Saturday, November 18, 2017

God’s Will Hunting

  
1 Thessalonians 4:3 “This is the will of God, your sanctification”

Seeking God’s holy will in our lives and the specific details daily is a priority of every child of God. How to go about it hunting for and finding it is a virtuous and rewarding pursuit. I read that though Paul was an Apostle, he did not have automatic insight into all of the plans of God and His will in each specific situation. Life presents us with many opportunities for trying to discern God’s will for us. We face many situations in which we must make a choice between two good options, and we are unsure which one is what the Lord has willed for us. This is especially difficult when neither option seems to be more advantageous than the other. At such times, we often ask God to intervene in a special way to show us the way forward. Most of us, of course, can think of times when the Lord seemed to give us special aid. One of the good opportunities might inexplicably vanish. Maybe we get an unexpected phone call from a friend and the conversation turns out to have bearing on the matter even if we never mention it. Still, even though such things may happen, they are extraordinary. The Lord does not ordinarily guide our decision-making in such ways. We need to know how to make God-pleasing decisions when no special providence is forthcoming, and we need to know how to distinguish what seems to be providential direction from our own imagination.


The first place to turn when we must make a choice is our Creator’s wisdom in Scripture. His Word says that above all, His will for us is our sanctification. The 1828 Webster’s dictionary defines the word “Sanctification” as: The act of making holy. In an evangelical sense, the act of God's grace by which the affections of men are purified or alienated from sin and the world, and exalted to a supreme love to God. The act of consecrating or of setting apart for a sacred purpose; consecration.

Thus, anything that works against our personal holiness is to be rejected. If we are fretting about God’s will for us in a particular situation and one of the options available is ungodly, we may fret no longer. We are never allowed to disobey our Creator’s revealed standards, and if one of our options would require us to do that, we must immediately choose otherwise. The Lord’s will for us is our sanctification, so we must study Scripture diligently in order to know His will and to understand what the holiness He demands looks like.


Blessings in God’s Will

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