UGW #18: Our Responsibilities Regarding God's Will
Understanding God's Will #18 (no Calvinism stuff added to this post):
You keep saying that we have responsibilities in getting God’s Will done? What kinds of responsibilities?
I’ve already gone through many of them, but if you read the Bible, you’ll find lots more. Because as I said before, His Will is a Verb. It's more about the way we live in obedience to Him than it is about finding "His plan" for our life.
He says to seek wisdom. Do we? He tells us things that He wants us to do in His Word, things that are always His Will for us, like loving our neighbor, tithing, not gossiping, etc. Do we obey? Are we guarding our tongues and building others up, instead of tearing them down? Are we honoring our marriage vows, and putting up strong protective boundaries around our marriage? Do we pray or do we think it’s good enough that He can read our minds? Do we forgive or harbor bitterness? Do we rationalize the first bit of flirting with temptation that we do? After the first unintentional glimpse, do we look again? Do we search the Scriptures and meditate on them as we are called to, or do we just pick the Bible up every now and then for a little boost? Do we seek godly counsel or go off in our own wisdom? Are we honest and transparent with ourselves and with Him, or are we hoping He doesn’t notice the “sins” we are covering up and the distance between us and Him? Have we learned to be thankful, even in the hard times?
You keep saying that we have responsibilities in getting God’s Will done? What kinds of responsibilities?
I’ve already gone through many of them, but if you read the Bible, you’ll find lots more. Because as I said before, His Will is a Verb. It's more about the way we live in obedience to Him than it is about finding "His plan" for our life.
He says to seek wisdom. Do we? He tells us things that He wants us to do in His Word, things that are always His Will for us, like loving our neighbor, tithing, not gossiping, etc. Do we obey? Are we guarding our tongues and building others up, instead of tearing them down? Are we honoring our marriage vows, and putting up strong protective boundaries around our marriage? Do we pray or do we think it’s good enough that He can read our minds? Do we forgive or harbor bitterness? Do we rationalize the first bit of flirting with temptation that we do? After the first unintentional glimpse, do we look again? Do we search the Scriptures and meditate on them as we are called to, or do we just pick the Bible up every now and then for a little boost? Do we seek godly counsel or go off in our own wisdom? Are we honest and transparent with ourselves and with Him, or are we hoping He doesn’t notice the “sins” we are covering up and the distance between us and Him? Have we learned to be thankful, even in the hard times?
Too often, we blame things for being "God's Will," when it might just be a result of our irresponsibility or willful sin. Maybe it’s not "God’s Will" that someone is struggling financially; maybe it’s that they are not being responsible with their money or following the command to tithe? Maybe it’s not "God’s Will" that someone lost their job; maybe they didn’t put their best effort into it, doing their job for the glory of God? Maybe it’s not God’s plan for someone to follow a certain path; maybe they didn’t really bother to ask for God’s guidance and to wait for God to guide them? And when He did show them what they were to do, maybe they didn’t obey?
My concern here is that it’s far easier for us to call all things “God’s Will” than it is to realize that we have an enormous impact and influence on what happens. If we were to realize that God just doesn’t do what He wills, but that we have an impact and influence on what happens, then we would have to take more seriously our responsibility to search for God, to remain close to Him, to seek righteousness, to be obedient, and to pray.
“All things happen for a reason” and “God always does what He wants” are not always true. Sometimes they are just ways to relieve ourselves of the guilt over the consequences that we created, to not take responsibility for our own actions and choices. So often, we want the blessings without doing the work. We want to believe that we are in God’s Will, while we coast through life on “It happened, so it must be God’s Will” and “Everything happens for a reason.”
Because believing that we have more responsibility than that infringes too much on our comfort.
For the posts in this series, see the "Understanding God's Will" label in the sidebar (or find the original series, without the Calvinism info, by clicking here).
