The Will of God

A short course in God's Will for us...

I believe God wills me today to do something good for someone else. God wills for me to look outside myself, to give what I can to whom I can in every way I can, to paraphrase John Wesley. God wills that I sacrifice, the more the better. God wills that I care, because He does.

God does not will that I suffer, that I be filled with pain and loss, that things are going to go poorly for me today. I do not believe that God wants bad for any of us, only allows it to happen, then ensures that we can learn from it and take good from even the worst of all situations, even the death of a loved one.

One of my favorite verses is this, Romans 8:28:  "²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who^[i] have been called according to his purpose."

This theological idea that if I have faith God will give me all good things is at best ill-thought. Clearly there are very faithful people for whom things go very poorly. Clearly even those with the strongest of faiths die, their prayers for healing crumpled away like used notebook paper. But that verse doesn't say that. What it says is that God works in all things, the good and the terrible, to turn them to good.

When we lose a loved one, God is there to sooth the pain. When we have the pain itself, God is there to help us through even if we can't see or feel the change in the hurt. He takes us through it.

Paul said at one point we were to rejoice for suffering, but I believe he meant we were not to rejoice in the suffering or while the suffering was going on for I haven't met anyone who would say, "Thank you God for giving me this illness." But what he meant was thank God for the opportunity the suffering might give us to show the glory of God.

In the 8th chapter of the Book of Romans, it also says, "³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,^[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. "

More than conquerors. Never separated from God's love, shown to us through Christ Jesus.

That's God's Will. That we experience His love through His Son.

Take it and go out into the world, my friends. Love someone today.