Guidance and the Plan of God

In this article, Jim Petty discusses the will of God as it relates to human decision making. Petty maintains that the phrase “the will of God” can mean either the plan of God or the commandments of God. He focuses on His plan and on how people understand and relate to God’s sovereign will of control. Petty challenges the notion that someone could end up on “Plan B” because they “missed God’s plan A.” He gives ways to think about circumstances and evil actions in the context of God’s providence. Petty concludes that God keeps many things to Himself, that we do not need and cannot know, but we can trust the “guardrail of providence” to hedge in our decision making, so that we do not need to live in either fear or presumption.