Pathway to Victory

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Hey podcast listeners. Thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory and Dr. Robert Jeffress.

We're dedicated to bringing you bold biblical teaching that transforms your life and strengthens your walk with God.

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You spiritually, physically and emotionally.

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Cabins are filling quickly, so reserve yours today. To book your spot on the 2026 Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska, call 888-280-6747 or go to ptv.org now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

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Hi, this is Robert Jeffress and I'm.

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Glad to study God's Word with you every day on this Bible teaching program.

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On today's edition of Pathway to Victory.

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I can't tell you what God's will for your life is going to be 20, 30, or 40 years from now.

However, if you desperately, sincerely want to know what God's next step is for your business, for your family, or for any area of your life, I think you're going to find these principles very, very helpful.

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Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. God spoke to Moses through a burning bush. Mary received direction through an angel. God even used a donkey to talk to a stubborn prophet. But most of us have never seen such a clear sign from God.

So how do we discern God's will? Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress shares how we can better hear God's voice in every decision we make.

But first, let's take a minute to hear some important ministry updates.

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Thank you, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Tragically, some people view God's will like some kind of complicated maze. It's like we're the proverbial mouse trying to find the cheese, turning left then right, bumping into dead ends, trying to figure out how to reach the goal. Let me assure you, God's will is nothing like that. He's not teasing you with a giant puzzle whereby you're required to figure out the riddle. He's crafted a plan for every believer's life, including yours.

In my teaching series called "How to Make Wise Decisions," I'll be drawing my conclusions not from my opinion, but from God's Word. As a complement to our study, I've written a book by the same title. It's called "How to Make Wise Decisions," and when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, you're invited to request a copy. My book will help you get rid of the distracting noise so that you can clearly hear God's voice.

There's another resource that's one of our best kept secrets at Pathway to Victory. I'm referring to Pathway Magazine. While most magazines are closing their doors, Pathway Magazine is thriving because people are hungry for uplifting content they can hold in their hands. In our digital world, there's something refreshing about reading encouraging material without staring at another screen. Pathway Magazine is your perfect travel companion, offering hope and inspiration wherever life takes you. I'd love for you to start receiving Pathway Magazine. Visit ptv.org for details, including a free complimentary offer.

Alright, let's move ahead and continue the study I started yesterday. We're talking about discovering God's will.

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First of all, it's only natural that Christians would want to know God's will for their life. You know, in John 4:34, Jesus said, "My food is to know the will of God, of Him who sent me, and to accomplish his work." Jesus said, the reason I exist is to know God's will and to accomplish his purpose. Quite frankly, the reason I'm addressing this topic is not because nobody's ever spoken on it before, but so many people are speaking on this topic with so many contradictory ways to discover God's will for your life. Go to a Christian bookstore or listen to some of the best-known speakers in America today. They're all addressing this topic, but they give you different ways to discover God's will.

For example, there's what I call the formulaic approach that says there's a formula for knowing God's will. It's kind of like a checklist that a pilot uses before he takes off. You have to check everything off. You know, God's word, check. Prayer, check. Wise counselors, check. And then if all of them line up and agree, you can know that particular decision is God's will. Now, the problem with the formulaic approach is what happens if all of those ingredients don't say the same thing? What if, for example, you pray about a particular decision, you feel like God's leading you one way, but then you go to a wise counselor who says, "Boy, that'd be a big mistake. You shouldn't do that." Which do you give more weight to? What you feel like God's leading you through prayer, or what wise counsel is saying to you?

A second way some people try to discover God's will is through the experiential method. They'll say, well, when Moses was trying to listen to God, he didn't have a checklist. He just got to know God intimately, and God led him. And they say, if you will just simply get to know God, experience God, then you don't have to worry about knowing his will. You'll just know automatically what to do. And then some people use the rational approach to discover God's will. They say, God doesn't have a particular will for every little detail of your life; what he's interested in is your making wise decisions. So wise decision-making is the key to knowing God's will.

And yet, above all of this chaos and confusion about God's will, Jesus has this very simple promise which is going to be the foundation of our series. It's found in John 10:27. Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me." Will you notice what Jesus is promising in that short verse? First of all, he says God's voice is audible. God has a voice. He is speaking. As Francis Schaeffer said, he is there, and he is not silent. Secondly, Jesus says, God's voice is discernible. That is, you can actually distinguish God's voice. You can hear it. Of course, he says, a condition for hearing from God is, first of all, belonging to God. And then thirdly, Jesus says God's voice is directional. It's leading us someplace. When God speaks to us, he does so more than just to give us courage and comfort to face our present situation. He actually promises guidance, direction to those who trust in him.

Now, today, as we begin this series together, I want to start with just three very simple and biblical presuppositions about God's will that we have to understand before we can ever hope to hear from God. I want you to write them down on your outlines. First of all, we must desire to obey God's will. It's not enough just to want to know God's will. We can't say, "God, show me your will so that I can decide whether or not I want to obey it." God doesn't work that way. He only reveals his will to those who truly want to know his will.

When we talk about the will of God, what do we mean by the will of God? As I search both through the Old and the New Testaments, I find that this phrase, the will of God, is used in three distinct ways. God's providential will is that secret plan by which he governs everything that happens in the universe. And notice what Paul says. For the most part, it's a mystery. It's hidden. It's hidden. You can't know it. I would say in this broad category of God's providential plan would be such questions as the origin of evil or the reasons for suffering, or predestination and election. All of those things we can sit around and theorize about and argue about and fight about. The truth is, none of us will understand it because it's a mystery. It's in the mind of God. The secret things belong to the Lord. The Scripture says that's God's providential plan.

But on the other end of the spectrum is God's preceptive plan, number two, his preceptive plan. And that's the part of God's will that can be clearly understood by everyone from the precepts, the teachings that are found in Scripture. But the third use of the term God's will is the term that most people use it the way most people use it. And that's in reference to God's personal plan for my life. Of course, I guess we ought to answer the question, does such a plan exist? Does God have a blueprint that governs every part of your life, even the smallest details of your life?

Some years ago, Gary Friesen, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, wrote a book entitled "Decision Making and the Will of God." And there are many helpful things in that book. But Gary Friesen argued that, yes, God has a providential will, a secret will that governs everything. He has a preceptive, or what Friesen calls a moral will. But Friesen postulates that there is no individual blueprint for your life. He uses logic. He said, do we really think God cares what color socks we put on this morning or whether we order chicken or beef for lunch? I mean, do we really think God has a plan that governs all of those things?

A few years ago, a publisher asked me to write a book with Gary Friesen, in which he would present his view of God's will, I would present mine, and we would interact with one another. I thought it'd be an interesting project, but I had to decline. I didn't have the time to do it. I figured it wasn't God's will, so I declined that project. But had I done it, this is what I would have said. I would have said, of course God has a blueprint that governs every part of our life. How do I know that? Turn over to Psalm 139 for just a moment. Psalm 139:13-14. And you know if there is any biblical argument against abortion, the aborting of a human life, the greatest argument, I think, is found right here in Psalm 139:13. Look at what the psalmist said. "For thou didst form my inward parts; thou didst weave me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are thy works, and my soul knows it very well." The psalmist said, when you were yet unborn, you were in your mother's womb. God to be the person you're going to be, every detail of your life, the color of your hair, of your eyes, your emotional makeup, everything about you was according to God's plan. And that means there is only one father, one mother, who could have come together to produce you. By the way, even if you're an atheist, you have to acknowledge that there is only one male and one female that could have come together genetically to give you the unique DNA code that you have. Everybody in agreement with that? I mean, that's science. There's only one man, one woman at a specific time that could have come together to produce your unique DNA code.

Now think about this. Think about all of the details God had to orchestrate to get your father and mother together at just the right time. He had to make sure they were born in the right generation. He had to make sure that they came into contact with one another. He had to preside over 10,000 details to bring your father and mother together to fall in love, to come together at just the right time to produce you. And you're trying to tell me God doesn't have a blueprint? Now, sure, we don't pray about what color socks to put on or what to have for lunch. But the fact that we don't pray about every detail of our life doesn't mean God hasn't planned every detail of our life. Yes, God has a blueprint, a plan for our life. And that ought to give us great assurance.

Secondly, God communicates His will to us in a variety of ways. Now, I'm going to call this section of the message a preview of coming attractions because we're going to look just quickly at about six or seven of the ways God speaks to us. And then over the next few weeks, we're going to look in depth at each of these ways. First of all, and primarily, God communicates to us through his written word. Through his written word. I think it's very significant that when God wanted to reveal his plan for Israel, the laws by which they would live, when God chose to reveal the Ten Commandments to Moses, he didn't appear to Moses in a dream or in a vision, but instead he wrote down those commandments on the two stone tablets. It was his written word that guided the people of Israel. In Exodus 31, verse 18, Moses said, "And when God had finished speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, he gave Moses the two tablets of testimony, tablets of stone written by the finger of God." Ladies and gentlemen, don't ever fall into the trap of thinking that the Bible is a secondary means of discovering God's will. It is a primary means of discerning his direction for our life.

Secondly, God communicates through prayer. He communicates through prayer. James said, if you lack wisdom, talk to God about it. Ask him, and he will give that wisdom to you. We see a great illustration of that in Acts chapter one. Remember, after the defection and the death of Judas, the apostles had to find a replacement for Judas. So what happened? Well, they came together, the search committee reported back with two possibilities to replace Judas. And the apostles had to decide, okay, which one of these is going to be God's will to be the next apostle? How did they determine God's will? Look at Acts 1:24-25. "And they prayed and said, 'Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, show which one of these thou hast chosen to occupy this ministry and apostleship from which Judas has turned away.'" The first thing they did was to pray. Now, after they finished praying, they had to get up off their knees and they had to make a decision. And how they made that decision is most interesting. We're going to talk about it in a couple of weeks. It amounted to they rolled the dice, but before they rolled the dice, they prayed. It's the same thing for us. There are many things we can do to determine God's will. There are many things we should do after we have prayed, but there is nothing more important we can do until we have prayed. That's what the apostles did. They engaged in prayer.

Third, sometimes God reveals His will to us through special revelation. Now, it makes some people nervous for me to talk about special revelation, dreams and visions, and supernatural signs. But as we look through Scripture, it would be wrong to say God has never done that. He certainly has done it in the past. Acts, chapter 26, verses 16 and 18. God appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus and said, "But arise and stand on your feet. For this purpose I have appeared to you to appoint you as a minister and a witness to deliver you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles." God said, my plan for you is to be a witness to the Gentiles. He revealed it supernaturally to Paul.

Number four, wise counselors is one way that God speaks to us. Proverbs 15:22 says, "Without consultation, plans are frustrated. But with many counselors, they succeed." Number five, sometimes God speaks through circumstances. Now we're going to talk about the use and misuse of that phrase, open doors and closed doors. God opened this door. He closed that door. That's misused in Christian circles today. But God can use circumstances to tell us to proceed or to stop. I think about Paul's journey to Syria. He was planning to go to Syria until he discovered there was a plot to kill him. Listen to Acts 23. "And when a plot formed against Paul by the Jews as he was about to set sail for Syria, he determined to return through Macedonia." Paul was planning to go to Syria. He was sure that was God's will. But when he heard some people wanted to kill him, he thought, maybe this isn't God's will for my life. See, that's wisdom. That's looking at circumstances. Sometimes God uses circumstances to direct us.

And finally, God sometimes directs us through our own desires. I think this is perhaps the most overlooked way God gives direction, but also one of the most basic ways. God many times will direct us through the desires that he places in our heart. Philippians 2:13 in the Phillips paraphrase says, "For it is God who is at work within you, giving you both the power and the desire to accomplish his purpose." Do you realize God actually places certain desires in your heart in order to follow his purpose? You know that burning desire you have to start your own business? The preference you have for brunettes over blondes? Your fear of speaking in public and enjoying small groups? Do you realize all of those things could actually be desires that God has placed in your heart to lead you in the way that he wants you to go? We're going to talk about that in a few weeks. How do I know if the desires I have are really God's desires or if they're Satan's deceptions? In my life, there's a way to know that. What I'm trying to say to you today is it's a mistake to think that God only speaks in one way. The truth is, he speaks in a variety of ways. C.S. Lewis once wrote, "I don't doubt that the Holy Spirit guides your decisions from within when you make them with the intention of pleasing God." The error would be to think that he speaks only within, whereas in reality he speaks through Scripture, through the church, through friends and books, which leads to a final thought. And that is, God reveals only what we need to know.

I remember a few years ago our church hired a consultant. And at breakfast one morning he said, "Robert, do you know what the most important question any leader can answer?" I said, "What's that?" He said, "It's the question of next—what's the next thing I need to do?" He went on to say, sometimes people get bogged down trying to determine what they're going to do in a year, 5 years, or 10 years without knowing what that next step is they need to take. And I think that truth applies to all of us. Have you noticed that God rarely unravels the whole blueprint of our lives ahead of time? Why is it God doesn't allow us to see what's going to happen 20, 30, and 40 years from now? Perhaps he knows if we knew, we would be paralyzed with fear. Matthew 6:34. Jesus said, "Each day has enough trouble of its own." I hear an amen on that. God knows that. But I think perhaps another reason God doesn't tell us the whole plan ahead of time or give us a way of discovering it is he knows that if we knew the whole plan, we wouldn't be nearly as dependent upon Him.

Think about driving in a thick fog. If you're in a thick fog, rarely will you travel at 80 miles an hour. Instead, you kind of inch along because you can only see a little bit ahead of you. On the other hand, when it's a bright sunlit day, you tend to put the pedal to the metal, don't you? You don't think about your speed very much. It's the same way in our relationship with God. When we can only see the next step we're going to take, it makes us more dependent upon God. It forces us to develop our relationship with God. In Psalm 119, verses 105, the psalmist said, "Thy word is a lamp to my feet. It is a light to my path." Have you ever been out in the woods on a moonless night trying to make your way along? It's difficult to see. There's no illumination from above, but hopefully you'll have a flashlight or a lantern that governs your steps. That flashlight or that lantern isn't powerful enough to illuminate the next two or three miles, but it does give you just enough light to take that next step and that next step and that next step. That's what the psalmist said. God's word is like that. His voice doesn't illuminate the rest of your life. It doesn't tell you the whole plan, but it gives you just the light you need to take that next step and that next step and that next step.

Let me offer this disclaimer at the beginning of this series. If you're expecting this series to help you determine what you're to do the rest of your life—the next 15 or 20 or 30 years—you'd probably be better off investing in some high-quality tea leaves than coming to this series. Okay, I can't tell you what God's will for your life is going to be 20, 30, or 40 years from now. However, if you desperately, sincerely want to know what God's next step is for your business, for your family, for any area of your life, I think you're going to find these principles very, very helpful. Jesus said in John 10:27, "My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me." Never forget, you have a God who is vitally concerned with every step that you take. He is a God who promises to give you the guidance that you need. And he is a God who can be heard by those who truly belong to Him.

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Maybe you're listening to Pathway to Victory right now and you're longing to hear God's voice. Decisions hang in the balance. You'd love for him to intervene right now and give you an audible plan. Well, you've come to the right place. Over the next few weeks, we'll drill down into this relevant topic and we'll discover what God's Word teaches. We'll also eliminate what God's Word doesn't teach. There's a lot of confusion about finding God's will, and I promise not to mislead you with wishful thinking or confusing formulas.

As another source of direction, I've written a book called *How to Make Wise Decisions*. If you're ready to cut through all the noise in order to hear God's voice, you'll want to read this book. A copy is yours today when you support the ministry of Pathway to Victory with a generous gift. David is standing by to give all the details, but first let me thank those of you who've given generously to Pathway to Victory. I can assure you that God is using your gifts to pierce the darkness with the light of His Word.

I recently heard from Norm in Ohio, who volunteers at a correctional facility. Norm said, "Pastor Jeffress, I want to say thank you for the gift of resources. My group of students have watched, studied, and worked through the Bible in my class. Sometimes we've had as many as 40 men watching and getting involved in the discussion. These men ask a lot of questions. Thank you. Your teaching helps a lot of people." Isn't that great? Thanks for sharing your story, Norm. And thank you as well to those who give financially because your investment is multiplied many times over.

Here's David to tell you more.

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To request your copy of the book *How to Make Wise Decisions*, simply give a generous gift to Pathway to Victory. In an age when people are facing more choices in life than ever before, this book provides clear, encouraging guidance for knowing, understanding, and acting upon God's will. To give and request your copy of *How to Make Wise Decisions*, call 866-999-2965 or visit ptv.org when your gift is $75 or more. You'll also receive the complete audio series for *How to Make Wise Decisions* on CD and DVD. This would be a great resource to use in your small group Bible study or for your own personal time in God's word.

Again, call 866-999-2965 or go online to ptv.org. You could also send your request by mail. Simply write to P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222. That's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 752.

I'm David J. Mullins. The most important tool at a Christian's disposal is the Bible. God's Word can offer us instructions for life and guidance for the future, but only when we apply it correctly. Join us next time when Dr. Jeffress explains how to properly apply God's Word to our choices here on Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Experience the breathtaking majesty of America's last frontier on the 2026 Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska.

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Board Holland America's luxurious Connings Dam ship with Amy and me for a journey that will refresh your soul and renew your spirit.

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Experience the unforgettable adventure June 13th through 20th, 2026. To book your cabin, call 888-280-6747 or go to ptv.org.

You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in his word.

To become a Pathway Partner, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.