What I Write About

I write about the infinite number of intersections between every day life and the good news of the God who has come to get us.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Knowing God's Will

This week I'm working on a talk on "Knowing God's Will." Here's a quick excerpt:

The most critical thing we have to begin with and hold onto as we begin this discussion about knowing God's will is this: God is much more interested in who we're becoming than in what we're doing. We are obsessed with the doing, with the next steps on our paths. God is obsessed with who we're becoming as we walk that path.

This is not to say that God doesn't care about what we're doing. God does care what we do, in fact Scripture says he has gone ahead of us and prepared good works in advance for us to do. But he cares about what we're doing insofar as it is the training ground for the person that we're becoming. He cares about what we're doing because our "doing" is part of what creates or re-creates (for good and for bad) our "being."

God is like an occupational or physical therapist. He gives us opportunities and relationships and work to do that works to rehabilitate our broken souls. He has us single, dating, married, working in this job or that in order to bring our sin and issues to the surface that they might be dealt with and we might be freed to look more like Christ. He is pacing us through all the seasons of our lives in order to transform us, change us, heal us, call us to repentance, life, grace.

When it comes to approaching the topic of knowing God's will for our lives, we've got to hold onto this core truth: God cares much more about who we're becoming than what we're doing.

6 comments:

Em the luddite said...

How true... Funny that we treat finding "God's will" like such a puzzle, like God is the Great Puzzle Master and our job as his followers is to figure him out, when Scripture never treats it that way. It talks about his will being "that none should perish" and things like that.

"Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus..."

Bonnie said...

Sounds like it's going to be a good talk, Alex.

Alex said...

thanks for the visit, em...although i have to ask if it's genuinely possible to be a luddite with a blogger account.

bonnie, i hope it will be!

Em the luddite said...

I know, I know... it had initially been my AIM screenname, which I'm pretty sure is not luddite. But I've been keeping the name around to signify my reluctance and my preference for real-life conversations.

Amy said...

Can't wait to hear the whole talk!

amy

Burly said...

Interesting post here: http://blog.togetherforthegospel.org/2008/02/the-bondage-of.html ... good quote: A subjective sense of leading--when we've asked for it (as in James 1:5 we ask for wisdom) and when God freely gives it--is wonderful. Such subjective sense of leading, however, are too often in contemporary evangelical piety, binding our brothers and sisters in Christ, paralyzing them from enjoying the good choices that God may provide, and causing them to wait wrongly before acting. Beware of the bondage of "guidance."