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Bruce Waltke is fed up. Christians "ought to stamp out of our vocabulary the nonbiblical and misleading expression 'finding God's will.'" God is not a divine sleight-of-hand artist with an elusive will that we must find like the proverbial pea in a heavenly shell game. God's will, after all, is clear! God wants us to be holy, to be mature, to be more like Jesus. God is all about forging our character and welcoming us into greater intimacy with him.
Who or what is to blame for this unwholesome fixation on God's will? In Finding the Will of God: A Pagan Notion?, Waltke blames disintegrating authority structures, lamenting the loss of guidance that family used to provide, but he especially fingers spiritual immaturity. Christians today, Waltke says,
are willing to try to follow a specific pattern of behavior their pastor draws out for them, but the abstract concept of "loving God" is harder to grasp. Consequently, they are leery of someone telling them to, in the words of Calvin, "love God and do what you please." They would prefer that someone tell them exactly what to do. That's why they resort to divination to seek God's will.
Conservative evangelical churches are often guilty as charged. As Waltke observes, far too many sermons promise "5 Steps to a Better _____ (you fill in the blank)," based on a view of the Bible as an AAA map to life—all road hazards clearly highlighted, of course—rather than as the essential book of stories we need to sustain us on the journey. In such a culture, perhaps it's natural that God morphs into a heavenly computer ready to spit out answers, but only with the correct passwords—in short, divination.
All techniques to "find" God's will—letting the Bible fall open to the first verse you see, laying out fleeces, analyzing signs and the like—Waltke labels as nothing more than pagan divination (hence his subtitle). An Old Testament scholar, he offers a thorough survey of divination techniques. (Did you know rhabdomancy means using arrows to get a sign from God?) After the disciples cast lots to select Matthias to replace Judas (Acts 1:24ff), Waltke says, never again in the New Testament does the church seek God's will with such means. In fact, he adds, whenever God does offer miraculous guidance (Peter's rooftop dream, for example), it is to people who have neither asked for nor are expecting it.
Having established that Christians are too often caught up in seeking shallow formulas that "tell them exactly what to do," Waltke proceeds to devote the final three-fourths of his book to his own six-point program! The six points are familiar—Scripture, a heart for God, counsel from others, providential circumstances, our own good judgment, divine intervention—but he stresses that we must take them in prioritized sequence if we expect to hear from God. While most would agree, for example, that Scripture should take precedence over circumstances, seasoned believers realize God is not contained in six-point systems. God begins at different points with different people—circumstances may drive us to Scripture, or the Lord might first capture our attention by a word from a friend. Chapters on each of the six points offer conventional advice—occasionally quite good—but cannot shake the shadow of the formulaic mindset Waltke himself criticizes.
If Waltke wants to save us from veering off into the stagnant shallows called "finding God's will," Henry Blackaby and his son Richard's more comprehensive Hearing God's Voice keeps us in the strong center of the current. Terminology is important. Whereas "God's will" is static and nonpersonal (something to find like a misplaced map), hearing God's voice is personal and relational. Just as in Henry Blackaby's Experiencing God series, used in churches throughout North America (including the one I serve), the strength of Hearing God's Voice is that the authors never tire in expressing a simple but surprisingly elusive truth: God really wants a relationship with us! "God's choice to communicate in so many diverse ways forces us to put our faith in him, not a method," the Blackabys write. "We do not seek a word from God to prove he is real so we can have a relationship with him. Rather, as we seek to develop an intimate relationship with him, we will hear him speak to us."
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