The Bible Teacher’s Commentary
Understanding & Discovering God’s Will for My Life
Isaiah 43:1–21
Understanding God’s Will | Developing Trust (Isaiah 43:1–2) | Two Guidelines (Isaiah 43:7) | Changing Perspectives (Isaiah 43:18–21)
Understanding God’s Will
Understanding & Discovering God’s Will for My Life is a biblical study based on Isaiah 43:1–21 and, through its three parts, provides great insight into the trust, guidelines, and changes that are needed to seek and discover God’s will for our lives.
The three parts to this study on discovering God’s will can be summarized as follows:
A • Does God Have a Plan That We Can Trust? (Isaiah 43:1–2)
Part 1: Understand the importance of trust in discovering God’s will.
B • What Is God’s Purpose for My Life? (Isaiah 43:7)
Part 2: Understand two guidelines to keep us in His will.
C • Why Is Seeking God’s Ways So Difficult at Times? (Isaiah 43:18–21)
Part 3: Understand what perspective changes are necessary in order to embrace God’s will.
God’s ways are beyond our comprehension. He is the infinite Creator, while we are finite and sinful people. Yet there is an important twist to this issue: God desires to reveal His ways to us. Deuteronomy 29:29 teaches that the Lord chooses to reveal certain things to His people.
“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29)
This is why we have the Word of God. Of course, we cannot understand God’s complete mind, but we can know the things He has chosen to reveal.
Around New Year’s many individuals ask questions about the purpose and meaning of life. Perhaps they have played with their new Christmas gifts long enough and found them less exciting and satisfying than they expected. Material things cannot truly satisfy us; they only distract us.
Even when we learn something about God’s ways, we still want to know our own part in His plan. As we search the Scriptures, we discover that God has a marvelous plan already in place.
Although He shows us the entrance to this pathway that leads to true fulfillment, we are often like the spies sent into the Promised Land. Our minds are so cluttered with our own ideas of fulfillment that we never walk onto that pathway. Or perhaps, after a conference, we are stirred to move in that direction, but as the vision fades we find it easier to return to our old ways.