Most of God’s will is written down, it looks exactly like Jesus, and it leaves you far more freedom than the anxious version many of us were taught.
What is the will of God? Mostly, it is what He has already said. Love Him, love people, do justice, stay thankful, be made whole, and become like Jesus.
The will of God is first about who you are becoming, and only after that about which door you walk through. Inside that character you have real freedom, and the Spirit and the church help you walk it out.
That answer disappoints people who were hoping for a secret. I think it should relieve them. It also corrects one of the most damaging sentences Christians say to each other, which is that every tragedy was God’s will. We will get there, carefully.
People come up to me after service asking whether to take the job, make the move, marry this person. Those are real questions. But I usually start somewhere else, because the New Testament almost never uses the phrase “the will of God” for a job offer.
When Paul writes “this is the will of God,” he finishes the sentence. It is not a riddle.
“This is the will of God, your sanctification.” Being made whole and holy, which in context means honoring other people’s bodies instead of using them.
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances. Notice it says in, not for. We will come back to that.
Justice, kindness and humility. The prophet does not say God is keeping it hidden. He says you have already been told.
Doing good, visibly and consistently, so that the worst assumptions people make about believers fall flat.
“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Micah 6:8 · ESVRead those together and a picture comes into focus. God’s revealed will is a shape of life. Justice for the person with less power. Kindness that keeps going when nobody repays it. Humility that stays teachable. Gratitude that refuses to let bitterness have the last word. And every line of it looks like Jesus, because He is what that will looks like with skin on.
Before you ask what God wants you to do next, ask whether you are doing what He has already said. That is most of His will, and none of it is hidden.
A lot of us were taught, without anyone saying it out loud, that God has one precise answer for every decision. One right college, one right spouse, one right house. His will becomes a dot on a map. Miss it and you live in plan B forever.
The appeal is real. Scripture does show God guiding specific people to specific places. In Acts 16 the Spirit keeps Paul out of Asia and a vision pulls him toward Macedonia, and the Spirit still leads like that.
But notice what that story is. It is God redirecting a man who was already going, already obeying, already preaching. Paul was not frozen at the edge of the map waiting for coordinates. He was moving, and the Spirit steered.
God has one hidden correct choice for every decision. Your job is to decode it through signs. Get it wrong and you have stepped outside His will, and the fear of that keeps you stuck.
God’s will is His character and His purpose, shown fully in Jesus. You walk in it by becoming like Him. Inside that, many choices are good ones, and the Spirit leads a person who is already walking.
Will in the sense of what someone wants or wishes to happen. It is the word in “your will be done” in the Lord’s Prayer and in “this is the will of God” in 1 Thessalonians.
Desire as much as decree. Lexicons describe it as what a person wishes or has determined should be done, and it often points to what God wants for people, an offer that can be received or refused.
Jesus taught us to pray for the Father’s will to be done on earth. You do not pray for something that is already automatic. Much of what happens here is not it.
God does lead in specifics, sometimes very clearly. But He leads as a Father walking beside you, not as an exam you fail by guessing wrong. The fear-driven hunt for the dot is usually anxiety wearing church clothes.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Now the hard part. Many sincere Christians believe everything that happens is God’s will, illness and accidents and the death of a child included, decreed for reasons we cannot see.
Let me give that view its strongest form, because the people who hold it are not careless. They point to Joseph telling his brothers, “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20). They point to Proverbs 16:33, where even the lot falls by the Lord’s decision. They want to say that nothing is outside God’s reach and that suffering is never meaningless. I want to say that too.
Our position at Sound of Heaven is that God is sovereign and good, and that not everything that happens is His will. Sin, violence, disease and disaster happen in a world where people and creation are not yet fully doing His will. That is exactly why Jesus told us to pray “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Joseph’s line says God brought good out of evil his brothers chose. It does not say God wrote the evil. A proverb about a lot falling is wisdom about God’s reach over what looks random, not a theory that every diagnosis was decreed.
Most of all, look at Jesus, who is what God is like. He never once told a grieving family their loss was the Father’s will. He healed the sick, He wept at His friend’s tomb, and He raised the dead. If you want to know how God feels about a tragedy, watch Jesus walk up to one.
The teaching that every tragedy is God’s will is wrong. And it usually gets used on the people least able to argue with it: the widow, the parents at the funeral, the person in the hospital bed. It sounds like faith. It lays the worst day of their life at the feet of the One who came to heal them.
“So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”
Matthew 18:14 · ESVLeslie Weatherhead preached on this at the City Temple in London after bombing in the Second World War left the church in rubble. He told of a friend in India whose little boy had died of cholera, and who said it was the will of God. Weatherhead answered him, “call it bad drains or communal carelessness, but don’t call it the will of God.” I have not found a better sentence on the subject.
None of this makes suffering simple. The question of why God lets bad things happen is one of the oldest in Scripture, and the book of Job refuses a tidy answer on purpose. But refusing a tidy answer is very different from calling the tragedy God’s plan.
If you lost someone and a well-meaning person told you it was God’s will, I am sorry. You were handed a burden on top of your grief, and it was never yours to carry.
God did not need the person you love more than you needed them here. He is not the author of the thing that broke your heart. He is the One sitting with you in it, and the One who does not let death have the final word.
You are allowed to be angry, to lament, to ask why. Scripture is full of people who did. If you want someone to pray with you, our prayer team would be honored to, and we have gathered Scripture for the loss of a loved one for the nights when you cannot find your own words.
What is 1 Thessalonians 5:18 actually asking of you?
Paul says in all circumstances, not for all circumstances. You can grieve a loss honestly and still find reasons for thanks inside the season, without ever calling the loss itself good.
So what about the job, the move, the relationship? God cares about those, and the Spirit does lead. Here is how I have seen it work.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Romans 12:2 · ESVPaul says the renewed mind is what lets you test and recognize God’s will. The word he uses, dokimazo, was used for testing something to show it is genuine. Discernment is a trained sense of what is good, grown by time with Jesus. That is what it means to have the mind of Christ.
Jesus is the clearest page of the Bible. If an option requires you to become less loving, less honest or less just, you already have your answer, no matter how open the door looks.
The Spirit speaks. Sometimes an impression in prayer, sometimes a prophetic word from someone who knows nothing about your situation, sometimes a settled peace that holds even when the choice is costly. The Spirit’s leading bears the Spirit’s fruit and never drives you by panic. Learning to walk in the Spirit is learning that voice.
In Acts 15 the church settled a hard question together and wrote, “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” That is how the early church discerned. People who love you and know Scripture see what you cannot. If you do not have that kind of church family yet, come sit with ours.
James 1:5 says to ask God for wisdom and He gives it generously. Weigh the facts, count the cost, notice how you are gifted. Sanctified common sense is one of the ordinary ways God guides, which is why wisdom in the Bible is so practical.
Then choose. If all of that leaves you with two good options, you are not standing between God’s will and disaster. You are free to pick one and walk with Him in it.
A situation I have seen more than once, details changed. A young man in our church has two offers, one in Hauppauge near family, one in Charlotte with better money. He has prayed for weeks and is terrified of choosing wrong.
Whichever job he takes, God’s will is that he works honestly, treats people well, stays connected to a church and keeps his heart soft. None of that changes with a zip code.
He asks God for wisdom and invites the Spirit to speak. He also stops flipping his Bible open at random, hoping to land on a verse that mentions North Carolina.
His parents, his small group leader, an older couple who know him. One notices he lights up every time he describes the Charlotte role.
He decides, not because he cracked a code, but because he weighed it honestly before God with people who love him. Wherever he goes, the Father goes with him.
That last line is the freedom. Paul calls the will of God good, acceptable and perfect, and perfect in that verse carries the sense of complete or mature. It does not mean one flawless path you have to hit. When your heart is set on loving God and loving people, you have a great deal of room to move, and God’s plan for your life turns out to be far roomier than the map you were afraid of losing.
God is not hiding His will and waiting for you to fail a test. He is forming His Son in you, and He goes with you into whatever good choice you make.
In the garden the night before the cross, Jesus prayed, “not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). That is the will of God at its deepest: love that gives itself away for others.
Peter says in Acts 2:23 that Jesus was handed over by God’s set purpose, and in the same sentence that lawless men killed Him. The Father’s will was the self-giving love of the Son. The betrayal and the whip were human evil, and God answered them with an empty tomb.
That is the pattern for you. God’s will is not a secret file and not a dark decree behind every loss. It is His Kingdom, here and now, showing up in a life that loves like Jesus. You can live it today, at a kitchen table in Deer Park or a desk in Manhattan, without knowing where you will be in five years.
For related reading, see what “thy will be done” means, predestination in the Bible, the book of Job explained and what a calling from God is.
The will of God is mostly revealed, looks exactly like Jesus, never needed your tragedy, and leaves you free to choose well while the Spirit and the church walk with you.
Whether you are facing a decision or someone told you your pain was God’s plan, tell us. Somebody at Sound of Heaven will pray with you.
Most often the Bible uses the phrase for things God has plainly said. First Thessalonians names our sanctification and giving thanks in all circumstances as the will of God, and Micah 6:8 sums it up as justice, kindness and humility before God. Jesus is the clearest picture of it. So the will of God is first about who you are becoming, and only after that about specific decisions, where the Spirit leads and you have real freedom.
Start by doing what He has already revealed, because obedience in the plain things keeps you close enough to hear in the unclear ones. Let Scripture, read through Jesus, shape your options. Ask God for wisdom as James 1:5 invites, and listen for the Spirit, who leads with peace rather than panic. Bring the decision to people who love you. Then choose. Where more than one path honors God, you are free to pick one.
No. God is sovereign and nothing is beyond His reach, but Scripture does not teach that every event is His desire. Jesus told us to pray for the Father's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, which only makes sense if much of what happens here is not His will. Sin, violence and disease oppose it. Jesus healed the sick and wept at a grave rather than calling death the Father's plan. God can bring good out of evil without being the author of the evil.
The fear of missing one hidden plan is heavier than Scripture ever asks you to carry. God's will is not a dot on a map you can overshoot and lose forever. It is His character formed in you and His purpose carried by His Spirit. If you made a poor choice, repentance and grace put you back in step with Him. He is a Father walking beside you, not an examiner waiting for you to guess wrong.
Paul says not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you can test and discern what the will of God is, good, acceptable and perfect. The word for testing was used for proving something genuine. Discernment grows as your mind is renewed by time with Jesus, in Scripture, in prayer and in community. God's will is not a code you crack once. It is something you learn to recognize as you become more like Him.