Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Can You Know God's Will? | Torah | Genesis 24

Episode Date: March 1, 2022

Wouldn't life be so much easier if God just told you his plan for your life? Is it even possible to know what God is doing with your life? In today's episode, Tanya uses Genesis 24 to share how to follow God's will for your life even when it isn't clear. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Genesis 24 Related episode: Can Christianity Handle the World's Big Issues? Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. Right now, we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. You might have heard me talk about having a senior this year, which means there's been a big decision looming in his mind and in our family dynamics for the last couple of years. Now, I'm going to tell you what God didn't do. He didn't make it perfectly clear. He didn't remove all obstacles from, one college and close all the doors for all the others. He didn't speak through someone who told Braden what to do and he didn't send a sign in the mail. But the Lord did give Braden the confidence to make a decision. And he did give us peace that he will be with Braden wherever he chooses to go to school.

But there was nothing miraculous about the way Braden chose his college. We're still kind of an awe, though, about the way God was with Braden. and we know it's going to be pretty cool and we can look back someday and see how God works through this decision. As Braden's mom, I don't know for sure that it's God's will for Braden to go to a certain college

because, well, God just hasn't told me that, but he made a decision and we're excited for him. In Genesis 24, Abraham is getting really old and he's thinking about the promise God gave to make him into a great nation. And this wasn't just a promise for Abraham. You can head back to Keith's episode.

It's number 390 to hear how God revealed to Abram and included him in his redemption plan for the entire world. Genesis 24-1 opens. Now Abraham was old, well-advanced in years, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. Now, this in itself is interesting, because you might have been following along long enough to know that Abraham had a lot of challenges and a lot of difficulty. He followed the Lord, and he also disobeyed the Lord. But Abraham was blessed because he had a cut.

covenant relationship with the Lord. And that's the truest and purest form of blessing for Abraham and for us. So Abraham's son by Sarah, well, his name was Isaac, and he was the one that God was going to use to continue this redemptive plan. And when it was time for Isaac to have a wife, he was almost 40 by now. Abraham wanted him to marry someone from their home country, not the land of Canaan where they were currently living. Basically, Abraham wanted Isaac to marry someone that they knew, like a relative, someone they knew would follow God. But they also wanted to ensure that this woman wouldn't pull Isaac away from Canaan and back to their home country because God had told them that the future of the family would be in Canaan. So Abraham sent his

servant back to Mesopotamia to find a wife for his son, Isaac. It was a journey that lasted several days. And when the servant pulled into town, he probably wondered how on earth he was going to choose the right woman for Isaac. He knelt his thirsty camels down beside a well outside the city, and the servant prayed, O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. Behold, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. Let the young woman to whom I shall say, please let down your jar that I may drink, and who shall say drink, and I will water your camels? Let her be the one whom you've appointed for your servant, Isaac. So the next verse tells us that before he'd even finished

mouthing this prayer, Rebecca came to the well with a jar of water on her shoulder. And when the servant asked, she offered him some water, and she also offered to water his camels. Now I read that it would have taken her about 72 trips to the well and about two hours to water those thirsty camels. The scripture also tells us that she is the daughter of Abraham's nephew. So Rebecca, before the servant had even uttered his prayer, well, she'd already made the decision to come to the well to draw water. And she invited Abraham's servant back to her home, where they ate together and where he told them that he'd come to find a wife for Isaac.

And then he described how God had answered his prayer at the well. He made a really encouraging case for Rebecca to go back to the land of Canaan with him. And as readers, we might all be shouting, this is crazy. You can't leave your home forever to go marry someone you don't know. But Rebecca seemed to have already made her decision, and she went with the servant. And after their long journey, when she saw Isaac coming out to greet them as they got close to the camp, she covered her face with the veil, and she became his wife. This is a pretty cool story, but you and I find ourselves in this story.

Matthew chapter one gives the lineage of Jesus, which includes Isaac and Rebecca. It says the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob and Jacob the father of Judah. And it goes on until we get to Jesus. So this was God's will for Rebecca. this was God's will to carry through to the lineage of his son. This was God's will to bring his son to us to die for us. This is God's will for you that you know you are blessed in all things

because you, by Jesus Christ, are invited into a covenant relationship with your father in heaven. Christians, non-Christians, we can all get this wrong when we see it as a short game. and we assume blessings and promises that maybe are intended for specific people and not for us, and we have like a name it and claimant mentality. But this chapter, it takes a long view of the whole story of God, the story that includes your life. God is at work in your life from beginning to end as part of his big story. But does God also work in a Genesis 24 kind of way in your life? the way he sovereignly established ideas and plans in people's hearts according to his will.

In Matthew 6, Jesus teaches us, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this. Our father in heaven, hal would be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus says, yes, God does work sovereignly in your life. And yes, we should pray for his will to be done. But how do we know what to do? Well, first, we need to have the right view of God. One of his attributes is that he is incomprehensible.

That means basically our human minds can't understand everything there is to know and understand about him. But he does choose to reveal to us what he knows we need to know about him. God reveals himself in his holy word. We can look to the Bible for his. revealed will. This is where we find the attributes of God that help us understand who he is. This is where we discover and are affirmed in his plans for us from the Garden of Eden and the original sin to the city in Revelation 21 and His kingdom come. This is where we find ourselves

and ground ourselves in God's big story. There's also what we call the hidden will of God. And this is the part of God that is not fully known to us, maybe not in the moment and maybe not even in our lifetime. Sometimes we can look backward at our lives like we look at this story in Genesis 24 and see how God made this happen and that happen. And see how even the hard things in our life have made us more like Jesus, or how the choices we made have blessed others by His grace. But these things aren't known to us at the time we choose to do them. God's Spirit opens your eyes to live in His will. God's Spirit opens your eyes to understand and know relationally and with your brain, the God of the Bible,

and God's Spirit opens your heart to desire and know the Lord of your life. This is why Paul prayed in Ephesians 116 that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened, that they would know the glorious hope to which they are called, and the riches of their inheritance and the immeasurable power given to those who believe. You have the power of God in you when you make decisions. You have this spirit of God working in you as you initiate conversations and make plans. Living by the Spirit is being led by the Spirit, not leading but following, submitting to God's authority in your life as your true king,

and having faith in the power to step out in faith and take steps and do the next right thing. Usually, we have to take it by faith. We come to the Father believing in his big story as we live out our smaller ones in faith that he is king. Sometimes we want God to reveal His will, but He wants us to trust him. Trust that He is better than anything else we can put in his place. Trust that His plans are for our good. that he is the one who gave his son for us and offers us that same power in which he resurrected his son to live according to his will, that his spirit lives in us and seals us with his name and

his power. The more we look for him in our lives and the way he has already cared for us, the more we can trust him in our present. You might not have confirmation that your decisions are perfect, but you can know that God never changes, that. that his plans that laid the foundation of the earth established your steps, and that everything he's ordained will be carried into fruition. And in that, we have no reason to be anxious, but every reason to step in faith, knowing it doesn't depend on us,

but yet asking him to include us in his journey. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes, and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.