Living freely

Here are some excerpts from an e-mail I received last week:

“I'm going through an extreme growth period in my faith but I still feel lost in knowing how to find god's will for me. Maybe I'm just thinking too much but how do you know god's guidance? . . . on many things I know his answers but when I seek him on a specific issue it is then when I tend to get lost. How do you know when he is answering?”

What is God’s will for me?

I hate trying to answer that question. Not because it’s a bad question, or because it shouldn’t be asked. It’s just that sometimes, I think that question holds us back. Of course living in God’s will is the only way to really live, but sometimes the question of what His will really is leaves us fearful that one wrong step, or one faulty interpretation of what God is “saying to me” could DESTORY. MY. LIFE.

God wants us to know Him and his will. He wants us to study the scriptures and become familiar with his nature. There are things that obviously are or are not God’s will. I read another blog recently that said something like, “As we do the things which are clearly in God’s will, we slowly become the kind of people who can discern the things that aren’t so clear.” Forgive me for not remembering who it was or where I saw it! If it was you, let me know and I’ll add a link!

I know . . . when we’re faced with issues like what job to take or what house to buy, there isn’t specific instruction to be found in the Bible on these things. But I think sometimes, outside of the specific commands that he gives us, we’re given the freedom to choose our own path. He tells us to love Him and to love people. This is what is important. Everything else falls into place as we follow him and seek his guidance. During my senior year of college, I was considering many different options for the following year. All of them were good choices. All of them had positive and negative points. I could have defended any of them as God’s will. I chose camp. Was it God’s will? I think so. I thought I’d work here for a year, and then move on, but I ended up meeting and marrying a wonderful man and having a beautiful child. It’s easy for me to say that this was God’s will. Does that mean that one of those other options have been out of God’s will? Not necessarily. My life certainly would have turned out differently, but I believe that God would have used me for his purposes in those situations, too.

I think that often (not always, but often) it’s more about how you’re serving God and honoring Him where you are and with what you’re doing than it is about being in a specific place at a specific time.

Be free!