s personal plan for our lives? Should we expect to hear a clear and audible voice declaring the Lord’s directions for us? Do we interpret our dreams? Should we hope for a messenger to come along who will deliver a "word from the Lord" to us? Or, as too many do, will we stumble along hoping circumstances will work-out in such a way as to lead us to the open door of God’s will? Does any chance exist of our coming to understand what God expects from us? If yes, how?
Our best hope for understanding God’s will for our lives comes by relying solely upon His Word. The psalmist posed the question, "How can a young man keep his way pure?" In other words, how can a person know how to live his life in a such a manner as to honor God? How can we find direction so that we might conform to God’s plan? His answer? "By keeping [one’s life] according to Your word." Walk according to the Word, and you will fulfill God’s plan for your life.
We are enjoined by the Bible to understand God’s will. Paul wrote in Romans, "Do not be fashioned by this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may determine the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God." To the Ephesians, he declared, "know what the will of the Lord is." So, how do we come to know God’s will for our lives?
Paul recognized that all kinds of pressures come to bear on believers. Some are overt and hostile, some subtle and deceptive, but all of the world’s influences are directed towards making all people on earth conform to some way of living. Thus, the Apostle declared, "Do not let yourself be fashioned by the world." Living in a manner consistent with any lifestyle other than a biblical one means to be out of conformity with God’s wishes.
What Paul commanded ("be transformed" was stated by Paul as a command, not a suggestion) the Romans to do was to fight against the outside pressures of the world and instead be changed from the inside out. The difference in the two verbs conform and transform is distinct and definite. To be conformed means to be changed by external forces. To be transformed, though, is another reality altogether.
To be transformed means one is changed by internal forces. The change a believer should experience every day of his life begins at the point of conversion. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old is passed away, behold the new has already come into existence" (2 Cor. 5.17). Earlier, Paul had written to the Corinthians, "the outer person (the flesh) is decaying, but the inner person is being made new day by day . . . so we do not pay attention to what can be seen, but to what is unseeable; for seen things are temporary, but unseeable things are eternal" (2 Cor. 4.16, 18).
So, what is eternal? The things of God (Psa. 107.43; 111.7, 10). More specifically, what are the eternal matters about which we should be concerned most? Foremost in our minds are to be the principles and truths of Scripture. God described his Word when he said to Isaiah, "My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, nor from the mouth of your offspring’s offspring, . . . from now and forever" (Isa. 59.21).
The words put into Isaiah’s mouth were from God. How did they end up in the mouths of the prophet’s descendants? The words were written down and preserved, even to this day. And Paul the Rabbi, the master interpreter of Scripture, wrote, "For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction" (Rom 15.4). So, heeding the command of Isaiah, we must go "to the Law, to the testimony" (Isa. 8.20).
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