I hear it from high schoolers trying to decide whether and where to go to college: “I’m just trying to figure out what God’s will is.”

I hear it from college students trying to decide whether and where to go to grad school, or whether or where to get into the job market, or whether or whom to marry: “I’m just trying to figure out what God’s will is.”

I hear it from middle-aged adults trying to decide whether to make a career change: “I’m just trying to figure out what God’s will is.”

I hear it, sad to say, from married couples contemplating separation or divorce: “we’re just trying to figure out what God’s will is.”

I hear it, heartbreakingly, from sixty-year-olds wrestling with the excruciating question of what to do about mom, after she wandered out of the house in the middle of the night and got lost in the neighborhood, for the third time this month: “I just want to know what God’s will is.”

We are not going to answer those questions this morning. But we are going to talk about some of the most fundamental issues of finding God’s will for your life. If you can lay these foundations rightly, you will be able to build on them a biblical structure For thinking wisely and well about God’s will for every situation you’ll ever find yourself in.

We are nearing the end of our foray through Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonian church. It is one of the earliest of Paul’s letters that appear in our bibles, written in AD 49 or 50. The underlying concern that shapes the entire epistle is living in light of the return of Christ. We’ve spent several Sundays talking about that subject. Here in the last few sentences of the letter, Paul is cleaning up a few final details. In my Bible, the heading that the editors have put over this last section is “Final Instructions.”

He has said a little something both to pastors and to church members about how to treat each other. Now he’s saying something for all Christians: the basics of knowing the will of God.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray without ceasing, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 

What we’re looking for in these three verses is two triads, two consecutive sets of three important truths. The first triad is three foundations. The second triad is three priorities. That’s what the Lord has for us today.

Three foundations

These three realities are fundamental for knowing what God wants in your life. If you don’t have these foundations in place, you literally have no hope of understanding what God wants for you. I’m thinking about the words at the end of verse 18: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 

The word “for” tells us that Paul is about to introduce and explain to us the foundation beneath, the reason behind what he says in verses 16 and 17. What that means is that this final clause is actually more important than the ones that are more pressing or urgent to most of us.

The Son of God this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you

Paul says the will of God is in Christ Jesus. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is also revealed to us as the image of God and the living Word of God. The first and most important thing God wants from you is to come to him by way of his Son because his Son is the only way to get to him.

Our Lord himself made this excruciatingly clear:

John 14:6 Jesus said…, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

For those who aren’t familiar with what Jesus actually thought and said about himself, these words are shocking. For others, especially those of us who have been around church a lot, they are well familiar. The problem for some of us is that we simply accept that it is the truth of God and never ask “why.” Why is Jesus the only way to get to God? Is because the love of God is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Paul told the Romans, in chapter 8:

³⁸ For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God [[ ]] in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Or listen to John’s description of the relationship between the Father and the Son: John 5:20 For the Father loves the Son. The reason that Jesus is the way to God is that the Father loves the Son with a love unlike any other love conceivable in all reality. It is the greatest, highest, deepest, longest, strongest, purest, most immense love even imaginable. And you have to know that that love of the Father for the Son has always been. The father did not begin to love the son as a way of loving you or me. The Father loves us because he sees us in his Son.

If you want to know the will of God for you, you have to start with the Son of God. If you don’t yet know Jesus as your Lord and savior, turn from your sin and yourself today and run to Jesus. He is the way to God.

The people of God this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you

Paul was writing to a church full of believers who had been spiritually dead pagans just a year or so before he wrote this letter to them. Thessalonians were worshippers of all the regular Greek gods. They had temples to the Caesars of Rome as divine figures deserving and demanding worship. They had a unique devotion a Macedonian god called Cabirus, who even showed up on their coins as their patron deity. Yet now these Thessalonians were followers of the God of the Jews, whose only Son Jesus had been crucified and raised again just a few short decades before. Now the God of the universe had a plan for them, a preference for how they will live and what they will do and who they will be. He had a will for them.

That was 2000 years ago. Today, if you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, he has a will for you. He sees you, he knows you, he loves you and he wants things for you and from you. You are part of the people of God. That identity is fundamental to your ability to know the will of God because it is foundational to the fact that God even has a specific, special, individually tailored will for you.

You are part of the people of God.

Have you ever noticed how Paul begins his letters. If you go to the beginning of this letter, his first letter to the Thessalonians, You’ll see that he very specifically is addressing his letter to the church at Thessalonica. In a few moments I will quote also from galatians and philippians. If you look at the beginning of those two books, you’ll find that they too are explicitly addressed to churches in those locations. There are a few of Paul’s letters that are written to individual Christians: Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. All the rest are expressly addressed to churches.

Do you get this? Paul’s normal way of doing things is to talk to entire churches, not individual Christians. This is because he learned from Jesus that our Lord wants us to think of ourselves as part of his people. It is never his will for Christians to simply go through life on their own without being a settled part of a definite and disciplined body of believers.

The second foundation is the people of God.

The will of God this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you

We need to pause for just a second and make sure that we know what we’re talking about when we mention the will of God.

The Bible doesn’t always tip us off about how it’s using the term “the will of God.” Sometimes “the will of God” is referring to his plan for all things, which always comes to pass. That plan often includes any number of events or choices which are not what he would have preferred. But he has made them part of his plan. Think about that. His plan sometimes includes things that are not his preference.

Let me give you a couple of examples, both from the Apostle Peter: 1 Peter 3:17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. God doesn’t prefer that his children suffer. But sometimes he does plan for that to happen. Sometimes we’ll know why he has planned that for us, but most of the time we won’t. We will just trust our father’s wisdom and love even when hard things are happening to us. Even when we can’t understand the plan, we know we can trust the Planner.

Or listen to Peter’s prayer to God: Acts 4 ²⁷ for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, ²⁸ to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. Did you hear that? God’s predestined plan, his settled, certain, and unshakable will, was that wicked men conspire together to crucify the Son of God. That was the single worst sin humanity ever committed. To watch his Son dying in blood and agony was the least preferred thing imaginable for the Father. But it was part of his plan for the ages. In fact, it was the central part of his plan.

Sometimes when the Bible talks about the will of God, it’s talking about his providential plan, which no power in heaven or on earth can prevent from coming to pass. God will do all his will. But other times, when the Bible refers to the will of God it means his preference: what he wants, desires, and often commands. But it does not always happen the way he wants. Men and angels do disobey his will, disregard his preference. When we do, there is always a price to pay. This, too, is all part of this plan.

Here in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, when Paul talks about God’s will, he’s not talking about God’s plan. He’s talking about what God prefers. It’s what he wants, what he even commands. But it’s not necessarily what he’s going to infallibly bring about. It’s very much the sort of thing that we must choose. We must obey his will. The Thessalonian Christians were expected to pursue these three preferences, and so are we. These are the will of God for his people. These are three priorities that we need to keep our focus on as we live our lives.

Let’s turn the corner and spend a few minutes thinking about those three priorities.

Three priorities ¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray without ceasing, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances

Rejoicing ¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray without ceasing, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances

Do you understand that God commands you and me to rejoice? Let that soak in for a minute. Our Father commands us to rejoice. Have you ever thought about how shocking that is? How can he command something like that? What are we supposed to do? Turn the rejoicing knob so the joy can flow? Where is this joy supposed to come from?

Either right before or right after he wrote his letter to the church in Thessalonica, Paul wrote a letter to the churches in Galatia. One of the most famous sentences in that letter is this: Galatians 5 ²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control… I hope you notice that Paul lists joy right after the thing that Jesus himself puts at the top of the list: love. In fact, Paul does this repeatedly throughout his letters: love comes first, then joy. They’re the first two cardinal and characteristic virtues of the Christian life. Joy is a Christian non-negotiable.

About a dozen years after he wrote his letter to the Thessalonian church, Paul wrote a letter to the church in Philippi. In that letter we find the same command, only more clearly articulated and fully developed. Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Do you hear what or who Paul sees as the object or the focus of Christian joy? Our joy is in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not in what we do or in what we have. It is not even in our family. Our joy is in the Lord. When the apostles of Christ say this, they are carrying forward something that was central in the Old Testament. A dozen times or so the Old Testament saints are urged to rejoice in the Lord. So when the New Testament writers urge Christian believers to rejoice in the Lord, they are doing two things. They are telling us that Jesus is the source of our joy and they are telling us that Jesus is God. Just as Jehovah was the source of the joy of the old covenant saints, so Jesus is the source of joy of the saints under the covenant. Because Jesus is God the Son, manifest and mortal flesh.

What that all boils down to practically is that Christians train their hearts to rejoice in the Lord. In good times or bad, happy or sad, our joy is in Jesus our Lord—not in our circumstances. And it is that joy that Paul says is foundational to knowing the will of God for your life. As long as your truest, deepest joy, pleasure, and satisfaction is in your cocaine or your car or your job or your hobby or your husband or you grandchildren, you cannot reliably know the will of God for your life. Because God’s will for you is joy in the Lord Jesus Christ. It says so right here.

Prayer ¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray without ceasing, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances

When you read the book of Acts, it is impossible to miss the fact that those earliest Christians loved to pray, and to do it together. Although the reality is that you don’t get the sense that they prayed so much because they simply liked it, but because they desperately needed it. They were utterly reliant on their Father in heaven for everything, especially safety and provision. So they cried out to that Father all the time.

Take note of this. When we feel like we have to have help from God in order just to make it, we pray more. But when we have guardrails set up, and default settings in our lives that are designed to keep us from ever really being backed up against the wall, it’s easy to forget to talk to our Father. But our father wants us talking to him constantly.

He doesn’t want this because he needs our attention or admiration. Actually it’s we who need to give him our attention and adoration. We just don’t know or feel this by nature. We don’t have an innate sense of what we need. Other things capture our attention. We are broken and fallen, so we don’t know what we need. We are like lepers who don’t feel any pain and therefore aren’t even aware that our wounds are gangrenous and our limbs are falling off. We are like zombies: constantly shambling around, driven by an insatiable hunger, without even realizing we are dead, stinking corpses. God doesn’t need us; we need him, far more than we’ll ever know. That’s why Paul tells us to develop a solid habit of continual prayer if we want to know the will of God.

I hope you caught it just now when I used the terms “all the time,” “constantly,” and “continual.” I did this because Paul tells the Thessalonians and us that it is God’s will for us to pray “without ceasing.” When I was a young Christian, I did more than a little griping about this phrase. “How can we possibly pray without ceasing,” I would demand to know. “Don’t we need to go to sleep?”

I was, of course, being silly. Paul is just speaking in hyperbole, like everybody else does. [[ ]] If I were to get really honest, though, I’d have to admit that my problem was not really ever that I was confused or silly. I always knew what Paul meant:

1. I should make conscious, deliberate prayer a regular and developing discipline in my life;
2. I should do everything I do, even wash my car or make love to my wife, as an act of prayer and worship to my God; and
3. I should never stop growing in these holy habits.

I always knew that, just like you do, if you’re honest with yourself. We just constantly search for excuses not to submit to what God is telling us he wants from us. We’re always looking for ways to let ourselves off the hook. Stop that.

If you want a life that’s genuinely shaped by the will of God, become a prayerful person. If you want some ready made opportunities for regular prayer, I’ll invite you again to the prayer meeting we have every Sunday at 8:00 in the morning in room 102 and also the prayer meeting we have every Sunday evening at 5:00 in room 101. And if you want help in making prayer a regular discipline everyday of your life, I’ll be standing right by that door right back there…

Thanksgiving ¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray without ceasing, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances

Did you hear there are some politicians in America today who are advocating that we do away with the Thanksgiving holiday? People went nuts about that, because we Americans love our Thanksgiving—the Pilgrims, the Turkey, the cranberry sauce, the football, all of it.

But the Thanksgiving Paul is talking about here is not a holiday and it’s not American. It’s the genuine feeling of thankfulness to God and the open expression of thanks to God. I suspect that it is the inescapability of the presence of God in the Thanksgiving holiday that makes the holiday most troublesome to people. The thoroughgoing secularist has nobody to think and therefore finds himself with no purpose for the holiday except the football.

The doctors tell us that thankfulness is one of the healthiest emotions you’ll ever feel. Most of us don’t need doctors to tell us that. We just know we love the feeling of thankfulness We experience when someone does something kind to us. We love it when people are thankful to us for the good things we do. But here in this verse Paul talking about far more than just the emotions that we feel and the positive effects that those emotions can have on our health. We’re talking about a genuine Christian virtue: giving thanks freely and gladly.

The difference between rejoicing and thanksgiving is the object of the positive feeling. Rejoicing means “I’m thinking about God, his Son, and their Spirit, and it’s making me happy.” Thanksgiving means “I’m thinking about all that the triune God has done, is doing, and has promised to do for me, and I love it.” Thanksgiving is focused on the good gifts that God gives. Rejoicing is focused on the giver himself. He is the best gift of all.

So here are the three most important priorities if you want to know the will of God for your life:

1. be joyful
2. be prayerful
3. be thankful

if you put priority on adding those three things to your character first of all, if you’ll treat them as being of primary importance, well before any other consideration, you’ll have a good start on discovering God’s will for your life. If you won’t pursue those priorities, don’t expect to receive much help in knowing what God wants you to do.

Now I know that you still have lots of questions about what God wants for your life. I promise you I want to help you get those questions answered if if there’s any way they can be. I’ll take however many hours or days or weeks are required to help you find answers to those questions. But I promise you we will not get anywhere unless you start with these three priorities:

1. be joyful
2. be prayerful
3. be thankful

Have you noticed that two of the three priorities God gives for Christians to know his will involve being happy? What do you think about that?

Maybe you’ve had someone tell you that Christianity is all about gritting your teeth and forcing yourself to do the right thing even though it’s making you miserable. Is that the way Christianity has been sold to you? That is deeply confused. It’s not grit and guts that we need. It’s hope of joy.

Listen to what held Jesus to the cross as he writhed and gasped there in the last moments of his earthly life. You might need to turn to Hebrews 12 in your Bible to read it for yourself as I read it to you. Otherwise you’ll think I have to be making this up. There’s no way it could possibly say what I’m saying it says. But it does. Seriously! Go there. Read it for yourself as I read it to you and talk to you about how it applies to your life.

Hebrews 12  ¹ … let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, ² looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Did you hear that? It’s easy to miss. But don’t miss it. The thing that allowed Jesus to endure the cross, no matter how horrible it was, and to count the horrendous shame of the cross as a small, measly, insignificant thing, was that he was looking to the joy that he was soon to experience, specifically the satisfaction of taking his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. It wasn’t nails that were keeping him on the cross. It was the hope of joy.

Eternal Father, in this very moment, we turn again from our sin and ourselves to you and your glory,

Trusting only in your Son’s sacrifice for our sins to make us right with you.

We want to shelter ourselves in the shadow of his cross,

Bathe ourselves in the blood that he shed there for us,

Rest ourselves on his redemption

Robe ourselves in his righteousness,

Renew ourselves in his resurrection,

Lose ourselves in his Lordship,

And find ourselves in his friendship.

We want him to become for us, for today and forever, wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness, and salvation.

For he is the One who suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to you, our Father.