Your Will
Will means desire. God's will, then, is God's desire. We are told to do something with God's will, with His desire. What we have to do comes in the next section. First we have to figure out what God's will is.
Some people know exactly what they want, all the time, every time. They go to college and never even think of changing majors. They job hunt like a jungle cat stalking a wildebeest. They propose marriage, buy a house, start a family all with no hint of any internal struggle, no second guessing, no qualms. They even order dinner decisively.
Other people just let things happen, floating along on the whim of whatever current happens to catch them. They drift into and out of college programs, they happen upon jobs, they bounce from relationship to relationship. Often, they take whatever they are given because that is what is there and that is what is easiest.
Then there are those of us in the middle. We do not always take whatever life offers, but we often hesitate or vacillate when making a decision. Our choices and conclusions come after a struggle. We take control, but we are not always confident in our course, and we sometimes doubt our own choices. I changed majors a couple of times. I had a long succession of part-time jobs before I became a teacher, and I became a teacher in an almost backwards kind of way, getting my master's degree in English before going back to get a teaching certificate. Perhaps most telling, I have been known to drive aimlessly around town looking for some inspiration about where to eat.
To oversimplify this, there are three kinds of people: those who know exactly what they want, those who take whatever they are handed, and those who question every choice they face. The question, then, is how do these groups handle the concept of God's will. Does one group have an advantage over the others? Does one group better know the nature of God's will or how to respond to it?
The people who know exactly what they want might seem to have some sort of edge here because they are decisive; however, they have a huge stumbling block: they know exactly what they want. To respond to God's will requires that we look past our own desires and our own perceptions. We have to put aside our wants and needs to open ourselves to the possibilities God presents. God's will must supersede our own, and for people driven to stay on their own track, this might be difficult.
The people who take whatever they are handed face a different kind of challenge: they have no filter for judging whatever comes into their lives, so they do not differentiate between God's will, their own will, or the will of something outside themselves, whether that be society's will, Satan's will, or the fortune from a cookie at a Chinese restaurant. Someone might suggest that God's will, since it is from God and God is omnipotent, would always come first and so be the choice of members of this group. But God does not work that way; if He did, there would be no point to free will, a concept we will tackle a bit later. God's will requires us to acknowledge and accept it, and that requires that we actively choose.
The final group, those of us who question, might probably be the largest group of the three. These folks try to figure out the best possible alternative in any given situation. These folks have elements of both of the other groups: there is an element of making the decision based on our own agenda, much like the first group, and there is an element of taking the easiest path, like the second group. However, this third group is a bit closer to the correct approach than the other two simply because there is some element, however small, of attempting to discern the correct choice.
This idea of discerning a correct choice gets back to the idea of free will, the idea that God allows us the opportunity to make our own choices. We can see from the whole Tree in the Garden story that having free will and using it successfully are different. God allows us to make choices, but that does not mean that all choices are equally acceptable. Our challenge, then, is to align our free will with God's will. The question remains, though, of how. What is the key to discerning God's will?
Unfortunately, there is no magical method of discovering God's will. Though it is always there, it is up to us to find it. That means we have to do something: we have to work in order to access the interface with God (and find His will). We probably all have some idea of how this might work: prayer and reading the Bible. Our communications with God usually take these two forms: we pray, each in our own way, each prayer its own particular message; and we read God's Word, searching for God's message to us.
Prayer and Bible-reading are necessary to the process, but they are not the only elements. Both of these actions can be very self-centered activities: we control what goes into the prayer and we may choose what we read in the text (and how we interpret what we read). In order to achieve the revelation of God's will, we often need to do a thing that many of us find very difficult: we need to be still. In order to hear God's will, we have to listen, we have to open ourselves to His voice, and that requires that we stop, that we focus our attention on Him. Too often--and here I am referring to my own experience since I cannot speak for anyone else, but I sense that others may have the same or similar experience--we throw a prayer in the general direction of God and, possibly, look at a couple of familiar sections of the Bible and expect that we will be guided toward the correct choice. We have to slow down. Things do not happen according to our schedules. We are not in charge.
God's will should be the controlling force in our lives, but for that to happen, we have to give up our own misguided attempts at control, and we have to listen to God's voice. Before we can do anything, we have to know, and in order to know, we have to find. The search for God's will is our daily task, and we have to be prepared to accomplish that.
Some people know exactly what they want, all the time, every time. They go to college and never even think of changing majors. They job hunt like a jungle cat stalking a wildebeest. They propose marriage, buy a house, start a family all with no hint of any internal struggle, no second guessing, no qualms. They even order dinner decisively.
Other people just let things happen, floating along on the whim of whatever current happens to catch them. They drift into and out of college programs, they happen upon jobs, they bounce from relationship to relationship. Often, they take whatever they are given because that is what is there and that is what is easiest.
Then there are those of us in the middle. We do not always take whatever life offers, but we often hesitate or vacillate when making a decision. Our choices and conclusions come after a struggle. We take control, but we are not always confident in our course, and we sometimes doubt our own choices. I changed majors a couple of times. I had a long succession of part-time jobs before I became a teacher, and I became a teacher in an almost backwards kind of way, getting my master's degree in English before going back to get a teaching certificate. Perhaps most telling, I have been known to drive aimlessly around town looking for some inspiration about where to eat.
To oversimplify this, there are three kinds of people: those who know exactly what they want, those who take whatever they are handed, and those who question every choice they face. The question, then, is how do these groups handle the concept of God's will. Does one group have an advantage over the others? Does one group better know the nature of God's will or how to respond to it?
The people who know exactly what they want might seem to have some sort of edge here because they are decisive; however, they have a huge stumbling block: they know exactly what they want. To respond to God's will requires that we look past our own desires and our own perceptions. We have to put aside our wants and needs to open ourselves to the possibilities God presents. God's will must supersede our own, and for people driven to stay on their own track, this might be difficult.
The people who take whatever they are handed face a different kind of challenge: they have no filter for judging whatever comes into their lives, so they do not differentiate between God's will, their own will, or the will of something outside themselves, whether that be society's will, Satan's will, or the fortune from a cookie at a Chinese restaurant. Someone might suggest that God's will, since it is from God and God is omnipotent, would always come first and so be the choice of members of this group. But God does not work that way; if He did, there would be no point to free will, a concept we will tackle a bit later. God's will requires us to acknowledge and accept it, and that requires that we actively choose.
The final group, those of us who question, might probably be the largest group of the three. These folks try to figure out the best possible alternative in any given situation. These folks have elements of both of the other groups: there is an element of making the decision based on our own agenda, much like the first group, and there is an element of taking the easiest path, like the second group. However, this third group is a bit closer to the correct approach than the other two simply because there is some element, however small, of attempting to discern the correct choice.
This idea of discerning a correct choice gets back to the idea of free will, the idea that God allows us the opportunity to make our own choices. We can see from the whole Tree in the Garden story that having free will and using it successfully are different. God allows us to make choices, but that does not mean that all choices are equally acceptable. Our challenge, then, is to align our free will with God's will. The question remains, though, of how. What is the key to discerning God's will?
Unfortunately, there is no magical method of discovering God's will. Though it is always there, it is up to us to find it. That means we have to do something: we have to work in order to access the interface with God (and find His will). We probably all have some idea of how this might work: prayer and reading the Bible. Our communications with God usually take these two forms: we pray, each in our own way, each prayer its own particular message; and we read God's Word, searching for God's message to us.
Prayer and Bible-reading are necessary to the process, but they are not the only elements. Both of these actions can be very self-centered activities: we control what goes into the prayer and we may choose what we read in the text (and how we interpret what we read). In order to achieve the revelation of God's will, we often need to do a thing that many of us find very difficult: we need to be still. In order to hear God's will, we have to listen, we have to open ourselves to His voice, and that requires that we stop, that we focus our attention on Him. Too often--and here I am referring to my own experience since I cannot speak for anyone else, but I sense that others may have the same or similar experience--we throw a prayer in the general direction of God and, possibly, look at a couple of familiar sections of the Bible and expect that we will be guided toward the correct choice. We have to slow down. Things do not happen according to our schedules. We are not in charge.
God's will should be the controlling force in our lives, but for that to happen, we have to give up our own misguided attempts at control, and we have to listen to God's voice. Before we can do anything, we have to know, and in order to know, we have to find. The search for God's will is our daily task, and we have to be prepared to accomplish that.
posted by Rodney Rhodus | 10:23 AM
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