Ep.1360: What Is God’s Will, and How Do I Make It My Will?
Deciphering the scriptural guidance needed to determine God’s will
CHAPTERS
Theme Scripture: Hebrews 13:20-21
Doing God’s will should be a given for any and every Christian. After all, the mere fact that we are called "Christians" implies that we follow in Jesus’ footsteps and are therefore obliged to do God’s will as Jesus did God’s will. While this all sounds pretty straightforward, the big question has to do with knowing. How do we know what the will of God is? Answering this question may be harder than we would like to think. It would be easy to assume that because we love and worship God, He will in turn show us His love by giving us the good things we want. After all, that IS what it says in Psalm 37:4: "Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart." Sounds exciting and almost easy, but as you might have guessed, it's not. So, how do we know what God wants for us?
There are many factors we need to put in order to understand God’s will for us in our daily lives. The first thing we need to grasp is more or less an introductory statement: God will NOT whisper His will to you into your ear. He will not send an e-mail or text; He will not post or message. He will not speak. Why? Wouldn’t these kinds of things make it easier to follow Him? On the contrary, these simple things would be counterproductive, as finding His will for us means we need to be looking for it.
So, where do we look?
We search in the Bible of course, after all, it is His holy word! The Bible gives us two very broad categories of what doing God’s will looks like. The first category is full of things NOT to do. One very blunt scripture plainly makes this point: 1 Thessalonians 4:3: "For this is the will of God, your sanctification - that you abstain from sexual immorality." The point is simple. If you want to do God’s will, then you completely avoid immoral behavior. Several other scriptures give us specifics on the many kinds of thoughts and behaviors we need to avoid.
The good news is that there are many more scriptures that tell us about the second broad category of things we SHOULD do. These are things like rejoicing, praying, being thankful and doing good.
With all of this said, there is so much more! Check out our November 18, 2024 podcast, “What is God’s Will, and How Do I Make It My will? For more. We outline how Jesus daily went about doing God’s will in every area of life. We take his example and overlay it onto our lives, and we suddenly have a clear guide. No texts or posts, just God’s holy word showing us His holy will. Don’t miss this wonderful journey towards living a much fuller Christian life!
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