Discovering God’s Will

God’s children want to know what his will is for their lives, but invariably believers ask the question “How do I know what God’s will is for my life?” Church bodies ask similar questions about God’s will for them as a local body of believers. Being able to answer these questions can mean the difference between a life of meaning and purpose and a life of confusion and frustration.

The first thing to consider is that God’s will and a person’s will can be different. God’s will is not that every person on earth should be as happy as they can be and doing whatever they want. We must realize that what we want to happen or receive from God might not be right or best for us. We must admit that God’s will is found outside of us. We need some way of testing our desires and wants against what God wants for us. There is something that accomplishes that for us. The scriptures do reveal God’s will to us. We have a collection of commands and stories of God’s will in the lives of his people. When we want to know God’s will we should go to the Bible to discover it.

God’s will, as revealed in his word, can be summed up as obeying his commandments. When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment he answered with “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:37-40) Jesus summed up God’s commandments as love God and love your neighbor. There are many people who want to focus on the second these commandments. They want to say that God wants everyone to be treated equally and that we show that we love God by how we treat the “least of these”. That is true, but we cannot neglect the first command to love God and truly love our neighbors. God’s will is that we love him first and foremost above all else.

What does it mean to love God with our heart, soul and mind? This means that we must love God with every part of ourselves and every part of our lives. Everything that we do should show our love for God. From the moment we wake up in the morning and the moment we go to sleep at night and in between, we should loving God in all that we do. This means that the way we work at our jobs should show that we love God. The way we behave with our friends and family should demonstrate our love for God. Every detail of our lives down to what we eat, drink or wear should be based on our love for God. If this seems extreme look at the laws given to the Israelites, they were told what they could and could not eat and drink, and where to live. They were given very specific commands from God that showed that they were his people. When faced with a choice to make we should choose the option that shows love for God. This means that we might choose something that alienates us from other people or even causes hostility from other people. If we are going to be living God’s then we will look to please him more than ourselves or others.

As we look to please God with our lives and read his word we will grow in the knowledge of what pleases God. But as we do that we will see the many ways that do not please God and do not show our love for him in our lives. At this point we must be reminded that we cannot love God on our own. We must repent of sin and have faith in Christ before we can ever love God or please him. Even long-time Christians must be reminded of their own sin and repent and allow the Holy Spirit to do the work of sanctification in their lives.

Another part of doing God’s will is that we should enjoy it. Christians should not seek to please God out of a sense of duty. Loving God should not be something that we are forced to do. We should love God because he deserves it more than anything else and out of gratitude for our salvation. God commands that we should “love kindness” (Micah 6:8) It is not enough to practice kindness, we are to love it. This applies to every aspect of God’s will. Sharing the Gospel or church attendance should be things we enjoy. As we love God these are things that we cannot help but do. If you know of things that God has commanded and you do not do them, you do not love God as you should.

We find God’s will for us in the Bible through reading and praying about what we have read. In his word we will find that God’s will is for us to love him with all that we have. We must allow our love for God to come out in every part of our lives and always be ready to commit more to him. This is not an easy task, because we are by our nature opposed to God’s will. We must continually be repenting of sin and growing through the Holy Spirit’s work. As this happens we should find that pleasing God is all that we want to do. We should get our pleasure from our love for God and doing his will.