God's Will

How often do we sit around, especially when things aren't going in life as well as we'd like, and think to ourselves, "if only God would just tell me what I am supposed to do". In the depths of difficulties, we desperately cling to the hope that in some awesome and miraculous way God will text message or email us the next 10 steps we're supposed to take in our lives. Unfortunately, that rarely seems to happen in any Christian's life. Not to be deterred by our failures, how many of us continue to hope, pray and ask God over and over again to reveal his will for our lives? Why do we continue to ask for revelation of divine will in our very ordinary lives when answers are so rarely if ever forthcoming? We have this problem of trying to figure out God's will because we think knowing his will will somehow alleviate all of our worries.

There's comfort in certainty. I used to invest professionally for a living, and the one thing that's worse than owning a stock that's down 25% on a bad quarter is the uncertainty leading up to that earnings report. The human mind has an uncanny ability to absorb bad news and move on, but we are frightfully terrible at handling uncertainty. I think when we ask for God's will to be revealed in our lives, we are seeking the security of certainty. Even if God is going to have us sell everything and send us to Africa to be a missionary, as long as we know for certain that it is God's will, then we'll be happy and content knowing we are fulfilling the Divine Creator's specific desire for our lives. It's that pursuit of certainty and the feeling of security that certainty provides which pushes us to ask for his will to be revealed.

But is that God's desire for our lives?

I think most of us feel that if we could divine God's will, then all of our problems would be solved. We'd be less anxious, we'd be less stressed and we'd definitely sleep a lot better knowing that we were doing the explicit will of our Heavenly Father. But I think we approach this whole issue of God's will in a backwards way. We think that IF only God would show us his will, then all of our problems would go away because we'd be in a good spot with God. But why do we have this problem in the first place?

Our problem results because our hearts are focused on this life, on this world. Micah 6:8, one of my favorite verses, reads: "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Matthew 6:33 reads: "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

What God is telling us is that we need to focus on him. And he has promised us that if we do so, all the things that we need will be provided. Let's go back to the problem of trying to figure out what God wants us to do in our lives. Well, he tells us very explicitly in the two verses I've quoted. He wants us to focus on him, to live as he has taught us and to seek him above all. The amazing thing is that if we do as he calls us to do, all those problems we have of trying to figure out his will kind of just disappear. The certainty of things in this life become less and less important as our hearts focus solely on him. God is wise. He knew before time that our sinful hearts would constantly seek the security of certainty. And so he gave us his Word, which tells us to focus on him. In doing so, our certainty doesn't rest on where we'll live or what job we'll have, but on the one and true eternal God.