Being "in the will of God"

The notion of whether we are "in" or "out of" God's will is binding, harmful, and destructive. It produces guilt, shame, fear, and anxiety.

On maybe the most important level, God's will for us is clear and simple. We are to love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbors as ourselves. In fact, we are told this is the ¹greatest expression of what He wants (wills) us to do ...  yet who among us does this perfectly? Not me!

If we don't, does that mean we are now "out of God's will" and forever off-track to fulfilling “our destiny" or "God's will" for our lives? If so, then we are all out of God's will in this way, for no one loves God and neighbor perfectly, even the most mature among us. 

Typically, when someone says they are anxious about "missing God's will," or wish to be sure of what His will is, they are referring to "vocational" type decisions - sometimes referred to as ¹God's "secret" or providential will - e.g. whether to marry this person or not, to take this or that job, buy this or that house, move to this or that location, etc.

However, these are more our concern than God's. It's not that we shouldn't consider these things or that God doesn't care about whether they are important or not. They are! But God says ²whatever we do, do it for his glory. In God's economy, why we do things - for or not for His glory - is stressed far more and is more important than what we do - i.e. do we act for God's glory or our own? 

 

This is the most important question. There is no uncertainty on whether doing something for God's honor is His will. It always is. The challenge is knowing our hearts well enough to know if we are pursuing or building his kingdom - living for His glory - instead of our own. This is by far the more challenging and important question.

What we should do is determined more by our skills, gifts, resources, and circumstances, etc. 

Why we do it is determined by our hearts.

It's not that God doesn't care about the “what” decisions or that we shouldn't pray about them, but only after we assess if we are doing them for his honor or not i.e. out of trust in Him and love for Him. Then we can better assess if, when, and how our choice fits our resources, skills, and circumstances. 

Using all God has given us in the way He intends and designs for us individually is part of doing things for his glory and is the heart of walking in His will.

The biggest reason we are so concerned about "vocational" type decisions is often because we do not wish to be responsible for a decision if the outcome is not favorable (e.g. "it's not my fault things didn't work out, it's God's. I was just following 'His will' ") when in fact these type of decisions are exactly the ones God calls us to make and be responsible for.

The following passage may be appropriate in this regard. 

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways." -1 Corinthians 13:11 

Becoming wiser in our choices is part of the growing-up/maturing process. He works with us accordingly. When we are young in our walk with God, He works differently. As we grow in our faith we are to walk more in His wisdom not by some "sense" of God's will - which may have more to do with our present state of mind (which can change day to day) than inspired by the Spirit of God.

The reality is, no matter what our choice, God is always ultimately going to use it for our good (though not necessarily for our comfort or ease). So we should always move forward in hope, not fear, when we are seeking to honor God, regardless of what direction we choose or what the outcome is.

Someone once said it is not what I don't know about God's will that is most challenging but what I do know. 

How well do we love God with all our hearts? Christ said if we love him we will keep his commandments. This is pleasing and honoring to God. This is clearly His will and should be our primary focus and concern, not if I am taking the right job or getting the right place to live. Those type questions are answered more by our gifts and circumstances, not some special revelation or "sense" from God.

Regarding God's will, we are told the following...

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." - Rom 12.1-2

This passage tells us discerning the unknown (secret or vocational) will of God (i.e. decisions like which job or what place to live) is contingent on living out the known will of God i.e. If we wish to discern what God’s good, acceptable, and perfect will is for us, we must present our self in sacrificial obedience to God and align our thinking and will with His and His direction i.e. the first and greatest command on which all other commands rely. As we do, we can be assured he will reveal to us what we most need to see or do in our obedience. As the analogy goes, God can't steer an anchored ship, but only one that's got its sails up and moved along by the wind. 

We are to leave the guidance to God as we focus on our part of being faithful to Him i.e. loving him with all that we are and have and our neighbor as ourselves i.e. being that living sacrifice He calls us to be.

Another guiding principle we often hear that runs parallel with the greatest commandment is given in Proverbs 3:5-6.

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

What both the greatest commandments and this passage have in common is God's guidance (the "straightness" of our path) occurs in our moving forward out of love for and trust in God, not normally by some mysterious sign or signal from Him. Though He may certainly provide guidance in this way occasionally, it appears to be secondary and contingent on our faithfully pursuing Him out of love and trust first. Our focus should be on faithfulness not on a sign or signal to "confirm God's will." God's will is already laid out as mentioned above. We may be perfectly in line with God's will without ever receiving a particular sign to continue on any particular course outside of what is already clearly given in God's written words to us in scripture.

• For further discussion click here
• For a discussion on the value and importance of following God's known will click here. 
• For a discussion on being led by the Spirit click here. 
• For a discussion on doing all things for the glory of God click here. 
• For a discussion of how God is sovereign over all things both good and evil, click here. 
• For a discussion on how God works with the "real you" click here.

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¹this is sometimes referred to as the "revealed will" of God whereas vocational-type decisions are referred to as the "secret or hidden" will of God.

²One thing we can be sure of, whatever choices we make, God will use them to draw us closer to Himself, conform us to the image of His Son, and teach us to love Him more so we might bring greater glory to him. This is the good God is bringing about through "all things" of life.  

Also, loving God with all our hearts and doing all things for his glory are not two distinct expressions of pursuing God's will but are tied together i.e. I should do all things for his glory because I love and value God above everything else. And because I love and value him above all things, I seek to do everything for His honor. 

Having vs participating in God's love

Having and participating in God's love are two separate things (though not unrelated). 

The tension between these is throughout scripture.

Having God's love is based solely on (secured by) the faithfulness/work of another i.e. on Christ's faithful obedience and sacrifice. 

*Nothing we do can add to or take away from this. 

This is complete/finished.

Participating in God's love is based on our faithfulness/work. 

**Only what we do determines this. 

This is ongoing and never finished.

Having his love is like owning a bank account with unlimited funds, available to you at any and all times.

Participating in his love is making a withdrawal and using it to honor/love someone (whether that be God, someone else or ourselves).

We can have the former and never experience the latter but we can never have (participate in) the latter without the former.

And

We will never truly and fully know (experience) the former until we ***fully participate in the latter.

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*how can it since it's not based on our efforts to begin with.

**this is not to say we do this in our own power but only in the power of the Spirit. For several posts addressing the Spirit see the following:

Spirit driven

The empowering of Spirit

Operating in Spirit...mystical or practical?

Defining terms-flesh-spirit 

For a post discussing our "work" click here.

***we will not fully participate in this in this life but only begin to. The degree to which we do now, determines the degree to which we experience him in eternity.

Faith is contageous

Faith is not only necessary for living but contagious. We want to believe because we want to be cared for/valued. Belief is infectious because it is tied to our need for love. We are drawn to love like a moth is to flame/light.

This is why we are so easily allured to promises that can (or may) not truly deliver. Though we like to think our views are based solely on reality/truth, they are based more on belief and hope then irrefutable facts. Belief that what we seek for life, it truly life long term. 

However we are quick to trust and depend only on anything and everything except God, who alone promises true life long term (i.e. eternal life). Why? Two reasons. 

1. We can't control God. We don't like trusting in what we can not control. Trust and control are opposite's.

2. What God offers is often not immediate but a long term solution. What we want however is immediate reward, resolution or relief. Long-term reward or relief requires greater trust and patience and is outside our control (eating a treat or watching a movie on the other hand [or whatever is our "drug" of choice] is more immediate and within our control).

This is also why people are so emotional/passionate (even volatile at times) about their views (e.g. religion and politics); they are tied to their need for love, a sense of well-being, purpose and meaning. In effect if you mess with my beliefs you are messing with me, my identity and my sense of value i.e. our belief system is more emotionally than intellectually based.

This is also key to how you change someone's mind. If you wish to win someone to your way of viewing things, you treat them with more value (love) then their current belief system offers or provides. Love (meaning/purpose/value) after all is what we are really after, not facts.     

Trust and "gathering facts"

The reason we must trust is we are limited in the facts we can gather i.e. we are finite. We don't know everything and can not be everywhere to observe all that is "out there" to observe. Much of our views are based on what we don't know but simply must believe (trust) is so (we know what we know, but it's what we don't know that is our challenge). This is why someone's commitment to a particular view may seem irrational to others who don't hold that view while perfectly rational to those that do.

For example, I don't see God, therefore I don't believe he exists. And since he doesn't I am not accountable to a Creator and free to choose how I choose to conduct my life

OR

I believe there is a God because I see design, beauty and love in and around me indicating there is some kind of higher meaning and purpose to life. A higher purpose suggests a higher will (or Being) then my own. 

Neither of these views can be proven in the absolute sense due to our finiteness, so we interpret them to mean what we choose to believe.

In summary, we can not operate without faith, no matter what our world view. And since we are designed for love we gravitate to that which meet's that need best (at the moment) based on our limited perspective. Faith is not only necessary because of our limits it is necessary in that it is tied to our very sense and need for value/love. Because of these two factors faith is not just unavoidable, it is contagious.

For a further discussion on being finite click here.

For a further discussion on being designed for love click here for several related articles.

Do our deeds matter?

If God's love for us is not based on what we do, do our good deeds matter?

Absolutely! 

Doing things to honor God and love others has real value/importance/significance. 

To live in such as way as to honor God and display his infinite worth in our day to day affairs is a vital means by which others can see something of the love of God and our love for him and thereby be drawn to him. This also has immense value to God since he seeks to spread his glory throughout the earth.

To treat others with value/love is also of tremendous importance. It brings true value directly to them (whereas the above is more indirect) and can be a means by which we point them directly to God as the source of life, love and all things instead of just indirectly. It can be key to someone seeing something about God in and through our actions thereby also being drawn to faith in him. Loving others as he loves us is not only a way we directly bless others but a primary way in which we honor God.

So living for God in general pleases God and seeking to honor him by directly helping others, also pleases him by blessing others.

In these two ways, loving God and neighbor, we are acting as we were designed to; loving others out of our love for God.  

So there is no doubt as to whether what we do or don't do matters. It matters greatly. We are God's appointed means to "put him on display" and to love others so they might come to know him and experience him in all his glory for their greatest joy.

It matters to us as well since we are designed to operate in this way and how we experience the maximum of who God created us to be - which in turn brings us greatest joy as well as great reward.

But are our actions, good deeds, obedience etc the means by which we gain/earn God's love and acceptance? 

And are we to seek and find our sense of value, acceptance and purpose by bringing value (doing good deeds) to others. This is often were much confusion lies and a distinction must be made. 

There is no doubt we can be valuable to others and also no doubt we will derive a sense of our own value in helping others. The question however becomes whether this is the basis or grounds for our true acceptance and value. 

To say it another way, do we act to gain acceptance and approval from God and others or because we already have it? If we already have it we will give or bring value to others. Loving others - treated them as valuable, significant etc - is the fruit of our being loved by God. And when others benefit we can legitimately rejoice in being the means of showing them God's love. But to garner acceptance and praise of others is not to be the reason we act. We are designed to act out of fullness and not in an attempt to obtain acceptance from others by or through our actions i.e. out of emptiness.

This is easy to say but not always easy to identify since the true motive of our hearts is not always obvious to us. Our hearts after are desperately wicked. Who can know it. 

So what exactly is the basis of God's acceptance of us and from where do we acquire our true sense of significance, meaning and value?

In truth, there is *nothing we can do to earn or gain God's acceptance. The ultimate grounds by which we are accepted and loved by God has to come not by our efforts but that of someone else. It is in and by God's approval of his Son i.e. his Son's faithfulness in honoring God and loving his neighbor to the point of losing his own life. This is because we can not and do not honor God or love our neighbor well enough for our efforts to ever cause God to love and accept us.

God's absolute love and acceptance of us requires our 100% (perfect) faithfulness. Faithfulness we never do (or can do). Anything less is inadequate, unacceptable and insufficient because God is the 100% cause of life, love and all things (all that we have and are). Because these are true he rightfully deserves and should receive our 100% commitment, faithfulness, honor and love.

Since we never are 100% faithful (and can be without his Spirit/love moving us to faithfulness) this had to be done for us if we were ever to be accepted by God. It had to be done perfectly because God is perfect and is rightly due perfect and absolute faithfulness. Only the eternal Son of God could do this and did do this, for us. If there was to ever be any hope of God restoring us to himself, this had to be done because we could not do it ourselves. We simply are too distrusting and too unfaithful i.e. we are not 100% faithful. If he hadn't done this for us we'd be without hope. Because it's 100% obtained for us by Christ we have absolute 100% hope. 

To do things in order to be accepted and loved by God or others will never cause God to love and accept us or give us what we need and were designed to experience i.e. 100% acceptance and love by God. 

To say it simply we don't act to gain value but to give it because we already have it, in Christ. And in so doing we in fact bring real value to others.

We treat others with value because God is 100% worthy of our faithful pursuit and so are others he's created.

God certainly loves and approves our doing things for his honor and glory; when we demonstrate our love for him by loving our neighbor as ourselves. It's just not the basis by which he accepts and receives us.

Pleasing God is not performing for God to gain his acceptance, it is operating by faith to spread his glory.

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*The issue in question is a legal one i.e. justification, not the very practical day to day one of pleasing God. Faithfulness definitely pleases God, it simply doesn't justify us and make us right with God or causes him to accept us.

We do things to bring him glory, not to earn or cause him to accept us. 

Lovable versus lovely

Seldom are we are ¹truly lovely but we are always lovable and even adorable in the eyes of God.

There is something about us that is worth adoring. 

Not only so but we have the capacity to experience and enjoy adoration i.e. to be adored.

What is it about us that is worth loving and adoring? At a minimum -- at our worst and even in our greatest state of rebellion -- we are like God in that we still have the capacity to display something of who he is and what He's like as the ultimate person worthy of all adoration i.e. our capacity/ability to be loved and adored makes it possible for us to be lovely and adorable because we are like God, who is lovely and adorable. 

As His image bearer, we have the capacity to experience and enjoy love and adoration and respond to Him in love and adoration. In fact, in order to love and adore him as much as possible, in such a way that even comes close to his true and full worthiness of all our adoration, we had to have the innate capacity to be loved and adored. 

We are designed to be in a reciprocal relationship with God to receive his love and adoration and respond in kind.  And in so doing we put God on display for others to see and be drawn to him. This capacity - only given to us by God and ²not lost in our rebellion - is what makes us lovable, adorable and of great worth to God and others. 

Nothing else fits who we are 

Finding love and adoration apart from and outside of God is not sufficient. Anything less than the love and adoration of God -- receiving these from and reflecting them back to him -- simply will not do. No substitutes will work because there is nothing else like God -- i.e. There is only one God who is the most lovable and adorable, who created all things and on which all things depend. 

It also fits who He designed us be. We were made to be in a love relationship with this all loving, wise and powerful being called God. Why is the giving and receiving of love and adoration significant? These are core to God's being as Father, Son, and Spirit who love and adore each other and we are like him so we too might take part in this triune community of love, beauty, and overflowing joy that is core to who God is.

He is the most lovely and most adorable and has created us with the capacity to enjoy him as such. That capacity means we too must be lovable and adorable, otherwise, we could not truly appreciate this about him.

When we are truly loved and adored we reciprocate. It is the way He designed us and how we are hard wired. If we do not reciprocate we have not yet truly experienced his love and adoration. 
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¹in fact, we can not be truly lovely as we are designed to be until we experience the love of God who is the Source of love. 

To say it another way, we were never designed to initiate love for God but to be the recipients of his love and to respond to His love and love him in return i.e. we are love responders, not love generators. To say it another way, we are like God -- in His image -- but we are not God. 

²What was lost was our actual loving and adoring of God, not our capacity to love and adore Him. So for all practical intents and purposes, we might as well have lost the capacity to love and adore God. However, if the capacity had been completely annihilated we could (and would) never respond to God when he reveals his love and adoration to and for us. 

Celebrating our design and our Designer

The creative efforts of people may be carried out for the wrong reason (i.e. to exalt and advance self not God) but the fruit of those efforts is still evidence of the image of God within us all. For this reason we can (and should) fully appreciate the results of those efforts for what they are; evidence of the majesty, wonder and creativity of God within each of us, his image-bearers. 

Our creative abilities show us something significant for both God and us. Something that can be legitimately appreciated and admired (even the ability to design and construct the Tower of Babel gives evidence of the image of God within us).

Nevertheless, if these efforts are not carried out in an attempt to honor the one in whose image we are designed, they ultimately are all for naught i.e. they will have no eternal value.

We can and should celebrate humanity's design and our ability to create, but in doing so we must recognize the Creator (the giver of our abilities) and our utmost Designer is the ultimate reason for our celebration.

A divided nation

Why is our ¹nation so divided?

What are the factors? 

Some are external and objective i.e. there are outside forces deliberately attempting to "divide and conquer" us - though some would say this is conspiracy theory. 

However, whatever external influences there are, these outside factors could not have influence or take hold in a society without subjective issues existing first. 

The following addresses the subjective.

Ultimately, the solution to our national woes is not political but spiritual.

For example, the government can put forth the right policy but if the individual hearts of men and women are not submitted to truth (or we do not ²recognize there is such a thing as objective truth and morality), right policy will not change our hearts (or our minds). We may comply but only to avoid the consequences, not because we agree.

Right policy only addresses external behavior, not an internal desire to live truthfully with integrity or even the recognition of an objective moral standard.

Without an objective standard such as loving God equal to his loveliness and treating others as you wish to be treated (the summary of God's law), you only have "every man for himself" with a commitment to doing what is right "in their own eyes" - i.e. our "moral standard" is our subjective values/beliefs and unchecked desires.

Should we engage in the political process and seek to implement right policy? Absolutely! But we must also recognize, given man's natural bent away from God, that until the hearts of individual men and women change, right policy will only be looked at by many as an obstruction to happiness, not a means to it. 

We should be praying for our nation to return to God as much, if not more than we seek to promote right policy. Why? Because ultimately, only God can make a nation good, not a ruler, leader or politician. 

For more on the importance of praying for our nation, click here.

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¹Though I have America primarily in mind, the same need for spiritual focus applies to any country or group. When a people group or country turns to God through a spiritual awakening, good behavior and material flourishing increase. When they don't a country declines. This was the pattern throughout Israel's history as well as all human history in general.

²In order for unity to occur in a society or a nation (or any other social unit such as a company, a family, marriage or a church) there must be a commitment to the same primary values. In order for this to occur there must be the recognition that there is such a thing as absolute objective truth; that our values are not simply subjective; that there is such a thing as objective and absolute good and bad values. If they are only subjective, who decides what (or whose) values take priority over another i.e. there must be either an outside arbitrator or an objective standard. 

For a further discussion on the importance of values in the sociopolitical realm click here.