Some decisions can be made easily by looking at Scripture and determining to live faithfully within its guidelines. So how do I decide what to do? According to Packer, most important is to be living within the guidelines that God lays out for us in His Word. The book is well worth the fifteen minutes it will take you to read it.

In a fallen, hostile world, obedience to God’s commands often leads us into hardship or even persecution. The final section of the book reminds us that even when we are in God’s will, the sailing will not always be smooth. The whole list and discussion is full Packer’s typical, edifying insight. Those pitfalls are unwillingness to think, unwillingness to think ahead, unwillingness to take advice, unwillingness to suspect oneself (“We can never distrust ourselves too much,” 20), unwillingness to discount personal magnetism, and unwillingness to wait.

Packer also gives a list of common pitfalls when people are seeking guidance about a certain decision. He will never prompt us to do anything that is contrary to His Word. “Only within the limits of this guidance” does God ever prompt us when we are faced with a decision. And what is the basic form of divine guidance through the Word? “The basic form of divine guidance, therefore, is the presentation to us of positive ideals as guidelines for all our living,” for example, loving others, avoiding sexual sin, seeking certain virtues, avoiding vice. The corrective to this is to realize that “the fundamental mode whereby our rational Creator guides his rational creatures is by rational understanding and application of his written Word,” (15). He gives several examples of people who have believed that they were receiving a divine prompting to do ridiculous or even sinful things. To the contrary, Packer argues, “The consequences of this mistake among earnest Christians have been both comic and tragic,” (13). The problem, he says, is when Christians make the mistake of thinking that every decision requires this kind of guidance to be sought. When he comes to the question of how precisely that happens, he leaves open the possibility that some decisions are made by “God-given prompting and inclination,” (12). Packer spends several pages carefully proving from the Scriptures that God does in fact speak to His people. It’s short, only 29 pages, and that in a tiny book that measures no more than 3×4 inches. Packer’s Finding God’s Will is a very useful and characteristically careful study of guidance in the New Testament.

God ji