Decision Making and the Will of God

I love reading. However, in the last year I have been so incredibly busy with my involvement with the political party that I am involved with and also when I get home at night I help with my kids' homework. As a result. my reading has suffered!

First, due to the place in which South Africa finds itself right now, just more than a year ago I decided to join the ACDP (African Christian Democratic Party) and got actively involved. I was elected onto the local BEC (Branch Executive Committee), the REC (Regional Executive Committee) of Pretoria, the PEC (Provincial Executive Committee) in the province of Gauteng and also the PC (Provincial Council) for Gauteng. (see this clickable map of Gauteng) I also started a more politically oriented blog called Βιβλιόπολιτ.

Second, both of my kids are now in the senior primary phase at school (grades 4 & 6), so now the time that we need to spend helping them with homework has escalated dramatically. They both write tests every Tuesday and Thursday, which means that apart from normal homework, they also need help studying. So, several nights a week the kids go to bed between 9-10pm (21:00-22:00).

Third, in South Africa the law states that every city/town must be further subdivided into wards. Pretoria, for instance, has 76 wards. Johannesburg has 104. When local government elections are held, like in March 2006, councillors are elected to serve on the city/town council. Each ward is won by a councillor who will then need a team of 10 people from the local community to help run the ward. These people from the community are elected onto these ward committees (WC) by the people of that specific ward. I made myself available for election onto the WC, and was elected to serve.

So, as you can see, I am a tad busy. Where does that leave my reading? Well, it is going very slowly, as you can imagine!

It is for this very reason that I have decided to blog on the contents of a book. This will force me to read more regularly.

The book I have chosen to blog on is Decision Making and the Will of God by Garry Friesen. You can read a review of the book at 9 Marks Ministries.

Note that I am not promising to have a piece out on this everyday. I do not want to bore readers of this blog that are not interested in this subject. So, I will write about other topics in between.

I have not yet decided how I will tackle it; whether I will go chapter by chapter or part by part. What I do not want to do is to rehash what Friesen has written. That would just be plagiarism! Rather, I want to look at it from the vantage point of how it impacts my thoughts on the subject and perhaps offer a difference of opinion where possible.

So, if you are interested, come back soon to see if this series has started fully.

The whole idea of "finding" the will of God is a hot topic in evangelicalism, and I fear it has become more of a gazing into the crystal ball thing than actually following the will of the Lord. Of course, many Biblical passages are aborted from their natural contexts in the Bible and given meanings that are not there, especially when speaking of THIS subject.

Some will even go so far as waiting for the writing on the wall!

Read Part 1 of my blog posting on Friesen's book here.