“It is astonishing to consider what the Bible says and does not say about the will of God. It is positively loquacious concerning what God wants us to do today; it is virtually mum about what God has in store for us tomorrow. None of us, James writes, can have certainity about tomorrow, except the certainity that we will face surprises, hardships, and even death. Instead of being presumptuous about the future, we should be attentive to God’s will in the present.”
– Jerry Sittser, The Will of God as a Way of Life
“The will of God is the necessity of all things.”
-- Augustine of Hippo, On Genesis in the Literal Sense
“God’s will is made known to us by what he disposes, what he commands. This calls for no deliberation on our part; we simply carry out God’s orders. In everything else, however, we are perfectly free to make our own choice of what seems good – though it is not a question of doing everything that is permissible, but only such things as are suitable.”
– Francis de Sales, Selected Spiritual Writings
"The Reformed proceeded from ‘the will of God’s good pleasure'; they regarded this as the real, the essential will of God. That will is always fulfilled; it always effects its object; it is eternal and immutable. The’expressed’ or ‘signified’ will, on the contrary, is God’s precept revealed in the Law and in the Gospel; it is for us the rule of life."
- Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God
“The providence of God is like a Hebrew word – it can only be read backwards!”
- Puritan writer John Flavel
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