Determining God’s Will
All of us have struggled with finding the Lord’s will for
our lives. Right away, please remember
that God never ignores your prayers if you truly belong to Him. Of course I would not want to cause you to
doubt your salvation, but I would want you to examine it to be sure you are
His. “You believe there is one God? You
do well, but do you want to know, oh foolish man that faith without works is
dead?” James 2:19-20. It’s not enough to
believe that Jesus is God’s Son. “Even
the demons believe and tremble.” It’s
not merely checking the “confirm” box. Rather
you need to go beyond that and trust Him.
Not trust Him like trusting Him to take out the garbage, but trust Him
enough to give yourself away to Him. “Present
your body a living sacrifice.” Give yourself
wholly to Him as a slave, relinquishing ownership and rights, and belonging to
Him. That’s what it means to give your
heart to Jesus. You trust Him enough to
give Him complete charge of your life.
Now, having done all that does not mean that you will never
struggle to know God’s will. It just
ensures that He is engaged in your life and you just need to discern what He
wants you to do. When you find yourself
in that situation there are at least a couple of things that you need to
do.
Cleaning out the home of my recently passed mother was a
challenge for my siblings and me. The
temptations are to either regress to a micro examination of a trinket or photo
and grind to a halt in your task, or flit about trying to do everything at once
and get nothing done at all. The cure
for that is to step back and unemotionally decide what task most needs
attention and then go to that task and see it through. Was it the task you were working on and just
went “micro” or is there a change in direction because you had “flitted”? The same thing is going on in your Christian
walk. You’ve lost your focus and need to
step back, ignore the emotion and ask God what most needs your work. Then go where He sends without reservation.
First of all you need to, in your “stepped-back” state,
determine whether you have “flitted”.
Did you forsake a task and leave it incomplete? We owe it to the Lord to see it through. If He has led us to something, we need to
pursue that thing until He bids us do otherwise. This can either be a basic, on-going thing
like: “Read your Bible daily”, or “Love your neighbor as yourself”, or it can
be a specific command that He still would have you do like: “Serve here”, or “Help that person”. If you find that you have erred, press back
into that prior to further inquiries
about His will.
Lately in our household, money is quite tight and, for a
while we were fretting about it. A
couple of faith steps we had taken had been costly and we were stymied because
we could not make more, change our past failings, or reduce our costs. We were (are) stuck. The answer?
Step back, see where God would have us focus, and dive in with a zeal
for God’s plan over ours. That’s what
we’re doing and I’ll let you know how that goes when it “gets there”.
Second, once you’ve settled back into obedience, you can
again take that step back, if you should feel the need, all the while
continuing in your most recent obedience, to determine whether you have gone
“micro” and need to turn your attention elsewhere. To be perfectly transparent I need to confess
to you that this step is kind of theoretical.
You see, I’ve found that if I will just dive into the work He has for
me, He won’t let me miss a thing. I have
never been diligently doing His will
and felt the need to ask His
will! This is His will! Should something come up that represents a
change in direction, His will is so obvious that it becomes a seamless
transition and the questions just aren’t there. Occasionally there will be
concrete, specific questions, but they will be short-lived experiences if I’m
steadfastly and joyously doing His will as it has been revealed to me.
