Doing What’s Right

Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way,
and may your whole spirit and soul and body
be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.
1 Thessalonians 5:23

Obviously, we cannot do what is right if we don’t know what is right. Unfortunately, our culture is awash with information and opinions and philosophies and ideologies—all in the context of a postmodern worldview that doubts the very existence of definable truth.

I am also concerned by what I see as a growing trend in evangelical churches—the notion that God reveals truth directly to our hearts in spoken and unspoken messages, that we can receive instructions from the Lord. I often hear people say things like, “I wasn’t sure what to do about that job offer until the Lord spoke to my heart and told me what to do,” or “I haven’t made a decision yet; I’m waiting to hear from God on that.”

Let me be clear. In the past, the Lord spoke to people directly—via visual and audible manifestations of Himself, in dreams and visions, even in silence—and His purpose was to have them convey those supernaturally communicated messages to others or write them down for future generations. We have a record of those messages preserved in the sixty-six books of the Bible. Once the Bible was complete, the Lord stopped supernaturally speaking to people directly. He replaced this method with a greater, more intimate one.

In the old covenant, God issued orders that He expected to be fulfilled to the letter. But in the new covenant, He has stopped issuing orders. Instead, He sent His Holy Spirit to transform the heart of the believer, to renew his or her mind to think as the Father thinks. He no longer shouts to the faithful, in effect, “Drop and give Me twenty push-ups!” Now He reforms the character of His people so that they will say within, “I want to give You fifty!”

In a process called sanctification, God transforms the character of the believer to match that of His Son, creating agents who think like He thinks, behave as He desires, and make choices that reflect His values and accomplish His will.

Therefore, as you seek to do what is right, don’t look for God’s voice within saying, “Turn left. Take this job, not that one. Read your Bible. Eat less fat.” Instead, make use of the resources God has made available to you.