DISCERNING TRUTH - Carter Conlon

“How can I find the will of God? How can I be sure that I am walking in His will for my life?”

Have you ever found yourself asking these questions? Do you find the topic of the will of God confusing, or do you live with the constant fear that you are missing His will for your life?

Let’s look at a statement Jesus Himself made concerning the will of God: “If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority” (John 7:17). In other words, this applies to anybody who wants to do the will of God.

According to Jesus, if you have it in your heart to do the will of God, you will understand and know what truth is. You will know His voice that says, “This is the way, walk in it.”

Since I was a young Christian, I wanted to do the will of God — even though I did not always fully understand what that was going to look like in my life. I remember going to church, sitting in the congregation listening to the preacher, and thinking, “How in the world can these people sit under this kind of message? Don’t they see how far off this is?” Most of the time they sat and listened but they went to church simply so that they could be blessed.

When people do not want to do God’s will, the first thing that comes into their lives is doctrinal confusion, eventually followed by an inability to discern truth. As their prayers go unanswered, they come to the conclusion that God doesn’t speak to them. They want their lives to be extraordinary. They want the crowds; they want to raise the dead, lay hands on the sick and have them recover; they want to speak in tongues and all the rest of it, but they do not want to walk in the revealed will of God.  

Carter Conlon joined the pastoral staff of Times Square Church in 1994 at the invitation of the founding pastor, David Wilkerson, and was appointed Senior Pastor in 2001.