What Is God’s Will?
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. -- Proverbs 3:5-6
How do you view God’s will for your life? There are many different views about this. Oh, we know that God wants only good for His children. But just how does His plan and our free will coexist within our beliefs?
Do you believe that God has written out your days and no matter what you do all He has written will happen? It sounds good, reasonable even. Until we remember that if we believe this, it means God also planned all the horrible things that happened. That doesn’t fit with God’s goodness and love.
God also gave us free will. That means God lets us mess up, even rejecting Him. So if God planned every detail of our lives, we wouldn’t have any free will. He would have predetermined our every move. We’d merely be puppets in His play. We can’t have free will and be puppets.
But what if God has a perfect plan for our lives, but we get free reign to mess it up? That would make sense. He probably looks down on us, sees the train wreck looming in the distance and tries to warn us. We, being stubborn and determined to go our own way, ignore God’s warning. So we crash, cry out to God, and turn toward Him. And He always takes us back. I will never, ever cease to be amazed by that.
It could also be that God has a general outline for our lives but let’s us write the specifics on our own. He guides us through His Word, prayer, the Holy Spirit and Christians in our lives. And, if we’re smart and listening, we don’t make too many bad mistakes.
Perhaps God’s will for our lives is more about our hearts than in the specifics of our choices. Maybe God wants us to care for people He puts in our paths, to live righteously, sharing and caring as we go through life. Maybe God means us to live our faith loudly so that others can see Him in our choices.
Determining God’s will for our lives isn’t always easy. Sometimes we know exactly what He wants and we want to do it. Other times we pretend we didn’t hear Him because it isn’t what we want to do. But I think we are most blessed when God calls us to something way out of our comfort zone and we step out in faith, following His lead and His will.
God doesn’t call us to live our lives in timid fear of what others will think. He calls us to follow Him, putting His teachings into active use in our daily lives. Perhaps the specific road doesn’t matter so much as the faith that leads to action. Maybe, in the end, that is is will for our lives.
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