What is the scope of the will of God? How can we know what the Lord’s own will is? How are
we to be maintained in this pathway? These questions arise from a genuine desire to know how
to put into practice some of the great truths of Scripture. We learn from many passages in the New
Testament that the one great aim and object of our Eves should be to do the will of God.

The scope of God’s will reaches up to the highest point of His purposes in Christ, and down to
the smallest detail of our lives. "It begins in heaven and reaches down to the kitchen," according
to Spurgeon. In the first we are lifted up to Christ where He is; in the second He is brought down
to us where we are. The first sets forth the favor in which we are in Christ before God; the
second, the grace that there is for us in Christ for all the vicissitudes of the life of faith and
obedience below. It is Christ either way; we in Him on the one hand, He for us and in us on the
other. We are instructed as to the first in the early or doctrinal parts of such Epistles as those to
the Ephesians and Colossians; as to the latter, in the practical parts of these and other Epistles.
Indeed, we cannot leave out any part of the Word if we are to stand perfect and complete in all
the will of God.

But the exercises that lead to our questions Me more on the side of our daily life, and our desire
to please God in all things and to know His will in matters about which the Word gives no special
direction. "To begin well is half the battle," is an old saying, and it is certainly that and more in
this matter. To begin with the desire to do His will is to begin well. How often we wish that the
thing that we would like was His will for us. Our desire is for our own will, and we pray, perhaps
eagerly and often, that it might be so. A little girl one night added to her usual prayer, "And
please, God, make Manchester the chief city in Great Britain." "Whatever made you pray like
that?" asked her mother. "I said it was in my exam paper today," answered the tearful and
doubtful little maid, "and I want it to be." Yes, often we want a thing to be, and want it so
passionately that we are not in a fit state of mind and heart to learn what the will of God is about
it.

"If any man will do His will he shall know . . ." There we must begin; and we do begin there
when we understand that God’s will for us in everything springs from His great love; that it is not
against us at any point, but is against everything that would be harmful to us. This is proved in
the Epistle to the Romans. There we are able to trace out all the way that God has taken to bless
us, and we have to exclaim at the end of the review, God is "for us; who can be against us? He
that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also
freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:31,32). Can we trust a love like that? a love that would stop
at nothing when our good was in view? Then let us trust it fully and say, The will of God is
"good, and acceptable, and perfect" (Romans 12:2). But to prove it there must be subjection to
God. But is subjection difficult when it is perfect love that asks for it? "Yield yourselves unto
God, as those that are alive from the dead" (Romans 6:13) is such a reasonable exhortation that
the heart that knows His love responds to it naturally and at once.

Granted then the willing mind to be subject to God, and that confidence of heart that trusts Him
and leaves the consequences with Him, since He sees the end from the beginning and cares for

us with a Father’s love and care, the next thing needed is nearness to Himself. If we walk with
God as Enoch and Noah and Abraham did, we shall become conversant with His will even when
it has not been definitely expressed. We can understand this in natural things. I knew a boy who
when asked to do certain things said, "No, my father would not wish me to do that." Yet his father
had expressed no will as to the matter at all. The lad knew his father’s thoughts through
companionship with him and did not require a definite word on the matter.

Psalm 32:8,9 shows us God’s way of leading us. "I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way
which thou shalt go; I will guide thee with Mine eye." But such guidance calls for nearness to God
and that sensitiveness of soul that responds to His instruction. If we are not near Him we are like
the horse and the mule that do not know their owner’s will except by the check and pull of the bit
and bridle. This life of nearness to God and obedience to His will was perfectly portrayed for us
in the Lord’s life on earth. He is our pattern.

We are maintained in this path by the grace and company of the Lord Himself, and apart from
Him we could not tread it. It is the path for those who are alive from the dead, and as soon as we
step into it we find that we have a traveling companion. He hath said, "I will never leave thee, nor
forsake thee" (Heb. 13:5). "Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me" (Psalm
23:4). Cultivate the thought of the Lord as your traveling companion in the path of faith and
obedience to God’s will, and the sufficiency of His grace for you in it will not be a doctrine only
but a blessed experience. He comes down to us in all the sufficiency of His grace to keep us from
stumbling in the path of God’s will, and at the end of it He will present us faultless before the
presence of His glory with exceeding joy, and to Him be glory and majesty, dominion and power,
both now and forever. Amen.

(From Help and Food, Vol. 50.)