What is God's will for my life? Good question, Keith

seize the time because the traffic is evil the weather means I've got a couple extra minutes in my mobile studio today so I thought I'd take up a question from Keith who writes in and asks something like I can't actually read it because it's on the camera and I'm recording but something like I hear people all the time say it's a god thing and I'm waiting to figure out what God's plan is for my life Keith says it seems like people are trying to walk one step at a time as if the next step God has ordered and they're trying to get access to supernatural information that only God has can you respond I think this is a this is a very good thing for us to reflect on because one question that you hear all the time is what is God's will for my life people are always asking what's God's will for my life and I think the picture that they have for the for living life as a Christian and for figuring out what God's will is it's like God has a perfect plan for me when track then I'm supposed to walk God's plan for me this is God's will for my life to walk this one thin like a like a balance beam it's like walking a balance beam in the dark yeah let me show you what that looks like here's a video of me walking on a balance beam in the dark now and but I can't see where the next step is god knows where my next step he hasn't told me what my next step should be so that I have to try to figure it out then I'm trying to somehow get access to this knowledge of what God's will is or what God's plan is I'm trying to get access to that knowledge that God is holding from me so like God has a little file somewhere that's like perfect plan for Brian's life and I'm trying to sneak into his office and look in his file to figure out what my plan is because he won't tell me I ask him and he won't tell me so so this leads to all sorts of strange Christian activity think is Allah in fact I don't think it's like witchcraft it is it's Christian witchcraft I'm trying to discern or or or figure out or divine the future the I'm trying to get access to these secret things that God hasn't given me access to and so I'm looking for signs open doors little indications that I've made the right choice studying the right thing in college and marrying the right person that I'm pursuing the right career that I'm taking advantage of the right opportunities and all this sort of stuff and this is especially tricky for young people as so much of their life as ahead of them there's so many unknowns that they're mostly looking forward now as you get older and you look back you're you know most of your life is in the past and it's quite different when most of our life is in front of us then then we're especially tempted to this to this kind of thinking is this how the Bible teaches us about God's will I mean that's just this should be the simple question what if we say well what what's God's will for my life we just say well what does the Bible say God's will for my life is and the answer is that the God's will for your life is that you would keep the Ten Commandments it's not some sort of secret the Lord has given us wisdom also courage and joy and his instructions are there in his law this is God's what now people say well I would look I want something more than that I don't want I don't just want the command to love love God and love my neighbor to not murder and not commit adultery and not steal and so forth I want to know what kind of job I should do I want to know who I shouldn't marry well the point is as long as you're keeping God's commandments you can marry whoever you want to marry as long as they'll they say yes you know they have some freedom in this thing as well Luther makes this really really helpful distinction when he's writing to Erasmus on the bondage of the will and he says look our will is bound towards the things above us we care not by our own reason or stream believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or come to him or accept him or believe in his word and all this sort of stuff all these spiritual gifts are given to us by the spirit the mind of the flesh cannot understand receive the things of the Spirit of God nor can it we don't have that ability we don't have free will towards God but we do have free will towards our neighbor you do have a free will to torture calendar you do have a free God has given you freedom to study what you want to study to marry who you want to marry you do what you want to do or or what you think you would be best at to serve your neighbor we're actually truly free to decide how your love ought to look now it's what's what's amazing is that we always want to be creative when it comes to the gospel you know churches are always trying to be creative when it comes to the preaching and worship and everything else that is not the realm of creativity God has told us how that's supposed to sound what the gospel is supposed to be but if you want to be creative you can create creativity comes into our life of love our life of serving our neighbor so the Lord has said don't steal bless your neighbor help him in his bodily needs don't commit adultery that means be faithful to your spouse don't don't a murder that means befriend your neighbor and so forth it but when it comes to how that looks how that love looks like toward your neighbor and your wife and your kids and so forth there's a creativity involved there's a million different ways that you can love your neighbor today and all of them are great Lord doesn't have one thing one next step for you to do there's a whole realm of possibilities that are all good it's not like this this balance beam there's one right thing and I got to pick what that one right thing is or else I'm out of line with the will of God when you sin you're out of line with the will of God but when you love when you keep the commandments you're right in God's will no matter if the love looks this way or the love looks that way if you're a student and you like engineering god be praised or if you like creative writing god be praised if you like you to study I don't know agriculture God be praised all of those are good works and all of them are God's will for you there's some sort of super secret individualized plan for your life God has given you this freedom now now when we look back when we turn and look at the past we can see that the Lord was working all of these things together for good that the Lord was was plotting and helping and all of this sort of thing when we look back we can see it and we can rejoice in it but we're not supposed to see it when we look forward the Lord has hidden that from us he's hidden the knowledge of the future from us for a good reason so that we trusted him now I know it's frustrating because sometimes when we look at the future and we see all of these options we think well it'd be nice if there was just one thing for me like when you're looking at what college to go to and you think man it would be nice just to know that God has one place for me in mind and I'm supposed to figure that out or when we're dating and looking for a spouse the guys for a wife the girls for a husband it would be nice if we had the idea that God has one person for me a soulmate out there that I'm destined to find and I'm on the hunt for the one but it's just not that way I mean how do you know it was God's will for you to marry the person that you're married to it's because you're married to them you see God's will looking backwards but he's hidden it from us looking forward so what do you do I mean because we don't have that comfort of knowing that there's just one right thing well this is where we really lean on the biblical idea of wisdom it's why the Lord gives us wisdom and he gives us wisdom through our elders and most especially through reading his word remember how David says I know more than my teachers because I have delighted in your word we turn to the word for wisdom and we trust this promise from from James chapter one if anybody lacks wisdom let him ask God who gives to all freely I think in some of the translations it says liberally but so such as my disdain for the word liberal that I can't even use a great league God gives wisdom to all freely so we have this promise so we pray Lord look I gotta try to make a decision here I got to figure out what's gonna be the shape of my love I got to figure out what's gonna be my vocation or whatever and I don't know what's best so please give me wisdom and we pray that the Lord would give us wisdom and then we trust that he gives us wisdom through his word and through our friends through our counselors through our elders and so forth we look for wisdom we're not looking for a secret revelation from God if heaven is gonna crack open or is if we're gonna somehow discern that that divine tea leaves or something like this and and through some sort of act of Christian witchcraft figure out the secret no that's not the case we are looking for wisdom in these sorts of things maybe one more point teeth on this sorry to ramble on but we got a snow day today so but it is an interesting thing to note that with this idea of freedom above and freedom below that the American the Evangelical Church in America I guess in the whole world has kind of flipped that on its head it acts like we have freedom towards God and bondage towards the things below so so I've got a I can make a decision for Christ that's up to me Ike it's my free will to decide if I want to be a Christian or not but then I have to go and search God's will to figure out to figure out what color socks he wants me to wear today that's a that's this great danger of freedom that the kind of understanding of the reversal of freedom and bondage that happens in American Christianity so we want to we want to do the opposite of that we want to know that God has not given me freedom to choose Christ that belongs that belongs to faith which is a gift of the Holy Spirit through the word but he has given me freedom towards this life he's given me freedom when it comes to what my love ought to look like he's bound it in by the ten commandments and when we're in that realm of the Ten Commandments within that when were in the boundaries and not transgressing the boundaries that the Ten Commandments draw then the Lord says have at it rejoice in my freedom you choose live discerned love go for it be creative in the way that you that you live this life and know that I'm gonna be pleased with it that you have a multitude of options every day and then I'm going to be pleased with one of them it's not like this there's this balance beam that I'm trying to push you off of [Music] no you have all these various different you have a whole realm of good works to choose from so have at it he's given us that abundance of good works in the freedom that is the Christian life so Keith I appreciate the question I think you're onto something there and I hope this rambling sort of thing helps I might edit it to make it one of those sort of choppy jump cut videos to kind of Fisk II sort of things so let me know what you think about that God's peace be with him Keith also asked about this it's a god thing there's a couple of problems with this kind of language with this cliche and and one is that it assumes if there are things that are God things then there's other things that are not God things which is dangerous like when something good happens like some sort of surprisingly good thing that we didn't expect and we say well that's a that's a god thing but then let's say something bad happens whose thing is that that a devil thing and what was the stuff that was going on with Jobe was that God thing the Lord gives the Lord takes away blessed be the name of the Lord shall we receive good from the hands of the lord and not evil so if you can say if you just look back at everything that happened like not only that some sort of unexpected letter came from an old friend or something like that but also that you got like you got terrible news and you say ah it's a guy it's all but the Lord sits in the heavens the Lord reigns let the whole earth rejoice that if everything is a god thing but we normally use that phrase is normally used like some unexpected sort of nice thing happens wow that's a god thing or that we somehow see how two things were working together that we weren't planning and we see that there that the Lord is at work but okay that's fine but look everything is a god thing the Lord is sovereign Jesus sits on the throne of the universe and he rules and reigns Oh in all things for the sake of his body the church so that the weird good thing that happened to you today and the unexpected or expected bad thing that happened to you today or the very normal thing that happened to you today like that you ADA that you woke up and had cocoa puffs that also is a god thing it's all God things if we want to make a distinction between the way that God works sort of directly versus indirectly in our lives that also is helpful but we want to then say the way the Lord works directly in our lives is through the word when we hear the Lord's word read taught preached expounded then we say now that that's a god thing when my sins are forgiven that's a god that's the particular work of God in this world and that really is a god thing it might not surprise us it might be totally expected we go to church and and there we hear the Lord's word and we we open up our Bible in the morning and we and we hear of his kindness now that there is God doing what he what he wants to do is essential work to save us and deliver us from our sins that's that's really what we should be talking about when we say it's a god thing all right there you go Keith if I still had my Albert Einstein here this would be like jack-in-the-box that's kind of uneventful

Channel: Bryan Wolfmueller

Views: 6,008

Rating: 4.9470201 out of 5

Keywords: what is gods will for my life, gods will, what does god want me to do, hearing god, what does god want me to do with my life, what does god want me to do for a career, what does god want me to do today, what is god's will for my life, its a god thing, it is a god thing

Id: Up-C_hIilqo

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 28 2019