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What does God have in store for you?
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What is the will of God for your life? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
In a post of mine from last week on if you are called or not, a non-Christian friend commented saying that the answer will come from our own minds in knowing God’s will. The voices in our head are not the devil or God. He was surprised to find that for the most part, I agreed with what was said. I do believe we are too quick to say that a thought that comes to our heads if it’s really good is from God and if it’s really evil, it’s the devil. After all, if it’s so awesome, we didn’t come up with that, (But we like the idea of being the conduit for an awesome thought and God speaking to us in that way) and if it’s really bad, well surely that’s not us. It must be the devil.
Maybe, just maybe, sometimes we can have good ideas on our own and sometimes we can be tempted to do great evil on our own.
Where I would disagree with my friend is, of course, when it comes to Scripture. If I want to know God’s will on a matter, I go to Scripture. Now to be sure, this doesn’t mean God’s will is spelled out in a specific manner in every single case. There are issues that are around today that weren’t around back then and we have to go with principles. Sometimes, this can take a lot of work and study and there are some areas genuine Christians who love Christ have active disagreements on.
Here’s another problem though in our culture. We don’t find in there God’s individual will for our lives which most of us do want to know about. First, we generally assume that such a thing exists. God has a blueprint for how our lives are all supposed to go and it is our job to follow that blueprint as closely as possible and find out what is in it. Make a mistake and you could be interfering with God’s will for your life.
A simple thought experiment can show that this is just bad thinking. Let’s consider an important question. Who do you marry? Many Christians don’t ask if they should marry, as some are just fine without, but who they should marry and want to know if that person they are dating is “the one.” So let’s suppose that you are dating someone and decide they are “the one” and you marry them.
Well, it turns out they weren’t the one. So you made a mistake. What happens as a result?
Well, not only did you marry the wrong person, but they married the wrong person. After that, the two people you were meant to marry now have to marry the wrong people. Now those other people have to marry the wrong people and you see where this is going. So in the end, congratulations. By marrying the wrong person, you have pretty much screwed up the blueprint for every other person in the world for God’s plan for their lives.
Way to go.
Or you could just ditch that idea and realize you don’t have that power.
So what about marriage? Well, God’s idea for you has some guidelines. For one thing, you have to marry someone of the opposite sex. Second, you can’t marry a close relative. Third, you have to marry a Christian. After that, you have tremendous freedom. As a friend of mine says, dating is about finding the right person. Marriage is about being the right person.
And that’s something else we miss. The question is not so much who should you marry, but rather what kind of spouse will you be? In our day and age, it’s easy to treat marriage as a consumer good. You should stay in the marriage because it makes you happy and when you are unhappy, you get out. The other person is there to meet your needs and it is all about you.
We could continue down the line. It’s not so much what job you will have, but what kind of employee will you be. Will you work for your employer as if you were working for Christ? It’s not about what you major in in college, but what kind of student will you be and how will you use your degree for the glory of Christ. Of course, there are some obvious guidelines in these areas, like you can’t get a job as a prostitute or in the porn industry and think you’re working for the glory of Christ.
However, when I meet a Christian who then says, “I still want to know God’s will for my life” I always answer the same way. It’s a very easy question to ask. God’s will for you is to conform you to the likeness of Christ. His will for you is for you to be holy and to live a life of virtue. That command itself is hard enough to follow on its own. All of these behaviors above is hard. Dying to yourself in a marriage is hard. Working at a job you might not like is hard. Putting in long hours of study for a degree is hard.
Living holy is super hard. The path of least resistance is always the easier path to take. Being like Jesus is extremely difficult, but while my friend and I might have some differences on matters of theology, when he said the following in the chat, I thought it should be written in gold.
“I would say that a sincere undertaking to emulate Christ would have a huge impact on nearly every aspect of someone’s life.”
Indeed. Our society would be all for the better if we all tried to emulate Christ. I would encourage this for the non-Christian as well. Even if you don’t see Jesus as God, but just see Him as a great moral teacher, really try to even live like He did. Maybe you’ll hopefully come to see He’s more than a moral teacher at that point.
For the Christian, we are already called to do this. That is God’s will for us. Let’s get to work.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Link
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What is the will of God for your life? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
In a post of mine from last week on if you are called or not, a non-Christian friend commented saying that the answer will come from our own minds in knowing God’s will. The voices in our head are not the devil or God. He was surprised to find that for the most part, I agreed with what was said. I do believe we are too quick to say that a thought that comes to our heads if it’s really good is from God and if it’s really evil, it’s the devil. After all, if it’s so awesome, we didn’t come up with that, (But we like the idea of being the conduit for an awesome thought and God speaking to us in that way) and if it’s really bad, well surely that’s not us. It must be the devil.
Maybe, just maybe, sometimes we can have good ideas on our own and sometimes we can be tempted to do great evil on our own.
Where I would disagree with my friend is, of course, when it comes to Scripture. If I want to know God’s will on a matter, I go to Scripture. Now to be sure, this doesn’t mean God’s will is spelled out in a specific manner in every single case. There are issues that are around today that weren’t around back then and we have to go with principles. Sometimes, this can take a lot of work and study and there are some areas genuine Christians who love Christ have active disagreements on.
Here’s another problem though in our culture. We don’t find in there God’s individual will for our lives which most of us do want to know about. First, we generally assume that such a thing exists. God has a blueprint for how our lives are all supposed to go and it is our job to follow that blueprint as closely as possible and find out what is in it. Make a mistake and you could be interfering with God’s will for your life.
A simple thought experiment can show that this is just bad thinking. Let’s consider an important question. Who do you marry? Many Christians don’t ask if they should marry, as some are just fine without, but who they should marry and want to know if that person they are dating is “the one.” So let’s suppose that you are dating someone and decide they are “the one” and you marry them.
Well, it turns out they weren’t the one. So you made a mistake. What happens as a result?
Well, not only did you marry the wrong person, but they married the wrong person. After that, the two people you were meant to marry now have to marry the wrong people. Now those other people have to marry the wrong people and you see where this is going. So in the end, congratulations. By marrying the wrong person, you have pretty much screwed up the blueprint for every other person in the world for God’s plan for their lives.
Way to go.
Or you could just ditch that idea and realize you don’t have that power.
So what about marriage? Well, God’s idea for you has some guidelines. For one thing, you have to marry someone of the opposite sex. Second, you can’t marry a close relative. Third, you have to marry a Christian. After that, you have tremendous freedom. As a friend of mine says, dating is about finding the right person. Marriage is about being the right person.
And that’s something else we miss. The question is not so much who should you marry, but rather what kind of spouse will you be? In our day and age, it’s easy to treat marriage as a consumer good. You should stay in the marriage because it makes you happy and when you are unhappy, you get out. The other person is there to meet your needs and it is all about you.
We could continue down the line. It’s not so much what job you will have, but what kind of employee will you be. Will you work for your employer as if you were working for Christ? It’s not about what you major in in college, but what kind of student will you be and how will you use your degree for the glory of Christ. Of course, there are some obvious guidelines in these areas, like you can’t get a job as a prostitute or in the porn industry and think you’re working for the glory of Christ.
However, when I meet a Christian who then says, “I still want to know God’s will for my life” I always answer the same way. It’s a very easy question to ask. God’s will for you is to conform you to the likeness of Christ. His will for you is for you to be holy and to live a life of virtue. That command itself is hard enough to follow on its own. All of these behaviors above is hard. Dying to yourself in a marriage is hard. Working at a job you might not like is hard. Putting in long hours of study for a degree is hard.
Living holy is super hard. The path of least resistance is always the easier path to take. Being like Jesus is extremely difficult, but while my friend and I might have some differences on matters of theology, when he said the following in the chat, I thought it should be written in gold.
“I would say that a sincere undertaking to emulate Christ would have a huge impact on nearly every aspect of someone’s life.”
Indeed. Our society would be all for the better if we all tried to emulate Christ. I would encourage this for the non-Christian as well. Even if you don’t see Jesus as God, but just see Him as a great moral teacher, really try to even live like He did. Maybe you’ll hopefully come to see He’s more than a moral teacher at that point.
For the Christian, we are already called to do this. That is God’s will for us. Let’s get to work.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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