Step by Step: Divine Guidance for Ordinary Christians

This remarkable book explains how to find God's will for our lives. The author makes important distinctions between God's moral decrees which will reveal what outright sinful behavior consists of, and God's more general "laws" such as love thy neighbor as thyself or love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength. Here we are faced with tough decisions about marriage, career, housing, and relationships where we need to choose between options where neither choice is immoral in the decretal sense, but where we nonetheless are seeking a path consistent with God's will for our lives. Thirdly, there is another sphere called "Christian liberty," where there is even more latitude than in the second case. Our decisions, say, regarding what clothing to wear, do not have the same consequences as the more momentous decisions in the second area of life-decisionmaking noted above. Dr. Petty's main point is that God does not communicate his will for our lives directly through voices or other instantaneous communications as a rule. Nor do we pick our way through signs, circumstances, fantastic coincidences and powerful thoughts sometimes received in dreams (and sometimes waking). While these may come into play at various times in our lives, they must be subsumed under "wisdom." Wisdom leads us on a path of decision making based on Biblical understanding without our having to find an ideal plan for our lives that God has, and wisdom enables us to act in full responsibility for our actions as we discern for ourselves, based on our knowledge of Almighty God, the proper plan we want to take. There is no one plan for our lives that we either discover or miss out on. Rather, by growing in wisdom, we follow a godly path and that path with its setbacks, flops, disappointments, and confusions is the path God would have us follow, and...here's an important point: that path will bear godly fruit! I urge every Christian in the United States to read this book, and especially pp. 146-147 (I won't say what's on those pages so you will be surprised and challenged by what you read.) The case study in the last few chapters about "Don," an engineer seeking guidance from God about his career path (with many implications for his family life) is especially engrossing. As we go through Don's journey we see Dr. Petty's great kindness as he relates experiences that Don has in his charismatic church and other spectacular coincidences (which many Christians take as direct communications from God)and how these "prophetic" communications fit into the bigger picture of Don's Biblical walk in wisdom and discernment. I won't tell you how things turn out for Don, but I will tell you that I was gripped with suspense as I moved from chapter to chapter wanting to know what would happen next. I can only express great personal gratitude to Dr.Petty for having persevered in his search for wisdom and as a Christian administrator, pas

"What is the will of God for my life?" As followers of Jesus we all long for a clear answer to this question with which this book begins. While on one level the answer is clear - "This is the will of God, even your sanctification" (1 Thess. 4:3) - the application of such broad, general statements to the concrete, specific decisions of our lives can be challenging, even perplexing. How do we receive guidance about the big decisions of who to marry, what college to attend, what vocation to pursue, or what church to join? And what about the dozens of small everyday choices such as which shirt should I wear, where should I go for lunch, and how should I use my free time? How do we make connections between the will of God revealed in Scripture and decision making in daily life? Answering that question is what this book is about. The author divides his eighteen chapters into four parts: The Promise of Guidance, Understanding Guidance, Experiencing Guidance, and Seeking Guidance. The first three parts develop "the theology of guidance" (11), while part four presents a case study which illustrates how to apply seven steps for making wise decisions. Part One: The Promise of Guidance Chapter one ("Does God Guide Us?") discusses the need for guidance from God, especially with the complexity of decision making in today's world. This is an immensely practical question. Knowing God's will is no mere theoretical exercise. "When we seek guidance from God, we are not like a student pondering the great questions of life safely seated in a library . . . We are more like a pilot seeking to land a commercial airliner filled with passengers. For a pilot, even the best of them, the pressing need is for current information on position, weather, visibility, and local air traffic. The thought that communication with the control tower might not be possible, predictable, and clear is more than unsettling - it is the stuff of horror films . . . Our relationships, our jobs, our health, and safety can be compromised by a single bad decision" (18). Changes in the home, the workplace, economics, and the moral climate of our culture all accentuate the need for guidance. While this topic has been addressed by many Christian authors and leaders (the author reviewed some thirty-five books on divine guidance in his research), most of them "address their issues in a nontheological way. That is, their books offer no serious study of Scripture, no in-depth interaction with larger theological principles" (26). The author's obvious aim is to fill that theological gap while still addressing the practical issues. The second chapter asks "How Does God Guide Us?" and compares "three main schools of thought about how God guides" (29). The view most popular in the twentieth century held "that God has a specific and detailed plan for each Christian's life. Guidance involves discerning that plan" (29). This plan is discerned by "looking carefully into a combination of circumstances, spiritu

Ever been confused or thought "Man I made the wrong choice and now I'm totally on the wrong path for God's will for me." For me I've always had this issue and always thought the decisions I've made in life had 'consequences' that totally threw me off the track God wanted me to be on. This book helped me realize that different paths happen for a reason but it's still all part of a divine way. Honestly compared to the bible this is probably the most important book I have ever read in my life. I really wish every Christian reads it and gains the blessings I have gained out of it. It is so good on teaching and explaining things in ways I never would have thought about on my own. From his views on why something's happen to how to make good decisions when both decisions are blissful. It amazes me how I've grown in just a week by reading this book

At least half of my lunch appointments seem to come around to: "What is God's will for my life?" In my floundering to help people with this big `God's will' question over the last few years, I have been particularly influenced by two books: Bruce Waltke, Finding the Will of God (1995) and Sinclair Ferguson, Discovering God's Will (1982). While both are fundamentally in agreement with Petty's basic approach, reading Step by Step has helped me organize their thoughts (and mine) in helpful categories, and further distinguish them from alternative approaches. As Petty ably illustrates, the stakes are high in this venture. As we seek God's guidance, we are indeed more like `pilots in flight' than students in a library! (p. 18). Especially helpful were Petty's explanation of the `three views.' What Petty (somewhat disappointing) labels the Traditional View is certainly the most popular today among evangelicals (pp. 29-31). It holds that guidance from God involves discovering the specifics of God's particular plan for our lives through various combinations of "circumstances, spiritual promptings, inner voices, personal peace of mind, and the counsel of others" (p. 30). Guidance occurs when God reveals his plan through these means (p. 31). Petty next distinguishes the Traditional Charismatic view (pp. 32-33). The key difference between this view and the one preceding it in Petty's summary is that in the Charismatic view God communicates directly. Essentially, "each means of revelation that God used to give us the Scriptures is still available to individual Christians today" (p. 33), often with a new twist. The third view, the Wisdom view, is the one endorsed by Petty (pp.33-35). This approach contends that while God does have a specific plan for each Christian, this plan remains hidden. God generally does not lift the veil. Instead, "guidance comes... by God making us wise.... The wisdom view sees God as guiding his children mediately, not immediately....his guidance is mediated by (comes through) the illumination of our minds and hearts by the Word of God" (p. 34). Petty favors and unpacks the Wisdom view in relation to four topics: 1. the doctrine of providence, 2. the sufficiency of Scripture, 3. the doctrine of illumination, 4. the current work of the Holy Spirit (p. 35). Applying each of these criteria, it is clear that the Wisdom view in broad outline is more Biblically faithful than the proposed alternatives. The first three parts of the book (pp. 17-192) explore the theology of guidance. The fourth part (pp. 193-262) consists of a helpful case study, illustrating ways this model can be practically applied to our lives. The reader is invited to a robust confidence in the Bible alone (not the `Bible-plus'). Through it, "God guides us by progressively placing within us spiritual wisdom and understanding to know the will of God... He never leads us with a `guess the signs' model" (p. 155). This occurs as the Christian

I have just read this book after being involved in a study of Henry Blackaby's "Experiencing God" study. In Blackaby's study, the student is challenged to wait upon a revelation from God concerning His will before acting. As I pondered this idea, it seemed to be contrary to the apostle Paul's attempting to enter certain areas for the purpose of spreading the gospel only to be stopped by the Holy Spirit (Acts 16:6-10). In Paul's letters, he makes mention of multiple attempts to visit the church's he had established only to be prevented by Satan (1 Thessalonians 2:18). Paul seemed to be acting contrary to Blackaby's method and this disturbed me.After reading Petty's book, everything fell into place. Paul was acting in accordance with the principles given in Petty's book. He was being guided by wisdom and providence (two things key to the Scriptural teaching regarding God's will) and not by direct revelations from God.James Petty challenges much of what is written today regarding searching out God's will for your life. This book has addressed many of my questions about understanding God's guidance in my life. It has given me a deeper understanding about what the Bible teaches regarding God's will and how I should make decisions. The only problem I had with the book was Petty's remark that Satan can sometimes place thoughts in our minds. I cannot figure out how Petty draws this conclusion from Scripture and he does not explain why he believes this in the book. (This one issue should certainly not dissuade you from reading the book - it was simply a passing remark and is certainly not foundational to Petty's argument!)Petty's approach is definitely different from other books I have read, but he does an excellent job of establishing his teaching on the foundation of the Scriptures and showing the problems with many modern approaches to seeking out God's will for your life. As Colossians 1:9-12 teaches, the key to understanding God's will is gaining wisdom and it would be wise to buy this book if you have been frustrated or confused by what you have read in other books.