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Knowing God’s Will

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Walter Chantry on the supremacy of God’s Word and prayer over reading circumstances in knowing God’s will:

Reading the Future by Providence

   Many who lived during David’s era were quite aware that the Almighty manages all things on the earth and all things in human affairs. In David’s time it was as it is today. Those who have a doctrine of divine providence often attempt to read divine intent for the future through unfolding circumstances, all of which are under God’s control, or through opportunities set before them by the Lord’s governing of our world.
   When Keilah fell under attack from the Philistines, David’s men feared that responding to help the people of that city would provide Saul with a golden opportunity to capture David and his small band. Since Keilah was so close to the border of Philistia, and therefore, since it faced constant raids from Israel’s arch-foe, the city had built defensive walls. If David and his men entered a walled city, so they reasoned, they would be trapped. Saul would then hasten from Gibeah and seize them all. It was for this reason that David’s army preferred to remain in the open wilderness where numerous routes of escape were their protection. Providence dictated, it seemed to them, that they decline to help Keilah.
   David reasoned differently and inquired of the Lord as to what his will was (1 Sam. 23:2-5). Through Gad the prophet, and through the Urim and Thummim in Abiathar’s possession, David could entreat God and hear his word in response. Thus did David rise above guesses as to God’s intentions from the mere observation of providence. For him, prayer and ‘Thus saith the Lord’ would guide all decisions. So must we seek to know God’s will by prayer and by the searching of his Word as we make decisions for the future.
   After David and his forces delivered Keilah from the Philistines, Saul indeed did hear that the brave men of Jesse’s son were in the fortress of Keilah. Reading providence only, Saul concluded, ‘God has given him into my hand, for he has shut himself in by entering a town that has gates and bars’ (1 Sam. 23:7). Not unaware of their danger, and employing informers, David knew when ‘Saul summoned all the people to war, to go down to Keilah, to besiege David and his men’ (1 Sam. 23:8). Again he sought by prayer and by inquiring of God to know what he should do. God told him that Saul was on his way. He further told David that, in the face of overwhelming numbers, and in the face of their rightful king’s demand, Keilah’s elders would deliver David and his men into Saul’s hand. Then, and only then, did David and his men depart in haste.
   As we have seen, when David was in the region of Engedi (1 Sam. 24), Saul entered a cave, unaware that David and his men were hidden in this very cavern. David’s men, reading the providence of God, said, ‘Here is the day of which the LORD said to you, “Behold, I will give your enemy into your hand”’(i Sam. 24:4). The opportunity was there to kill Saul and to seize the kingdom after the assassination. How many presume that God wants us to act in a certain way because there is an unexpected opportunity to do so!
   David did not need Gad, nor did he need the Urim and Thummim, to tell him what God’s will was. He knew, as well as we, that, ‘the governing authorities . . . that exist have been instituted by God’ (Rom. 13:1). He spoke of their advice as bad counsel, ‘to put out my hand against him, seeing he is the LORD’S anointed’ (1 Sam. 24:7). On principle, received from the Word of God, he refused to seize his ‘opportunity’ against Saul.
   How often are we met with flippant comments like, ‘The Lord showed me’, or, ‘I was led of the Lord’! Often, by these slogans men and women mean, ‘I have glanced at providence; I have read circumstances through the lenses of my personal optimism or pessimism, and with my personal wishes near at hand.’ It is possible to use the above phrases if by them we mean, ‘I have prayed for God’s guidance and I have found these principles in his Word which give light to my path.’
   Providence does inform us of God’s having acted in the past. It is far less yielding of information about the future will of God. If God’s Word informs us of God’s ways, how much we can see of his hand at work in our own lives! How many praises we should give for surprising deliverances and unexpected grace! We should sharpen our sensitivity to our God’s omnipresence. One of its major evidences is his control and meaningful direction in every circumstance of our lives.

—Walter J. Chantry, David: Man of Prayer, Man of War (Edinburgh, Banner of Truth Trust, 2007), 82–84.

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