Seeking God's Will for Your Life...
So many of us claim to be doing just that. We say we want God's will for us, no matter what the cost. Is that really true? I mean does that statement bear out in our daily decisions and lifestyle? I'm wondering that for myself. I know somewhere deep down, I want to please God and glorify Him with my life, but on the day-to-day, what am I really doing to that end? Perhaps I being too hard on myself? Perhaps I'm being too easy. At the end of the day, what we do reflects what we truly believe.
If we believe that God is good, we will surrender our hearts, our possessions and our time to Him knowing He is going to make it all work together for our good. If we don't truly believe He is good, we will try to keep running our own lives, making tons of mistakes along the way and potentially doing some major damage.
If we believe God loves us, we can surrender our relationships, our self-image and our view of others to Him. A person who knows they are loved behaves drastically differently from a person who thinks they are unloved or doesn't know they are loved. The Bible says that we love because God first loved us. We are able to understand and feel the love of others and reach out and give love to others when we know we are loved by God. If we don't believe God loves us, we may try to earn His love with empty works or with a check list for life. We may become bitter about hard times or even little things that would normally not affect the secure believer. We will see ourselves as unworthy scum that no one can love and is not able to love others right. And we'll feel badly about the latter, but be powerless to change it.
If we believe that God is all powerful, we will be able to hand over the reins and allow Him to drive the daily as well as the big decisions we make. We will pray more for others and trust in the outcome of those prayers. If we don't believe in His power, we will not surrender our lives to Him because we will feel we need to maintain control. We will live by the philosophy that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. We won't let others in and give them opportunities to serve and grace to grow and make mistakes.
If we believe God is Holy, we will seek to be holy ourselves. We will cringe and the thought of sin. We will be offended by the things He is offended by. We will know how to handle different convictions on the part of others, not becoming tainted by them, and at the same time, not judgemental of them. If we don't believe in the holiness of God, the world will stain and spot us with it's filth in the name of entertainment or fun. We will fail to please Him with our personal lives and begin to rationalize the injunctions of Scripture saying they are outdated or culturally bound.
Back to the title. Seeking God's will for your life means seeking to know and believe the truth about God and allowing it to change who you are and in turn, what you do. God's will for your life is all over Scripture. He wants us to be holy, pure, empowered and effective for Him. Bottom line: God's will is that you glorify Him in every thought and action by understanding who He is and letting that guide your thoughts and actions so that people see Him, not you.
3 comments:
We tend to believe God is good, but not that he is good enough to do a better job of running our lives than we ever can. It's not so much a lack of belief (in my opinion), but a lack of INTENSITY of that belief.
We hear over and over and over that God loves us. We parrot it to others as "Good Christians" should, but how many of us truly know what "love" means? I personally have struggled to define it for myself, but I can't speak for everyone. How many of us can define love? Some see love as a "What have you done for me?" thing while others may see it totally different.
Omnipotent. Yes, God is, but again it's the intensity of our belief that drives us in the wrong direction.
Even if we believe every point you listed, we often fail in our quests to discover God's will for our lives. What is holding us back from truly doing this? Simple. Unwillingness to surrender. Fear that His plan won't match up with OUR plan. That's a scary thought. Thinking that God's will for my life won't match up to the one I've dreamt up for myself. But here's the hitch: we seem to short circuit between our minds and the One who can do IMMEASURABLY MORE than I can ever dream or imagine. Of course my will won't match his. His will be more than I could ever have dreamed or imagined. I think once we understand and truly TRULY believe that "minor" little detail, we can walk in the will of God for our lives with confidence.
Shredding wasn't my aim...really...
I think shredding is too strong a word! I think your comments are insightful and right on. You really make a good point with the intensity of belief thing. I hadn't thought of that. Thanks for keeping me on my toes. :)
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