God’s will for our lives
Once we’ve broken free from the pattern of this world we begin to
grasp his will for our lives. Until then his will is illusive and
circumstantial, like a magic path.
We desperately seek the way that avoids stress and pain, where
decisions click with the circumstances. It’s a lot like seeking an
amulet for safety. What’s God’s will for my life?
For those who are still practicing the pattern of this world the
question implies if you could just find it, you’d find fulfillment.
If you could just keep step with it, you’d not have any
unnecessary pain. It’s as if
you’d like to pull your file and peruse the contents so there was less
trial and error. His will is
nothing like that.
God’s plan, before the beginning of time, has always been that we
become like Jesus Christ in heart, mind and action.
When we’re talking about becoming
like Christ we’re not talking about mimicking his external behavior.
We’re talking about change within us, to become how he is inside.
For example, part of this change
occurs because our Father deals with our needs when we ask. Eventually
this makes us self-unaware.
Since personal need is the driving force in a normal life it’s very
apparent when the whining is absent.
This person then has the ability to advocate on behalf of others
in a self-sacrificial manner.
Jesus was like that.
He knew the Father would take care of him, so he focused on us.
Here is where he’s taking us, and
more.
Finding his will for our life isn’t about which career option to
take, or what car to buy, finding the one that will cost us least in the
long run. It’s not about
searching for the best financial choice in portfolios.
It’s about becoming like Christ and a difficult job may be the
best environment for that.
Having more money may hamper the process.
The efficient car you had in mind may not be the one he had in
mind to change you inside.
At other times, it may not matter which job or car you have or what
choices you’ve made. The
circumstances he has designed for you may be much more fundamental and
penetrating, striking at the core of your being.
He creates circumstances and uses them to advance toward his
goal. And his goal is to
change us from what we once were, to what he wants us to be and that
takes training.
But before we can get on with our training, we must come to
repentance. Obviously,
that’s why repentance is part of God’s will for our lives, something
that can take decades to arrive at, or even a life-time.
We must realize that God is at work trying to bring us to
repentance and then once that occurs he shifts his energy to a
progressive training that changes us inside.
At first this seems unpleasant,
not at all like we’d imagined, it’s often disorienting.
But he has his eye on making us like Christ.
Why is that? Why is
the whole focus on bringing us to the place where we are like Jesus?
Why does change have to happen in
this life?
Why can’t we simply wait to be changed completely at the last
trumpet? Can’t we just be
amiable with him, appreciating his compassion and gentleness?
Why can’t we cruise along with our lives instinctually doing what
we think best? Why can’t we
have our own private religion where it’s just he and me?
It seems like such a stretch for me to become like Jesus of
Nazareth in this life. Why
all the pressure? Why can’t we
just focus on the things we can do for him in the course of our lives?
Why can’t we just contribute to the drama of the ministry?
Why not just focus on my healing?
Why not?
God’s will is that we become like Christ because he’s getting
married. And marriage is something permanent, so he’s not going to be
unequally yoked. We
see God finding a wife for Isaac but not from among the Canannites.
We find God commanding Moses not to allow the people of Israel to
inter-marry with the people of the land, who run on instinct and
impulse. We find Nehemiah
very adamant about inter-marriage as they rebuild Jerusalem.
It’s all symbolic, pointing to the marriage of the Lamb.
“The kingdom of heaven is
like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son…”
The Church is considered the Bride of Christ, and this is the
time of her preparation.
We’ve got to keep in mind that the Church is different than the local
church. The Church down
through the ages is made up of people who’ve come to repentance and are
becoming like Christ. That
is very different from the local church, which is composite by nature.
The local church has within it at least three types of people, if
it’s real at all. It will
have the repentant who have abandoned to him.
It may have the religious who are
either blinded or on the road to repentance.
And it may also have unbelievers attending, a curious people who
have an inarticulate sense of something just out of their reach.
It seems we’re not to uproot this mix.
Jesus is teaching about this
composite nature when he talks
about the wide road that leads to destruction and the narrow road that
leads to life. He says that on
that last day, most will try to persuade him that they were on the right
track because of their religious activities.
In the end, he tells them that those who carried out the will of
God will be those who join him, he will know them.
It’s easy to be an unbeliever or
religious on the wide road, but it’s a rare thing to abandon and be
changed. Jesus will marry
only those who are like him and no one is born like that.
We all have the potential, but the reality comes by following the
will of God in our lives, becoming like Christ.
Being a kindred spirit with Jesus of Nazareth generally revolves
around three things. The
first being abandonment to God’s agenda, to the Father’s goals and
dreams. This is not in
addition to your own, but where yours are supplanted by his.
The second is being unaware of self, like we’ve talked about
before, where things don’t revolve around us anymore. In fact it’s a
place where we forget about ourselves.
The third is being
investors for the benefit of others, for their future, their eternal
future. This costs us but he
is the resource for our need, it flows through us and right out for
others. Our old nature
doesn’t stand for this. It
will share with God, but it will not step aside for him.
It writhes and declares war. To the repentant this matters
little, but to the religious it matters a lot.
Jesus is looking for a marriage
partner who is equal to him in character & commitment, equal to him in
heart & mind. Equal to him, that
takes preparation.
This is the time of preparation.
Jesus Christ is preparing a place for his bride where no eye has
seen, no ear has heard and no mind has conceived what God has prepared
for those who love him. And
those who love him will be preparing for him.
This preparation is God’s will.
This is what his Spirit is doing in tutoring us, guarding us and
training us to be kindred to Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.
On that last day we will see that the bride has made herself
ready with fine linen, bright and clean. She’s been given beautiful
garments during her time of preparation, because she has changed,
inside. May you also be
changed and be one of those who enter the wedding feast of the Lamb
because you co-operated with his will for your life.