I wish to encourage you to live to see God’s will done.
A common condition that cuts across all cultures, and manifests from an early age, is that we don’t respond well when we don’t get what we want. We are typically very protective of our ‘so-called rights’ to do what we want. In other words, we naturally tend to will and do as we please. Not so the child of God!
Jesus, instructing His disciples on how to pray, following His initial worship, says, “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). While most believers are very happy for God’s will to be perfectly and instantaneously carried out in heaven, we’re lease than enthusiastic to apply the same principle to our own lives. The fact is, in this matter of living for God’s will to be done, we need to increasingly adopt the attitude of John the Baptist, “He (Jesus) must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
Genuinely desiring our Heavenly Father’s will to be accomplished in our lives is an integral component of our highest worship. In so doing, we acknowledge His rightful sovereignty, His entitlement to Lordship, and our rightful servitude. In this most important matter, we need to regularly ask, as the disciples did, Lord “Increase our faith!” (Luke 17:5).
Our very salvation evidences that, “He (God) predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Ephesians 1:5). God’s will always has purpose. He never does anything simply for the sake of doing it. As “those who belong to Christ Jesus (who) have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24-25), let us focus our spiritual, emotional, and intellectual “minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:2-3).
As is so often the case, Christ leads by divine example, exemplifying His righteous submission when saying; “I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:30). Obviously, what our Heavenly Father wants, how He wants to accomplish what He wants, and His timing, is going to differ from our way of thinking; “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD” (Isaiah 55:8). God’s eternal holiness, His infinite knowledge and wisdom, His glory, His mercy, and His love of us, all work together to determine His will for our lives. He sees and understands every component of every situation, nothing is overlooked, and nothing is disregarded as irrelevant, as He lavishes his sovereign love and irresistible grace upon us (1 John 3:1).
Seeking another’s will in preference to our own requires a Holy Spirit generated work within our hearts. So, we pray; “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”! (Psalms 139:23-24). Let our response mirror that of Thomas, who answered Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28), as we acknowledge that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5).
I encourage you to live as those looking for God’s will to be done in your life, putting Jesus Christ first! Invite His Holy Spirit to inspire your spiritual motives, your aspirations, your passions, to embolden your faith, to enlarge your willingness for personal sacrifice, and empower your willingness to tell the lost of their only Saviour, Jesus Christ! For His glory alone!