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Finding God's will

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FINDING GOD’S WILL
Reaffirming the Sufficiency of Scripture
By Colin Hamer
Wipf & Stock Publishers. 167 pages. £6.00
ISBN 978 1 608 998 784

How do you discover the will of God for your life, get your guidance for key decisions?

Colin Hamer begins this book with a definition of the will of God in traditional ‘decreed’ and ‘prescriptive’ terms alone. He creates a conversation between a mature Christian, Tom, and two younger people, Ben and his wife Alice. The conversation explores the various ways Christians might know God’s will. Various ways are considered, all the time being compared with Scripture. The strength of the book is that it is a clear, well structured, and perhaps, above all, consistent review of how the Scriptures show us the will of God. Providence, feelings, the Spirit, prayer are all considered in the part they play, or don’t play, in this discovery.

There are 16 short chapters. A chapter a day as part of a devotional discipline would be a good way to tackle the book. The four sections take us through definitions of God’s will, the biblical record of how his will is revealed, the uniqueness of the first generation of apostolic gifting, to a conclusion on the completeness of the biblical revelation.

There are no frills here, no exciting testimonies of miraculous intervention, no discovering of God’s will through dream, vision, a prophetic word, no internal call to ministry or mission, no ‘leadings’ of the Spirit, ‘no mystical experiences’ (p.55), nor any other means now much accepted and weighed by the majority of the global church. No charismatic gifts, but a ‘perfection’ in Scripture according to 1 Corinthians 13. We are left with a rigorous, rational adherence to biblical revelation, the discovery of the decreed will of God through obedient decision making. For that reason, many who start to read this book may not complete the course. For the initiated, it is Warfield, or Walt Chantry, if you like. The majority of us in the global church apparently live in some spiritual delusion.

Who will benefit then? Anyone who is serious about examining the process of making choices that conform to the mind of God revealed in Scripture. For a Christian whose background has been dominated by subjective processes, like ‘what feels right’ or personal ‘prophetic’ words, there is plenty of substance here to build a more balanced view.

If you share Mr. Hamer’s worldview, then you will find it a satisfying tool for understanding and growth, which you will probably want to share with others.

Roger Welch,
pastor of Merland Rise Church, lecturer in church history, and Board Chair of the Wycliffe Global Alliance