“What is the Will of God in my Life?”
“Your Will be Done; on Earth as it is in Heaven.” Matthew: 6:10
I don’t know about you, but for me, I have often wondered what the will of God is in my life. For most of my life, I have wrestled with this question and often have frozen up, and I don’t have a clue. I get caught up in the mire of indecision, worry, anxiety and distress. Inevitably, something will happen and most of the time, it is not God’s will.
I often have struggled with trying to determine God’s will making important decisions. For example, what should I do when I confront my boss on an ethical question fearing that I might lose my job? Should I marry this girl, or not? Do I follow my convictions and join a protest march over the innocent death of an African American boy at the hands of the police or be afraid that my conservative friends will cease to be my friends? I am afraid that I may be arrested while practicing non-violent civil disobedience? Do I follow my selfish tendencies and want my comatose husband to continue “living” and instead of let him go?
Last summer, while a teaching a class, we were discussing the same topic. We concluded that knowing the will of God is not based on specific situations, such as the questions from the previous paragraph. Rather, God’s will is my decision to follow the Way of the Christ. We decide to follow Him, no matter where He leads us.
We have the faith to live with Him by trusting Him. Faith is belief in Him. Trusting is acting in faith for Him. Trusting Him is putting our “boots on the ground,” and following him.
This is what the Apostle Paul means when he exhorts his house churches:
“If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” Philippians 2:1-3
What Paul means is that we align our mind with Christ. We live to live into the “mind of Christ.” It takes a lifetime to achieve this. Fortunately, God is patient with us, because He “first loved us,” offering is extravagant Grace.
Why? Because Paul time and time reminds his first century churches what became the earliest creed, which we repeat at Sunday worship. Christ lives. He is condemned. He is crucified. He is resurrected. We come again, that we may have “life abundant.”
Paul writes again and again that we are the Church, the koinonia. We are the saints as the “body of Christ” on earth. Christ is present with us when we gather with Him, especially when we celebrate Holy communion. When we eat His body and drink His blood it is more than “in remembrance of me,” as is often carved the communion tables. He is present now.
Yet, Christ invites us to follow him, if we are find God’s will in our life
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Mark 8:34-36
That is radical stuff. It is costly because Jesus forces us “metanoia,” that is radical transformation from the we are in our brokenness to the way He wants us to be. Is this what Jesus means when we live into the will of God?
We walk the way of Christ; living in His will. We have the “blessed assurance” that “all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” (14th century mystic Julian of Norwich)
