Seeking God’s Will

by Joe Thorn on July 25, 2006

DeVine on BonhoefferI am sitting in a local coffee house, the Donnie Darko soundtrack is playing on the store’s sound system, I am half way through both an iced coffee drink, and Mark DeVine’s book, Bonhoeffer Speaks Today. With the SBC, summer, and the Founders Conference I stalled in my reading of it, so I picked it up again today and will finish it this week. After finishing the chapter examining Bonhoeffer’s take on “Knowing and Doing the Will of God,” I had to stop and talk about it.

Bonhoeffer’s perspective, and Devine’s elucidation of it, is very helpful and relevant in light of the tendency among evangelicals to seek the will of God more often outside of the pages of Scripture than within. DeVine says that many Christians today “find themselves predisposed to interpret a wide range of experiences – including especially coincidences, what they call ‘having peace,’ so-called open and closed doors, and internal nudges – as indicators of God’s specific will for their lives.”

The illuminist notions I have in view believe that God wants to give fresh and specific guidance for a broad range of daily decisions confronting believers. Concrete guidance covering matters large and small is not only possible but should be expected by Spirit-led believers. Throughout the day one should be open to divine guidance, which could come at any moment, resulting in a left-turn rather than a right on Pine Street.

For Bonhoeffer the will of God is revealed in Scripture, grounded in his character and expressed in the Gospel. It isn’t that God no longer leads his people, but that he does so through the given revelation of Scripture. DeVine explains when one falls into the habit of seeking extra-biblical divine leading the consequences are often a diminished appreciation of God’s providence, a paralysis that hinders action until God’s will is mysteriously made known, a general neglect of the Bible, and the exaltation of experience to the level of Scripture.

Certainly, where a guidance-heavy notion of the Christian life takes hold, the neglect of the Bible should not surprise us. If God stands poised to offer new, daily, extra-biblical instruction, reason and stewardship of time must draw us away from the old word of the Bible, to these new, ostensibly more relevant words of God. In such circumstances, inattention to God’s new words smacks of neglect, bad stewardship and ingratitude. And many evangelicals behave precisely according to such reasoning, using the Bible more as a prompter to a seeking of something more, or as a confirmer of convictions they bring with them to the text while applying the bulk of their spiritual effort to the quest for some new word from God. Not surprisingly, the Bible is neglected in favor of the pursuit of daily guidance…

Seeking, understanding and obeying the will of God is not about immediate illumination apart from Scripture. It is more a matter of intimate familiarity with and study of Scripture, and a more comprehensive understanding of the character of God and his Gospel.

Of course, much more is said, but I need to get back to reading. Get the book. So far I have really enjoyed it and benefitted from it. I will give my take on the book as a whole after I’m done.

About Joe Thorn

I am the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Fellowship in Saint Charles, IL, and author of Note to Self: The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself. Jen is my wife, and Katherine, Elias, Madeline and Kilian are my kids.

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  • http://adamfeldman.typepad.com adam

    i found the book to be a very helpful primer to bonhoeffer and his writings. i read a couple of bonhoeffer’s books prior to reading devine’s work, and can say that devine does justice to examining bonhoeffer’s theology and applying it to contemporary times.

    i, too, was enlightened by devine’s treatment of bonhoeffer’s view of the will of god. most importantly (as devine points out), bonhoeffer really didn’t have the luxury of “time” in making decisions (nazis breathing down your neck kind of limits your timeframe). that really helped me evaluate my own approach to discerning god’s will.

    i suggest the first chapter to anyone who is new to bonhoeffer or would like to know more of this history behind the man.

  • http://theepdoughts.blogspot.com Philip

    Interesting points. I’ve never heard the entire Donnie Darko soundtrack, but I’ve been mesmerized by the version of “Mad World” on there ever since CSI featured it on an episode.

    As for the book, really interesting points, and I can see myself in some of the descriptions. I wonder if there is some place in the middle, where sometimes there is a “peace” or a “circumstantial leading”, and always reconciled with scripture. I think he’s right that evangelicals absolutely need to look at scripture for our direction much more than we currently do. But I don’t want to go too far the other way in a correction and ignore that there may be some experiential Holy Spirit instruction in addition to scripture. Very worthy of examination in my own life and in the church in general.

  • http://www.sosipater.wordpress.com Russ

    Joe,

    For such a deep topic, that was very succinctly written. I am tracking you (and apparently Bonhoeffer) all the way.

    Russ

  • Eddie

    Joe,

    We do a journal every month- you mind if I bum some of your articles like the one above occasionally? Obviousally I’d give all your pertinate info…By the way we have far too many looking for subjective “direction” for thier own life goals (selfish) instead of seeing the objective need to be obedinet, rid our lives of sin and do the work of evangelism.

    Eddie
    Jn 3:30

  • http://www.joethorn.net Joe Thorn

    Eddie, nice to see you commenting here! of course, you can use whatever you want.

    Phillip, based on the book I am reading Bonhoeffer seemed to believe that God does lead his people, and even Dr. DeVine gives an example of God’s leading in his own life. The problem is that if it is “always reconciled with scripture” then peace is not the issue, obedience is. Plus, it often assumes that God does not want us to simply make decisions in the world, in accord with his word, in light of his person and Gospel, but prefers us to wait for subjective experience to provide the way, thought not in any way like we read in Scripture. DeVine says,

    The God of the Old and New testaments seems to have had little trouble making his will clear when he chose to do so. Yet the will of God for so many today who are caught up in the quest for ongoing guidance seems comparatively murky and elusive, does it not? – almost as thought God were playing hide and seek with his own children on matters of paramount importance to both them and him.

    God’s word does promise peace, but not as a part of the decision making process.

  • http://pc1oad1etter.blogspot.com Nick P.

    Joe,

    I struggle with this issue. I think on ‘big’ issues I often pray and pray and never feel like I know what God wants me to do. I convince myself that God also speaks through the wisdom he has already given me, and passions, and also through Godly counsel. And then I worry that I’m giving up too soon on hearing from God. And I know that my wisdom might not be that good, my passions are all to often for the wrong thing, and my counselors won’t always be right.

    How should Scripture guide us in circumstances and contexts that it doesn’t address so directly?

    Your review touches a sensitive spot with me I guess. Discerning the will of God.

  • http://ctlillies.blogspot.com/ Josh Kidwell

    I’m not trying to rain on the Bonhoeffer parade or anything–and this may just be ignorance–but wasn’t his theology just a little wonky? Somehow I got that impression.

    Much Grace
    Josh

  • http://www.theologyprof.com Mark DeVine

    Bonhoeffer is often lumped with Karl Barth under the ambiguous and largely unhelpful term “neo-orthodoxy,” which is often then dismissed as liberalism Lite or liberalism decked out in evangelical sheep’s clothing. Cornelius Van Til suggested that Barth might be the worst heritc in the history of the Church because he “sounds so orthodox.” There is a little truth to these designations but very little in my estimation.

    The contention of my book is not that Bonhoeffer belongs to the ranks of anything like, say, an American evangelical (he was not) but rather that Bonhoeffer’s life and message offers sound biblically faithful guidance for evangelicals today.

    Life Barth before him, Bonheoffer was educated and nurtured in a context dominated by a matured and variously reformulated Protestant liberalism and its exegetical companion, namely, higher critical hermeneutics of a particularly Bultmanninan cast. However, once Bonhoeffer discovered Karl Barth, he opposed Protestant Liberalism for the rest of his life and his thinking took a decidedly biblical, more conservative, more dogmatic direction. And like Barth, his teaching and preaching is often more biblical in the sense of emerging from an obvious wrestling with the text than much of the preaching heard in many ostensibly evangelical churches which hold (formally at least) to a very high doctrine of inerrancy.

    Of course the proof is in the pudding and I find that most dismissals of Barth and Bonhoeffer are a little too quick and dirty in my estimation. When evangelicals and Bible believing Christians actually read either of these men, a good portion, perhaps most of them come away edified in ways compatible with orthodox theology and a high view of scripture. that’s why they keep buying bonhoeffer’s books at an amazingly high clip 51 years after he was executed by hanging.

  • http://www.joethorn.net Joe Thorn

    Thanks for the helpful comment Mark.

  • http://ctlillies.blogspot.com/ Josh Kidwell

    Mark

    Thank you that was wonderful. I read parts of The Cost of Discipleship and Letters and Papers from prison and did enjoy them–that was years ago, I could barely understand some of it. I still have them…they may warrant a re-read.

    Much Grace
    Josh

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  • Matt Christenot

    Joe,

    I was a student in Dr. Devine’s theology class two semesters ago and while I haven’t had the chance to start the book yet I was able to hear him articulate a lot of this in person. One thing I heard him say (and if he reads this, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), is that our subjective impressions of the will of God, a la “having a peace about it,” tends to assert itself in an authoritative way on other people. What I mean is, just because someone says, “I do or don’t have a peace”, or the ever popular, “I feel like God is saying…” we’re all supposed to bow down and say, “oh, well in that case.”

    I will say that when Dr. D (can I call him that for short?) presented this in class there was much uproar, but an eventual, if only partial acquiescence to his point of view. I myself am in agreement with his perspective, and I believe God used that class to free me from a lot of the trappings of having to find God’s extra will for my life. Now I feel the freedom to attempt great things for him according to his word and trust his providence to direct me if he should have a different path.

    Matt

  • http://zoecarnate.com Mike Morrell

    Good words. I’ll have to check this book out. Here’s another good book: Rethinking the Will of God by my friend Frank Viola.

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