Being Serious About The Will of God

As we entered into the new-year my earnest and deepest desire was to live in the will of God. Frankly, I got fatigued by playing games with the free grace God has given me. I yearned for a deeper revelation of God’s presence and power not only in my heart but in the entire world as a whole. I could not allow myself to continue allowing deception to hinder my fellowship with the Lord so I had to make drastic changes in the things that I primarily sought from the Lord. As I sat in the stillness of the night my heart groaning for the Lord, I came face to face with what really my following the Lord Jesus Christ has been all about. Oh, we can get it so wrong! We can be so deceived! We can follow the hierarchy of the world and imagine it to be the will of God. Christianity is something we have taken as a hobby, or a path of rite we may use to manipulate or control others giving us a sense of grandiosity.

In that stillness of the night as I looked around the requests I placed on the walls of my prayer room, none about doing the will of God was in sight. With no words to even utter in prayer I realized how full I had been of myself. The only time I knew how to pray was when I was telling God what I wanted and as He was emptying me I discovered that I had been going around full of self yet lacked the Holy Spirit power. God is so gracious; He never turns us away when we realize that we have been walking in error and repent of our ways. He said to the Church in Ephesus, “Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.”(Revelations2:5) God is always willing to guide us in our journey with Him but sadly many of us choose the way of deceit. Slowly but surely as we place other things before His will our lamps grow dimmer and we are not even aware of what is happening. We only see ourselves as powerless Christians, giving in to worldly pleasures and sins, confess the sins, ask for forgiveness, only to repeat the cycle. There comes a time where you have to examine yourself- could this be all to Christianity?

The moment I cried out to God in prayer to do His will, He immediately sent help along my way by placing books and articles of sound preachers along my path. I was no longer hearing about receiving a great husband or travelling the world or becoming rich, I was now exposed to the realities of sacrifice; of repentance; of carrying my cross and feeling its weight. I was now exposed to the realities of Christ’s salvation which is the will of God. Oh, and His will is not easy. I remember once I had just read about how imperative it is for us Christians to love and bless those who hate and persecute us. It seemed doable until I got into a situation whereby I felt offended by someone close to my heart. I could not love them back instead I retaliated the only way I knew how to- revenge, hatefulness, anger. After a while I felt convicted by the Holy Spirit to practice what I read in God’s Word and in this case it was loving the unlovable. I fumed and raged and cried and bluntly said to the Lord, “If this is your will then it sucks. Your will sucks!” I look forward to the days when like the Psalmist I honestly say, "I desire to do your will, O my God; your will is within my heart" even during the times it feels less convenient. As Christians, we mostly assume that the will of God is for everyone to love us and be at peace with us. We expect to be blessed, to be liked, to be held in high regards because of our walk with Christ. It’s easy to “walk in love” in situations like that until our toes are stepped on, then what’s inside finally comes out. Jesus’ words according to Mathew 10:34 say, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I’ve come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against a mother-in-law, man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” For those who are seeking peace at all costs with human beings even at the cost of compromising the truth, this can be a hard pill to swallow-yet still it’s the will of God.

Seeking God’s will is no easy venture. God will take us at our word and will begin to work in us. He is not playing games because He knows that there are millions of lost souls who still need to be called to repentance. As I stated earlier, for us Christianity is either a hobby or a game until we become acquainted with the knowledge of what true servants of God are facing in other parts of the world. For us Christianity is about getting a husband in order to satisfy our sexual cravings, making ample money and gaining material gain to be esteemed highly by society. Our hearts are so far from the truth of God’s Word hence we disobey Him and take so lightly being buck-naked in front of men who are not our spouses. Oh, we can always repent. Oh, we can feel sorry for ourselves! Oh we can drag as many people into our pity party!

This year as I went down on my knees seeking the will of God, I gave up the prospect of searching for a husband and putting my feelings of loneliness before His will. The Spirit of God showed me a clearer perspective that God has called me into a season of aloneness with Him. This made sense because I discovered that by trying to fill the void of loneliness in seeking relationships, I was always led into sin which consequently ended in deeper hurt. And as I began to shift my focus off my desires, I began to gain God’s worldwide vision for His kingdom, that all men should come to repentance and He has called me to preach His Gospel, not to nurse my feelings of pity because I’m not in a relationship and can’t have sex. Giving me a husband is a small matter to God, yet I’ve been limiting His power by making my singleness such a huge factor that I often lost sight of His will.

Throughout scriptures we find encouraging and earnest passages about the will of God. God is serious about His will and I believe He’s prompting us to be serious about Him too! We have to place it above our desires and expectations. We have to totally abandon ourselves to Him even when it hurts. That hurt cannot even be compared to the freedom we’ll gain because “the safest place to be”, as it’s commonly said, “is in the will of God.”

“The world and its desires passes away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever!”(1John2:17)