I was really encouraged by Greg Marshall’s sermon about God’s will for our lives… These are my notes and study from it.. But here is a link to the actual sermon..
http://westbrookchurch.com/mp3/sunday_morning/2010/10-08-01.mp3
Colossians 1:9-14
“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding…”
In order to do this, you must first understand how God’s will works. There’s no right or wrong answer because of free will given to us by God. We can do whatever we want in this life: take whatever job, speak however we please, have whatever friends we want, eat what we want, marry who ever we want.. But if we are not choosing decisions with wisdom according to God’s best interest, how are we able to make a good decision that will be honoring to God?
Now, you might say, someone who actually cares about God and His will won’t make decisions blindly or selfishly. But we do. Everyday we do and say things that we don’t bring to God and that aren’t honoring to Him.. But that doesn’t mean that all is lost even with the smallest or biggest of choices we make daily. God is a loving and merciful God.. He looks forward to when we turn our thoughts of actions to Him and say “Actually Lord, I need your help. I make dumb decisions and I wander away from you when I think I know what’s best or when I’m afraid of where I know you might be calling me.” I found this concept of turning to the Lord relatable with something I read earlier this morning having to do with idols in Deuteronomy 4:15-31… Read through that carefully and notice the end result in verses 29-31..
v. 15-19 “…Therefore watch yourselves carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the starts-all heavenly array-do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshipping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.”
v. 29-31 ”BUT if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him. For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your forefathers, which he confirmed to them by oath.”
We can mess up, and He’ll take us back if we genuinely desire to know His truth and believe that He can provide us with wisdom, knowledge and understanding. If we believe that He knows what’s best for us; through knowing Him, His character and His promises, we can be confident in ourselves because of the One inside of us. With wisdom, knowledge and understanding we will see proof in the way that we live and that it may be a life worthy of the Lord by: “bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints of the kingdom of light.” (Colossians 1:10-12)
It’s not about making the correct big decision in our lives. It’s about living day to day with wisdom, knowledge and understanding and trusting in the fruit that we see in our own lives and being confident in Him inside of us so that when that day comes to make a big decision, we trust that the Lord can trust us and say “Kari, I can trust with your wisdom, knowledge and understanding that you can make a good decision that is honoring to Me..”
We become paralyzed and blind when we view the process of knowing God’s will incorrectly. When we think that we are able to fall out of God’s will for our lives, we are afraid to make any decision because we are afraid it will be the wrong decision. We can also become blind if we don’t understand the concept of God’s will because we can worry so much about making the right decision that we can forget the growth that needs to happen in order to know what would be the best decision.
It’s not so much about where you need to go, it’s about how you need to get there. So often we set goals for ourselves to learn and adopt ways into our lives as soon as we can so that we can be the best that we can be but we forget the process that it might require. When we jump into a process expecting it to be easy and fast, we tend to just rush the process, which leaves a gap of possibly lacking a genuine transformation.
Some encouraging verses:
James 1:5 “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”
Proverbs 24:5-6 “A wise man has great power, and a man of knowledge increases strength. For waging war you need guidance, and for victory many advisers.”
2 Peter 1:2-3 “Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”
