So often we hear people say God told me this, God told me that, and it confuses us, because they put the authority of God over their own decisions and choices, as though somehow God has endorsed it all, and there's often confusion around this. I just think it's much easier - we'll just give you a few practical things, and then I want to give you a couple of areas that can really hinder you discovering God's will for your life. Now these are quite important ones too. I'll just give them out one at a time then. So first of all, one of the practical ways, what's the passion and desire of your heart? One of the things you've got to do is, discover what's in your heart. Now if you just want to go out and just do all kinds of stuff and look after yourself and spend money on yourself, this desire needs to come to the cross at some point. You need to learn to live bigger than that, but you know Moses, it came into his heart in Acts 7, Verse 23, it came into his heart to visit the people of Israel. In other words, it was something he felt in his heart, a stirring he had in his heart.
In Judges 14, Verses 1 to 6, Samson felt it in his heart to go down and get this woman to be his wife. It says here that his parents didn't approve of it, but they did not understand God was using this to provoke a fight with the Philistines. Now how did he get to find the will of God? He didn't hear anything. He just had something in his heart - I like that woman, go get that woman for me - but he found himself in the will of God, following just that desire of the heart. Jacob in Genesis 30, Verse 30, said I'm sick of working for wages, you rip me off. I have a dream of providing for my household. I want to actually go out and be an entrepreneur. How did he - he had it in his heart. So many of the people in the Bible were motivated by just a desire of the heart. Sometimes we make it all very complicated.
Jesus, in Luke 2:49, He was down there at the age of 12 in the temple, and the parents said to Him, what are you doing here? He said don't you know, I must be about My Father's business. He had a desire in His heart to learn the word of God. I don't think there's any big spiritual thing. I think it's just desires of the heart, and so you've got to learn to tune in to your heart. So if you block your heart off, and block what goes on in your heart, and block because of all kinds of things, issues of your heart, you won't ever hear what it is God's put in your heart to do. Who knows, you might be called to something really great, that no one else has ever done before, but you're the only one could ever know that. How would you know it? It must have been put in your heart by God, so sometimes God will directly put it in, sometimes it's just a desire. Then you find when you flow in your desire, you just can't help but do it, it's just part of you. It's who you are. So one thing is the desires of your heart.
The second thing is, here's a good question to ask, what is the desire of my heart? Here's another one you can ask, what does God expect me to be responsible for? Now I'm not going to tell you about everything in life. He expects you to think it out. Which school should we send our children to? Well go and have a look around, find what's a good school, get some report back from the parents, commit your decision to the Lord and make a decision. You don't need God to tell you everything. He wants you to use wisdom and if we don't grow in wisdom - another word for wisdom is commonsense - that God doesn't want you to be a slave, so you've got to connect with your heart and you do your homework. You've got to identify your desires and make plans.
Notice this in Proverbs 16:9, in his heart man plans his course, so you are responsible to plan your life. Don't just wing it, make a plan. Plan your finances, plan how to build a good marriage, plan how to build a good family, plan, plan, plan, plan. You're called to plan. God's not going to plan for you. He wants you to plan, set goals and that comes out of know what you want. What do I want for my marriage? What do I want for my family? What do I want for my life? What do I want in our finances? You've got to ask what you desire and then form a plan, use practical wisdom. Don't wait for God to tell you everything. You've got to do your part. Another scripture like that in Proverbs 16:1, to man belongs the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue. In a heart man plans his course, but the Lord directs his steps, so God expects you and me to plan. He will actually direct whether the plan goes according to plan or not, so you need to have a flexible plan, able to adjust.